Not Reacting to Your Narcissistic Parent Can’t Be the Goal

0:05 Welcome to You're Not Crazy, a podcast for the adult children of parents with narcissistic and unmanaged borderline personality disorder. I'm your host, Torie Wiksell, a therapist with over a decade of experience in the mental health field. I also happened to grow up with a narcissist mom who had a lot of BPD traits, and I know a thing or two about how crazy-making these types of relationships can be.

0:30 I'm so excited to show you what it actually means to break the cycle of dysfunction that we grew up in and help you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks for joining me. Now let's jump into the show. Hi, and welcome back to this episode of the You're Not Crazy podcast. We are fully in the holiday swing of things, the holiday season, if you will.

0:50 Halloween is a mere few days away, and so we are going to ramp up our talk around navigating complicated and dysfunctional family dynamics at the holidays And today I wanna start by talking about something that is really important to acknowledge and understand in order to change the way you approach your own family dynamics and that is when you have a parent who is unable or unwilling to appropriately regulate their own emotions, when you have a parent who lashes out at you when they're mad, who has unreasonable and inappropriate expectations of their relationship with you.

1:33 When you have a parent like this, you are dealing with a parent who is not a consistently emotionally safe person And this gets really tricky because that is true of your experience with your parent when you were a kid growing up in your family dynamic, and because you're listening to this podcast, I imagine that continues to be true of your parent to this day.

1:57 With parents like this, it's not just about the past, and it's not just about the present. It's about both. And where this gets really, really tricky is that growing up in this type of dynamic, when you have a parent who's not consistently an emotionally safe person to be around, you learn to pick up on cues you learn how to read the room.

2:21 You learn how to read their body language. You learn how to pick up on their subtle shifts in their tone of voice, their subtle changes in their mannerism. You learn to pick up on triggers for them in order to keep yourself safe because you know when your parent is upset, when they're angry, when they're frustrated, when they're hurt, they don't handle that appropriately.

2:45 They lash out. They do something that feels scary, that might be actually scary or dangerous. And so you do your best as a kid to learn how to get ahead of that, how to anticipate it, how to intervene as quickly as possible so that you can be safe, you can feel safe And this becomes the dynamic with your parent growing up And when you're an adult and you're dealing with a parent who still isn't consistently an emotionally safe person to be around because they haven't done the work that it would take for them to learn how to become an emotionally safe person, they haven't taken accountability for the fact that the way that they act out and lash out at other people isn't appropriate.

3:30 They haven't self-reflected to try to understand why it is they do the things that they do. They haven't learned new skills and practiced implementing those skills consistently over time, poorly at first because that's what happens when we learn new skills. Your parent hasn't done any of that hard and time-consuming and emotionally intensive work that you've been doing throughout your life trying to be the healthiest version of yourself.

4:02 Your parent hasn't done that. And so they're still this emotionally unsafe person. They're still not an emotionally safe person to be around. And so when you're around a parent like that and you've grown up in this type of dynamic and they're still not an emotionally safe person, it gets really confusing because you're a different person than you were back then, right?

4:27 You're not a little kid anymore. You're an adult now. As an adult, you don't have the same dependency on your parent that you did back then And so a lot of the times it can feel like you should be able to stay more grounded around your parent. You should be able to be less reactive around your parent.

4:48 You've learned how to be a healthier adult, therefore, you should be able to do that around your parent. And what so often gets overlooked is the fact that your parent isn't a safe person today. It's not just that they weren't a safe person growing up, but they're still not a safe person. They're still the person who's demonstrating emotionally and psychologically abusive behaviors when you're interacting with them.

5:15 Gaslighting, that's abusive. That's not healthy. That's extremely unhealthy, and it's really disorienting, and it's upsetting and confusing and all of the things When you're actively on the receiving end of abuse, it is very normal and healthy to have a negative reaction to that. That's appropriate. That is normal.

5:39 However, there is nuance here. I'm not saying that we want you to become completely dysregulated and to lash out that would be a very extreme interpretation of what I'm saying. What I am saying is that you feeling upset, you being emotionally upset in response to being on the receiving end currently of abusive behaviors is appropriate and normal.

6:03 Now, the way that you respond to that might be healthy or unhealthy, these are the layers and the nuance regardless, it doesn't feel good to become dysregulated, even if it is an appropriate reaction to inappropriate and abusive behavior. When you become emotionally dysregulated yourself in these types of interactions, it is very upsetting.

6:28 It feels very unnerving, and it is oftentimes followed by a shame spiral because you act in a way that is not aligned with the person that you are working so hard to become. You act out in a way that feels embarrassing or shameful to you, or like You are becoming your parent. And so what do we do about that?

6:52 If you know that you're going to be more likely to have a negative emotional response around your parent because they weren't just emotionally abusive with their behaviors when you were growing up, but they are still that same person, and they still engage with you in that same unhealthy and emotionally abusive way.

7:13 If we know that that is true, and you are likely to be on the receiving end of that dysfunction to some extent or the other around your parent this holiday season, how do we actually help you prepare to deal with that? The first thing is the expectation can't be for you to be more calm in response to their abusive behaviors . That can't be the goal because when that becomes the goal, what we're essentially encouraging you to do is to become more desensitized to abuse, and that's not a good goal.

7:50 That's not what we want anyone who's trying to heal from a dysfunctional and abusive family dynamic to do. We don't want you to become more desensitized to abuse. We want you to become more confident and empowered navigating these situations and these interactions and dynamics in a healthy way We know that it doesn't feel good to lash out, right?

8:13 Although it might be understandable, it doesn't feel good. And so this is where boundaries come in. This is where having realistic expectations of these types of interactions come in. This is where having a really clear plan for how you're going to navigate your family dynamics over the holidays comes in It shifts the focus from I just need to not react, I just need to be less sensitive, I just need to fill in the blank of whatever it is that you tell yourself over and over again, it shifts that focus to, " This is likely what is going to happen when I interact with my parent this holiday season This is how I'm going to handle these situations that are likely to come up It shifts the focus from something that requires you

9:05 to dissociate, requires you to just completely internalize all of these very appropriate feelings that you're having in response to abusive behavior. It shifts the focus from that to, " I can handle this. I can protect myself. I'm an adult now, and I have choices that are available to me now that weren't available to me when I was a kid and growing up in this dynamic.

9:37 I'm not financially dependent on my parent anymore. I'm not physically dependent on my parent anymore. I can make different choices, not just about whether or not I see my parent this holiday season, or for how long I see them, or in what circumstances I see them, but I can actually make different choices as the interaction with my parent unfolds."

9:59 Those are opportunities for us to handle these types of situations differently through a lens of, how do I protect myself? How do I keep myself safe? How do I navigate a situation that becomes unsafe when it's becoming unsafe? These are the types of things that I walk you through in my Surviving Interactions guide.

10:21 It is how to think about these types of interactions through a lens of what is realistic and likely to happen, and what it is that you want to do to protect yourself as this visit is unfolding, as you're actually there interacting with your parent, how are you going to navigate a situation where your parent is likely at some point in time to demonstrate unhealthy behaviors?

10:49 Because historically, that is their pattern. That is what they do, and they haven't taken the time and energy to learn how to do something different. How are you going to do that, and how are you going to help yourself following the emotional intensity that is this type of dynamic These types of relationships are so complicated, and they're so layered, and they're so nuanced, and they're so confusing.

11:16 And I talk a lot about how growing up in that very black and white world that our parents live in seeps into our own healing journey. It seeps into the way we think about what our options are when it comes to these types of family dynamics. It seeps into our thought process around how we should or shouldn't be handling these types of situations.

11:40 But the reality is that these situations are really layered, and they're really, really nuanced. And navigating the holidays through a different lens than you have historically, a lens where you look at, okay I'm gonna have a hard time emotionally regulating around my parent because what they're currently doing is abusive is important.

12:03 It's not just about historically what's happened in our relationship, it's about the fact that that dynamic is still happening now. But it's also about the fact that I now am an adult and I have different choices and options available to me than I did back then that's the shift that helps set you up for a healthier holiday season.

12:26 That's the shift that sets you up for a holiday interaction with your family where you actually have the ability to protect yourself as we continue to go through the holiday season, I will talk more and more about the complicated layers of family dynamics that come up here And in the meantime, you can find the Surviving Interactions guide in the link in the show notes for help simplifying this whole process Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the You're Not Crazy podcast, and I'll see you again soon.

13:00 Bye. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of the You're Not Crazy podcast. If you like the show, please leave a five-star review to help other cycle breakers find it, and make sure to check the show notes for other ways I can help. Thanks again for joining me. I'll see you soon