You're Not Doomed: Escaping a Pattern of Dysfunctional Relationships

Big news! The Confident Boundaries App is officially live—now available for free on iPhone and Android. Inside, you’ll get instant access to a curated starter bundle of some of my favorite episodes and articles to support your healing from family dysfunction.

In today’s episode, we’re digging into a question I hear often from adult children of narcissistic parents or those with unmanaged BPD:
 “Why do I keep ending up in toxic relationships?”

When you grow up with emotionally immature or abusive parents, you're taught to dismiss your gut, minimize your needs, and tolerate mistreatment. That pattern doesn’t magically disappear in adulthood.

You’re not doomed to repeat these patterns forever. You can learn healthy love—and it starts with understanding what was never your fault to begin with.

📲 Download the Confident Boundaries app now to start healing with practical tools and community support. And if this episode hit home, tap 5 stars and leave a quick review to help others find the podcast.

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Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy. If you’re in crisis, please call the 988 Crisis Lifeline.

You're Not Crazy is owned and produced by Torie Wiksell and Confident Boundaries, LLC.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome to You're Not Crazy, a podcast for the adult
children of parents withborderline and narcissistic
personality disorders.
I'm your host, tori Wixel, atherapist and coach with over a
decade of experience in themental health field.
Now let's jump in.
Hi and welcome back to thisweek's episode of the You're Not

(00:35):
Crazy podcast.
I know last week I announcedthat I had something very
exciting in the works and I wasgoing to tell you what it is
today, and I am really excitedto do that.
I've been working on somethingbehind the scenes.
If you're a part of theConfident Boundaries membership,
then you have known this hasbeen in the works for a while,

(00:58):
but if you are not, this will benews to you.
So I have been working oncreating my own Confident
Boundaries app as in like iPhoneAndroid app, and I'm really,
really excited to let you knowthat it is officially available

(01:19):
for you to download for freeright now.
It is called ConfidentBoundaries.
There's a blue C and a B in theApp Store or the Google Play
Store if you go search it rightnow.
I am really excited about thisapp because it's going to allow
even more people to get to hearthe podcast, to get to access

(01:44):
the things that I write, andevery week when I launch a new
episode of the You're Not Crazypodcast, I'm going to post it to
Apple Podcasts, spotify, allthe things and I'm also going to
post the new episode in the app.
So if you're someone who, forwhatever reason, doesn't like

(02:07):
listening to podcasts in Spotifyor Apple Podcasts, you now have
another option You're going tobe able to listen to it for free
, just like you do here.
So that's an exciting newfeature.
Also, the Confident Boundariesmembership is now a huge part of

(02:28):
the app and it's this reallycool feature where, if you're
not a part of the membership,you don't even know that it
exists.
It doesn't even show up for you.
But if you're in the membership, it is now super simple to use
our chat feature.
Super simple to use our chatfeature.

(02:49):
It is so much easier to accessour library and the bonus
podcast episodes of You're NotCrazy.
All of that is loaded into theapp in one spot so you can have
it on the go with you, unlikehow it was before, where you
really had to pick and plan atime to sit down at your
computer.
So I am so excited because, aswe all know, when we're dealing

(03:11):
with a dysfunctional family.
They don't schedule freak outsor pressure moments at the most
convenient times in our lives.
We're typically doing somethingor out and about, and we're not
always sitting at a desktopcomputer when we need support.
So with the app, you're goingto be so much more able to just

(03:36):
pull out your phone, hop in thechat, vent, ask for advice, get
a little encouragement, whateveryou need.
So I am really excited aboutwhat the app is going to do for
the membership.
If you go to the app, if youset up an account with your
username and passwordautomatically, you're going to

(03:58):
get a welcome to the app bundlesent directly to your content
library in the app.
So those are three of myfavorite episodes of this very
podcast, as well as three blogarticles that I've written on
areas around toxic parents andhealing from family dysfunction

(04:21):
that I think are really big gamechangers when it comes to the
way we look at this type ofdynamic.
If you happen to rate it fivestars when you're there, that
would be even more wonderful,but you do.
You Head over there, check itout, and I would be so grateful.
Now, pivoting in to the heartof the podcast today I'm going

(04:44):
to be talking aboutrelationships.
What I want to talk about ishow, when you grow up with a
parent like this, you are somuch more likely to find
yourself in dysfunctional andtoxic relationships in other
aspects of your life.
I want to talk about why thatis of your life.

(05:08):
I want to talk about why thatis.
When we grow up with a toxicparent, we're taught to ignore
our own internal voice, toignore our own intuition and to
override that based upon whatour parent wants from us, what
they think we should do, whothey think we should be, who
they think we are.
We're constantly conditioned tosilence ourselves and what

(05:31):
feels good to us and overridethat in order to make sure
everyone and everything seemsokay.
It is a constant practice ofignoring what feels okay,
ignoring what we want, and areally high tolerance for

(05:53):
allowing people to treat uspoorly.
Also, when we grow up in thistype of family dynamic, we're
consistently in survival mode.
We're constantly walking oneggshells.
We're never quite sure if it'ssafe to let our guard down.
It is very taxing physicallyand emotionally on our bodies to

(06:16):
be in an environment like thiswhere there is not a sense of
emotional safety.
You become really used tooperating in survival mode.
So when I was younger, when Iwas a young adult and I was in
trauma therapy, I had thiswonderful therapist and we began

(06:36):
to discuss the differentrelationships in my life and how
I was found myself in reallytoxic and really abusive
relationships.
Those included my boyfriend, mylongtime friend growing up, and

(06:56):
my mom and other friends that Imade as a young adult.
I consistently found myself inthese relationships with people
that I wanted to really like me,that I thought liked me, and
that ended up treating me reallypoorly.
I wanted to know how I couldprevent this from happening

(07:19):
again.
And while doing this worktogether and trying to help me
better understand how I foundmyself in these relationships,
in these situations, I asked hersome variation of am I a magnet
for sociopaths?

(07:39):
What is wrong with me?
I am the common denominator?
How can I stop this fromhappening?
What could I do?
And she told me this reallyinteresting thing and this has
stuck with me through all ofthese years she told me that
when you grow up with a parentlike this, you are far more

(08:03):
inclined to tolerate abuse anddysfunction.
Someone who is a narcissist orsociopath or otherwise
manipulative or unhinged goesaround life and they don't just
automatically know who you areright.
They don't just look at youfrom across the room and see oh,

(08:26):
this is someone who's grown upwith a toxic parent and is ripe
for abusing.
That's not how this works atall.
When you experience thisprofound amount of conditioning
and manipulation and abuse,growing up, it really is like
I've said before being raised ina cult, you're taught to look

(08:49):
at the world in a way that isnot how you naturally are
inclined to look at the world.
It is a way that is notreflective of the real world.
And the biggest manipulationtactic that these types of
people use it's really the lovebombing.
That's what gets us.
It's that desire so badly towant to be seen for who we are

(09:16):
and to want to be loved and towant to be in a relationship
with someone who not only getsus but really appreciates us and
cares about us, and that's whatsucks us into this cycle with
our toxic parent too.
It's that false hope, thatglimmer of maybe they do see me,

(09:40):
maybe they do want to try,maybe I have been overreacting.
That's the narrative peopletell themselves in abusive
romantic relationships too.
It's the same thing, becausethe abuse cycle is so similar it
mimics itself in thesedifferent areas of life.
There are overwhelmingparallels and similarities, and

(10:04):
when you've been trainedthroughout your life to doubt
yourself and to give people fartoo many chances and to allow
people to make excuses and giveyou explanations that are
illogical and don't make sensebut they say it so convincingly

(10:27):
that you feel insane, you feelcrazy, and then you get so far
into this type of relationshipthat you can feel really trapped
, like you do in your parentrelationship Dealing with a
toxic parent.
I think until we've broken thatcycle of toxicity we've broken

(10:54):
that cycle of toxicity we allfeel trapped, we all feel like
this is horrible and I don'tlike this and I don't have any
other options, there's notanything I can do about it, and
it's those mental prisons thatkeep us stuck in these
dysfunctional familyrelationships.
It's that same mental prisonthat keeps us stuck in abusive
romantic relationships orfriendships.

(11:15):
Essentially, what I'm trying tosay is that there are so many
things that you're taught thatare unhealthy and dysfunctional
when you grow up in this type offamily dynamic and you're
taught you're the problem, andso if you're the problem, then
it's your responsibility to fixthings.
And if you're the problem whenthings feel bad, that's your

(11:40):
responsibility to make it feelgood.
That breeds codependency.
It doesn't breed healthyrelationships and it's certainly
not reflective of the truth.
In a healthy partnership, youhave two parties who take
accountability when they mess upand they try to learn from

(12:01):
their flaws and conflict andthey try to lift the other
person up and encourageindependence and autonomy.
None of those things arepresent in the relationship with
our parent.
When we grow up with a toxicparent, that's just not the
reality.
And so, even though it feels sobad, we learn to respond to

(12:24):
things like conflict and stressand people mistreating us,
abusing us in the ways that wewere taught to, even if,
logically, that doesn't make anysense because we want to get so
far away from that.
That's how we know how to cope.
We didn't learn how to identifyour emotions when we were kids.

(12:47):
We didn't learn how to identifyour emotions when we were kids.
We didn't learn how to regulatethem.
We didn't learn how to sit withreally tough emotions or to
have healthy relationships andresolve conflict in a healthy
way.
We didn't learn any of thosethings.
And so how on earth can weimplement those things, tools
and those skills into our lifeso that we could have healthy

(13:10):
relationships.
We can't, unless or until webridge that gap and we fill in
those black holes.
And that's a huge thing that Istrive to do with my therapy and
coaching clients and I hope, tosome respect, I've been able to
do in some way, shape or formvia this podcast and in the

(13:34):
membership and through mywriting.
These are little kernels ofallowing you to see the big
picture and awareness being sucha huge part of that.
But also, how do we learn whatwas never taught to us?
Because we're not hopeless,we're not doomed to live a

(13:57):
horribly stressful and traumaticlife that is completely out of
our control.
That's the story that we wereled to believe, but it's
bullshit.
It's not true.
And I promise you, as I havesaid so many times before, and I
truly mean from the bottom ofmy heart if I could learn how to

(14:19):
break the cycle in my own lifeand in my own family.
If you are willing to put inthe work and show up for
yourself and keep going when itis hard, you can do it too,
because let me just tell you theTori that you would have met
before I started all of my ownhealing journey is in some ways

(14:43):
very similar, but in a lot ofways really different than the
Tori that you guys have metthrough this podcast.
There's nothing special aboutme, and I don't mean that in a
self-deprecating way.
I mean that in a there is nosecret sauce here.
There's no magic potion thatonly I know the recipe to.

(15:03):
These are things that are real,they work, that can be taught,
that can be learned.
I am so hopeful that bylistening to this episode today,
if you have found yourself inrelationships that maybe weren't
the healthiest for you, thatcaused you a lot of pain and you

(15:25):
didn't understand how thathappened, I hope that, listening
to today's podcast, yourecognize that you are not
doomed to live out the rest ofyour life in dysfunctional
relationships.
But if you're still findingyourself repeating the cycle,
that there's probably some workthere to do to fill in those

(15:47):
gaps that you were never taught,to learn how to do something
completely different and manytimes contradictory to what you
had to do to survive growing up.
Just like it was possible forme, it is completely possible
for you.
So do not lose hope.
Keep going.
Check out the ConfidentFoundries app.

(16:09):
All right, right, guys.
Have a great rest of your weekand I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Bye thanks so much for joining me for another week
of you're not crazy.
If you like the podcast, pleasemake sure to rate us five stars
and leave a review.
It helps so much.
And make sure to rate us fivestars and leave a review.
It helps so much.
And make sure to check the shownotes for discounts and updates

(16:35):
of what's going on in my world.
Okay, I'll see you next week.