The Enabling Parent: Things Are Complicated with Your "Healthy" Parent

You're Not Crazy: A Podcast for the Adult Children of Parents with Borderline and Narcissistic Personality Disorders

Have you ever wondered why your "healthier" parent never stepped in to protect you? In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on the complex role of the enabling parent—one who may seem less toxic than the other but still plays a significant part in family dysfunction. Through their silence, excuse-making, and avoidance of conflict, the enabling parent often allows harmful patterns to persist. It’s easy to grow up seeing one parent as “the bad one” and the other as “the good one,” but the reality is far more painful and complicated.

In this episode, I also share personal examples from my own relationship with my enabling parent to illustrate how enabling parents can remain disconnected from the reality of the abuse right in front of them. This disconnection isn’t always about a lack of empathy—it’s often rooted in their own unresolved trauma and lack of healthy coping mechanisms.

Understanding this gray area is vital to your healing process, even though it can mean letting go of the fantasy that at least one parent could have been your protector.

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Torie Wiksell is a therapist and coach who specializes in working with the adult children of parents with borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. Torie brings a unique perspective having spent years working with clients with personality disorders and growing up with a mother she suspects had NPD with BPD traits. Torie provides online therapy to clients located in WA, OR, and CA, and online coaching internationally.
Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy. If you are in mental health crisis, please contact the Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988.
You're Not Crazy is a podcast owned and produced by Torie Wiksell and Confident Boundaries, LLC.

Chapters

1. Introduction and Housekeeping Updates (00:00:00)

2. The Enabling Parent Defined (00:07:44)

3. Common Behaviors of Enabling Parents (00:12:44)

4. Psychological Impact and Gaslighting (00:17:58)

5. Personal Example with Father (00:20:02)

6. Healing and Boundary Setting (00:24:43)

7. Finding Support and Closing Thoughts (00:27:19)