Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - When Roots Become Toxic

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Welcome back to another Language of Love Session! In this episode, I chat with a caller from Australia, Fatima, who is currently going through a tough divorce and grappling with a challenging relationship with her narcissistic mother. Fatima opens up about her struggles with codependency and anger regulation, which she believes are deeply rooted in her traumatic upbringing. I offer her guidance on setting clear boundaries with toxic individuals, including her mother, to protect her emotional well-being and create a healthier environment. Additionally, I discuss the importance of seeking therapy to address unresolved trauma, gain a deeper understanding of herself, and develop effective strategies for managing codependency and anger.  We discuss: How unresolved childhood trauma can affect an individual’s parenting style The importance of self-preservation and creating distance from toxic individuals The “splitting” behavior and manipulation tactics used by borderlines How to use somatic experiencing for trauma recovery Remember, if you're going through a difficult time, it's important to seek help and support. You don't have to face these challenges alone. Reach out to a therapist, counselor, or trusted friend who can provide guidance and a listening ear. You deserve to live a happy and fulfilling life, and with the right support, you can achieve it. I also recommend you check out Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself, and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Fatima, welcome to the show, calling in all the way from Australia. I'm so grateful to have you

with us. Tell me how I can help. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here. and thank you. Thank you again. Of course. I'm glad I'm glad to talk to you. Tell me what's going on. Nothing is right at the moment in every aspect that you touch. I don't think in any aspect I'm fine. I'm the only aspect that I'm really good at it's work. So that's amazing because it's like helping me to stand straight, stand on my feet. So it's work, which I'm very blessed. I love my job, et cetera. I'm really good, et cetera. But with the other side, another thing I'm very blessed and I'm very happy I have two gorgeous kids and they're very healthy and they're beautiful so I'm very grateful for that two things but when it comes to my life first of all my personal life

I'm going through a divorce right now well my love life I'm going through a divorce right now I really try to work things out he keeps saying he loved me he didn't want to we we separated I told him over a year ago in July that I wanted him out of the house he left in December last year in Australia in order to get a divorce you need to be separated for a year to file for divorce okay so he moved out in December and I told him I don't want to get a divorce we're gonna take this year to really work it out and he said yes all the time he loved me we went to Bali we went to Fiji together but honestly he never put anything we went to therapy when I was pregnant with my second child. Yeah. He never changed anything. Right. Well, so what are the issues

in your mind? I mean, obviously he may have a different story ever, you know, there's always your side, their side, and the truth is somewhere in between. Right. But it doesn't matter what his reality is. Cause, and this is what I always say to the couples I work with. I don't care what the truth is because you're living from your truth. Right. So whatever it is that you believe is happening is what's operating in the relationship. So what's your story about why for you, why the relationship isn't working? Well, when it comes to my love language, we're different in love languages. I think bottom line, what he told me last time, he's, and I just said, I wanted, I'm only asking to be treated right. And he's like, you asked, you asked for too much.

And what is being treated right? Like what, in his mind, what, what are you asking for? That's too much that i wanted to be like celebrated on my birthday i wanted to have once in a while yeah but the story gets really really dark and um i don't know if it's really dark but bottom line i don't want to be with him and the reason why is because i grew up without a father my mom is a borderline narcissist which obviously she don't accept any of she doesn't accept she's a narcissist she doesn't accept she's borderline but this is according to her sisters and i know she's a narcissist she's my mom yeah and when i became a mom i told her i need you need to i put limits to the relationship and she never took it right and then it got to a point last

december that i said listen i really need to block you out of my life i'm trying to work on my relationship with martin i'm trying to be the best mom here i have so many things that i have to heal from childhood, I really need you to, to back up. Like I need to be a good mom. One of the things my ex complained is that I, when I get angry, I really get angry. I don't know how to regulate myself. And it's something that I've been working on and I agree. I don't know how to regulate myself. I get really angry. So your mom makes you angry and then you'd get really angry. And then it would be hard to be calm with your kids. Is that what you're saying? The reason that you're equating, separating from your mom and being a good mom? Just in general, I think I have

such a trauma. I wouldn't say such a traumatic, but I have so many wounds from childhood and the way I was treated that I wanted to heal that to be a good mom. Okay. All right. So there's a lot going on here and what you're saying is important, but just for the sake of time. And so I can help you the most. What I'm hearing you saying so far is that you are in the process and you are committed and you feel good about your decision to get a divorce from your husband. Yes. That you are trying to set boundaries with your mother who has borderline personality disorder and is narcissistic, is a narcissist. And, you know, we can talk about all that means if you want, but she's not making it easy, which borderlines do not do. And that's the opposite of what they

allow you to do. We can get into that if you want. Not that you can't, but they make it really hard to set limits or have healthy boundaries or create space for yourself. So there's that piece that I think you're presenting. And maybe there's something else on the list. I don't know. Is there something else in addition to your mom and your... And my ex. So no, basically my mom never respect my limits and she ended up giving a house to live for free to my ex. That's what the borderlines do. They collude with your enemy when they're mad at you or feel abandoned by you. Okay. So I have lots of things and wisdom I can give you, but you tell me like, what are you seeking here? How can I best support you?

Okay. So my question is here is I have my mom here. Yeah. No, with a lie with my ex to be on top of me. So how can I navigate the situation knowing that, first of all, my dream of having a family, because obviously I grew up with a family, it's broken, right? Broken in the sense that mom, dad, and two kids, that's broken. second of all my ex betrayed me because he knew exactly everything I was growing up how much I wanted to put my mom a limit and now they are light together so that betrayal from my ex which I trusted with my life so with that two things here how can I I feel like myself is broken like I see myself on the floor broken how do I put myself together with two beautiful kids pick up myself and then navigate my life with these two people surrounding me. Why are, okay. So that's my first question. Why are they surrounding you? Why do you have to deal with them at all? I mean, I know you have to deal with your ex from the extent of co-parenting

with him and, you know, getting through the divorce, but why can't you set limits to protect yourself? Is there a reason why you can't cut off contact with your mother, even if she is aligning with him and helping him. Is there any reason, and I'm not saying you have to do this forever, but let me just back up here and say this, because I don't want to give you advice that sounds heartless without telling you why I'm giving you the advice. I'm guessing maybe you've investigated borderline personality disorder. I don't know, but I'll just, for my peeps here who maybe aren't as familiar with it, borderline personality, in my opinion, as a clinician of 30 years is the worst of the worst. I will treat anyone who wants my help except someone with

borderline personality disorder because they are so sick. Here's the thing with borderline personality, and we'll get into why it's so hard, is that the reason the development of borderline personality disorder starts at pre-conscious. It's in the first three years of life that the trauma happens, right? So with a narcissist, the trauma happens a little bit later, usually around age seven and up. And the wound there is the grownups, the people that are supposed to be taking care of me don't know what they're doing. I'm smarter than they are. And I better step up and just like take care of myself. And there's this theme of no one is as smart as I am. No one knows better. There's no substitute for my judgment.

I'm going to commit so strongly to my own truth because I can't trust any of the grownups around me. That's part one of the narcissist. And part two is I'm being so criticized and so demeaned in such a profound way. And the way that my personality structure is, because all of us come into the world with a different temperament, right? The way my personality is, is that I can't be with this level of rejection and take it on and in. So instead, I'm going to decide that you're an idiot and I am fantabulous. And I'm going to build this illusion of grandiosity and perfection around myself because I've internalized all the criticism and all the hate you've given me and all the worthlessness I feel inside. And I don't want to see it. I'm going to lock it in

the basement and hide it under several floors of the illusion of how fabulous I am. And if someone tries to puncture that illusion and tell me something that embarrasses me or makes me feel small and they may not even know they're doing it and they're doing it innocently, then I'm going to fly into a rage rather than let anything that might poke at the illusion of my perfection because I can't face how worthless I really think I am. Okay. So that's the unconscious usually story of a narcissist. The borderline, and narcissists are hard to treat. The thing with the borderline is, and you know, there are people that treat them. I personally can't because I'm not always the best at not being manipulated. My heart goes out to someone and I can be a

softie. And with a borderline, they have zero boundaries, zero. And they want to merge with you. And their wound is abandonment. So usually in the first three years of life, they were completely abandoned. Like their, their parent was totally checked out or disappeared, or they were left more or less, even if their basic needs were met at the most basic level, they were left to their own devices to soothe themselves, to take, you know, and they couldn't take care of themselves. They're little babies, but it's such a deep and fundamental wound. And the core wound is abandonment. So their thing is like you take codependence, you mix it in a vat, like you multiply it a hundred times, you mix it in a pot with manipulation and what we call

splitting. Okay. And this is what your mother is currently doing. When the borderline feels abandoned, which means you've set a limit on contact, you're unwilling to enmesh with them and let them say or do or the toxic things that they're doing and saying to you. So you stand up for yourself and set limits. Or God forbid, you pull away or try to separate from that person. Then they fly into a psychotic rage where before, so they go hot and cold when they fall in love with you or love you or want to be in relationship with you. They're the most charming, amazing, loving people and they enmesh with you. They merge with you. You're the most fabulous. I'll do anything for you, right? And then the minute they feel abandoned, and abandonment can be in the form

of just not approving of something, or it can be, I want to set a limit in our contact or the way you speak to me, or it can be, you know what, this is too much. I need a break, right? They not only fly into rage, but they go into what's called splitting behavior. And they also do splitting behavior, if they feel like the person they're enmeshed with is too close to someone else, because their illusion is, if I'm the closest person to you and you need me and we're this enmeshed, you'll never leave me, right? So if you start, let's say it's with a group of friends and you have a borderline best friend, if you make another friend, even if you're still really close to the borderline, she will feel threatened by that and will split, right? And I'll tell you

what splitting is. Or as in your mother's case, she felt rejected by you, didn't like your boundaries. Her abandonment wound is coming up. So the splitting means I'm going to split you from this other relationship. How am I going to do that? By telling this other person all kinds of lies and or breaking confidences of things you've told me that I should never tell him. I'm going to tell him all these horrible things that you've said and done about him to make him hate you. And I'm going to tell you all these horrible things, right? So that's what the borderline would do with the friendship. What your mom is doing is punishing you. This is what the borderline does when they feel rejected. This is the problem you have. There is no worse enemy

than a borderline personality or a narcissist, and you have two in one. And so what happens is she has been narcissistically severely wounded and she has been abandoned in her own mind. So, and unfairly so, and she's in a panic. So what does she do? How can I am hurt? And so they're not even consciously thinking that all they want to do is rage and do as much damage as they can to you, to make you feel the pain they're feeling. How does she do that? She did it brilliantly. She goes and aligns with the other person that is hurting you most because now she can compound the hurt to you. She can show you what it means to set a boundary with her, and maybe you'll change your mind because she thinks it may be too hard and painful if she's supporting your ex. So maybe

you'll give in with your boundary. And she's getting a new enmeshment with this dependent man who is going through a divorce and needs and wants support and someone to mirror him in his own narcissism. He's a narcissist, too, by the way. I can feel that in Simon. So that's where you are. Right. And it's extremely hard. I mean, I have one in particular relative, but others as well who were really close to me when I was younger. But as I got healthier and got older, their borderline personality was just so toxic and abusive that I had to, you know, first I tried to set limits. You can't talk to them or rationalize. You cannot change their behavior, period. Like it's not, it's not like you can have a healthy conversation where they'll say, oh, I see what

you're saying, right? So you're not going to change her behavior, period. As most of you know, for the past several years, I've been on a pretty intense grief journey and it's been a path of healing. I've shared lots of that healing with you and lots of the healing resources that I found. And I am so thrilled to announce that I am doing my first ever retreat for grieving mamas. So if you or someone you love is a mama who has lost a child in any way, at any stage, at any age, I would love for you to come join me at 1440 Multiversity in the Redwoods near Santa Cruz, California for four amazing days of beautiful, uplifting community and healing. We've got David Kessler. We've got Paul Selig. We've got Catherine Woodward Thomas. We've got me. We've got body work.

We've got organic food, beautiful rooms. Go to 1440.org. Check it out. It's right there on the homepage. I really hope you can join us. So the question is, how much do you want in your life? So what I was saying before is that some of them I've had to literally, which is heartbreaking because these are family members that I was really close to and I care about. The way I see it is just loving them through a glass wall. Like I just had to cut off contact for my own safety, my emotional safety, and to a certain degree, my financial safety and my physical safety. So my recommendation, I'm saying all this so that people understand these dynamics because there are many of us, you know, you're helping yourself, as I'm always saying, but you're also helping millions of other people listening in who are in similar situations with a narcissist and or borderline. You have to A, set boundaries.

And if they can't or won't respect your boundaries, then you may have to cut them off, especially if it's devastating you. And this is devastating you, right? To have your mother basically align herself with someone who is currently working against you, right? And who has really hurt you and betrayed you. And the two of them are betraying you together. So my recommendation would be as hard as it is, because I know you're feeling really alone

in the world, but having a borderline in your life is like sleeping with the enemy. So you're better off taking a break from your mother and saying, look, I love you. She's not going to hear you, but this is for you. I love you. I know that you're hurting me this way because of your own wounds. I'm going to work really hard to find grace for that and to love you, continue to love you through that. But I need to create distance here.

I don't want to hear from you. I don't want to talk to you. I need, you know, if you're willing, maybe we can revisit this in three months, but I've got to put the pieces of my life back together. And this is too toxic for me. And she will rage and she will try to do more damage. And here is the mantra that saw me through this kind of separation that I'll share with you, which is just because I am the only sane one in this insane situation or conversation does not make me insane. Because what both the narcissist

and the borderline will do is gaslight the poop out of you. So, but when you try to set that limit by the end of the conversation, you feel guilty or crazy for setting it. So that is going to happen on steroids when you cut off contact with your mom. She's gonna try to, so what may have to happen in the short term

is that you block her from your phone, from email, from however she typically messages you or contacts you. And if your kids have phones, block her on that, on those two. Now she probably will use your ex. Cause I know how their minds work. She will use your ex to get through to you. And then you will say to your ex, I am willing. And I want to talk to you about the divorce and, or our children, but I am not going to talk to you about my mother. And so if he calls with your mother on the phone, you say, I'm really sorry.

I'm hanging up. Call me when you're alone. My mom, you know, you have to just, you're going to to be so clear inside yourself and strong and so steadfast. Yeah, exactly where you told me it happened. I had this conversation and I tried to block her and that's when she went in range and she bought a house for my ex to live in with my kids because we live in an apartment. She's giving money to him to go for lawyers

to fight for custody of my kids. She's blocked. She's blocked long time. Yeah. But she's giving all this money to my ex And that is devastating. And she can't even see how severely, evilly messed up that is because she's in the middle of her. I am hurt. So I'm punishing you back. You know, she's acting like this is the borderline acts like a two or three year old having a crazy, irrational temper tantrum. but with the power and intelligence of an adult. Okay. So that's what you're dealing with right

now with the emotional maturity of a two-year-old, but the body, mind, and resources of an adult. And so there's not much you can do. And this is one of the hardest things when you're dealing with this in a custody battle. I mean, I don't know how old your kids are, but the one thing I've learned having been through a divorce with a toxic narcissist and sociopath myself many, many years ago, 25, 26 years ago, but I had a child with him and also ushering hundreds of people through this process is that, and this happened for me too, a tremendous amount of fear comes up when you feel like, okay, this other person may get custody or may get more custody or has resources now to fight me that I don't have, right?

I'm going to lose my children. But here's the thing. I know you will never lose your children, okay? No court of law, unless you are found to be dangerous to the child, no court of law is going to take your children from you. You may have the worst thing that will happen is that you may have less custody than you want. You may have less control than you want. but here's what you need to know is that your kids love you. You are their mother. They need

you. And even if your husband talks poop about you or maligns you or your mother tries to split them, even if temporarily they feel conflicted or pull back from you, they will always come back. they will always come back because you are their mother and they need your love just like you need and deserve your mother's love I know it's so hard so hard because what you said is true like I feel like I'm the only one saying here and I haven't done anything for this you haven't tried trying to be the best mom if I'm going through therapy if I'm here right now if I'm doing everything that I'm doing just to be the best mom for the kids. That's all you can do. That's all you can do and take care of yourself and set limits and be strong and be clear and not join

the madness, not join the madness and hold on to your own sanity. And do not say, which I'm sure you're not like anything to your kids. How old are your kids? They are almost four and two and a all. They're tiny little boo-boos. Yeah. They need their mama. Nobody's going to take them away from you. Nobody's going to take a child. I mean, if you were doing drugs or going out all hours of the night, or, you know, there were things like that going on or putting them in danger, you know, of course, then maybe that could be used, but you just need to focus on being, and also being a really good mom, not that you aren't already in the presence of their preschool teacher, their babysitter, their doctor, their pediatrician, their whoever it is, because what's going to what

may happen, I'm just saying this logistically, is that you may need if they do try to go the bad mom route, which I don't think they will because they don't have a leg to stand on. But if they do, you can go to all these people and get letters attesting to what a good mom you are and that you there's nothing to imply that these children are anything but excellently taken care of. But it's going to be with those two, it's going to be not a pretty road. And what will probably happen is that if you shut off all because what she's doing now, and this is what the borderline does, is that they escalate and escalate and escalate the stakes for you so that they do everything within their power to destroy you so that you will eventually say, OK, mercy, I'll let you in my life. I'm sorry. And you come to them with hat in hand. And so if you don't do that, then she will eventually a burnout and won't be able to keep sustaining it because she's only doing all this. So you give up your boundary. Yes. And so you have to be hold that because

otherwise you're then teaching her that she can behave this way and, and not have to, you know, Right. So you hold that boundary for your sake and for hers. And eventually she will burn out a B. He is going to do something to enrage her. And then she will withhold and withdraw all support from him. I just have to hold on. You know, it's so hard when you feel so hurt. Victimized. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, your job, frankly, is to continue to heal. Be there for your kids. in as many ways as you can. Never say anything negative about their father to them ever. And also work on your codependency because you're definitely codependent. I mean, I can say that just I could smell you as a recovering codependent. Not that I can really smell you, but metaphorically. And you were raised by a narcissistic borderline. Nobody gets out of that without being codependent. You can't, you wouldn't have survived your childhood if you weren't codependent. And that is why you were what we call a frequency match to your ex-husband who couldn't

meet your needs, who is a narcissist, I believe, even though you haven't told me anything about it, but I can just kind of feel into the dynamic. So in order for you to move through this, continue to heal and certainly potentially find love again, you need to spend this time working on the codependency piece. So I don't know if they have CODA groups, codependency anonymous groups in Australia. I'm sure they do. Also, there's a great book I always recommend to beginning codependent work, people working on themselves, which is Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. And if you're in therapy, start working on that and talking about that a little bit more in therapy. Now the key with the, with the codependent is our own abandonment fears of

feeling like I'm, I'm all alone in the world and I don't have anyone I can lean on. And I don't have anyone who's, you know, I'm scared. It's fear. It's terror about being alone in the world and that's fine and normal and natural. And it's, and with the codependent, the key always is boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. And setting those boundaries, not giving up those boundaries when someone judges you, gaslights you, or criticizes you for the boundaries. And also, many of us with all sorts of personality issues fall into this category, but codependents definitely do. We are rarely in our bodies. And so one of the issues the codependent has is what we call discernment, the ability to recognize manipulation, lies,

people who aren't who they say they are, people who aren't presenting themselves as they really are. Because we're not fully in our bodies and we're not really fully attuned to our intuition. And the reason we're not in our bodies is because of our trauma. We learn to leave there to survive it. So there's only a part of our consciousness that's still in the building, right? We do that to survive. But the problem is if you're not in your body and you're a codependent, you've made so many excuses for the caretakers in your lives in order to keep loving them and getting love from them. You've made so many compromises to your limits and your boundaries that you have to give up your common intuition, your ability to read people's motives and understand them and believe

yourself when you read it. So the other kind of therapy that I think is really helpful for anyone who's had a traumatic history, and you definitely have, there's no way you didn't get through a childhood with a borderline narcissist without severe abuse. So you have a lot of trauma in you. Somatic experiencing. I hear from a lot of practitioners in Australia. There's a lot of really good ones out there doing somatic experiencing for trauma recovery. It's really one of the primary means, but there are therapists who specialize in this. And really much of the therapy, it's not talking, it's getting you back into your body, feeling where the energy of those old traumas or the remnants of those old traumas, or even what's happening to you today is being

held in your body because it is and releasing it. And as you release it, you come more and more into your body. And then as you come more and more into your body and at home in your body, you have so much more clarity, you have so much more strength for your boundaries, and you have so much more discernment. So it's a three-pronged approach, addressing and learning about and exploring codependency and codependency recovery, somatic experiencing, specifically around the trauma and boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, and like really holding that and tell yourself, you'll have to tell yourself you know you have to repeatedly at least it helped me you're in the middle of a conversation just because i'm the only sane one in an insane world does not make me

insane i am sane i'm truth i am clear you know you can't let them gaslight you because now you've got them teaming up yes yes it's just oh my god thank you so much yeah of course does that give you some guidance. I mean, this all just happened to me in a different way when my dad died about five years or four or five years ago, but two years. But he was a toxic narcissist and he was romantically involved with someone who was borderline personality and a narcissist. And it wasn't pretty to watch. And she was really, really nice to me at first. But eventually, especially when I had to start stepping in because she wasn't taking care of him. He had Parkinson's and needed 24 hour care and she didn't, she just wasn't watching him, helping him or supporting him,

even though she was in the medical field. And so I had to step in and get some, cause I had his medical power of attorney to get some, you know, anyway, I became demonized. She split, she started to split at that point because she felt like I was getting in the way of her relationship with my father. And so she got angry at me. So she started feeding him with all of these horrific things that weren't at all, there wasn't an ounce of truth in them of things like making up lies of things I'd said about him or to her or things I had done or pointing out something and making it seem like I was being rude or disrespectful when I wasn't or whatever. By the end of it, he was like furious with me and not talking to me for like three months. And this is toward the end

of his life. And the only reason I give this, say this story is that I was freaking out and I'm 10 years into recovery from codependence. But all my codependency wounds were firing up. I was petrified. I was abandoned. I was like a little girl with a punishing father again. I felt helpless. And I just had to start chanting, like coming back into my body again, chanting to myself, like, what is your truth? You know the truth in your body here. You know the truth and like really holding on to that, which does not come naturally to us because we have no practice with that. We've been letting go of our truth our whole lives until we start recovering. So that's your journey right now. But I guarantee you, you say your dream of a family,

and this is where we'll end because I think this is important to say to you, you say that your dream of a family is now finished. It's over. Yeah. The dream of this version of a family is over. Okay. That is done. It served its purpose. It created these two beautiful little lives. And now it's about healing. But if you do this healing and you stay sane through this, my prediction is that within three years, you are going to meet, maybe sooner, but I'm just getting three years, you're going to meet someone who is healthy because you're going to, you're going to attract someone in at your same level of emotional wellness. And you are going to have an amazing family, maybe even a blended family, maybe not, maybe just a co-parent for your kids,

but you're going to have a partner guaranteed if you do this work and you want one. Yes. Yes. Feel me? Yes. Believe me? Yes. Yes, I do. Thank you so much. All right, keep up the good work. Prescription, but there is no cure for a crush