The Impact of a Narcissistic or Borderline Parent/Relative | Ashok Gupta | Gupta Program

Hello and a warm, warm welcome to our Facebook Live with myself, Ashok Gupta. On our very interesting topic today. Did you have a parent or relative that experienced borderline or narcissistic traits or in fact the disorder itself? And if so, how may it have impacted you? So I'm really glad you can join me for today's session. And I really hope it's going to be a session of healing through compassion for everyone involved in these types of processes. And obviously this is quite a heavy topic. So as we go along, if at any point you notice yourself being triggered by some of the things that we say, hopefully not, but if you do, then please do make sure that you just close your eyes, just breathe, and if you do need the support of someone around you, please do seek that out. Now, obviously we are not going deep into the actual therapy or anything like that. We're simply being curious today. What are these conditions? We may have heard of them in the media or perhaps in coaching sessions. What are these conditions and what are the characteristics and how do they impact on me or my experiences in life? So in terms of what we're going to cover today, I'd like to share just the contents. So we're going to be looking at what are traits of borderline. Now, there are, it's a whole scale. So there can be somebody who has mild traits of borderline right through to full blown borderline personality disorder, which is a diagnosed disorder or mental health condition. But sometimes it may not be the full condition, it may just be mild traits of it, but it can still impact on somebody in their lives. I'll be looking at what impact this may have on us as children or now as adults. And remember during this whole session, this isn't about blame. This isn't about pointing fingers and saying, look what this person did to me. That just keeps us stuck in the past. It's simply a curious awareness of who we are right now and why we are the way we are. And with that healing, or with that awareness, at least healing, we find, becomes much easier. What are narcissistic traits and the potential impact on a child or us as grown adults? How does this impact on our brain neurology and our parts? And many of you who are already on the Gupta program will understand what I mean by our parts or sub personalities. And finally, what are the options for healing moving forward? Okay, and once again, please do share this on your various social media platforms. It's a very important subject and often this type of subject isn't addressed in the mainstream. Not Even in mainstream personal development. So it's something that many people may be experiencing but don't know where to turn. So this is really valuable information for many people. And in terms of our research that we've done and conducted over many years, we've conducted a literary review on these types of conditions. And this is also based on our experience with hundreds of clients. Now, just for full disclosure, we here at the Gupta program are not psychiatrists. Okay. We do have people on our team who are trained psychotherapists. We are not psychiatrists. We're not here to diagnose somebody who has a condition. And in fact, it doesn't even help you to try and diagnose anybody. But what we do have is a lot of experience of people who've experienced chronic illness, such as me, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, who often reports that they've had one or more parents or people in their lives who've had these characteristics. And it hasn't just been a general characteristic, but a very specific characteristics of these types of conditions. And that's why we've really developed a kind of knowledge base of how to support clients through this. And it's also based on several books. So Surviving a Borderline Parent by Kimberly Roth, a very good book, Walking on Eggshells, Understanding the Borderline Mother by Christine Lawson. And I will put these up on the screen towards the end of our presentation. And then you can write any of these books down that you think might be useful. Another one by Carol McBride. Will I ever be good enough? And obviously many online articles and videos that we've researched. And so what might be a characteristic that may mean we may have had someone with these traits in our lives? Some examples might be a feeling that I'm not good enough or not worthy of love. Now, of course, that's quite a general term. And if you had a parent who perhaps was an addict or neglectful in some shape or form, this may also create these kinds of feelings. And today we're going to be specifically looking at these particular traits that we're talking about. But obviously these kinds of emotions, this kind of feeling of not feeling good enough, even self hatred, sometimes guilt or shame, not feeling worthy of love. These are experiences that can impact all aspects of our lives. Our levels of happiness, our work relationships, our personal romantic relationships, and our sense of well being. Stillness of mind at the core of it. And many of you were there a couple of weeks ago when we did a session on self love at the core of it. All of personal development comes down to this one thing. How much appreciation and self love do you have for yourself? And if that is missing or it's being sought out from the outside, that can create this huge gap, this gaping hole, this emptiness which we then spend our lives trying to fill. And the truth of the matter is nothing from the outside can ever fill it because the hole itself was always an illusion. And we'll come on to that. We talk about compassionate awareness for ourselves. Do you ever have that feeling that you're disappointing your parents, that you need your parents approval or I'm responsible for their well being or happiness and feelings of shame around that which then gets projected onto other people in your life? A feeling that when you were younger you couldn't express your emotions, you couldn't express anger, it would be invalidated. Perhaps some of you might have experienced unpredictable yo yo parenting where one moment one of your parents or guardians or siblings was very loving and caring, almost overly so, and then suddenly the next minute they were neglectful or critical. And as an adult now, do you feel you need to be on guard? Do you sense any sense of lack of safety in your life or the need to wear a mask in order to protect yourself? And sometimes was it crazy making as a child, as an adolescent, even as an adult now, did it sometimes feel like you had no stability because there was so much uncertainty, unstability in your upbringing and those parental styles? And if so, it may well be that you had someone in your life that was exhibiting traits of these conditions. So in terms of our literary review, a meta analysis that was conducted found that people who experience trauma in their lives, or that might be childhood trauma, neglect, are nearly three times more likely to develop a chronic illness. And for those of you on the Gupta program who are experiencing chronic illness, that probably comes as no surprise. And that was a meta analysis on, I think about 70 studies. Parents self reported symptoms of borderline antisocial or narcissistic personality disorders at a predominantly subclinical level. So it wasn't something that would be diagnosable. Had a strong effect on children's psychiatric symptoms. And there isn't a huge amount of research on this for whatever reason, but the research that is there does show that children being brought up by parents who exhibit these traits. There is more of a preponderance towards psychiatric symptoms of depression, anxiety and other disorders. And finally, high prevalence of early life stress and particularly early traumatic or victimization experiences, maltreatment, abuse or neglect. There's a higher level of that in the history of cfs and fibromyalgia patients. Okay, so what we're doing here is we're going from understanding these conditions, borderline and narcissistic traits, right through to how they impact on a child, right through how they impact on the adult child, right through to how they impact on stress and anxiety, right through to how they may go on to cause chronic illness such as CFS and FM fibromyalgia and how that chain from start to finish, how it works. And this just brings us awareness of what is going on. And of course, as I've mentioned, the caveats are that firstly, each person who experiences any borderline traits, narcissistic traits, or the full blown disorder is worthy of compassion in my personal view. Because when we understand, as we will do what they've gone through and how they experience it, then we understand that although the actual behavior was not excused, we can go to a place of understanding as to why they behave the way that they did. It was from their own lack, the own gaping hole of self love that they experienced in their lives from developmental trauma. And these aren't ideal labels. The npd, the BPD labels, we are speaking in generalizations to facilitate this healing. And not all people with NPD or BPD or parents with these traits will have this negative effect on their children. It's just some will. And all of these different types of parents have different coping mechanisms, different parental styles. So it's very tricky for us to handle this subject with compassion and awareness because there are so many generalizations. And we're trying to pick apart those generalizations to really find those nuggets, those gems. Awareness. So those are the caveats that were put in place before we jump into our content today. And we are at a crossroads. So if some of this is chiming with you, we are at a crossroads on that left and right path as we go through this presentation. Do we want to stay in that blame, that stencil, that center of blame, to say, I feel angry at what happened, I still hold on to that shame and guilt. This means we are stuck in that conditioned response, that whatever we experience in our childhoods is still there, stored as a learning a conditioned response. Just like if you hit your knee, you know, your doctor hits your knee when they're testing your knee or your reflexes and your knee immediately jerks out like that conditioned response. So in the same way, if we stay stuck in anger or blame in the past, those conditioned responses also stay stuck within us. But we have a choice. Do we choose to take the Path of awareness, understanding and taking responsibility for ourselves and our reactions and understanding to be able to let go and heal. And today we'll be joined by some very special characters, as you know, that we use on the Gupta program these different features, parts of us. So we talk about parts or sub personalities that pop up from time to time and rule our behavior, rule our thoughts. Okay, so these are some of the examples of these types of personalities within us. And as you can see at the bottom there, Jess the Princess is going to be playing a dual role today. So Jess the princess, we're actually going to rename her today. She's playing a different role, a different character. She's going to be playing Tess, princess. So t e doubles a very different character to Jess the princess. So this is Tess. And Tess is going to represent the person in our lives, it may be a parent that experiences borderline or narcissistic traits. Okay, that's two separate things. We're not saying they have both. First of all, we'll talk about borderline and then secondly, we'll talk about narcissistic traits. Okay, so in the core, in this model that we talk about, the core fear that we all have is this fear of separation or abandonment from the tribe. At its core, every child needs to be nurtured by their parents, otherwise they can't survive and pass on their genes to the next generation. And until the age of seven or eight or nine, a child is vulnerable. They can't survive on their own, so they need to rely on the love and the approval and the nurture of a parent. And if the parent separates from them or abandons them, or even the tribe abandons them, that creates this fear of failure or rejection. And this is at the core of what Tess experienced in her childhood. So what is borderline personality disorder or those traits? Well, borderline personality disorder is a condition characterized by long term patterns of unstable relationships, a distorted sense of self and strong emotional reactions. They may struggle with feelings of emptiness, a fear of abandonment and detachment from reality. And there are many different definitions and different aspects which we will go through according to the official diagnosis of these conditions. But the core of it. Sorry, before I go on to that, they estimate around 1 to 2% of the population have borderline personality disorder. And there's lots of comorbidity and more women than men experience it. And this is a controversial diagnosis due to the heterogeneity of the different types that can be involved in this type of condition. And what do we think causes it? Well, as I'd mentioned often somebody who has borderline, or let's start with borderline first. There can be a lack of attunement to a parent, a lack of connection with a parent. There can be maltreatment right through to abuse, right through to the extreme level of developmental complex trauma where that child didn't receive the nurture and the love and the care and the security that it needed. And so what do we do when we don't experience that? Well, all of us have protection responses. So borderline and borderline traits are not. When someone deliberately is behaving that way, nobody is born says, right, I want to have borderline traits. I want to exhibit borderline personality disorder. It's completely unconscious. It's a strategy. It's a protection strategy to ensure that emotional survival. And when we see it like that, we recognize there are no victims in life. There are no victors in life. There's no good or bad person. There's simply souls coming together and playing in this game called life. And when we see it in that way, when we stop blaming, when we stop rejecting and understand the deeper reasons, it can bring up compassion within us for other people as well as ourselves. This is all happening for a reason. And often with borderlines, sexual abuse in their history can be quite common. Not always, but can be there. And as I mentioned, these are unconscious protection strategies in the way that a borderline behaves towards their partner, towards their children, towards their own parents, their protection strategies because of the severity of that developmental complex trauma. And this really impacts on their interpersonal relationships. And diagnosis of Borderline Personality disorder is based on having five out of nine criteria. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go through these nine criteria, the criteria for being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. And we're going to talk about what they are and then how they impact or how they may have impacted on us as children and now as grown adults, grown up children of a parent who had that borderline. So Tess is going to play the role of the borderline parent or some other person in our lives could even be a partner. And you may remember Tina the ballerina. So Tina the ballerina is going to play the role of the child, the child who's experienced a parent with those borderline traits. Okay, once again, we want to go through this presentation with compassion, without blame and recognizing that everyone had a role to play and these were unconscious. Okay, so if we look at the first criteria according to the dsm, now DSM stands for The Diagnostic Statistical Manual. So it's an American manual on mental health disorders and how they are diagnosed. And the first trait of BPD is frantic attempts to prevent feelings of actual or perceived abandonment or rejection. So somewhere in Tess's life, in her childhood, she may have experienced deep rejection or abandonment. So severe that even once Tess has grown up into an adult and become a parent herself, those feelings of abandonment are so deep. That is her core fear that I'm going to be abandoned by people and that is life threatening. So imagine if somebody, we were walking down a street and we suddenly felt afraid of somebody, something might happen. We would go into that survival mode, that instinctual survival mode. And in the same way, within a borderline, they go into that deep survival mode to prevent feelings of actual perceived abandonment. I'm going to be rejected. People don't care about me at all. And the behavior that causes within the borderline is that sense of victimhood. I'm the victim. I'm the victim of how other people treat me. Because that's what she experienced when she was younger. And in order to avoid that feeling of abandonment, a borderline will need to control the situation and control the environment to make sure that he or she is not abandoned. And there can be a lot of blame as well. Look what you're doing to me. You're rejecting me. You haven't shown me that love. Look how you're treating me. So it can be very easy for the borderline to withdraw into that victim mentality. And what impact might this have had on us as children? So for Tina the ballerina, she may have experienced this idea that I can't leave. I need to look after my parents well being because look, they're really scared. I can help reduce her anxiety or sadness by spending more time or doing what she asked. So Tina the ballerina grows up with this feeling of I need to be the good little girl. Because when I'm the good little girl and I listen to my mother and do what she says, then that means that I am approved of and that means that my mother won't feel rejected or abandoned. So there becomes a sense of something we will talk about called enmeshment, where the needs of the mother no longer are separate from the needs of the child. They become enmeshed together. A second trait is a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation, something called splitting. Now what this means is that the borderline has a strategy, an unconscious protective strategy to make sure that she isn't rejected by people around her. So one minute she will lavish incredible praise on people, real loving praise, to the point at which you think, wow, this person just loves me so much. And it's almost over the top sometimes. And Tina may have experienced this, but then it can alternate between then suddenly excessive criticism, shaming, and having high standards and expectations on that person. So the effects on Tina is thinking, right, well, one minute I was loved and now I need to quickly win back the approval I need to do XYZ because I've been a bad person. So there is the shame that is instilled within Tina. Tina may feel I'm worthless. Why even bother once again with those feelings of shame or a lack of confidence? Tina may experience that the world is inconsistent and unsafe because one minute I am loved and I feel that I'm loved, but the next minute I'm excessively criticized or even shamed or even abused in some situations and I have little control over how I'm treated. And this is where this approval seeker or people pleaser protection strategy starts developing in Tina. So as an adult, do you notice yourself always seeking the approval of people around you? Do you worry that people are judging you or not feeling that you're good enough and constantly watching out for how other people treat you to see whether you're getting their approval and not wanting to stand up for yourself? Because if you stand up for yourself, then you may be rejected. So you almost become almost like a servant to other people's expectations or how they want you to behave, rather than having your own identity. And these are what we call ego shells, that in order to protect ourselves, we create these hard shells to protect the soft inner core. And both of these characters in this dynamic, in this game that we call life, both of these characters are in fact creating hard protective shells to protect the soft, bruised and wounded core within. So when the borderline, or the borderline person with borderline traits is being excessively strong willed and excessively criticizing, that is the hard shell. But very quickly it can turn into a sense of victimhood and a sense of being abandoned very quickly and feeling sorry for oneself. So this, the hard outer shell is just an attempt to protect that soft inner core, that wounded core. And sometimes a strategy itself becomes the personality, so the strategies become even more important than the core self. And sometimes the borderline may experience that she doesn't have her own sense of identity. The strategy is so strong that if she doesn't have the strategy, who is she? Who am I? She may ask and in the same way, the wounded child may experience herself not understanding and knowing who she is because a strategy has become more important than her own identity. All as a way of filling that yawning gap of a lack of love within. Thirdly, identity disturbance markedly and persistently unstable self image or a sense of self. So once again, I think I've already described that there can be mood swings, there can be this sense of I don't know who I am, right, because there wasn't. A child develops that sense of security and safety from a parent, that knowing who they are, that they are loved, that they are cared for, that they are worthy, they mean something in life. And if that isn't there, then the self image of Tess is persistently unstable. She doesn't know who she is, she doesn't know from one moment to the next how she's going to feel. Now, what impact does that have on the child? Once again, the parent needs me to rely on for their sense of self. And once again, that causes enmeshment, that there is no end between where the borderlines need start and where they end. So there is a I must look after my mother or father and do whatever they need of me. So sometimes the child becomes the parent. The child feels like the parent can't look after themselves, so I need to step in and parent the child. So there's a role reversal sometimes. And also what happens, the way that the parent sees the child becomes internalized. So Tess is seeing Tina in a certain way. And even once Tess is no longer on the scene. If we hold a mirror, imagine this is a mirror, we hold a mirror up to Tina. Tina's mirror on who she is is based upon how Tess treated her, how her mother treated her. So she doesn't have her own sense of self. Now it is based on the perception of her parents. And if that's the case, then Tina has to wear masks in life, present a false self in order to survive in a tough world. Not only to protect her wounded self, but also because she may have internalized some of Tess's traits. So because Tess has to put on a false front in order to survive and wear a mask. We don't mean a Covid mask, but we mean a mask in terms of putting your best foot forward. That becomes internalized within Tina as well. And Tina learns that the world is inconsistent and unsafe and I'm unloved, creating this approval seeker, people pleaser, this wounded child. But remember, once again we'll repeat that it wasn't Tess's fault. It was an unconscious strategy based on her deep wounding from her own childhood. A fourth trait, impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self damaging. So these can be certain self damaging behaviours. And in terms of the offspring, once again the child feels like I need to look after them. And often the child blames themselves. Tina may blame herself saying if I was just a better daughter or son then they wouldn't do this. So they blame themselves. And once again Tina's default setting is rather than self compassion for what I've been through I must be a bad person. The shame sets in. Yeah, there's something wrong with me, says Tina. Fifthly, sometimes there can be recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures or threats. And once again this effect can be the child or the offspring themselves may internalize that and think that they've got to solve it. And once again as we go through this, if any of this is triggering for you, it's very important that you look, let go of today's presentation that you just meditate and I would love for you to meditate at the end of today's presentation because this is some very heavy points that we're going through and to seek professional help. But this is simply at the moment about becoming aware of these conditions and whether they were in our life or not. The sixth trait there effective instability due to marked reactivity of mood. This can be irritability or anger, anxiety which can last just a few hours and then suddenly the person can switch back to normal again. So tests may swing between approval of Tina. So you may have had a parent who really approved of you one minute and the next minute a switch flicked and suddenly he or she was incredibly abusive. There was lots of criticism, neglect and it may or may not have been abusive criticism but it's depends where it is on that scale. Sometimes giving the silent treatment or once again even that emotional blackmail to say look, this is how you've treated me and it's your fault. And with that anger and therefore Tina thinks I don't know what I'm in for. Moment to moment I could do something completely innocent and Tess could just react. So I don't know what I'm in for. And so as an adult this creates hyper vigilance. Tina becomes hyper vigilant of her own mother or father's reactions but also people around her in her life, the subtle cues. What is that person saying? Are they approving me of me or not? I really need people to love me. And this can be a really interesting characteristic is when You've had a conversation with somebody, and after the conversation, you run through that conversation again and again in your mind to think, what do they say? What did I say? Because you're looking for those subtle cues of approval. And because of these reactions of moods, Tina feels I can't be happy or excited or trust people because it may trigger a violent reaction or attract criticism. So sometimes it can create more of a melancholy, almost depressive sense within Tina because whatever she does, whether she's happy, excited, sad, it can trigger reaction from a parent. So therefore there becomes a suppression of one's core personality. And instead the personality becomes about the ego shell to protect the soft core. And this is quite fatiguing for Tina. It's a suppression of the life force and joy within her. And it takes a lot of energy. And once again, we've seen this time and time again in the people that come into our clinic that actually this is based upon so many stories that we hear time and time again. 7. And remember, a borderline only needs to qualify for five out of nine of these to be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. But it may be that one or more parents may only have had one or two of these traits, in which case you may not even call them borderline. But at least there's awareness of these types of behaviors. Tess feels really empty inside. And let's really take a moment to feel that compassion for someone with borderline personality disorder. That constantly feeling like I have a lack of sense of self or self love, and being reliant on others for a sense of self and really feeling sometimes the victim of this. And the effects on Tina may have been that she once again, she feels responsible for making her feel better, but also inside her knowing that she can't rely on her parent to be there for her, which can impact on her attachment styles. And we'll talk about that in a moment. Number eight. Inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger. So sometimes the borderline parent, out of the blue, may rage on the child. There may be verbal or physical assaults, and they will not tolerate the child answering back because that would threaten the borderline sense of safety. Remember, for borderlines, they have to control the environment to remove perceived abandonment. So having control over the environment is incredibly important. And control over people. Now, these episodes can subside very quickly. And then suddenly they're like, what's wrong with you? That was nothing. Why are you still not over that? And some of you may recognize this in a parent, but you also may recognize this in an ex partner or a Current partner. Now what impact may this have on the daughter, Tina the ballerina? She may feel like I can't express my emotions because if I do, I'll be raged upon. It makes things worse. So I must hide and internalize my emotions and not express them. I must become hyper vigilant of what I say in case it triggers anger and I'm guilty just for being me. Maybe I'm a burden, maybe I'm unworthy and my needs don't matter. Once again, the approval seeking, people pleasing part and also the safety seeker. So we have another part of us that develops Sam the fireman, which is the safety seeker that actually in these childhood environments things felt very unsafe. So now a safety seeker part gets created within Tina, where we constantly survey the environment for physical, emotional or mental dangers. Because the brain generalizes dangers and that creates the hypervigilance and the hypersensitive person and a centrally sensitized nervous system. Number nine, transient stress related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. So sometimes Tess, because of the extreme levels of stress she may be experiencing, she may blame others for incidences and things that happen because she can't possibly be rejected by others. She may space out and remember situations differently. Sometimes called gaslighting, where you're told that your memory or the way that you see things is completely incorrect and this is the right way of seeing things. Once again, this is all a survival mechanism, a defense mechanism that's perfectly normal for that borderline to protect that soft core and the effects it may have on the child or the grown adults. Once again is I have to ready to defend myself because my choices are not valid. And then we often find that Tina grows up to be highly sensitive to criticism, highly sensitive to feedback, because it once again makes her feel bad and presses her childhood wounds. I have to be perfect so they don't get false allegations against me. So this is another part that develops. Jean Charles, the French chef, the perfectionist. This part develops within Tina where once again everything needs to be perfect. I need to tiptoe around the situation because if I don't get it right, then who knows what might happen? Creating a huge amount of hypervigilance and a nervous system that's on high alert. And sometimes Tina may even alter her own reality to please the parent to make sure that she isn't rejected by the parents. And a seminal book by Christine Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother, Once Again is a controversial book. This whole area is very controversial. But her book identified four different types of borderline Traits or personalities, and someone may have more than one. The first one was the waif. So that's that aspect of the borderline traits where someone feels helpless, victimized, often depressed, and they may experience hypochondria, so they may be quite neglectful. And Tess, if she's very much the waif personality, says, life is hard and I'm not loved and feels the victim of life. The hermit is a second aspect of the borderline. Very fearful of others and situations, but at the same time really wants to belong to a tribe or a group and looks for it, but essentially wants to retreat because they're scared of being abandoned and rejected. That push pull feeling of I want to be loved by others, but at the same time I'm scared. And that parenting style can be very possessive and over controlling because the world is unsafe. Third type is the queen, where it's lacking empathy and is critical of others and needs that attention and loyalty, saying, you must love me. And finally, the fourth aspect that Christine talks about is the more authoritarian style, which is the anger that gets acted out onto the child. That's actually that inner anger towards oneself that gets acted out. Now, what kinds of effects might these borderline traits have on Tina the ballerina. As a child and also growing up? Well, there can be many different aspects along that scale. From just a lack of nurture, a feeling that I wasn't loved and taken care of, right through to actual neglect, through to maltreatment, through to actual abuse that might be physical, mental or emotional abuse, right through to trauma and developmental trauma, which can be very serious. And we've talked about this hyper vigilance, walking on eggshells. So Tina the ballerina has to tiptoe around like a ballerina, and she has to suppress or override her natural impulses and wait for others to decide the cues and behaviors. Because remember, anything that Tina says used to have really severe consequences in her childhood. So as an adult, we are constantly surveying the environment for cues for what other people want us to be. The shell becomes the very personality itself. Tina may experience herself as very hypersensitive, a heightened fight or flight freeze response, which is the worried part. So she may be a worrier, experience chronic anxiety, which then, flip side, leads to depression. Later in life. She may have the achiever or perfectionist traits where Leo the lion is the achiever within us. That says, right, in order to make sure that I'm not rejected, that I am loved, I need to achieve. So Leo, this part of us says, right, if I achieve things And I do well at school and do well at university and I get into the best career and I over succeed and I overachieve. Then, then I can protect this wounded core within me and then I'm allowed to feel better about myself. But it's only temporary and never lasts. And it's the same thing with those perfectionist traits within Tina. If I'm perfect, then I can make sure that the soft core within me isn't triggered. But it's impossible in life to be perfect. It's impossible to be a successful achiever. Because the moment an achiever achieves something, there's something more and there's something more and there's something more. And this is the modern society that we live in. It is an achiever orientated society where no one's allowed to feel good enough because we're comparing ourselves against everyone on the planet and not feeling good about ourselves. And this is heightened when we've been through this type of childhood. And how we then link this to illness is from our experience in the clinic. People who experience this are more prone to what we call neuroimmune condition syndromes. That's what we've named them in the clinic. Things like me, cfs, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and other conditions. And this kind of have effects on our attachment styles. So some of you may have heard of this. Our attachment style is how we relate to significant others in our lives. They may be, for instance, romantic partners. So if you have a look at attachment styles, there are four main types of attachment styles in terms of how we feel with our romantic partner, let's say top left. The most, I suppose the best one in some ways is the secure attachment style, where we feel confident in ourselves and we're non reactive and we're resilient in relationships and we go through the inevitable ups and downs of relationships. But if we've been through these types of experiences, we may become anxious in our attachment style. So when we go into a romantic relationship, we may feel very needy, right? We may feel a lack of nurturing. No matter how much love that other person shows us or demonstrates, we still feel like we're not loved. And this can create inner turbulence in the relationship and also within Tina herself. And often we may attract partners with those traits of borderline or narcissism, which we'll come on to in a moment because of, depending on your belief. This karmic cycle that we're on, that whatever we experience as a child in order to enable us to overcome that and heal. We may experience new people in our lives, whether it's work colleagues or partners, in order to give us an opportunity to engage in that healing, to not repeat the same patterns that we experienced as a child. So each person and situation in our lives is bringing conscious awareness to that which was within us, which was unconscious, and bringing it to conscious awareness. Look how I'm reacting, look how I'm anxious in this attachment style with this person. We then may have an avoidant attachment style, which is at the bottom. And essentially avoidant means where Tina feels, look, my childhood wasn't great, so in which case I want to avoid those types of relationships because if I avoid them, then I can protect my soft, vulnerable core from the rejection and the pain that I experienced as a child because I never got the love that I wanted. So why try now? It's not going to work anyway. What's the point? Okay, so that's our presentation in terms of boys, borderline. And what I'm going to do now is briefly talk about narcissistic traits and how they may impact, based on the research that we've done. So let's imagine that Tess the princess is somebody who actually grew up in an environment which then as an adult, caused her to experience traits of narcissism or narcissistic personality disorder. And the core fear there also is abandonment, but it's far more about rejection and criticism. So the developmental trauma in NPD is often where a parent severely neglected the child and there was a huge amount of punishment and criticism. And this affects up to 1% of the population. And in terms of the diagnostic criteria, often there is impairment in terms of identity. And Tess relies on other people to define her, to define her sense of self esteem. There is an exaggerated self appraisal. It may be over inflated or deflated. See, arrogance is actually a reflection of lack of confidence inside. So we create the hard shells, the hard narcissistic shell on the outside to protect that soft, vulnerable core. And the emotional regulation, how a person feels mirrors how they feel inside about themselves from moment to moment. And then in terms of goal setting, life becomes all about gaining approval from others, setting really high standards and seeing oneself as exceptional in order to fill that yawning gap within. Often it's based on a sense of entitlement as well. So other people around tests now become an opportunity to make her feel better about herself. There can be a lack of empathy, a difficulty to recognize and identify the feelings and needs of others, and they can be attuned to the reactions of others, but only if it's relevant to themselves. And finally, in intimacy, the relationships can be superficial and exist to serve self esteem regulation. Once again, it's that need for personal gain. And remember, we sometimes hear this word narcissist and it has a very negative connotation, unfortunately. But with these narcissistic traits, it is about compassion here, because Tess doesn't want to behave like this. It's just that wound is so core and so powerful that it is a survival instinct to need other people to approve of her, to show her admiration, show her attention in order to not feel extreme pain. Insight. And I hope as we're going through this presentation, little Eureka moments, little light bulbs are going off and there are little awarenesses, little gains that you're getting of awareness. And it could also, there are many, there are some other characteristics, but a feeling of entitlement, sometimes a self centeredness and a belief that one is better than others because one has to, one has to be better than others because if one isn't better than others, then that means that I'm worse than others. In which case I now become attuned to my own inner wounds. And that's too painful to look at. So I'm going to not look at my inner wounds, but instead look at the outside environment to protect me from needing to look within and to heal that. So excessive attempts to attract and be the focus of attention in others. And how might this impact on Tina the ballerina? See if you can recognize any of these impacts. So Tina the ballerina, who may have grown up with a narcissistic parent or a parent that displayed these traits would have experienced a lack of nurture, empathy and bonding. And she may keep asking yourself, am I worthy? Am I good enough? And often children of narcissists will become overachievers because Tess taught her to realize that it didn't matter who she was, it was all about what she did and what she achieved and how she made the mother feel better about herself or the father. Remember, in this presentation, although we're talking about females here, it can be male or female on either side. Okay, So a narcissistic mother may live her life through the achievements of her child. And so Tina learns that it's not about me as a person. I'm not loved for me. I'm loved for what I achieve or what I prove in life. So once again, that mirror. When Tina looks at herself in the mirror, she doesn't see Tina the ballerina. She sees what her parents saw her, she defines herself by her parents perception. So it can be overachieving or sometimes in the children of or the grown children of narcissists, there can be underachievement, self sabotaging, underachievement. It can go both ways there. And a lack of self love compromises romantic relationships. So relationships can become co dependent where when we go into a relationship we feel that we need to look after the needs of the other person. And once again those attachment styles are impacted upon, we might go into a severe anxious attachment style. In those situations there can be hypersensitivity, insecurity and a feeling of being really self conscious. And once again that lack of safety didn't feel safety as a child. And therefore as a grown adult. Physically, mentally, emotionally, we may constantly be hyper vigilant about our life and our surroundings to prevent us from experiencing the danger, the trauma that we may experience as a child. Once again impacting on our attachment styles and how we connect with people around us. Do we become deeply anxious about how people treat us and what we think, in which case we become anxious attachment style or do we become quite avoidant and ambivalent? Yeah, so what? So even in those avoidant traits, what we're trying to do is protect ourselves from hurt and pain. So sometimes in a relationship we may decide that relationships aren't worth it. We may even decide that we're not going to be in a relationship. Or we may think our relationships mean pain. So I'll become emotionally distant. And any of these strategies may also enter. So for instance, we have Anita the doctor who is the helper. Sometimes we perceive that we were only good enough as a child with a BPD parent or an NPD parent if we were constantly helping and being good little girl. So as an adult we find that the needs of other people outweigh our own needs and that starts defining us. Any of these traits can develop. And one of the ones that's most important here that we haven't even mentioned, she will make an appearance. It's Melissa the cheerleader, which is actually our inner critic. Now our inner critic doesn't want anything bad to happen to us. Our inner critic is trying to motivate us and push us and protect us from dangers. But often in these situations, our inner critic is an internalized voice of that parent. So whatever was the voice, that was our mother or our father, if there was a lot of criticism, a lot of rejection, even abusive comments, they become internalized within our inner critic. And suddenly whatever we do in life there's that strong voice putting us down. And we think, why am I behaving like this? Why do I keep putting myself down? It's not your fault. It's once again a protection strategy because the brain thinks, if I protect you by criticizing you, then you'll avoid criticism from other people because you'll make changes in your life. So once again, everything is a protection strategy. The npd, the bpd, the wounded child that experiences this, these are all protection strategies. And in terms of the brain neurology of this and very fascinating brain neurology, we know that actually those inhibition mechanisms are compromised. So what happens is we have our prefrontal cortex and our amygdala and people who've experienced trauma, developmental trauma, abuse or neglect. There are more pathways from the amygdala up to the prefrontal cortex than there are from the prefrontal cortex down to the amygdala. So when there are strong emotional reactions, they can no longer be inhibited by our conscious, rational mind. So we may find, as the adult children of NPD or bpd, that we find it hard to emotionally regulate. We might be more emotionally reactive, and those emotional reactions may last longer than other people. And this is one of the reasons why we have a more sensitive amygdala, which then makes us more prone to these conditioned responses in illnesses such as me, CFS and fibromyalgia. And we also, ironically, know that people who experience bpd, they're also potentially more prone to getting these types of illnesses as well because of that dysregulated autonomic nervous system. So where do we go from here? What are our next steps? Remember that here we are not diagnosing anybody. So I don't want you to look at this presentation, think I need to diagnose a parent. This is simply about the impact that it has on us. And can we recognize these traits and does it facilitate healing now? How can it facilitate healing? Well, when we look back on our childhoods, if we recognize some of these traits, it enables us to realize that, that this was something in the past and it doesn't need to be relevant now. And it enables us to heal that inner child, the Tina, the ballerina that lives within us, all that wounded part of us. It becomes easier to heal her because we can nurture her and give her what she didn't get as a child through our own self love. So what is self love? We hear it banded around self love. We just got to love ourselves. What does that really mean? It means that we make an attempt to discover and heal the pain from the past and then reparent ourselves back to normality, helping this part of us realize that the strategies that were relevant as a child are no longer relevant as an adult. Because we are resilient and strong and we have that strong spirit within us. We all have it. And our past is not our destiny. So how do we heal? Tina well, first of all, the understanding. So today is just the very first initial step, the understanding of some of these patterns that may have occurred in our lives. And then we look at processing any emotions of anger or grief. As we watch today's presentation. We may experience feelings of grief for the loss of a nurturing parent or a nurturing childhood that we never had. But it's remembering that wasn't lost time. There is a deeper, karmic reason for this. There's a reason for why this came into our lives. And it's for us to grow and develop and evolve to the next stage of our evolution as human beings for our soul's evolution. It's amazing work that we're up to right now. So from understanding can then come the next step of processing our emotions. And I would love for you to work with a therapist or a coach to support you through that. It can help us to potentially feel compassion. And that's what we try to do today is feel compassion for that person who exhibits narcissistic or borderline traits. They don't mean to do what they're doing. They're not deliberately being mean. That's because they are wounded for their own developmental traumas in their own childhoods. And at one point it's just compassion. It may even be empathy for what they're experiencing. Because actually there's a chain. There's a chain of that energy that gets passed down from generation to generation. And at one point in time, we can decide to break that chain that is our destiny. From that stage comes a sense of acceptance that now I understand the past and I process my emotions, I begin to feel some compassion for the those actors in my life. And I can begin to get to a sense of acceptance for what I experienced. And from that acceptance, are we ready to get to a stage of forgiveness? We may not be. And that's okay. It's okay if what we experienced was very severe and we aren't ready to forgive. But at least there can be an acceptance and letting go and a release of the past and then finally that self parenting within a child work. You know, we've worked with so many different modalities. And we find that inner child work so incredibly powerful at healing this Tina within us, that lives within us and bringing her into an adult life because she may be stuck at the same developmental age at which these experiences occurred. There may be a seven or eight year old child just living within us that we now can. And she's isolated, she's lost, and she keeps coming up to the surface, bubbling up to the surface and impacting our adult interpersonal relationships. So how can we look to heal this part within us? And we do a lot of that within the Gupta program as well as part of our recovery process from chronic illness. So where do we go next from here? Well, this has been such an important topic and we've had such a great reaction from people that what I now want to do is actually interview certain people who support the survivors of borderline or narcissistic traits and actually understand how they work with clients. So these are future Facebook lives that I'm sure we'll do where we're going to interview some experts in the area and really enable some deep, powerful healing within all of us. So in terms of some books and some interesting places you can go, I'll put these up now. So perhaps you can take a picture of this in terms of certain books that we recommend, or certainly I recommend that I've read that have been really powerful in terms of their deeper understandings of these types of conditions. So there's Surviving a Borderline Parent Understanding, the Borderline Mother, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? And we also recommend mindfulness meditation and that has been shown when we've been through traumatic childhood experiences. Mindfulness and meditation can be a great way of just being able to calm down our nervous system ready for that inner child work or that support. So please do consult a therapist. Some of the things that we've talked about today have really triggered something within you. Some awareness or perhaps even an emotion. And look to that process of healing. And finally, if you do suffer from a chronic illness, may it be me, cfs, fibromyalgia, chemical or mould sensitivities, or a whole range of physical illnesses, then please do Visit our website, guptaprogram.com where you can find lots of free videos and resources to support you with healing from those chronic conditions. So I hope we've taken you on a compassionate journey here of awareness. We haven't gone into the healing, but we've just wanted to help you become more aware of how we may go from Tess, who had a challenging childhood developmental trauma that he or she may have experienced right through to how that then impacted on her behaviors as a parent, which then impacted on Tina and her childhood experiences, which then impacted on Tina as an adult, which then meant that she had a more sensitized nervous system, which then made her more prone to certain mental, physical, and emotional disorders. And it's now time to break that chain, to be aware, become more aware of ourselves, take responsibility for our own reactions and our conditions. Say, let's let go of the past now. Let's heal what we experienced and then move forward with grace and heal that inner child and bring it to our conscious, adult, rational self. So I hope you've found that useful. It's certainly been fascinating for me to research this area and sharing the experiences of many of our clients. And really, as I said, I hope that this has enabled compassion for ourselves, compassion for the actors and actresses in our life that played those roles. And now we can look to move forward and we'll do more work on this in future events. I know that we always like to end on a song. So after this presentation, if you've been affected by this presentation, I really encourage you to meditate. It's really important that you just go to a place of stillness right now to allow the mind to process what we've gone through. And let's just finish on a song. And I know it's a song that I've sung a number of times, but it's a beautiful, healing song that can just help us come to rest with what we've talked about today. Okay, so it's that song Let It Be by the Beatles, and I hope you'll sing along with me at home. So this is about living our past Eve and moving forward with grace, knowing we have the strength of spirit within us and we're being looked after by this. When I found myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me beginning Let it be, Let it be, let it be, let it be Whispering let it be. He will see that I will be Let it be, Let it be, Let it be, Let it be Whispering words Let it be. Great. So thank you so much for watching this Facebook Live today. Please do share it on your Facebook channels or your media channels. Want to get this word out as to as many people as possible to bring more awareness and healing to the entire planet. So I hope you can share this video with friends and family. And what we're going to do now is we're going to have a Q and A so live on the same Facebook page that you may have joined, we'll have a live Q and A. Or I'll take some of your questions. And once again, I'm in no way positioning myself as an expert on the matter. I'm not a psychiatrist, but we certainly have experienced a lot of people who've been on the other end, people have experienced chronic illness as a result of having one or more parents with these types of traits. And I'll do my best to answer your questions. So see you on the next Facebook Live. And all it's left for me to do is to say if you've experienced some of this, you're incredibly brave. You're a brave warrior and somebody who has all the strength and the knowledge and the love within to move through this. Because you are the very epitome of love. You are made up of love. It is at your core. And it's an illusion that there is a lack of love in your life. So let's break through that illusion, through that veil of separation, and connect to our true source, which is love, which is bliss and united with the whole. So thank you so much for watching and look forward to seeing you on the next Facebook Live. Just in a couple of minutes, we'll answer your questions. Thank you and goodbye.