The Good Daughter Syndrome: How to Set Boundaries with a Narcissistic Mother

What does it mean to be ‘the good daughter’?

Being ‘the good daughter’ is a role many people step into without even realizing it. If you find yourself constantly maintaining peace, prioritizing others’ feelings over your own, and seeking your mother’s approval, you may be experiencing ‘the good daughter syndrome.’ Over time, this role can quietly wear you down, erode your mental well-being, sense of self, and energy to the point where you no longer recognize yourself.

In this episode, I sit down with psychotherapist, author, daughter, and mother, Katherine Fabrizio, who coined the term "The Good Daughter Syndrome" and wrote an insightful book on the topic. In our conversation, she shares her experiences with her narcissistic mother and reflects on the moment she realized it was time to leave home and spread her wings. She also recounts stories of patients who have dealt with similar mothers with some exhibiting borderline personality disorder or an emotional immature parent. 

Together, we delve into the profound emotional impact of toxic mother-daughter relationships and explore what it means to be a daughter who feels compelled to "appease her mother," even at the cost of her own happiness.

What you’ll learn:

• The definition of “The Good Daughter Syndrome”
• Common signs that your mother may be narcissistic or have a borderline personality disorder.
• Signs that you may be experiencing “The Good Daughter Syndrome,” including people-pleasing behavior and childhood emotional neglect.
• How to set boundaries with a narcissistic mother.
• Why you might feel guilty about caring for a difficult or aging parent.
• The importance of repair in all relationships, including those with your children.
• How to begin healing from childhood trauma.

This rich and compassionate conversation about mother-daughter dynamics, self-awareness, and finding freedom is a must-listen!!  

So, grab your AirPods and take some time to listen to this important episode.

Much love,

Laurie

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Katherine Fabrizio 

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Transcript

Laurie James 

Hello there, free birds. It's Laurie. Before we get started on today's episode, I wanted to let you know that I currently have two openings to work with me, one on one, they typically fill up fast. So if you've been listening for a while and have been contemplating working with someone who knows nervous system regulation and is a somatic experiencing practitioner. Now is the time you can click the link in the show notes to schedule a free inquiry call to see if working together is a fit for you. Second, I'm working on a new offering and would love to chat with any of you listeners that would like to share a little bit more about yourselves. This is all confidential, and it's a way for me to create a new offering that will meet your needs. So I encourage anyone listening to either schedule an inquiry call with me, the link will be in the show notes. Or also, if you're not comfortable chatting with me, but would still like to give feedback, there will be a questionnaire, and that link will also be in the show notes. You can just click the link questionnaire, and that will ask a handful of questions. It should only take five minutes, and it would mean the world to me to have your feedback, and I want to thank you in advance. Lastly, enjoy this very rich conversation with Katherine Fabrizio. She is an author, therapist, mother and daughter, and she wrote an incredible book called "The Good Daughter Syndrome”. So if you're interested in learning the signs of what a good daughter syndrome looks like, and easy steps to break free, this episode is for you. So stay tuned. 

Laurie James 

Welcome back, free birds. Today I'm sitting down with Katherine Fabrizio. She is a psychotherapist, mother of two beautiful adult daughters, and the author of the Amazon bestseller and award winning book "The Good Daughter Syndrome" help for empathetic daughters of narcissistic borderline and difficult mothers trapped in the role of the good daughter. Katherine lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she dances to loud music, talks to her husband about everything and enjoys her grandchildren without doing any of the work, which I want to know about. So Katherine, thank you so much for being here with me. I am so excited to have this conversation with you, because this is a topic that I haven't really touched on, on my podcast, and I think it's a really important one. So can you just share a little bit about your journey into the therapy world and what led you to write this book that's been such a success.

Katherine Fabrizio

Thank you, and I'm so glad to be here. So let's see my journey. I would say, 30 something years ago, I had finished my psychology degree. I went into practice with my mother. I had my two at the time, little girls. Was married to a nice man, and I was paralyzed with depression. It was everything that I had wanted, I thought, but I was paralyzed with depression, and the only thing that I knew was going on before I got into psychotherapy myself was that my mother and I were very close. We were two peas in a pod. But one pea was always in charge. There was nothing that she didn't weigh in on, where to live, the profession that I was in, my relationship with my husband, she was a third party in that unit, how to raise my kids. And I thought that was perfectly normal. I mean, it bothered me a little bit, but I just thought, well, she knew best, and she knew what was best for me. So I got into psychotherapy myself as I was just starting off as a baby therapist. What did I know? I look back at those early days, but I found out that my kind of natural, normal trajectory to get on my own two feet, to make decisions right or wrong about my own life, to raise my kids the way that I wanted to, to have a relationship. That just involved the two of us was actually perfectly normal and that had been interfered with. So I'll never forget the day I walked into the office, the office that my mother and I shared, and I said, Mom, I'm leaving home. I need to leave the practice. And I knew it would break her heart, because that had been her dream, but I knew staying would break me, and that was, you know, 30 really, 35 years now, 35 years ago, and I kept on seeing it in my practice, women would come in, and many times they would have picked, say, a narcissistic partner, or, you know, had played out, or they would be stuck in a job that they couldn't get out of, or they would be exhausted from people pleasing. And so the mother daughter thing was not, we didn't use the word boundaries back when, when I was, I mean, it just wasn't even the thing.

Katherine Fabrizio 

I didn't know what a boundary was like, what a boundary is like, a fence around my house. So I had to learn all about that. So lots of clients came in with a presenting problem, and then what would come out? Well, you know, my mother weighs in on things, and I'm very I would find these women, or lots of them, would be psychologically preoccupied with making sure the mother was okay, making sure the mother was okay with them. And then a subset of those women would have really difficult mothers, which, of course, you're not supposed to diagnose anybody in absentia, but those mothers, it seemed to me, would have narcissistic or borderline tendencies, and I can go into that in more detail. And the daughter was resonating with moms who were bullying, intrusive, mowing over boundaries. But the problem was kind of a dynamic. The daughter kept working for approval that never came. Or had a mother suffering borderline personality disorder, and their life and their childhood was chaos, and the mother was causing chaos, and the daughter was just using every ounce of her energy in managing send out of control mom. And that's just a couple or someone who is alcoholic and always bailing your mother out or and I saw these women, I can say more about it, but particularly, they had a hard time drawing any sort of line and both growing up and making their own choices and being able to differentiate, which is a healthy thing for daughters to do.

Laurie James 

So this pivotal moment when you walk into the office and you tell your mother, at that point, did you kind of know that you had been the good daughter or was that something that you came to a realization later on? 

Katherine Fabrizio

Well, I coined the term, and so later on, that just I kept seeing people that fit this description. At the time, I knew something was wrong, and I knew that I needed to spread my wings and fly, if that answers your question, but I had done enough work in psychotherapy to know this was going to be really hard.

Laurie James

And so what was your mom's response when you did that, when you finally stood up for yourself and said, I am leaving the office and I'm leaving home, I need go spread my wings. What was her response? How did she react?

Katherine Fabrizio 

It did break her heart. I would love to say she, you know, said, Oh, I realize you need to be your own person. And that was it. And I was set free. No, no, no, no, no. She was very upset. Initially, she was a psy, she's dead, has passed. She's psychologist, and so there was a part of her that knew I was right. It was so interesting. She was a perfect mom for me to learn this stuff, because she wasn't evil. She was very, very difficult, but she had done some work on herself. It never became easy. She would sometimes give it to me. She would sometimes say, you know, I know you needed to leave, but it was kind of a moving target, you know, she would refer to it, you know, still there were grandchildren. We lived in the same town. I did not go, no contact. I still had contact with her. But I did put a lot of boundaries into place, and they would have to be renegotiated, and I would say I made every mistake that a daughter can make, and I can go into those so hopefully I can shorten the learning curve for other good daughters who are trying to get free. I can't make it easy, but I can till you know, if you're going down this road, it's probably a waste of time. 

Laurie James

Yeah, yeah. Well, we're going to get into that, because I've got a ton of questions around all this. But before we go any further with you know some of these other avenues. Can you help? For anybody? For our listeners, you said you coined the phrase "The Good Daughter Syndrome". How do you define that in a sentence or two? 

Katherine Fabrizio 

Well, "The Good Daughter Syndrome" results. It's hard to do in a few sentences, but results from an attuned, sensitive, empathic daughter and an emotionally either traumatized, immature, insecure, dysregulated mom from the somatic work, you'll..

Laurie James 

Yeah, dysregulated.

Katherine Fabrizio 

Dysregulated, so throughout the daughters, so she raises a daughter who, over time and throughout development, is the person doing the regulating.

Laurie James 

And the daughter tell me, if I'm wrong, is trying to constantly attune to the mother, but because the mother is, you know, dysregulated and maybe has an anxiety and has her own trauma. It's like a moving target.

Katherine Fabrizio 

It's like a moving target, and so the daughter's doing more of the relational work. That's kind of a simple way of but that when it's appropriate for her to break free, have her own life, she's still preoccupied with mom's emotional well being.

Laurie James And as she gets older, as she might become a people pleaser and continues to always try and appease or please her mom. 

Katherine Fabrizio

Yes, that becomes a relational template that she operates out of. And by the way, she's usually doing it with everybody, her spouse, her co-workers, her boss, because that's just like, it's like, I don't have an accent. Of course I do, but I don't know. 

Laurie James

By the way, I love a good southern accent, which you have.

Katherine Fabrizio 

so but you don't know, as you know this, but you don't know any different, right? 

Laurie James  

You don't know what you don't know, because that's what you were raised in this container. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

Yeah, and you, you want to be a good girl.

Laurie James

It's kind of like, so just to give a quick metaphor for somebody, it's like, when my kids were growing up, I wouldn't let them eat sugary cereal during the week, so they just assumed, like when they would go to a friend's house, that every house was that way, like you didn't. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

That's a great analogy. 

Laurie James 

So one of my daughters still says, like, Oh my God, I didn't know that other people were able to eat sugary cereals during the week because we weren't able to do that. So it's kind of do that. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

Yeah, it's, it's like that. And then you add in a child knows intuitively their very survival is dependent on their caregiver being okay, and so if they're a lot of trouble, too much trouble, rock the boat. If their needs are too big, or they get the impression that they're too big, if mom's dysregulated, ideally, mom is a more put together adult who has more mature defenses, who's more emotionally mature, and the child, over time, is leaning into that, but if mom becomes triggered, dysregulated, pops off, dismisses, criticizes, and you think, well, there are lots of things, and every mother daughter interaction doesn't have to be perfect. Of course, not like what, but it's kind of the pattern and over time, if you think about it, the best mothering moves are so undramatic, they're so not remarkable on the outside. All the stuff that we do as moms that goes under the radar that really gives our children a solid sense of self and security. It's so nuanced, and it's so it's just not big and flowery. It's very just calm and you know, and you don't. Again, nobody does it right, 100% of the time, even 70% of the time.

Laurie James

Right, But we don't need to be the perfect parent or the perfect daughter or child, we need to be the good enough parent, right?

Katherine Fabrizio 

Good enough. Thank you, DW Winnicott for that concept, yes, yes, just good enough and able to be do repair. That's a big tell. If we're able to say, reflect back, say our child as my children say to me, Hey, Mom, you know, don't even make a positive comment about my body. That's something I had to go through. I'm like, Oh, you. Your figure just looks so great in that outfit. They corrected me, Mom, we don't talk about the way somebody's body looks or what they eat or, you know. That was news to me. I intended it to be positive, but so, you know, when you can course correct, it stings a little bit, you know, but..

Laurie James 

But I think that's a huge point that is really important to bring home, because it's not just a parent-child relationship that repair is important, and it's every relationship, whether it's a girlfriend relationship, you know, a male female friendship relationship, and most importantly, our intimate relationships with other people. And because that's one of the reasons why my marriage ended, is because we couldn't repair. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

And that's just the biggest, biggest thing. If you can't repair, then there can't be intimacy, because intimacy is not among two perfect people. It's too reflective people that can say, oh, I can see how that came across,

Laurie James 

Right, Let me pay attention to that a little bit more next time. And I'm sorry that it affected you that way. Wasn't my intention, right. They're simple words, but I think it's hard if you weren't, you know, it kind of goes back to that analogy, if you were never taught that repair, or you never saw your parents repair, then you don't know what repair looks like.

Katherine Fabrizio 

And if a mom is safe, they're narcissistic, they character logically, can't be self reflective, can't they always have to be right. They can't admit when they're wrong, and they can't really be genuinely sorry without a qualifier. So in some ways, it's not that hard to spot. If you think you know, if you're the mom, if you can say, Yeah, I don't always have to be right, because today, have so much access to information. You know, we're shown up all the time. I don't know about you, but I am. 

Laurie James 

Well, and I feel like our kids are also. They have a lot more knowledge and awareness around some of these things that I don't believe that we had growing up. You know, we didn't have the access, and I don't know that. Tell me if I'm wrong, psychotherapy and therapy was at the levels and understanding based off of the research that we are today.

Katherine Fabrizio 

When I first started off as a therapist, clients would want a parking lot where nobody would see their car. There was, you know, great shame now out the back door. Now it's like a gym membership. What you're not in psychotherapy. What are you doing for your mental health?

Laurie James 

Exactly, which is a good thing. So if somebody's listening to this, and they're like, well, like, Okay, I understand this, but I'm not quite sure what if my mom is narcissistic or might have borderline tendencies, if somebody's listening, what are some signs that would signal to a listener? Yes, my mother has narcissistic traits, and I know narcissism is a scale. There's a spectrum to it, but what are some sure signs that, and I know we've talked about some of them. But if you could add like, three, four signs for people to like, Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Katherine Fabrizio  

Well, and I'll answer it in a very particular way, you get these personality disorders because there are core wounds that the person is defending against. So if a narcissist feels as they do, shame based worthless, awful about themselves, and they covered up with the defense of being superior, being special, being entitled, oh, so there's where that they always like, if it's an always so the way you give a diagnosis is through, is it pervasive and is it persistent? So that's where the always comes in. I know it's not popular to say always, but that helps. You know, are they, do they always have to be right? Can they never apologize without the qualifier? So and the mom that has borderline personality disorder, their core wound is abandonment, so at which it translates a little differently. The way that they are triggered, it's a good word, is through a child's differentiation is through their separation when they're pulling away, so borderline traits show up when the child goes off to school, elementary school, you look at what happens in adolescence. Now, adolescence is a difficult time, but if you ask yourself, was it tense or was it Armageddon? You know, did mom let me differentiate, like have my own music and maybe. Tasting clothes. But did she draw the line, inappropriate lines, or did she just go in, read all my texts, pick all my friends, come down on any individuation really.

Laurie James 

who you should be hanging out with and who you shouldn't. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

Exactly, exactly? Was she just hard line about it? Did she want to have power over me, and that's more of a narcissistic trait, or did she go ballistic at any individuation like I she liked this music, and I like this music, so now as an adult, maybe mom's bossy and intrusive and gets a little bit unhinged when I have my own life, if you look at it from is she threatened because she won't have the same power over me? It's more of a narcissistic trade, or she threatened because and needy because she's afraid I'm gonna leave her alone. It's a good question to ask yourself. Also, every mom likes to have information that their daughters could use. Every mom suffers some sadness, if we're real during a wedding, during these you know, when they don't need us quite as much. So it's a struggle. It's a fine line when it tips over into the person can't accept and work on that struggle. You know, we had turned towards girlfriends, other moms that are going through the same thing, or do they double down and are they insulting if the daughter, you know, has power, or if they're threatening, if you don't call me back? You know, within 10 minutes, I'm gonna do something. I'm coming over to your house or..

Laurie James 

And one of the things that I try and do with my kids, because they're all adults off the payroll, you know, one's engaged. I got a couple more that are teetering in that direction of getting engaged, and so, you know, they're starting their own lives. As a mother, what I often try and do, it's like, okay, I want to know more, or I want to have more of a connection. But my daughters also are very close, so they have each other. And I have to remind myself, this isn't about me, yeah.

Katherine Fabrizio

Yeah oh, see, that's great, yeah. This is not meant to hurt. 

Laurie James

Isn't about me, even though it hurts and it's sad and I desire more of a connection. This is not about me. This is about them, and the fact that I have that pull or that desire, even though maybe they don't, I can express that and say, you know, I'm here for you. I would love to be a part of this if and when you're ready.

Katherine Fabrizio 

Oh, that's, those are great words, yeah,

Laurie James

Yeah. But you know, in saying you need to include me otherwise, right? A threat that doesn't it's so different. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

It's so different, right? Yeah, when I have clients in psychotherapy, it's, you would think it would be, oh, you know, hard to tell, but it isn't, you know what's inappropriate. 

Laurie James 

So what are the characteristics? So we've kind of talked about the mother. What are the characteristics of the daughter, of the good daughter, if we had to kind of categorize that who might be in that relationship with, you know, a narcissistic mother or a difficult mother.

Katherine Fabrizio 23:31 

I talk about it in terms of traps that they fall into. So mom who's critical and demanding, the daughter tries to get mom's approval, tries to get her permission to grow up or to do things a certain way, and many times she's chasing, chasing, chasing. Becomes a perfectionist. I've seen this because it never satisfies mom. If you think about the Dynam, it's never enough, and so she internalizes that feeling. And she feels like whether it's with a boss or with a boyfriend, or, you know.

Laurie James

As you look a certain way, I you know, he can't see me without makeup, or I have to be a certain weight, or I have to get to a certain pay level or title by a certain age.

Katherine Fabrizio 

And then they land there, and then it's not enough. And then they like another hit of that feeling, because if it's really ingrained, they keep chasing something that never that they'll never achieve, and you get on the kind of clinical end of it, perfectionism, a lot of eating disorders, because that's kind of acting in, you know, they're not going to get break the law. They can break themselves. They're going to act in, again, on the extreme end of the spectrum.

Laurie James 

And that could, eating disorders can be both, you know, lack of eating or overeating, right? Or, you know, bulimia. Uh, anorexia or binge eating,

Katherine Fabrizio 

And a lot of it's related to mom trying to get mothering, that's where the somatic piece comes in, looking for love, being attached to people who.. 

Laurie James

That attachment. Yeah, that attachments’ anxious. And oftentimes, tell me, if I'm wrong, that's more of like an anxious attachment, because the narcissistic borderline mother is going to be more maybe avoiding that time, or probably disorganized because she's hot and combination of both, right? So again, that moving target, and so the daughter is very anxious because she's always trying to attach to get that approval. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

Exactly, a narcissistic mom will be more consistent, but maybe consistently cold and critical, whereas a borderline mom will be kind of all over the place, and her daughter's trying to contain her and please her and not differentiate and the which kind of leads me to the second trap, which I call the guilt trap, and that's where the daughter feels emotionally responsible for the mom's emotional well being. So the daughter has terrible trouble setting boundaries saying no, because if you think about when you say no to your mom, you're frustrating her to certain extent. Nobody likes no but a really disturbed mom is going to take that as a threat, like narcissistic, a threat to their authority, and a borderline mom is going to take it as, Oh no, they're going to leave me forever, and I've got to cling to her for dear life. And so again, this dynamic, like when you say, you know it's not about you, and I know which some things my daughters do are hurtful, but they're not about me. They're not intended and that's where the personality disordered mom gets so confused, so and the daughter gets confusing for the daughter. I would say the third one is the self doubt trap, which is really the internalized mom. So mom may be very, she's very critical of you. You're going to internalize that and second guess all your decisions, you know, because you're going to hear that internal mom voice, and mom could be just afraid for you. There's that too, you know, and it was a mother, oh, I have to hold back, oh, so much of my fear to not overwhelm them, to know it's not really going to help them, and my fears for them, is that really going to help them look out for themselves sometimes, yes, but I can't dump all of them. There's a particular one to women, the mixed message trap, where the daughter's always trying to read the mother's mind. You know, there's what the mother says, but then there's the subtext, the eye rolls, the raised eyebrow, the shoulder shrug, the backhanding compliments, which Southern women are terrible for. You're not gonna wear that. Are you honey?

Laurie James 

Like, okay, was that a comment?

Katherine Fabrizio 

Um, so, yeah, all so and she can't, so she can't really trust that what people say is what they mean. So all these things have this cumulative you know, it's throughout development. It's not just this relationship that you've just run into, but it's all throughout your development, and it's very implicit and encoded,  

Laurie James 

Right? Well, because, and tell me if I'm wrong, we learn these things as children to cope, to manage, to right. And so what happens is, until we become aware of it and start working on it, through therapy, through coaching, through reading your book, is we continue to do these things in our adult life that we learned because we were trying to survive our childhood, right? So we have to unlearn all these things and rewire our brains.

Katherine Fabrizio 

We really do. It's a biological mandate to, you know, love the one who brung you, I mean, to get along. You know, baby looks up and looks into a mother's eyes, and that, I gotta work it out with her. So she becomes distracted. I've got to get her attention, or she becomes upset. If I cry, maybe I want to, you know, be quiet. So much of it happens, even gets its start pre verbally.

Laurie James 

Yeah. So talking about this, you've touched on the psychological impact of living with a mother. We've talked about this. Is there anything else that you want to add around that area that we haven't touched on because we talked about how we cope and how it turns into a. Marrying, maybe a narcissist or marrying, because we often will marry either our mother or our father or some combination of the two, even though, I swear I didn't, but I did. I was like.

Katherine Fabrizio 

You don’t know.

Laurie James 

I thought I was not. I was like, I am not marrying my father. I'm like, 26 years later, oh shit, I married my father.

Katherine Fabrizio 

Because it's unconscious, right? It's just, it's just what we're just like, blindly led to try and master. So true. I mean, I would, it's a little bit of a downer, but I would add, not all depression and anxiety is from this. However, when you're trying to do something that's hopeless, you learn helplessness, which can contribute to depression. That's what I was experiencing. I kept trying, you know, to lead my own life, and it was truncated, it was thwarted at every turn. And so I just pick I just kind of gave up internally and felt depressed a mom who's unpredictable and you never know what you're gonna get. You're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Who's gonna make you anxious? 

Laurie James 

Yeah, I can totally see that for sure. So if somebody's listening to this and they're like, Yes, that's me. I haven't really done much work around this. Can you talk about maybe, where do we start? Where do we start on our healing journey when we've been dealing with a difficult mom?

Katherine Fabrizio 

Put in a little plug here, if you look up "The Good Daughter Syndrome", I have a quiz, and that will let you know if you are under this umbrella, right? The first it sounds hackneyed or sounds trite to say, but so much of it is awareness. And you might think, you know, your mother drives you crazy. It's like, are so many people say, Oh, my mother's such a narcissist, whether or not she is or not, is another. 

Laurie James 

Yeah, yeah, because that word gets thrown around a lot. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

It gets thrown around a lot. Um, so I would advise people to educate yourself and become aware of your role, not in not to condemn yourself. But there's power in that, like the solutions are in the problem.

Laurie James 

And we are worried about that, the solutions are in the problem. Say, more.

Katherine Fabrizio 

So if we understand why we never feel good enough. Say, just take the first one, why we never feel good enough. And then we go and maybe we understand what a narcissistic defense is, that mom needs to be relevant, and so she's always moving the goal post. So we can flip that and say, Wait a minute. I've just been with a very important attachment figure who has in her own need, out of her own deficits, to find me lacking. So that's just understanding the problem, right? But in understanding that over time, you can say, wait a minute, why do I keep going to the same empty well for something she can't give me, and when she makes a comment about my weight Thanksgiving. Maybe you can't brush it off, but you can more easily say that's not really about me, or you can ask her, Did grandma comment on your weight? That's another really important thing, if you've got a reasonable mom, to kind of open up a discussion and take the hot topic, whether it's sex, class, education, weight, money and gather some data. How was your mother with this? And you might scratch the surface of some trauma that your mom, if you get her, just in the right place, there can be some healing. She can say, you know? Oh, well, um, you know, she braided me all the time about my weight and made me get on the scales, and she would write it down. And then you might have the opportunity. Well, I wonder if that's why you always comment on my weight on Thanksgiving. You know, it's a lesser.

Laurie James 

Yeah, and take the blame or out of it, so it becomes less about Mom, what you said was hurtful, and it just opens it up to more of a dialog, to maybe open up some awareness for the mom.

Katherine Fabrizio 

Mom, maybe she may be like, oh gosh, I never thought about it that way. I knew your grandmother hurt me about that, but whatever you do, whatever digging you do, you will get data if mom bites your head off when you say, you know, I'd rather not talk about my spouse without him here, that's another easy thing mothers sometimes do is pick on, you know, they're never happy with your spouse. And maybe you triangulate, and you're kind of used to complaining about him with her. And then you learn about you're like, Oh, this is not so healthy. And you say, you know, I just don't feel so comfortable talking about Charles when he's not here. If your mother just goes off, wow, you know, you've hit a landmine. Or if you say, you know, we were thinking about spending Thanksgiving at the in-laws, and she just loses her mind and her head spins around three times. You know? I mean, I exaggerate. 

Laurie James

Not really, but it's a good visual for listeners. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

You know, you're like, Okay, I guess maybe we need to work on some autonomy and boundaries. So whatever you do, you know, do it with caution and you've got to live with consequences, but chances are, if you get a lot of blowback, you needed those boundaries. You needed to address some things.

Laurie James

Yes, and I want to, let's touch on boundaries real quick, because I think that's an important and then I have a couple other kind of I'm going to change direction a little bit. So what happens to our boundaries when we are in a relationship with a mother like this?

Katherine Fabrizio 

So a mom like this sees no need for boundaries. It's been working for her. Why should? Why do you all of a sudden need these boundaries? I can the main two things I can tell you about it is what not to do, and that is, a lot of good daughters think that they're setting a boundary when what they're really doing is asking for approval and permission. So if you say, we'll use a Thanksgiving example, you call up mom and say, and say, Mom, we're gonna go to the in-laws this Thanksgiving. If that's okay with you, understand? Don't you hear that I've gotten nervous.

Laurie James 

And then now you're asking for approval.

Katherine Fabrizio

Exactly now you're asking for approval, and maybe there's death, you know, silence. And you're like, Oh crap, oh crap, I've done it now I'm in trouble. And mom's, well, I don't know what I've done. I guess I'm just a horrible mother. What did I ever do to you? For you to, you know, pull it. We've always done it this way, or something like that. Yeah, you have to be so prepared to do this, like under the iceberg, this work of awareness, practicing those boundaries. And I would say I've kind of unique in this start small. 

Laurie James 

I'm a big believer in that, because, well, we have to start small, because if you start too big, too much, too soon, too much too fast, is going to overwhelm the nervous system.

Katherine Fabrizio 

There you go. You don't have the capacity to do it.

Laurie James 

Right, and you don't exactly. So, you know, in coaching, we talk about making small steps. Therapy is all about moving your clients slowly. And I hated that, like I hated that, because I just want the answer now I you know, it's like, I just want to be on the other side of this, right, but it's like we don't have the capacity. We build the capacity by practicing and practicing slowly and then adding it to our repertoire of our toolbox of, you know, building the bound, building the wall up, right? Well, and I don't want to say boundaries aren't necessarily walls, so I don't want to really say that, but, but, you know, kind of building up, I'm here and you're there, yeah, and I am not. You are not part of me, right? We are two separate people. We aren't enmeshed in the views, if nobody can see me, but my fingers are all entwined, right? Because you are as a child, you're enmeshed. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

Your very survival depends on it, so that, like, oh crap, failing is like, Oh, I'm gonna die.

Laurie James

For more than 18 years nowadays, right? Because we support our kids through college. So it's really not until their early 20s that they, you know, are really, truly on their own. So that's a very long time, and that's a lot of coping strategies and enmeshment and patterns that are developed. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

I mean, this is the same person that pulled you out of oncoming traffic, that kept your hand off the hot stove. So, I mean, most mothers come through, really, in a lot of ways, but yeah, and as you would say, our nervous systems don't know that, so we're putting a big threat up to this person, even we don't know we're all grown now.

Laurie James 

So one question I have, it's just changing the subject a little bit here, is. Many of my listeners are in midlife, and I've already been through this, but a lot of them are starting the process of caring for their elderly parents, or maybe even caring for their elderly siblings. If you know, there was a big, expansive time in between. And if that elderly person that they're caring for has narcissistic traits or borderline or is difficult, what advice do you have for them? Because the roles are now reversed, right? They are more dependent on you for their survival, yet they could still have those narcissistic traits of being mean and telling you what you're doing right and wrong and oh, and you're still kind of seeking your worth from them, and I struggled with that when I was taking care of my parents. I mean, there were times, literally I was driving. Because I did it for 14 and a half years, I would be driving out to my parents house, and every bone in my body wanted to turn around and go home. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

Yes, yes, I hear you. I guess two most important things I would say is one, people expect me included. I guess that when mom gets old, she's going to get wiser and sweeter and are just so this never happens if somebody's narcissistic. So aging is a narcissistic injury, right for all of us, aging is a narcissistic injury. 

Laurie James

So can you expand on that a little bit? 

Katherine Fabrizio 

Yes, to the degree that we all need to feel relevant, special, physically capable, competent, we all have a certain amount of narcissism that's healthy. So when we lose those things, the wrinkles come, the strength goes, all the things is tough to swallow. If the person is very rigid in their narcissism, they don't have any resilience. There's no bounce, so their defenses kind of double down. So the mom who is critical becomes three times as much critical. The mom who has to know everything and be the boss becomes more bossy. And it's always a shock to daughters, because they're expecting things to go one way, and then the reality of it, the parents dependent on them, can't they see? Well, if they're very narcissistic, they can't, because they would kind of crash through the floor into a pit of shamans and despair. You couple that with is you've already gone through. You have more power than you know even an adult. Our daughters know this. You know they're really the ones with the power they determine, to more or less extent, how much access we have to them. Now, unrecovered, good daughters do not know that. It's like they know it logically, but their emotional brain doesn't know that,

Laurie James 

Yeah, and their nervous system doesn't know that, because they're still looking to find that attachment and connect.

Katherine Fabrizio 

And connect, and they think, oh, you know, maybe now we have this time. Now I'm doing the caregiving. Now they'll finally acknowledge all the work I've done. And I hear this a lot. I'm not condemning all sons, but sometimes the son will get off scot free.

Laurie James 

Yep, I have two brothers that did.

Katherine Fabrizio 

And the parents will talk about them. You're like, Wait a minute. Do you see who's here? It's not him, it's me. So I hear that a lot. So if you can get them involved when you're younger, do it, because it will fall all to you. If you have a very narcissistic parent and they're not involved, and they've kept their distance, so there's incentive to kind of share the love. I almost said that sarcastically, but share.. 

Laurie James 

what about the guilt of feeling if you have siblings like me, I, I mean, my oldest brother had addiction issues, so you know, he came around because he was waiting for the money. And then my middle brother, who lived a mile away from my parents, and I lived 40 minutes away from my parents, only showed up every couple of months. But if, if you're the primary person or only child, or whatever it is, and you feel the sense of responsibility, or you've agreed, what can the daughter do, or the person, the caregiver that's in that caregiver role, what else can we do to help take care of ourselves during..

Katherine Fabrizio 

To not be reactive? And this, this is the same. Kind of thing to get somebody, maybe it's your partner, maybe it's your priest, maybe it's your therapist, and have somebody who's a little bit if they can be objective and help you work out, okay, what's a reasonable compromise? What can I do and maintain my own sanity and take care of myself and knowing I'm always going to fall short of what they expect and get each support from other people. Now that's easy for me to say. I think it's a very hard thing to do.

Laurie James

Agreed, yeah, it is. And I think some other things I would add is I think that the therapist, coach, that piece, is super important to have that support. But also, you know, if you can afford to get somebody else to come in and help take care, like if you're doing all the caregiving, I had caregivers in there, so I was just overseeing everything, which was really helpful. But I also had kids that I was still raising to and at the time, I for majority of the time, I was still married, but it's that self care, and it's not, I mean, part of it is, you know, getting your nails done and working out and making sure you're getting asleep. But the more important piece, I think, is the emotional support. Having that emotional support, somebody who you can process what's happening.

Katherine Fabrizio 

Who's outside of it and not pulled into that vortex of guilt.

Laurie James 

And to make sure that, if you can spread like you talked about, spread that responsibility out, and if you can afford it, get somebody into help that you can trust and not feel guilty, even though they're going to make you feel guilty.

Katherine Fabrizio 

Even though they're going to make you feel guilty, know that it will never be enough, and almost acknowledge they're like again. So narcissism as an art, as an injury, they're kind of sinking in this pit of despair. If there are two narcissists, they're not gonna become the Dalai Lama. They're not gonna, you know, wake up and..

Laurie James

They're not gonna have an aha moment?

Katherine Fabrizio 

They're not gonna have enough. Chances are, follows gonna bet.

Laurie James

Because that was my next question that leads perfectly into my next and last question is, if somebody's listening, because I do have, you know, women in midlife and in their 60s who are realizing, Oh, maybe I have some narcissistic traits, or I might be that difficult mother, and they're having an aha moment. What do you want to say to them? 

Katherine Fabrizio  

Well, I have had those aha moments. They suck, they sting. And then you take a deep breath and say, Well, I did the best I could with what I had. Let me take some courage and go talk to my kids. Remember when you were such and such and this happened, I think I might have done it differently. Now, if I could go back and you tell me what it was like for you, take another deep breath and listen without getting defensive, and that's so hard, but know that that repair because we live in a different time. We know things now that we didn't know when we were raising our own I worked very hard to do it better than my mother did, but I just I made my own mistakes, and I have a daughter who's raising kids, and said this is coming up, you know, and at her birthday party, her little girl had chocolate smeared over half her face, and it was everything I could do to not take a wet cloth and wipe it off, because it's gonna show up in all the pictures. My daughter had the best discipline. She just, she didn't do anything. 

Laurie James 

and she just let her have the chocolate on her. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

She just let her have the, you know, when my mother was everything needed to be proper and look the right way, and pictures gonna last forever. That's a very, you know, minor example, but I just almost

Laurie James 

It's a good example. It's a very good example.

Katherine Fabrizio

It's just it was all I could do. I almost twisted to see that chocolate icing and think. And then I, you know, praised her afterwards, my daughter, I said, just really impressed, because, as we both know, I couldn't do that. Yeah, yes. And you know, you can bring a little bit of levity to it when she acknowledges, Yeah, Mom, you couldn't, could you?

Laurie James

Right? Yes, levity and laughter, I think, is key.

Katherine Fabrizio 

They go a long way. They do.

Laurie James 

So as our conversation comes to a close, is there one confession that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't touched on?

Katherine Fabrizio 

Oh, my main confession would be, here's something. It's pretty powerful. When my mother passed, I was holding her hand crying, and when she passed, I had the strangest thought, and that was, I didn't need to feel so guilty for all those boundaries. She's in a better place of the better part of her totally understands. And I wish if I could help somebody else, go ahead, set the boundary in kindness and with respect, if at all possible, and lose the guilt, because it doesn't help anybody. So that's what I would wish. 

Laurie James 

Yeah, I love that. That's such a great place, too. And so if anybody, any of the listeners, are looking to connect with you, I know that you have a lot of different programs on your website or purchase your book, how can they find you? And I will leave everything in the show notes, but just to share that. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

My name is Katherine Fabrizio, but if you look up "The Good Daughter Syndrome", the book, the website, that's all you need to remember now and take the quiz and see if it applies to you, because there's a lot of freedom and a lot of growth on the other side, it's not all drudgery.

Laurie James 

And sometimes it is hard work, but I think the reward is so great. It's worth it.

Katherine Fabrizio 

We as women need to be empowered and need to grow in this way. 

Laurie James 

So Katherine, thank you so much for your time today and sharing your wisdom with our listeners. I so enjoyed this conversation, and I know our listeners did too. 

Katherine Fabrizio 

Thank you so much for having me.