CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Choosing Your Own Life and Letting Go of Guilt

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Feeling guilty is one of the most common struggles for people stepping away from a dysfunctional family. Whitney explores how guilt is a learned response, not necessarily an evidence of wrongdoing, and why you were trained to believe that meeting your own needs harms others. She discusses the difference between guilt and grief, how family members use guilt to pull you back in, and offers practical tools for moving forward and coming to terms with these feelings.  Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles. Have a question for Whitney? Send a voice memo or email to [e-mail] Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠⁠ Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft ⁠⁠Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity Learn more about ad choices. Visit podcast.choices.com/adchoices This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. 1:19 Why guilt shows up when you start doing life differently 03:04 Guilt is a learned response, not evidence of wrongdoing 12:22 Decentering 20:33 Statements for feelings of guilt 26:17 Building a life where you feel safe and supported Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everyone and welcome back to the calling home podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Goodman. And today we are going to be talking about something that so many of you struggle with. How to let go of guilt when stepping back from your family, setting boundaries, or finally choosing your own life. Maybe you're fully estranged from a family member. Maybe you've gone low contact or you're not meeting every demand or expectation anymore. Or maybe you're simply allowing yourself to prioritize your own. own well-being for the first time. And even if those changes are necessary, healthy, and grounded in years of effort, the guilt can be overwhelming. It can feel like you're abandoning the people who raised you, the people who depend on you or the people you've always been told you owe something to. Today we're going to talk about why guilt shows up, why it's so strong in dysfunctional or emotionally immature family systems, how to understand what you're actually grieving, how to hold the mixed emotions that come with distance, and how to move on without abandoning yourself. My hope is that by the end of this episode, you'll feel more grounded in your decisions,

more compassionate towards yourself, and more confident in living your own life. Guilt shows up when you start doing life differently. And many of you were probably raised in homes, where you were taught to prioritize harmony, compliance, or taking care of others over your own needs. And I'm not talking about people who are taught to take care of others and show kindness and charity towards one another. I'm talking about those of you that lived in homes where it was all about keeping one person happy or always doing what one person said or taking care of this really dysfunctional persons like emotions and feelings and needs. And you probably watched one of your parents do this for the other. And your siblings started doing it. And it just became

the culture of the family. And within these families, you often take on roles where you're trained to avoid conflict, be the easy one, smooth things over. Do not rock the boat too much. And so now, when you're in adulthood, and you start to do things that get this big reaction from your family where they're like, why are you doing that? You're really making things uncomfortable for people. You're being disruptive. That's not the way we do things. It can really feel very dangerous to you.

In fact, your nervous system can interpret this as danger. And you feel like I need to go back to doing things the way that I was doing. them because even if that didn't feel necessarily good, it didn't feel as wrong as this feels now. But that feeling of guilt shows up typically because you were conditioned to believe that if you had your own needs and you expressed them and you tried to get them met or you met them yourself, that was harmful to others. People may have even told you, like, you're hurting me. You're asking too much of me. You're so demanding. You're so needy whenever you had any type of need that needed to be met. And from that feeling came this guilt and shame that, like, it's wrong for me

to ask this. When I ask this of people, they get upset with me. And when they get upset with me, I get even less of my needs met, or maybe I get punished or disrespected or accused of being something that feels really not in line with how I feel about myself. And so you think that any time you do something like this, you seek distance, closeness, a need being met, you're actually hurting the people around you because honestly, that's like what they're saying to you. That's what they're making it sound like. you also likely feel a sense of responsibility for managing the entire emotional climate of your

family. And we talked about this at the beginning, that when you have a family system that prioritizes harmony and compliance over self-expression, people being their own individual people, then they feel like that has to be the priority. I have to make sure that everyone here is able to like be calm and okay. And the way that we do that is by making sure that especially this one person is calm and okay. And so let's use dad for an example. If you have a dad who gets frustrated very easily, he yells, he screams, he throws things, he's always blaming other people for his moods, his job is so stressful and he needs everyone to shut up and be quiet when he gets home from work, whatever it is. And you learn through your mother that,

okay, when dad is feeling like this, we all need to get really quiet. We need to make sure that we don't bother dad. Let's bring him his dinner to the couch. Let's go eat in the other room and play silently. We better not ask anything of dad because then dad's going to lose his mind. and we absolutely don't want that to happen. And we never think, like, huh, maybe dad needs to learn how to manage his dress better, not come home feeling so irate. Maybe dad needs some more support or therapy or sleep or he's not eating right. Like, we never questioned that. It's all just about how can we make sure that we meet all of dad's needs to keep him calm? And sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. But we keep doing it because we get some of that.

that positive feedback when it does work, or we're watching the other people around us modeling this continue to do it. And so we think that we should do it too, because we are the kids in the system, right? And this is how you learn that it is not on that really dysfunctional or explosive person to regulate themselves. It's actually on all of us to manage the system and regulate them. And if they explode, it's our fault because we were not doing things properly and we were not helping regulate them enough or we triggered them. Now, of course, in families, we all impact each other and we need to be conscientious and understanding and show love and respect to one another. But that's not the same thing as this. This is walking on eggshells,

only considering that person's point of view, only thinking about how is it going to affect them or what they're, what are they going to do? And your thoughts in the family are just consumed with managing this person to where it honestly becomes second nature. It's just like how you guys live as a unit. And that person grows to outsource their emotional regulation to the family and to come to expect it. It's very important that as you listen to this episode, you remember this, that guilt is a learned response, not evidence of wrongdoing. And the guilt actually just continues to fuel you and keep you engaging in this system of like, I need to keep taking care of them. I need to keep doing this. If I don't do this, it means I'm bad. I'm feeling that feeling of shame.

Like, I am a result of all the failures or things that I didn't get right. It does not mean that you're doing something wrong when you decide to step away or stop playing this role. It is normal to feel some of this guilt after you have been raised in a system like this. The feeling of guilt does not mean that you're making the wrong decision. It often means that you were trained to feel bad for prioritizing anything outside of the system or the most dysfunctional person in the system. And we'll talk a little bit more about, like, working through that guilt. When you decide to, like, let go, de-center, step back, take some distance, you might be questioning, like, did I do enough? Did I try enough? And I want to work through some signs that

you've tried enough and that you actually aren't abandoning anyone. And if anything, you've been abandoning yourself the entire time. So you've set boundaries repeatedly, verbally in writing, you've acted them out yourself, and they are consistently ignored. You've tried to explain how you feel, but you're consistently met with defensiveness or denial. So I only did that because of X. I do that because you make me angry. That never happened. That's not what I said, even in the face of concrete, legitimate evidence. You've gone to therapy, you've had hard conversations, or you've given multiple chances with little to no change over time.

Every attempt at closeness creates more conflict. If your body reacts with dread, anxiety, panic, or shutdown around this person, that's not a good sign. If you've taken responsibility for your side of their relationship and the other person continues not to and has consistently denied any role in the problem, and you are not abandoning someone when they are unwilling to meet you halfway. When I talk about moving on from family or letting go, when you've made the decision that you need to take some space because being around this system is making you sick and is not working for you. I think that one of the first things you can do is decenter your family.

And this doesn't necessarily mean estrangement or total cutoff or not having a relationship with someone at all. Decentering is a very good kind of first step, especially for people who grew up in high control families, families with a lot of rules, or very emmeshed family relationships where there's kind of no division between you and them and you haven't been able to be your own person at all. And what decentering means is that I take you out of this role of being like in this center circle with me where you are the most dominant force in my life. You are the person that I run all my decisions by. I think of everything through your lens. I wonder what you're going to think about everything that I do. I always call you for advice. I listen to what you say. And I

use your voice instead of my own in all these situations, right? And you're going to remove them from that role in that inner circle and decide where you need to put them and at what distance. Some of you might say I have to put this person all the way out here because when I am in a relationship with them, I make really bad choices. I hurt myself. I do not achieve my full potential. I keep myself very small. I'm crying all the time. I'm upset. It's bad for my health. etc. For others, it might just be about like, I'm going to move them a little bit out. And I love getting advice from them on these three topics. But if I talk to them about work, it doesn't really go very well or they're not very supportive. They don't give me a lot of good feedback. And I've

noticed that that just makes our relationship very difficult. And it's not good for us. And there's a lot of shades of gray in between those two, you know, points. Right. And decentering like this, it doesn't mean that you don't care. It doesn't mean that you don't love them or you don't want a relationship with them. It really just means that you're not living in this place where everything that you do is in response to them, is a reaction to how they're treating you, how they've treated you. You really can reorient your time, energy, emotional bandwidth, like towards your own inner knowing and system. And some of that includes what your feelings. family has taught you and what you like about them and what still fits. And part of that is this new

stuff that you've learned and who you are as an adult and who you're becoming. It can be a little bit of both and it can be integrated. Now, for others of you, you might say, if I am an adult and I have a parent who is in and out of jail, they're not making good choices, they have poor health, they're not able to hold down a job. They're very mean to me. They're extremely critical. They do not give me good advice. They are constantly causing chaos in my life. You might then say, I don't know that I'm getting a lot from this relationship that is beneficial to me. I love my parent. I am grateful for the things maybe that they've done for me if there were some of those in the past. But right now, this relationship is not healthy for me. And so do I want to prioritize this person?

opinion or judgments in my life? Or is that ultimately just leading me to absolute self destruction? Because unfortunately, just because someone is a parent, myself included, doesn't mean that they know everything, that they have the best advice about everything, or that they're the person that you should go to in every situation. We have to be discerning about that as well. and that is okay for people to play certain roles and have certain levels of authority depending on the situation in our lives. But the true root of decentering is that you will stop making every decision based on how they will respond and what they will think of it.

And oftentimes this is really necessary, especially in families with high levels of conflict, a lot of emotional immaturity or chronic boundary violations because it allows you to actually build your own life. And I don't want you to misunderstand me here that I think that this means like you cast these people aside in 100% of situations and you don't listen to what they have to say. Don't consider them. Don't integrate any of their thoughts or feelings. You absolutely can do that if that's what's necessary for you. And there are other situations for many of you where you might want to integrate 10% here, 20% here, and also realize that you are living in a completely different world at a completely different time as a completely different person than

your family members. And you might make different decisions and do things differently than them. And you need to be able to do that with your own piece and at your own pace and with your own sense of accountability for your decisions. This is also a big part of quote unquote growing up and becoming an adult is that I am accountable for my life and for my decisions. I can understand and appreciate the influence of my past experiences and of my family members and the way for me to take full accountability for my life is to totally move myself into that adult role, maybe de-center my family and not say I'm only doing X, Y, and Z because my mom and my dad told me so or because it's what my sister thinks I should do. But instead saying, this is my decision and I own it,

even if it's different. And even if there are consequences, I will own those consequences. Now, if you are starting to kind of move back, de-center, take some space, like, you're going to want to know how to handle these feelings of guilt when they come up. And I think that you have to remember, like guilt is going to show up even when you are doing the most grounded, healthy thing for yourself. There are people who feel guilt when they go to the gym because they're not at home putting their dishes away or guilt when they take a promotion because their mom is saying that they're worthless and they don't deserve it. Like, guilt can show up in times when it absolutely does not apply and does not fit.

You can feel guilty and still own your boundary or your decision and what you're doing. And that's where that big accountability piece comes in is like, is this a feeling that I want to listen to, that I want to let rule my life and be the deciding factor for me? Are there other feelings that I am having at the same time? like excitement, curiosity, happiness, even fear, or a sense of anxiety that I might also be holding at the same time as the guilt. And can I not let one of those feelings be the most overpowering and like overruling emotion in that situation?

I also think that guilt can sometimes be a mask for grief because you might. actually be feeling grief that this relationship isn't working. It's not safe. Things didn't change. They're not the family that you wish that you had. You wish you could have a different relationship with them. And it's not possible. And so instead of feeling that grief, because often that's a lot harder to sit with, instead we just only focus on the guilt or mistake that guilt, that grief for guilt, right? And if you go a little bit deeper, you might realize that what you're actually feeling underneath all of that is some of that grieving for what isn't and hasn't been possible. There's also a lot of anger that can come up in these moments. And I think

for those of you that grew up in families where you weren't allowed to be angry or where only one person was allowed to show anger, anger was kind of like a feeling that was shamed. A lot of times this is uncomfortable. And so that turns into maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I should actually be feeling guilty and change my decision. But I want to remind you that anger is a normal natural response to being mistreated. And sometimes it is also resentment and not feeling good. about what has been done to you or what decisions that you have made as a result of your circumstances. The other feeling that I notice that comes up that induces a lot of guilt is the feeling of relief. A lot of people actually feel relief when they move away from these really dysfunctional,

destructive family systems, and they feel very guilty about that because you think I should be sad. I should feel bad about this. I should want to, like, beat myself up. And I feel guilty that I feel this sense of, like, peace or really relief that I don't have to deal with this anymore. I notice that there's a lot more space in my daily life. And I think it's bad that I feel that way. And so I think the task for a lot of you going through this is really to allow yourself to feel the guilt and experience it without letting it dictate your choices or necessarily be the only feeling that's in the driver's seat. Here are some statements that you can use when those feelings of guilt show up. I'm not responsible for managing everyone's emotions. I'm allowed to have peace in my life. I can grieve someone or who I wish they would be and still take distance. I am not abandoning them. Now, something really common that happens when you are decentering or taking space is that people will use guilt to pull you back in. And this is because it really is one of the

most effective tools in dysfunctional families. It pulls on the heartstrings. You feel those old wounds coming up and the old roles. And I think I've talked about this before, like a lot of times, especially parents who were quite controlling or authoritarian, will utilize some of these old strategies in the present to see if they still work. They're just trying out old stuff. And sometimes it works. And then they don't have to change or pivot, right? So some of the common in ways that guilt is induced in families like this is by comparison, saying things like, well, your sister always calls me. Or using illness as a strategy. We covered this at calling home in one of our monthly topics, like illness being used as manipulation or pressure. The person can

also emotionally become extremely dysregulated and collapse and need you and put that pressure on you of like, I'm not okay. I can't get out of bed. I'm suffering so much. Or they engage in martyrdom of like, I guess I'll just be alone and do it myself. I always have, like, no one ever wants to help me or even saying things like, I'll just do it myself. I know you're not going to help me because you don't care about me. And these statements are really, they're guilt trips. They are often unconscious. And I think a lot of these family members, they really don't know a genuine way to express any of their feelings or fears. And so they resort to this type of guilt tripping. And your job here is to see that for what it is. They're not really

communicating their needs to me. There's another feeling under this. And it is not my job to rescue them from every feeling that they're having that they cannot name or communicate. And you can respond kindly to this without giving in or collapsing into that guilt. You can say, like, I understand this is hard for you. I'm really sorry that you're going through this. I am unable to help you with that. I hope that you're able to find someone who can help you. Have you thought about contacting X? Maybe your therapist can help you with that. There also might be times where you have to say, like, this doesn't work for me or I can't continue having this conversation. It's good to prioritize clarity and consistency. Of course, explain yourself, make things known, but you don't

need to keep doing it over and over and over. Now, if you are becoming estranged or even just taking some distance or de-centering your family, you want to be able to move on without feeling like you are abandoning your family. And the thing I think you need to check in with is, like, have I been abandoning myself this entire time to maintain a connection to them? And is that why it feels like the second I sort of prioritize myself that I am completely abandoning them? And we have to come to this place where it's actually very normal and expected that you should be able to care about your family, also caring about yourself and your mental health and holding those two things at the same time. During this moving on phase, you also are allowed to grieve the relationships that

you wish you had or the people that you wish that they could be. You might be grieving the parent who never changed, the sibling that couldn't show up emotionally, or the person in your family that shows other people or other behaviors over you. And you might also be grieving the fantasy of reconciliation and the apology that may never come or the childhood that you deserved. And estrangement or distance doesn't remove grief. Honestly, a lot of the time it intensifies it. And it brings up even more of that, which brings us back to that feeling of guilt that might be sort of covering up all that grief that is coming up for you. You're not necessarily grieving the decision to leave, but you're grieving everything that led to that decision. There's also a lot of

cultural and family history elements here that if in your family prioritizing yourself at all equals abandonment, it's going to be even harder to do. If your culture has consistently prioritized self-sacrifice in the name of, you know, family ties and overall family wellness, it's going to be harder. Even if you realize that doing that is actually making your family more unhealthy and it's not working, it's still hard to get all of these norms out of your head. And moving on really just means that you are creating a life where you feel safe and supportive. and free to be yourself, and sometimes that can include maintaining certain levels of relationship

with your family, and sometimes it can't. But this is all about building your own identity that can somehow integrate the expectations of your family that you think are healthy and justified and good and rooted in choice and empowerment and keeping the family strong with what you also want for yourself. And some of you have expectations in your family that you cannot meet ever. The goalpost is always moving and you cannot live a good, happy, solid life while prioritizing their expectations. It's just impossible. And this means that you're going to have to walk away and allow yourself to fully participate in your own life instead of just living solely out of a sense of obligation. I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I know that this

conversation can bring up a lot of feelings. Today we've talked about guilt, sadness, relief, anger, and grief. And all of that is normal, especially when you decide to take a little space from your family system or stop playing the role you were assigned. It's going to bring a lot of this old stuff up. But these feelings don't necessarily mean that you're doing something wrong. It means that you're human, that you're feeling, that you're reacting. These are all good things. It means that you're alive. And you're not abandoning your family by doing this. And you're allowed to build a life that feels peaceful and grounded and aligned with your values and also includes your family. It's not one or the other. And your

plan might be different from the one that your family envisioned for you. If you need support, as you navigate these decisions, you can always join at the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. We have groups, horses, and a community of people who understand exactly what you're going through. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you next week. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Collin' Home or Whitney Goodman. information on this, please see Collingholm's terms of service linked in the show notes below.