CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Co-Parenting with Dysfunctional Parents, Parents with Undiagnosed Mental Disorders

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Whitney Goodman is back answering more questions from listeners. The first caller is a grandmother co-parenting with her grandchild's dysfunctional parents and wondering how to successfully navigate that relationship and raise the child in a happy and healthy way. Then, our second call comes from a listener dealing with a parent who likely has an undiagnosed narcissistic personality disorder.  Have a question for Whitney? Call Home at 866-225-5466.  Join Whitney’s Family Cycle Breakers Club for further support and discussion on family dynamics at CallingHome.co. Follow the Calling Home community on Instagram or TikTok.  Follow Whitney Goodman on Instagram or TikTok.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Welcome back to another caller question episode of the Calling Home podcast. This is the episode where you call in, ask me your questions, and I answer. If you ever want to be featured on an episode or want to get my take on a situation that you're in with a family member, you can leave me a voicemail at 866-225-466. Let's get to our first caller.

Hi, Whitney. I got your number from the website. My daughter sent me a link for calling home. And my great question is, how do you co-parent when you're the grandmother and the child thinks that you are mom and you have two parents that are, uh, How do I say it, dysfunctional. One is a constant recovering addict, and the father, he has dealt with jail prison for six years and feels that the way he parents is 100% total opposite of my beliefs. So I believe in a child having a good education and having respect, not teaching a child how to sneak and tell lies.

So I guess my question is, how do you co-parent with two dysfunctional parents and you are raising the child as a grandparent? Thank you. Hope to hear from you soon. Thank you so much for calling in. And I'm really glad that your daughter sent you our website at calling home.com. So this is a really tough situation to be in. And I think that when you are a grandparent co-parenting with people, parents who are struggling with certain issues. We have to think about a couple of things here.

So I think the priority should be on helping the child maintain stability and helping the child feel loved and connected to all of the people in their life. And depending on the age of the child, this is going to look different. But your job as a grandparent who has decided to step in and help raise this child is to be consistent, loving, and show up for this child, which it sounds like that's exactly what you're doing or you wouldn't be calling in here today. Now, what you're also talking about is parenting differences with the two other parents involved in this situation and how they might be passing down some of their dysfunction to the child.

I think as a parent that can be very, very difficult to witness. I do feel that as a grandparent, one of your greatest roles can be to model good behavior for the child's parents and to work on supporting them in a way that empowers them to be good parents of this child. So I know that many of us when we are looking at parents who are maybe struggling with addiction, who are not being reliable, who are teaching children things that we don't like, we may want to resort to things like shaming those parents, disparaging them, calling them bad parents. But it sounds like you're trying to figure out how can I support them and how can

I build them up. And so what I would really be trying to do is almost find ways to like catch them being good, catch them being good parents, empowering them to take a role within their limits with this child that they can successfully fulfill. And so how can the three of you work together to make sure that this child has a good childhood, feels loved, feels supported, feels like they can rely on the three of you, and does not feel like they have to become a mediator between grandma and the parents or between the parents and grandma or the two parents against each other, we don't want the child to have to feel that discord between the three of you, even if it is there and it's natural that it's there. And there are also going to be situations

that may arise where you have to keep that child safe. And so thinking about, is this a safety issue or is this a difference in opinion or belief? And I know that can be like a really fine line to walk. But thinking about things like, is this child being fed, clothed? They have a roof over their head. They're getting access to the resources that they need. Do they have at least one of us consistently showing up in their life to show them love and care and affection? Is there someone between the three of us that really is showing that we care about this child and that we want good things for them and that we're going to show up for them and that they can count on us. And that can make all the difference and really trying not to

overly highlight the shortcomings of any of the parents that are involved deliberately in front of the child because I think that can create a lot more discord, especially because if this is a very young child's. Chances are that they might feel it, but they also really want to be connected to these parents and they want to feel close to them. And so how can we try to make that happen in the safest way possible? And how can you do that in a way that really empowers the parents to feel like you believe in them and they have your support? Now, I don't want to underscore or how difficult this can be when people are acting out and they're not behaving in ways that you feel or that anybody feels are in line with being a good parent. And I don't have

enough information here to like make that call. But I do think we have to really focus on like the child's welfare in this situation and trying to make sure that the child feels taken care of. Like I said, I know this is a really difficult situation. I also feel like, like when I hear that your daughter sent you this website that maybe she's really trying to or that she wants to learn or she wants the two of you to learn to better co-parent together. And so that's a really good sign. That means that like there's the desire there. And I would not underestimate the power of that desire.

Thank you again so much for calling in. And I hope that that answer was helpful for you and for anyone that might be dealing with a situation similar to this. Let's get to our next caller question. Summer's here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groom lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered. A cabana? That's a no, but a banana. That's a yes. A nice tan. Sorry. Nope. But a box fan, happily yes. A day of sunshine. No. A box of fine wines? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and

select markets, product availability may vary by Regency app for details. Oh, hi, buddy. Who's the best? You are. I wish I could spend all day with you instead. Uh, Dave, you're off mute. Hey, happens to the best of us. Enjoy some goldfish cheddar crackers. Goldfish have short memories. Be like goldfish. Hey Whitney, I just found your phone number on one of the newsletters I get. I was just curious, like, are you able to maybe like talk a little about if your mother or, I guess, parent, probably just parent, is they have something like, you know, undiagnosed, unofficial narcissistic personality disorder, like very, very possible high chance of that

and potentially other kind of like other mental health issues that haven't been formally diagnosed, whether it's depression or perhaps, you know, bipolar or something. You know, the impact, I guess, it has on the children, you know, the adult children and like how to, I guess, particularly, with like something like narcissistic personality disorder like how do you like help them navigate through like their issues without being like you know without telling them like look like you have something seriously wrong with you and it's

impacting everyone and you know I just think like that the defensiveness nature of like, you know, thinking like, well, it's likely my son or daughter with the issue and it's not be, like, how do you, like, what's your recommendation? Do we tell them, like, write out a list of examples so they can see, like, how their, you know, quote-unquote personality, like, their way of being is impacting, you know, not just the, you know, the kid in question, but, like, you know, like their grandchildren and other people, you know, like their, um, their kid's spouse, like other people in like the family relationship. Um, yeah, it's just something that, like, you know, I know I'm personally struggling with. My husband tunics are struggling with it, too.

And it's like, you know, I think the right thing to do is to say something to them. Um, so they're aware, other than just like kind of withdrawing and, you know, like in a way sort of like becoming estranged um giving them the opportunity to maybe change their ways but again in light of like it being a you know a true mental health like issue like they might not um like it might not be like the most supportive way to go about it so i just wanted to hear your thoughts thank you so much for calling it and for subscribing to the newsletter for any of you that want to get that i'll make sure that it's linked in the show notes and you can also access it on my Instagram at Sit With Whip, but we do send out a weekly newsletter to like over

40,000 family cycle breakers that are part of calling home community. So definitely check that out. I first want to highlight that in your question, I can hear that you're really wanting to fix this. I'm wanting to try to find a way to fix this. And I want to speak generally to anyone that is in this situation about what I know about these types of situations. So there are a couple of wonderful people that I think you can also consult with on this issue. One would be Dr. Romani who just wrote the book, It's Not You, and she's an expert on narcissism. And then I also think Lindsay C. Gibson's work on emotionally immature parents is also a great place to go for extra help on this work. have an upcoming episode with Dr. Gibson coming out in the future. But for right now,

I believe that we should always give people an opportunity to receive feedback from us in a healthy and respectful way whenever that's possible or safe in the relationship. And what I mean by that is if you're in a relationship where there has been domestic violence and someone has harmed you physically or mentally, whenever you've given them feedback, then you might not want to provide them with feedback alone, not with any type of mediator because there definitely could be danger to yourself or to others. Now, if you have someone in your life, maybe like this parent, I don't know if they've ever received feedback from you, that you feel like, okay, I could maybe provide feedback

to them and they might get defensive or they might deny it, but I can handle the level of rebuttal or defensive is going to come from them, or I haven't given them feedback before. And so maybe I want to try, then I would say in this situation, you could find a way to give them feedback about how the relationship is impacting you and impacting others. Now, something to keep in mind when someone has a personality disorder, whether that's narcissistic personality disorder or an undiagnosed mental health issue, sometimes their levels of defensiveness are very high, and they experience high levels of shame whenever they are confronted.

And so there is a chance that you could do this in the most delicate way possible, and they're not going to receive it because they simply cannot take in feedback that is inconsistent with the defensive concept of themselves that they have developed. And so there's a chance that you could say, you're hurting us, you're doing this to your grandchildren to this person to that person and they're going to simply deny it and say that it's not true. And that doesn't mean that it isn't true. It just often means that they cannot see it. They're not willing to see it. They're not going to see it. But I do think that often for people to feel good about themselves and the place that they're in with this relationship, they need to

take this step to try to explain themselves in a healthy, calm, respectful manner and be able to walk away and say, I know that I handled that in the best way that I know how and in a way that felt conducive to what I wanted to do and to my own value system. So that's what I would suggest that you try to do first. Now, there are a couple of ways that someone could do this. They could do it in a therapy session, in a letter, in a phone call, face to face, in an email. There's all these different options that you have to consider depending on the state of your relationship with this person and the way that they have reacted to feedback in the past. I also think it's very important to focus on like specific behaviors and boundaries that you would like to set

and things that you can actually illuminate rather than pointing the finger or calling someone something. I also made a video about this the other day on my TikTok at Whitney Goodman, LMFT that we really need to stop asking people who continuously harm us to go to therapy. And what I mean by that is that if you have someone in your life that you have told many times, you're hurting me, you're abusing me, you're not considering my feelings, I feel like this relationship is toxic, I feel like it's harmful to me. And they are not doing anything to change that. They're not trying to improve. They're not trying to heal the relationship. They're not taking any steps to learn how to be better in a relationship with you. And in fact, they're

refusing that or denying that there's even a problem. Then you asking them to go to therapy is not going to work. And it's not going to make a difference. In fact, they may take that as you calling them crazy and find a way to spin it back on them. There's also a lot of comments on that specific video of people saying, yeah, I did tell so and so to go to therapy and my family and they went for one session and said that the therapist said, there's nothing wrong with me and I don't need to be here, to which I made another reply video on there saying that I have never in my career met with someone for one session and told them they have no problems and that they don't need to be there. Typically, this happens in a situation where someone is not disclosing any information

is saying they don't have anything to work on in therapy and is not willing to be self-reflective to highlight goals or to be collaborative in the process. And then in that case, the therapist might say, well, if you can't reflect on why you're here, if you have nothing that you want to work on, if you feel like you have no problems in your life, then I can't really do this work because therapy requires input for there to be output and progress. And so, it's not that someone has no problems or doesn't need therapy. It's that therapy is not a one-sided process and it cannot be done without active participation from the other person, at least a little bit at the beginning. And so often this is why some of those people end up going to one session

and leaving. Now, if you decide that you want to explain yourself to this person, you want to highlight what they have done, how they're impacting you. I think you have to be very much prepared, especially if we're talking about certain personality characteristics here or certain combination of symptoms that are associated with specific disorders, that they are going to push back on this. They might deny it. They might blame you or refute everything that you're saying. And you have to be comfortable with reaching a level of acceptance when that happens. that you may not be able to convince or change this person, no matter how much explaining you do

and how much information that you give them. And so I know this is kind of like a non-answer answer, but these are really difficult relational dynamics to navigate because on the one end I hear we have one person here, this caller that is saying, like, I really want to try to explain and navigate this and understand. And when you don't have that on the other side of the relationship, it's very impossible to move forward or to do anything about the problem. And so sometimes

that mean accepting that this is who this person is and they're not giving you anything else to work with. And I truly fundamentally believe that people can change when they are willing to and they have the tools and the resources and the abilities. But sometimes people don't want to or it's scary to them or they just don't have the resources. They don't have the buy-in. They don't their defenses are too high, the risk is too high, and so they don't. And that's when, you know, riffs happen in relationships. I really appreciate you calling in. I hope that this answer is helpful to anyone that is in this situation and gives you a little bit more clarity when navigating this situation.

Thank you so much to everyone that called in this week and asked questions. I love being able to help you with these family situations and hopefully help you find a way to better navigate them with your adult family relationships. You can always call and leave me a voicemail and I may pick your question for an upcoming Thursday episode of the Calling Home podcast. Just call 866-225-4-66 and leave me a voicemail. I do these episodes every Thursday, and I love being able to get to help each and every one of you with your family relationships. If you're ready to work on your adult family relationships outside of this podcast and take what you've learned to the next level, we do have the calling home community. You can join us for weekly groups and watch videos, take courses, get access to worksheets and more, and those groups are run by me so we can actually meet. and you just need to go to www.callinghome.com and join the Family Cycle Breakers Club. Thanks, and I will see you all on Tuesday for another episode.