CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Estrangement vs. Distance | Why You're Pulling Away From Someone You Love

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

Not all distance in a family relationship is estrangement. Not everyone pulling away is escaping an abusive situation. In this episode, Whitney explores the gray area of quietly drifting from someone you love. Why does it happen? When does it cross into avoidance? What can reconnection look like realistically? 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] the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.coFollow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmftOrder Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivitySign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0oThis podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People don't just end relationships with people who are toxic. Sometimes we end relationships with people because they bring up feelings we can't handle, force us to look at our own behavior, ask us to meet certain expectations, or even because they see the good in us. There are relationships with empathetic, understanding people that end because the other person wasn't ready. There are relationships with good, kind, helpful people. that end simply because the other person is ready to move on. Someone choosing to distance themselves from you doesn't always mean you were toxic, abusive, or harmful. Not everyone that isn't right for you

or that you want to distance yourself from is toxic, abusive, harmful, or a narcissist. Sometimes people walk away for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with us. I wrote this, years ago on Instagram. I think it was back in 2023. And someone shared it recently and tagged me in it. And I'm reading it back to you today because I had two strong reactions when I saw this post. The first was that I still believe every word of that. And the second was, I don't think I could post that today without it being really misunderstood. And when I put this post up. I know that I was referring more to like friendships, romantic relationships, other types of relationships, not necessarily parent and adult child dynamics. But we're going to

talk about that a little bit more today. Welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. I am your host, Whitney Goodman. This is the show for people that are doing the work. Nobody handed them a manual for. You are breaking generational patterns, navigating complicated family dynamics, and figuring out what you actually owe the people that you came from. Today I want to talk about the kind of distance that doesn't come with a diagnosis, distance that isn't really estrangement, and distance from people who aren't necessarily abusive or narcissistic, but who you just can't be close to right now for a variety of reasons. This episode is not for people who have been told specifically why someone needs distance from

them and who aren't accepting that or taking accountability. This is for the adult who has pulled away from a family member that they love but feel like they can't engage with right now and for family members who have noticed that someone is distancing themselves from them without a clear understanding of why. This is about that gray area. Before we get into it, I just want to remind you that if anything we talk about on the show today feels like the work that you've been trying to do and you've been doing it alone, you don't have to.

The Family Cycle Breakers Club is our membership community at Calling Home, and we are a group of people actively breaking generational patterns with structured support, real tools, and licensed therapists who get it. www.callinghome.co, and the link is in the show notes. and a quick reminder that we are going back to two episodes a week starting June 2nd. Tuesdays are for these deep dive episodes and Thursdays are for the Q&As. If you have a question you want answered on a Thursday, you can send it to me at Whitney at callinghome.c.O or call the number in the show notes.

All right, let's go ahead and get into the episode. I want to start by naming what I'm seeing because if you've spent any time on the internet in the last few years, you've probably noticed this happening too. The conversation around family has really shifted. And in a lot of ways, that shift has been good. You've heard me talk a lot about the positive aspects of that shift. I think we used to live primarily under a script that said, you owe your family presence and devotion, regardless of what they do to you, that blood is thicker than water, that you can't divorce your parents, and that if you cut someone off, the problem is you. A lot of people that listen to this show and a lot of the people that come to

our groups at Calling Home and then have sat in my office over the years needed that script to break. They needed to move totally off of that script. They needed permission to end a relationship and leave one of those family relationships that was actively hurting them. And I think that a lot of you have gotten that permission from the language that we now all use. like narcissistic, abusive, unsafe, no contact, etc. I have no interest in rewinding that process. The freedom to recognize harm and act on it is one of the most important things that this corner of the internet has helped people do, and I think that we should keep that up.

But I think this language is doing something that it wasn't designed to do. There is another type of distance that I see in families that isn't necessarily estrangement. And I think some of you that are experiencing this have sent me emails and messages, you know, over the years being like, I feel like calling home isn't for me because I'm not estranged. And I don't want to be estranged from my family member. And I always try to tell you all, like, we don't just focus on estrangement. In fact, I think 75% of our content is about improving your relationships and, learning skills like boundary setting, active listening, healthy communication, how to be more

emotionally mature. We have all of those topics on the website. But we were talking about this, ironically, in our estranged adult child group at Calling Home. And from my perspective, a lot of the members of this group tried to take this distance before the estrangement. And it's what happened during that period of distance, which was usually boundary bias. or more abuse, more neglect that led to that final estrangement decision. But I also hear from some of you that don't talk to your sister that much anymore or you're just not as involved with your mom during this season of life. You've taken some space away from the family. And I think that there needs to be a reason and a framework for this type of distance

that maybe is something you're doing that will eventually lead you down the path of estradement or maybe is just temporary and circumstantial and maybe has something more to do with you than and your circumstances right now than it does to do with the relationship as a whole. And sometimes behind this distance, there is harm, right? And there often is harm and neglect. And I think that's when we see the distance being like a stop on the way to a And a lot of the research on family estrangement backs this pattern up. There's a particular study I'm thinking about that I think is by Aguilis is the last name,

about how people sort of move along this path towards estrangement, taking a couple steps forward and a couple steps back as they move along that process and they eventually get to this place of estrangement. Now, I think for some of you, there is a period of distance and we can return back to closeness if we understand what is going on during this period of distance and why it's happening. When we discuss this type of distance, I think there often isn't a clear villain, right? There's just distance. And that distance is real. It's legitimate. I think that we need to talk about it in a different way. And so that's what this episode is for. And because I like to remind you all this, like we are very big at calling home on self-awareness and accountability and not always

saying, like, this is all someone else and I don't have to do anything for me. Because no matter what you've been through, unfortunately, I think there is always this level of self-accountability that we have to take to say, well, how do I want to live my life? And make sure that I don't repeat these patterns, even if I'm not the person that caused this. So if you've noticed someone pulling, away from you, there's a chance that you could be this person that I'm describing in this episode. And even if your intentions are good, it's important to listen to this information from this angle as well. Let's talk about what distance is. And I want to be precise with what I'm talking about here because I think the words can be confusing and there's a lot of nuance.

I'm not really talking about estrangement. I have so much information on estrangement on the podcast and inside the Family Cycle Wikers Club, including what it looks like to move forward after it. And you can go listen to that and check out that content if that's the conversation that you need. But I am talking about a wider category that estrangement is a small piece of. So this might be you stopped responding to text the same day or at all. You know, you let the phone calls go to voicemail. You don't really feel like calling back. The visits home or to see this person start getting further and further apart. You stop maybe offering up a lot of information. You just notice that you're pulling back. You don't think about sharing good news with this person anymore. Or, you know,

you stop bringing like parts of yourself to the table. And you're not totally gone. You haven't cut this person off. You might not even want to. You've just kind of quietly drifted apart. And if anyone in your family asked you why you might struggle to even give them a clear answer because there really isn't one. This isn't like such a clear dynamic of like this person really hurt me. They did this thing that was abusive or harmful. They've neglected me my whole life and that's why I'm cutting them off. And the other person might even be doing this to you too and it feels like a mutual growing apart. And honestly, I think for some of you, you might not even know how you got here. And if you can relate to that, you know, leave a review or if you're watching this on YouTube, right?

That in the comments, like, does it feel like you don't have a full understanding of how you got to this place? Before recording this episode, I asked you on Instagram, you know, when you have kept something from a parent or pulled back without explanation, what was the reason? And hundreds of you answered, I read through all of them, and I found that, five themes kept coming up. And I'm going to walk you through them in order of how often they showed up in your responses. None of these, again, are really about abuse. And yet they're real. They've pushed people apart. And I asked you about parents on Instagram before I decided

that I was going to kind of make this a dynamic about the family in general. But I think that they can really apply to anyone in your family or maybe even someone that you've grown apart from that necessarily like a family member in the traditional sense. So the first reason was they can't provide real emotional support. This was by far the most common thread, most common response. Many of you described family members who don't know how to sit with your feelings. They give unsolicited advice when you wanted empathy or there are people who over like a lifetime of evidence have just shown you that they're not able to be there for you. And one of you wrote, knew being around them would be unhelpful at best. And somebody else said they don't have the emotional

skills to understand. This is a really important category because these people may not actually be abusive or cruel. I think a lot of these people can love you enormously. But love and capacity are two very different things. And sometimes you can love someone a lot and still be the wrong person to call when you're in the middle of a hard season. And the nuance I want to add here is that sometimes certain people are just bad at handling certain things. They're not necessarily across the board bad with emotional material. And I want you to think of this person in your life. You might have someone that you love to go and talk to about work. When you are having struggles at work, they are your person. They can listen to you. They can give you the best advice. They can be there for you. But when you go to

this person and you talk about parenting or about health issues, they suck. They can't handle it. They fall apart. They end up getting really triggered and emotional on their own. And they're just not good at being a support person. It would be incorrect to say that this person is unhelpful. They cannot handle any emotional material. They are emotionally immature. Instead, we're looking at a person here who just can't check off all the boxes. And honestly, I don't think I know anyone in my life that I can talk to with 100% success about every topic that is hard for me. There are people that I might want to go to when I am worried about my marriage or my

parenting. And there are people that I want to go to about work. and professional stuff, and sometimes those aren't the same people. And it's, again, not because I dislike any of those people or because I think that they can't be helpful. It's that you have to learn who is good for what topic, right? And so sometimes what people have to offer isn't what we need in that moment. And after rounds of asking and not getting it, you stop asking. And sometimes that distance shows up because you forget that, okay, just because they were really bad at handling this, doesn't necessarily mean that I can't go to them with something else.

Now, very different from the person that you can't talk to about anything. So let's make sure we differentiate between those two. The second one is they make it about themselves. This was a really common one. And I think this is something that all of us have to reflect on too, because I hear this from so many people that I know. that a lot of us are doing it to other people as well. So in this type of situation, you end up managing their reaction on top of whatever you were already dealing with. So

people brought up like their mom's taking credit for everything when they share something exciting or people who made things about their own feelings and hijacked the conversation. So it's sort of Like they're always trying to trump how you feel. They feel worse than you. They're having a harder day. Like they try to, they're a one-upper. People who couldn't stop talking about themselves, even in a crisis. And one of you wrote, I couldn't manage their emotions and their reactions to when I was

growing through this thing. Someone else said she was still just talking about herself every time I brought up my divorce. And so when the cost of telling your family members, something is processing their reaction on top of your own, you end up like sitting there looking at the phone, maybe drafting a text or pulling their name up to call them and being like, oh, do I really want to do this? Because I'm going to have to support them or listen to them after I share. And I don't know if I can do that today. And so you put the phone down. And like, If you notice you're doing that a lot with this person, this could be one of those underlying

reasons, right? Telling them just becomes exhausting. The third one that a lot of you brought up was fear of judgment, criticism, or gossip. So many of you pulled back specifically because you didn't want to deal with their opinions, lectures, or commentary, especially around big life things. This was brought up around divorce, breakups, parenting choices, politics, religion. the way you spend your money, your weight, how you look, all of these topics you guys sent in multiple times. And some of you also feared that the information was being shared with the wider

family. So if you grew up in a family where don't tell anybody this meant that your family member is going to pick up the phone and call their cousin immediately after getting off the phone with you because they don't consider that person in the family to be anyone. That information is fair game. you also kind of stop sharing things, right? One of you said it wasn't worth the judgment. It would be shared with everyone. So you stopped offering them material to share or comment on. And there's a very good chance that this person thinks they're being helpful.

It's their job to give you advice. I think the differentiating thing here is that how does this person respond when you say to them, hey, I don't want advice or opinions on this. Can they augment how they're responding to you? Can they listen and just be there for you? Because if you're pulling away without giving them that opportunity and you don't have a lot of pre-existing knowledge that they can't handle it or that they can't respond to that, then that might be premature, right?

But if you have done that, this and you've told this person like, hey, I don't want to advice. I don't want to input on this. I just want you to listen to this and they routinely cannot offer you that. Okay. Distance absolutely makes sense. The fourth one that a lot of you gave was limited personal capacity during a hard season. So I think this is actually super common. And this was the response that I was expecting to get. So many of you said postpartum, illness, grief, burnout, caregiving, divorce and kids in crisis. So you said something along these lines. I love them. The relationship isn't broken. I just don't have the bandwidth right now. I cannot process what I'm going through and also

take on what my family member will need for me because of what is happening. So this ties into a lot of the other ones that we've discussed. This is the category that I think I want every parent that's listening to this episode to take in, that sometimes you didn't get information. because your adult child was drowning. And it's not because they didn't trust you or they don't love you. It's because telling you something would have added weight to the load that they're already carrying. And I think sometimes that unless they can get the response from you, that is, I love you,

I'm sorry you're going through this. How can I help? Or I'm going to do this to help you. it becomes really hard to share. And when your response then becomes, why didn't you tell me this? I can't believe you wouldn't tell me. I'm mad at you for not telling or you respond with the silent treatment. That creates more distance.

And that doesn't go just for parents. I think that can extend to anyone, but it is a pattern that I hear more with parents. There were also quite a few of you that said that you didn't want to burden your parent with what was going on in your life. burden your family member. And so when many of you were going through things like depression, illness, grief, divorce, you know, you didn't want to share that with your family members because you were worried about burdening them if they were going through their own thing. And I think that that's a conversation that needs to be had between people who historically have loved and

cared about each other, right? Because sometimes we pull away when we feel like we're being a burden and you become a lot more avoidant. And the people around you perceive that as, well, they don't want my help. They don't need me. They must not want to share with me. And they pull away too because maybe they are also feeling anxious or avoidant about your avoidance. And this creates even more distance. And I know it's really scary and hard to be the person who says,

hey, I feel like we're pulling away from each other during a hard time. I want to make sure that this doesn't become a permanent thing, right? The fifth response that you all gave me was personal growth, therapy, or healing that required distance. So many of you mentioned therapy, sobriety, deconstructing religion, recognizing childhood patterns, and realizing the parent may have played or the family member may have played a role in something that you're actively working on. And some of you said that you needed, like, quiet to figure out who you were apart from the family unit before you could be in a relationship with them. This is another piece of distance that I find that the way it is handled makes or breaks

the process and can either lead to estrangement or to more closeness. When someone pulls away and says, I need space to work through this, right? I'm going to therapy. I'm doing this. I'm, you know, we're going through a divorce, whatever it is. I need some time to myself. And the person that they're telling responds with criticism, vitriol, why do you need to do that? You're not going to cut me out.

I can't believe that you're doing this to me. They do boundary violations. Estrangement is much more likely to happen if that is how you respond. Because this person is straight up telling you what they need. And this could be a sibling, a parent, a friend, a cousin and aunt, anybody. You have to figure out a way to manage your feelings about their distance on your own. and try to allow them to have that space and know that you love them and care about them and you will want to be there ready when they return. Doesn't mean that you can't have feelings about it.

You are allowed to be hurt and upset and sad. It is very hard when people pull away from us, especially to work on themselves and we feel like we played a role in that. It's extremely difficult. But how can we make sure that we're not centering? ourselves when someone does that. I think that this category also really gets misread and misrepresented online because therapy-driven distance, like the kind where it's like, oh, I'm going to heal and I'm doing this, I think that it often gets perceived as like blaming the parent for everything or

blaming the family for everything. And sometimes that's a real critique. The parent is at fault. They are to blame. The family unit is messed up. They are. are to blame. But I think more often, another side of this is that that adult is realizing for the first time maybe that they need space to do this work without their family's voice in the room, especially if you come from a very emmeshed, entangled, like on top of each other family where you couldn't breathe and you couldn't get to know yourself. And this isn't the same as saying, like, my family's a villain, my parents are a villain. It's really a prerequisite for that person being able to come back into the relationship as a whole person. Now, if you put those five themes next to

each other, you're going to see a pattern. And you might be seeing that with me now. No one said here, my parent or my family member abused me. They're a narcissist. And I, asked, you know, why people pulled away because of something going on with them, not because of something their parent did. And instead, what was said here is they don't have the skill set. They make it about them. I think they're going to judge me. I don't have the room. I'm doing the work and I need quiet to do it. And that tells me that I think, and I could be wrong here, but I think, I think both of these people or all of these people probably want to be in this relationship, but they have no idea how to navigate what they're going through without distance.

And the distance can create more problems depending on how each of them react to it. Now, I want to add a few more reasons to those five that came from my audience because I think in my office and in the groups at Calling Home, I see a wider set of issues that come up that maybe wouldn't have fit into that like 200 character Instagram box, right? The first one is shame and embarrassment. Sometimes you pull back from your family, not because of who they are, but because of what you're going through right now and you don't want them to see it. I think particularly, like, if you feel like you want to make your parents,

proud or you have a you're in a sibling dynamic where someone is the golden child and you have always been the one that struggled a little bit more. You're just going through a phase in life that has been hard for you. And you can feel shame about things like losing your job, divorce, I don't know, a breakup, not having to move, struggling with parenting. Even with supportive family members, you can feel those things because there are wider, at play here that make us feel like we should be ashamed of that. And I think even if like, let's say you're getting divorced and you come from a family where no one has gotten divorced before, you could potentially not have a single family member that has told you that you should be

ashamed of that or that is speaking poorly about you, but you have internalized this belief that this is what we do in our family. We stay married. And that's what people have always done. And so you feel some shame about that. And it's not always. reflective of the system, right? You may have gotten laid off and said you were doing fine, or you're drinking more than you want to be. Your marriage is in trouble. Your kids failing out of school. And you haven't told them because telling them would mean letting them see a version of you that you haven't totally reconciled or forgiven yourself for. There's also, I've talked about this in other episodes. I think a lot of families don't realize how painful is going to

be to go through different life stages at the same time. So a dynamic would be like your parents are retired, you have toddlers, your parents are still raising your siblings, you're trying to build a business. And the conversations don't have this like center of gravity for all of you. The relationship is just changing so rapidly. You're all living very different lives on a day-to-day basis. And the distance kind of grows in that gap because people just can't get on the same page. It's hard to find shared hobbies, interests, things like that. And sometimes we have trouble recalibrating, especially in a family that hasn't had to recalibrate very often throughout the life cycle of that family. Also hear a lot about just being busy. Okay. And there's a difference between

real busy and chosen busy, right? I think we all know which one we're doing at certain times, but being busy is sometimes how distance starts before you even realize that there's any of these other reasons at play, right? So you'll say things like you're slammed at work for a year and then realize that you haven't talked on the phone to your family in a really long time. And And busy is often the alibi that we use when we don't know why we're pulling back yet. It can also be a good acceptable excuse for not coming around. And then we don't have to actually label what is going on. This other piece, I think, is a thread that's woven through those five reasons that you all submitted.

And that is not feeling understood. I think sometimes the parent or the family member is emotionally available. They want to be there for you, but they just don't get it. They don't have a frame of reference. They don't understand your career. They were married and you're not partner. They don't understand where you live. And like, your conversations just aren't connecting.

And I had an episode come out last week about curiosity. in families. And I think when there's a big lack of curiosity, it leads to not feeling understood. So if this one resonates with you, go and listen to that episode about curiosity that came out last Tuesday. Because over time, the cost of being misunderstood becomes very, very high. And when there's not enough opportunities for warmth and connection, distance grows. There are also conflicts that we are afraid to face in our families. And sometimes it's because of how those conflicts have played out before. And I see this most often in cases where there is estrangement. You have played a conflict out so many times it never gets resolved. You're always the one that gets blamed. But in other families where conflict has maybe not come up as often, the family. The family, doesn't have a lot of reps dealing with conflict, they don't know how to bring things up with one another. And so distance is like the kind of way that they're dealing with it. It's their choice to

deal with it that way because it just feels too big or too risky to open it up. It's a way to manage conflict within families. And unfortunately then sometimes we see that distance grow so wide that estrangement happens. Now, I want to talk about what distance is actually for and what it can be used for. And I want to be careful about this because I think distance in like the larger cultural conversation has just been collapsed into like a way to protect yourself from someone who is hurting you. And it absolutely is that sometimes, right? You hear me talk about that a lot. If you've been abused, neglected, or continuously harmed by a family member, or you've decided to become estranged, this conversation is not for you and your relationship with that person.

But distance can sometimes just be a pause, especially if you're going through something hard in your life. It's just a way of saying, I can't be in this relationship in these ways right now. I need space to deal with this. And I think that we saw that come up in a lot of the responses that you all gave. And sometimes you can communicate that to the person and they accept it. And it's great. And you get to have your space. And sometimes you can't. And that is more information for you about the quality of this relationship. Distance can also be like a recalibration for the relationship. And there are periods of time in the life cycle of a relationship and of a family

where recalibration with some distance is necessary. I think that particularly when a child is moving into the teenage years, when they move out of the home, potentially go to college, when they get married, when you have children, maybe when you're going through a career or a major life change, when someone is going through a health issue. These are all moments where the family has now the opportunity to integrate a new change. And sometimes little subsets of that family unit will pull off, recalibrate, and reenter. And in healthy families, if you love, look at your family dynamic, you can see this happening. And you can think of times when it was

successful, when you successfully integrated a new thing into the family, whether that was a person, an event, a change in the family dynamic. And now you are this integrated family that looks very different from the family that existed before. The family unit is constantly evolving as your life changes and as the members of the family change. And that's something that I think estranged families do not do well. And families where there is a lot of authoritarian type attitudes of this is the way we do things we will not evolve, we will not change. Those are the families that cannot recalibrate. And so when people take distance, they stay out of the family. I also want to say that distance is sometimes the only thing keeping a relationship alive.

I'm going to say that again. Sometimes distance is the only thing keeping your relationship alive. Sit with that for a second. Because I know that sounds counterintuitive. Like, well, if I'm not close with this person, and if I'm not moving towards closeness, the relationship must be under threat or that there's something that's going to happen to it. There are relationships in your life that would not survive closer proximity. But with distance, they might survive and maybe in the future come back even stronger.

The distance is not the threat to the relationship. It's what's protected. it from rupturing even further and becoming something that neither of you can come back from. So not all distance in a relationship is bad. Now, this doesn't mean that pulling away or distance is always the right move. Sometimes it's avoidance and you feel like it's wisdom, right? Or it's like this good decision and we'll get to that next. but I want you to hear that distance can sometimes be the most loving thing that you can do for a relationship. Now let's look at the other side of this, when distance is actually avoidance.

And I don't want this episode to become a permission slip for anyone to pull back from anybody that makes them uncomfortable. And I know that those of you that listen to this show know that. Sometimes distance is protection and sometimes distance is avoidance and the difference matters. I am equally as guilty as all of you. I can be distant as a form of avoidance. It's something that I know about myself and I have to be really cautious of. And so you might be leaning into avoidance if the thing that you're avoiding is your own discomfort, not this other person's behavior.

Okay. You don't want to be around them because being around them brings up something in you that you don't want to feel or accept. So I have seen adults avoid a dying relative that they had a good relationship with because it was too painful for them to see them. or they avoid a family member that's going through a divorce or someone who's expecting a child because those situations triggered something in them that they didn't want to face, not necessarily because those relationships were toxic or abusive.

If you find that the list of people that you can tolerate is getting shorter and shorter and shorter and everyone around you is starting to feel like you just cannot manage it. And I want to put a caveat here that there are going to be stages in your life, especially for those of you that have PTSD, extensive childhood trauma histories, you are going through a lot. There are going to be periods in your life where it feels like that, where it feels like you cannot handle one more person. Everyone is bothering you and triggering you. And this is when you might know that like, I need distance. I need space to work on myself.

It's what you're doing with that distance that matters. And this is like an ultimate moment of discernment for you of like, is this that moment for me? Or am I actually just like making my world very, very small because I don't want to deal with this stuff? There's a very, very big difference between making a containment. in your life where you are protected to work on things and you're doing the work inside of that container and creating a container in your life so that you can self-isolate and sit in there and not have to deal with anyone or anything and never change your life. And obviously, shades of gray in between those two. If you can't articulate what you actually want from this

relationship, you have no picture of what that would look like, that's something to check in with yourself. And I think most people are somewhere on this spectrum, right, at some point. The work is really just to be honest with yourself about where you're at in between distance that is protective and distance that is avoidant. And again, big spectrum there. And this is where I think getting feedback from a therapist, from a trusted person in your life, coming to our groups at calling home can be very, very helpful so that you can ask questions and check in about how that's going for you. Now let's talk about how to reconnect after a period of distance and how to tell if it's safe to. This is a part that I get asked about a lot. And so I want to answer that carefully.

I think if you've pulled back and the dust has settled and you're starting to wonder, like, is there a way back into this relationship? And again, this is not about abusive, harmful, neglectful, highly conflictual relationships that have led to estrangement. I have a lot of other information on reconciliation. We just did an entire month on that at Calling Home back in April. And I have some podcast episodes on that. So go check that out if that's what you're thinking of. This is after more of the distance that we've been talking about in this episode. The first thing I want you to do is test your own readiness before you test it for them. So bring the relationship to mind and imagine a typical interaction with this person.

Notice what happens when you're doing this. Are you flinching? Do you feel very overstimulated and reactive? like there's like this buzzing in your body or you feel nauseous. Like what are the physical sensations that are coming up for you? You might not be ready if you are that reactive, right? And reconnecting from that place doesn't go well. You also need to start small.

I know that we all want this like big reconnection with a long conversation and repair and skip it. If this is a person that you've just taken some distance from, there wasn't this big like blow up. Maybe you've been going through something and you just didn't have the bandwidth to interact with them. Send a photo. Send a meme. Ford a recipe.

Ask a small question. Like you have to rebuild the reps of like I'm going to start engaging with this person again. I want to be closer to them on like the most basic low stakes level before deep stuff is even possible. And this is where I want to step in, that there is a chance that the person that you took distance from is hurt. And they feel distant from you. And they wanted to be there for you. And they feel like they didn't get the opportunity or they don't really understand why you took distance from them.

And so that's where I want to say, like, there is a time where you're probably maybe going to need to have this conversation with them. right, but you don't have to lead with the big explanation if they're not asking for it or if you're not ready to talk about it. I think a lot of people freeze on the reconnect because they think they have to come back with this like perfect narrative about why they pulled away. And you can if you want to, but you don't always have to. And I think a lot of people actually like would welcome you coming back and would engage with you before they get some big speech. And you can always ask them, you know, if you hurt someone with your distance and it was shocking or confusing to them, they might have feelings about that.

But I also want you to know that it is okay for you to say like, you know, for those of you that have been depressed and grieving and you've pulled away from people during that period of your life, like, it's okay to say to them. Like, trust me when I say, I just needed to be on my own and this had nothing to do with you, if that's the truth for you. Because we get scared about going back to people that we are afraid that they're going to reject us after we took distance from them, right? But the other person is often seeing this only from their side of like, oh my gosh,

I must have not been a good support person to them. I couldn't offer them what they needed. They don't like me. I did something wrong to them. And I think it's so important when distance isn't happening for that reason because of something the other person necessarily did or this big grievance that you guys call that out for each other so that you can move forward. And for any of you that have been on the receiving end of distance, I want you to think

about how powerful that would be for someone to say to you like, I just really was going through it. I was not in a good place. And I couldn't let anyone be there for me. And I didn't like how I was going to treat other people during that time. And so instead, I decided just to, like, hide away. Or I was scared to ask for help. Like, how meaningful it can be to hear that. Right. The other thing that you want to do in this process is notice what you are offering up. Reconnection isn't just about, like, resuming contact with a person. You also need to think about what this relationship is going to look like. Are you really reconnecting on like logistics first, more than actual details of your life? You may never get back to this full relationship of like telling them everything. You know,

we talked about the beginning of this episode, different types of relationships with different people. And it can be really hard to realize that like this person is no longer an everything person for you. But maybe you still want to have the relationship in your life. And the new relationship doesn't have to look like the old one. The next thing is, expect it to be weird. Expect it to be awkward. The first couple of visits, phone calls, like, there's probably going to be some stiffness, some walking on eggshells. Both of you are figuring out what this relationship is going to look like. And you may be a little bit anxious or hurt or, whatever it is. You know, the awkwardness isn't always a sign that you're making the wrong call. Sometimes it's just that weird period while you're figuring it out. I think you also need to be honest about what has changed in the relationship.

The version of the relationship that you walked away from is probably not the one that you're walking back into because you're different. And those old patterns are going to show up. So plan for that and decide what you'll do. The last part about reconnection that I want you to consider is that sometimes reconnection with someone that you took distance from or even someone that pulled away from you is internal only. And the relationship doesn't really change, but your relationship with it does. And so you stop feeling as angry.

you know, maybe you let the relationship be very small and that's enough for you. And that can be a form of reconnection as well. I talked about at the top of this episode that I would try to talk to the other side. And I've woven that in a little bit throughout, you know, if you're the family member that is being distanced from. But I want to speak a little bit more specifically to those people. So if your adult child, your sibling, your cousin, whoever has pulled back from you and you can feel it and you're not sure why this section of the episode is for you, okay? And I'm going to be really direct. First, you need to consider both possibilities that you did something wrong and that you didn't do something terrible. Okay. I think a lot of us have been told that any distance

means that we have been monsters. And it's not always true. Sometimes it is. And so you have to really be able to engage in self-reflection. And if you tend to land over here of everything is my fault, I am evil, I am awful, and I'm going to send myself into shame spiral, or you tend to be over here, the relationship was perfect. There's nothing I could have done. There's no reason why they're pulling away from me that has to do with me. Both of those are not great places to be. You want to try to come in to the middle, okay? And consider the different perspectives. Leading with like self-flagellation and being like, oh my gosh, what did I do in punishing yourself doesn't help anyone. You need to just be honest with yourself and open to the possibilities.

Okay. The next thing I want you to think about is trying not to escalate. This is the most common mistake I see. Someone pulls back from you. You get really freaked out. And your response is to jump in and close the gap as quickly as possible without thinking this through. And this widens the gap most of the time. Okay. So some examples of this escalation would be like blowing up their phone, sending multiple texts in a row. recruiting other families to talk to them, showing up unannounced, sending these like guilt-soaked letters, posting cryptic things online. All of this confirms that someone needs distance from you. Okay? Try to back up and not do those things. Let the space be for you too to think about what's going on

here. Now, you can also try to make yourself reachable without overly pursuing. So being reachable means that when they reach out, you answer warmly. You don't punish them for the gap. You don't lecture them immediately about how hurt you've been. You don't make every interaction about the absence. So when this person does decide to reach out to you, you're not opening with, I haven't heard from you in three months. I can't believe you haven't contacted me. Let the contact open the door and show that you are someone that this person wants to be in contact with. It's very hard. I know. But once that safety has been established, then you can have conversations. Now, I talked about not jumping into the distance so quickly. So do your own work in that gap.

therapy, a friend, a religious leader, journaling, anything. Do not make the person that is taking distance from you responsible for processing your hurt about their distance while they're not speaking to you. It will not work. The faster that you have somewhere else reliable and trustworthy to put your own pain, I really believe the faster they will come back. Okay. So your job, job while someone is taking distance from you is to become the kind of person that someone who is struggling wants to be in contact with. That is the kind of person that is like walking the walk, not just trying to like get this person back in contact with you immediately. And now the last one that I think is the hardest one is you have to sit with the possibility

that this relationship is not going to look like it used to. And that doesn't mean that it's over. It just means that it might come back in a different way. So smaller, more boundaryed, you only talk about certain topics. It's not the center of your world. And if you can accept that and grieve that and without turning it into pressure, I think you have a real chance of having a great relationship. But if you can't and you insist on violating boundaries, on putting pressure when the other person is not ready, you're going to keep losing ground. Okay. If you take anything from this section, I want you to hear that the move that brings them back

is almost always the opposite of that move that feels so urgent and instinctual in the moment. That thing that you want to rapid fire text on your phone and yell at them and call that, you need to move away from that and think about, okay, if that's my instinct, that might be coming from a place of anxiety, fear, shame, overwhelm. How can I put space between that reaction and not do the first thing that comes to mind when I'm in that dysregulated state? I want you to focus on trying to be still, work on yourself, but stay with you. reach and also know that sometimes people are pulling away from you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Sometimes people are pulling away from you because they're not ready to talk about

something. And sometimes you are not the right person for them to share that with. And we we cannot expect to punish people for that and then expect them to want to be in relationships. with us. It doesn't work. If you are someone who has pulled back from a family member that you love and you want to be in a relationship with, but you're just not able to right now. And you've been carrying around this sense that like you're doing something wrong because the pulling back doesn't necessarily fit into the categories that we talk about when we're talking about estrangement. you're allowed to take space when things are hard in your life. And you're allowed to do this without making the problem all you and all them.

It's complicated. The best case scenario would be that you're able to tell someone that you love and care about why you're taking distance and that you're going to return to the relationship when you're ready. Now, for some of you, you have a lot. haven't been able to do that because you didn't have the language, the understanding, you didn't feel like you could do that. You were scared of what was going to happen if you did. And maybe the other person didn't receive it well. For some of you, you have not received distance well. And you've put

more pressure on somebody who was depressed or grieving or whatever to talk to you and to come to you as a support person and it backfired. I think that we all need to give each other. a little bit more grace and space during these moments. And that will give us more closeness. As we wrap up this episode, I want to come back to the post that I opened with. Because I think when I wrote that years ago, what I was trying to say, and I said it very imperfectly, is that the reasons that people step back from relationships are bigger and more varied than any categories that we could use to describe them.

People walk away because they don't have the skills. They need to grow. They're afraid of being seen. They don't have the bandwidth. And they also walk away because someone has hurt them, has shown them repeatedly. They can't show up for them. That person is emotionally immature. They're neglectful.

they're abusive and they learn that their lives are better off without this person in it. But distance is not always the end of a relationship. Sometimes it's the thing that can keep that relationship alive. And if you're the one that is pulling back, the work for you is to be honest with yourself about whether you're protecting something or avoiding something and to keep checking in with that and to see can I become better at communicating what I need from the people that I love and what I'm looking for? And can I also be more discerning about who I go to with certain things and what they're able to offer me? And if you're the one being pulled away from, can you work on being more

patient with people, allowing yourself to not be the person that that person goes to with everything. To be more accepting of the fact that people go through hard times, sometimes where they're not as available, and that it's not always a reflection on how they feel about you. And can you also be more discerning about why someone might be pulling away from you and how you have historically responded when they were struggling or going through something? When they pull away, can you try to work on being reachable, being patient, and being the kind of person that they want to come back to. Two last things before I let you go. If this episode landed for you and you want to keep doing this work in a structured way with people who get it, if you want to work on distance without estrangement,

reconnection, what to do when the distance is happening to you, we have the tools for you inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. The link is in the show notes and I would love to see you there. And on June 2nd, we will be starting again with two episodes a week, Tuesdays for the deep dives, Thursdays for the Q&A. Go ahead and send your questions in. Thanks for spending this time with me. Please don't forget to like, subscribe, leave a review, comment on the episode. That is what helps the show grow and helps us keep it going. I have been seeing so many more of you on YouTube watching the show and commenting. So thank you. I appreciate that. If you are watching,

watching the video there. And I will 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 Collingholm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.