CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - How to Grow Up

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Too often the phrase “grow up” is code for ignoring your past and repressing your childhood trauma. This dismissive “get over it” mentality fails to ever reach a healthy emotional maturity. Join Whitney as she explores what it actually means to acknowledge your past, set boundaries, and embrace your adult power. 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. Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠⁠ Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft ⁠⁠Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity⁠⁠ This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute  for professional mental health advice. 00:00 What People Think Growing Up Means 04:22 The Real Process of Growing Up: Acknowledgment and Mourning 08:45 Decentering Unhealthy Relationships and the Double Bind 14:13 Taking Accountability as an Adult 16:54 Building Emotional Maturity and Self-Trust Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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on podcast. I am your host, Whitney Goodman. Today, we are going to be talking about how to grow up. The phrase grow up is something that I see a lot in my comment section. And I think it's often weaponized by emotionally immature, narcissistic, or estranged parents to dismiss pain, right? Whenever they see a person, typically anyone that's younger than them, saying, like, these are the things I'm upset about from my childhood. There's this response to like, oh, get over it. Why are you still whining about your parents? You're 30 years old. You're 35 years old.

Grow up. And today I want to talk about what does it actually mean to grow up? Is growing up denial or repression or? is it actually acknowledgement, integration about what happened and the impacts and stepping in to your power as an adult? And so today we're going to be talking about healthy ways to grow up while honoring your past, de-centering unhealthy relationships in your life, and stepping in to your adult power. First thing I want to talk about is, what people think growing up actually means. When we use the response, grow up in the face of

someone talking about pain from their childhood or something that they're upset about when it comes to their family relationships or particularly their relationship with a parent, I think what's actually being said is get over it. Stop being dramatic. That doesn't matter. It wasn't that big of a deal that happened to me and you don't see me talking about it. And there's sort of this false belief that if I'm an adult that's still talking about my childhood, it must mean that I am childlike. I'm immature. I can't get over it. I don't want to take control of my life. I just want to blame other people. And that I really am just stuck in that child version of myself. But this is ultimately dismissive, right? And it's a way of silencing someone

telling them to brush it under the rug. You don't want to hear about it. I think it's also a way of dealing with guilt and shame and feeling overwhelmed with your feelings and all of that good stuff. But we know that it's actually emotionally immature. to avoid accountability, be defensive, and fear your emotions. And what might appear as someone being, quote, unquote, stuck in the past or not growing up or not being able to get over it could actually just be them trying to hold someone accountable, processing their pain, seeking validation, trying to understand what happened to them, and actually talking about something real and legitimate that has impacted their life.

Now, of course, there is some nuance and shades of gray to this. I will not ever deny that it's possible to get stuck there. It's possible to get stuck in blaming and resentment and looking at what happened to you as a way that really, like, holds you back. That's true. And it's often essential and a requirement, I think, especially for people who experienced trauma and particularly childhood trauma that was consistent throughout their childhood at the hands of their caregiver or their parent, that in order for them to quote unquote grow up and move forward and step into that power, they need to accept what happened.

They need to name it, label it, know what it means, know how it impacted them, be met with validation and understanding, and then move in to that healing and empowerment stage. Without all of that first stuff, a lot of the times what we're seeing is just fake, covering it up. It's not legitimate or it's not going to last. And so we have to give people the space to do that. And often when they do, they are able to move forward. And that's honestly what I see in so many of our groups at Calling Home.

We were talking about this today that like this space is a space where you can come, share how you feel, be validated, be understood, not be ridiculed or criticized, have people get you. And that slowly chips away at that feeling of like no one will understand me. what I went through wasn't that big of a deal or I'm damaged, whatever it is. This is what actually growing up looks like. That first step that I just mentioned is acknowledging what you went through. So recognizing your pain from childhood without minimizing it or covering it up,

but just naming it, stating it even, and putting it out there and saying, this happened. You cannot quote unquote grow up by burying your story. You have to make sense of it. You have to understand it and look at it from the perspective of a child and as an adult and offer yourself that a hand of like, okay, that makes sense why that would impact me. If I heard this story about anybody else, I would be like, wow, that shouldn't have happened to you or that was hard. That was wrong. Whatever it is. You have to go through this healthy period of mourning for the childhood you didn't have, the parent you didn't have, the protection you didn't receive, the needs that weren't met. That is part of that acknowledgement. After you acknowledge that,

I think this is where some of that vulnerability and understanding, and recognition comes in and you learn that as an adult, you get to decide who you surround yourself with. You get to decide who is in your life and who isn't. And you can really take inventory of what that looks like. And sometimes that means removing certain people from your life or moving them out of your like center orbit circle to these further circles in your life where they have more distance from you and they can't impact you so much. And then you realize that, okay, there's people that I can move into my circle who hold me accountable, but also love me and respect me and show me that I am a human being worthy of

validation and recognition. And validation doesn't mean that all of your behaviors and actions don't have consequences and everything you do is fine. You need people in your life that both understand your story, respect it, hold it in like the most careful of places. And they also say, I want to be treated well by you. And I want us to be in a respectful and kind and loving relationship as adults. You may also have to, in this moment, de-center your parent or your family. And this is what I'm talking about when I talk about moving them out of that center space. A lot of what growing up includes is this acceptance that maybe your parents and or your family

cannot be the center of your life. because when they are, your life is chaotic, unmanageable. Your self-esteem is low. You feel criticized all the time. You can't achieve your goals. There's always someone there trying to get in your way or hold you back. And part of growing up is realizing that you have power in those situations and that you can say, I get to decide what my family looks like. And if I call my mom every day and she, She tells me that I'm worthless and I'm never going to amount to anything and I'm doing a bad job and I suck at my job and I need to quit and why am I not married and all this stuff. Like, I'm probably not going to get anywhere because having that person be the loudest voice in my life is not productive or helpful for me. And as a child, I had no power over that. I couldn't get out of my house.

I couldn't escape this. But now I do. And so what do I want to do with that power? And you have to sort of move into this place where you don't measure every decision feeling milestone event through the lens of what does my parent or my family think about this. That is part of being an adult is realizing like I get to decide what I want to achieve, what I want to prioritize in my life, whose opinions I want to consider. And I think this is where there can be a lot of friction between adults and their families

because on the one hand they're telling you, grow up, grow up, get over it, move on. And when that growing up includes decentering them and not holding their opinion in the highest regard, you get pushback. And so this is a phenomenon that I find to. be very true among adults who are estranged from their parents is that they are put into what is called a double bind. You cannot win in these situations. You are being asked to be a submissive child and an independent functional adult at the same time. And what that means is I want you to be successful and independent and do all these things that I deem to be like the achievements that are necessary. And I also want you to submit to me.

I want you to only make the choices that I want you to make and to listen to my advice and to do what I say. And in a lot of families and in a lot of adult child and parent relationships, those two things are not possible at the same time. And so a lot of you when you are growing up are tasked with this decision of do I want to submit or do I want to quote unquote grow up and disappoint some people in the process and make some people be really upset that. I am no longer acting like a child because children are fully at the mercy of their parents,

right, and have to do what they say. They're at risk. They know that their attachment often depends on compliance. And so, especially in abusive or really dysfunctional homes. And so this is a big change for a lot of you. but I think the full like picture of this that what will change in your mind when you truly are growing up is that you will shift from how do I get them to understand me and accept me and approve of me to how do I want to understand myself what do I want my life to look

like how do I want to feel about my life? me proud of myself. What makes me feel like a good mother, a good entrepreneur, a good spouse, what are my values? And do those align with the goals that my parent has for me. And I want to clarify this by saying that I am not promoting this entirely individualistic society or feeling where you say, screw them. I don't care what my family thinks about me. I am going to disappoint them, whatever. That's not always the right thing either. There are shades of gray to this. And there are some family systems that you must fully disappoint because their values are so off and they're never going to understand you and they want this very strict narrow path

of compliance. And there are some families where a little bit of like finessing and still getting along with the family and holding some values that are important to the elders in your family is important and it's valuable. So you have to look and say, what can I do within my family system that feels right, that feels authentic? Are there certain values that are important to certain people in my family that are maybe not super important to me, but I don't hate them? Or are there values that like we are so not aligned on that like I can't live like them without totally sacrificing myself? There's a lot of nuance here to work. through. It is not one or the other. Now let's talk about accountability. Accountability is something

that gets brought up often in conversations about estrangement between parents and their adult children. And if you're watching this, yes, I have an outfit change. I had to record this in two parts. But let's keep going. So I think that for a lot of adults, when you are a child and you've had to experience a great deal of accountability at a very young age. And that might be accountability for your parents' feelings and emotions and their experiences. It might be accountability physically for your siblings or the bills or taking care of the house or making sure that people were fed, whatever it is, that when you start to realize that and learn, okay, this is what has been going on. And that hits you like a ton of bricks. You may revert back to very

understandably, this more child-like version of yourself that's like, wait, I want the adults to take accountability. I want the people that were the adults in the room to show up and acknowledge this. And I think that unfortunately, you all know that that doesn't always happen. And so sometimes this desire and this sort of reverting back ends up just wrecking your own life as an adult. And so when we talk about accountability for adults who are struggling in their relationships with their parents and they're trying to quote unquote grow up, what that means is just being accountable for your own choices and behaviors now as an adult, not necessarily having

to be accountable for everything that happened to you. That responsibility lies elsewhere and learning to not carry your parents' responsibility and their fears and the things that they want to saddle you with. And we have a worksheet inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club under our adult children of emotionally immature parents' content that's about distinguishing between what's yours and what's theirs that can be very helpful for people working through this step. And so you really need to think about like, what is mine now? It's my actions, my healing, my relationships, how I take care of my body and my mind,

all of that is mine and I can let go and not be accountable for everything else because I think what actually happens sometimes is that you come, you become so overly accountable for your parent or for the family that you forget about yourself. And that makes some of that self accountability very much a struggle for you. Now, once you start to work through having some accountability for your own life, I think this is where you can move into healthy emotional maturity and the skills that come along with that. And the first one that I love is just accepting who people are. Maturity sometimes means no longer waiting endlessly for people to change and having

the clarity about who people are, not necessarily approval or having a relationship with them, but just acceptance. There's also this delicate balance of the past and the present. So how can you integrate lessons from your childhood into your adulthood without letting them control you or dictate your whole life or steal from you in that way? So you can say something like, my parents didn't know how to regulate emotions. They didn't teach me that, but I can learn that now. And I can do something different. The next thing that's so important is building that self-trust and self-compassion. So I get to decide

what's right for me. I get to live the life that I want to live. I have compassion for myself because of what I went through. And I love myself so much that I'm going to hold myself accountable and show myself that I can have the life that I want to have. I want to clarify again as we as we wrap this up what growing up is not. So growing up is not pretending that you're unaffected. It's not silencing all of those feelings like anger and grief or fear. It's not reconciling with someone who's still being harmful and hurting you and pretending that everything is fine and it's over and in the past. And it's not forgiving and forgetting. Growing up is having accountability, compassion, balance for the past and the present.

yourself and really knowing how you deserve to be treated and knowing that as an adult, you get to control that. As a child, you didn't. And so I hope you walk away from this episode knowing that growing up isn't about dismissing your past. It's about taking your power back. And so if you think about, I want to be an adult, what does it look like to be an adult? And also, I want to honor that child part of me or maybe that child part of me needs to come out more because I have been an adult for so long. But I think stepping into your adult self is something that is like really at the core of everything that we do at calling home. I am always trying to make sure that there is this undercurrent of like I have power. I have options. I have control. I

have self-respect. I get to decide what I want for my life because I think that's what so many of you did not feel in your childhood, right? Now, if you would like to work on this more, we would love to see you inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. We have groups for estranged adult children and adult children of emotionally immature parents every month. And for the month of September, we are going to be working on family secrets. So all of the worksheets, articles, videos, scripts that will be sent to your inbox and added to the website every Monday. We'll be about that topic, but you also get access to our entire content library. All my course is pretty much everything I have ever made in my career is part of the Family Cycle Breakers Club.

If you feel like this podcast is getting you close to where you need to be, but you're looking for more resources, maybe something you can do when you're journaling or work through with a therapist or someone else that you're working with, calling home resources, especially our worksheets, are really great for that. And we actually have a lot of members that. or therapists that utilize those resources in their sessions, which I love to hear. And I think that that is so wonderful. We also have a lot of interviews coming up on the podcast over the next couple of weeks. So look out for those.

Have some great interviews about fawning, estranged parents, divorce, splitting your time as a co-parent, all of that. I have some great ones recorded for you that I'm really excited to share. So as always, please like, subscribe, leave a review, comment on this episode. I love hearing back from you, and you are really what make this show possible and allow me to continue it. Thank you so much. I hope you all had a great holiday weekend if you're in the States and you had some time off on Monday.

And I will see you all again on Thursday for a Q&A episode. Bye, everyone. 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 Holmes Terms of Service linked in the show notes below.