CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - I Have a Confession

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Whitney has taken estranged parents' bait for the last time, and it's time to set the record straight.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 Club⁠⁠Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft⁠⁠Order Whitney’s book, Toxic PositivityThis 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.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Calling Home Podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Goodman. I have a confession today. I have spent years trying to dodge a particular accusation, and that is you promote estrangement. And I don't know why. Well, I think I do know why. I'm going to talk about it. I have always felt so defensive of this accusation. I didn't want to be seen as someone who, quote unquote, destroys families. And I think that a lot of the people who say this, who say you promote estrangement, you're destroying families, you're evil, I think some of their tactics got to me, I have to admit, in the way that I think their tactics get to their victims. And I'm here today to say that I'm done tiptoeing around this. I'm done trying to defend

myself against this accusation. And I'm ready to admit it. I do promote estrangement as an option. Not as a trend, not as revenge, not as a personality trait, but as a real, sometimes necessary option when someone is being routinely harmed, abused, or destabilized in a relationship. I promote and approve of the ending of any relationship that never improves, continues to harm you, and in which the power dynamics continue to play out and exist to further victimize people who have been harmed. I feel that way about marriages, friendships, workplace relationships, acquaintances, and family. I think that everyone should have the choice and the freedom to end relationships where they are being harmed. And if that means that I promote estrangement, I will wear that claim.

I will own it. Because what is the opposite? a therapist who tells people they should never end their family relationships. They should endure any mistreatment in the name of family. They're not allowed to walk away. They have to figure out a way to make it work. That doesn't seem ethical or like anything that I signed up for when I took on this license and agreed to practice ethically.

and especially to defend and work for victims of abuse, I can't do that in all good conscience. I think that's wrong to promote that. So I am done defending myself against this accusation. Maybe it's the pregnancy hormones. You know, I'm like nine months pregnant. Maybe it's just me. Way the white flag and I am not going to defend myself against these accusations any longer. And I think, when I think about why I dodged this for so long or why I'm constantly like making videos defending myself or trying to fight against this accusation, it's because the headline of like family therapist encourages people to cut off their parents, you're breaking families. apart. You're evil. You're destroying them. You're just in this for the money, which like,

is the craziest claim ever, guys. If I wanted to make a lot of money, I could find a lot easier ways to do so than being a therapist, being like one of the most underpaid career paths of all time that takes like years to even get entry into the field. It's just, it's the wildest accusation to me, but I think what really gets at it for me is that I went into this profession, knowing and believing, both personally and professionally, that family is one of the most important pillars of a functioning society. And I think from my own experiences that family has had such an impact on me in both positive and negative ways, it is like, the road that leads to everything. It's how you develop your sense of self. It's your community. It's

who you're tied to. Your genes, your personality, your temperament, what you have access to. It's all shaped by your family. And I really, really, like, I never wanted to be a psychologist or a mental health counselor or a social worker, I wanted to be a family therapist because I am so drawn to systemic thinking, looking at the family system. It's how the world makes sense to me. I don't think that I, when I am thinking about anyone, I can't separate them from their system and from their family. And so I wanted to go into that. I mean, I remember I got accepted into doctoral programs before I was really doing a lot of work on Instagram, and I was like, I don't want to do any of this because I didn't like the model. I didn't like what was being taught. I wanted to just like really work from this system's perspective. I loved my marriage and family therapy degree and that lens. And that was what I was going to work with. And even though I've worked with some different populations over the years, like addiction and chronic illness, all of it has come from the lens. of the family system, how it impacts the family, how the family impacts the illness. It's always

been about that. In my book, Toxic Positivity, I talk about the family being the birthplace for a lot of our toxicly positive beliefs and the pressure that we feel to be happy. And there's a huge public pressure of like, we live in a culture that, assumes that parents always have good intentions. They always love their children. They deserve respect and deference. But in reality, children are the most marginalized population on the planet. They have the least amount of power, the least amount of access, the smallest voices, and they can be taken advantage of so easily. We harm children. as a society all around the world every single day and they have no recourse and no way to

protect themselves. And I see those children grow up and become adults that are in serious, serious amounts of pain. They are struggling because of how they were treated during childhood. And so to act like parents are this like marginalized group, I mean, I'm a parent. I'm about to have three children. Like I understand how hard it is. for parents. I get it, but I was also a kid. It's way harder to be a kid than it is to be a parent. And it's way harder to be a kid in a very dysfunctional system and society and world that does not protect children. And I think if we've seen anything from all the news that has come out, we have wars and sexual predators and all this stuff in our society.

and children are harmed the most in all of these major world events that we have been hearing about, especially in the United States over the last year, children are the biggest victims. And so I tend to side with the kids because I know how easy it is to victimize children. And I know the ways that children can be harmed because I've seen it with my eyes. And I've worked in this field for a decade. And I've been in people's homes and inpatient and outpatient treatment centers. And I've met with families. And I have seen what people do to kids with unchecked power.

And I believe those children by far and large. I know there are exceptions. There are sometimes kids that don't tell the truth or exaggerate. But again, very small percentage compared to. to what is actually happening. And we don't want to admit that sometimes the parent you have is not the parent that you deserve. And some people are not good parents, whether because they don't want to be, they don't have the skills, they never learned, they had their own issues, whatever it is. The intent doesn't need to be qualified. Sometimes the impact is just bad enough,

even if you were trying hard as a parent. And so I feel very liberated saying this out loud that some relationships don't get better if one person refuses to repair. And I don't think it's on the child who is consistently throughout their life been at the bottom of that hierarchy with their parent to lead the charge for repair. I don't. Now, something I have noticed in my work with this population over the last several years is that our definition of estrangement is extremely unclear and people have very different definitions of this word. I define estrangement as the complete ending of the relationship between parent and adult child. There is no relationship any longer. I don't think these like momentary lapses of contact, some distance, some pulling away are. truly estrangement. It's been fascinating to me how many adults I have spoken to that identified

as estranged during my interviews with them, but then said, I called my parents at least once a week or every two weeks. And to me, that is not estrangement. And there are, of course, different types of estranged. And we're talking about potentially being emotionally estranged or physically estranged. But I think that our definition of this is what's kind of complicating the conversation. And not every low-contact relationship or low-contact family is estranged. I think for those of you that have been in very emmeshed, overly close, boundary-less and like-fused relationships with a parent or with a family member, pulling back contact or having low-contact feels like estrangement, but it might actually be normal to somebody else.

And so that's something that we have to remember here, that estrangement is when at least one family member in the equation intentionally distances themselves from the other person and is ending the relationship, typically because of the perception of a negative relationship with that person. And estrangement is purposeful. It has some intentionality behind it, whether that's that you are intentionally just kind of letting things fizzle out and not trying anymore because the relationship is already so distant and there's no communication, or, you're, you are overtly and explicitly telling this person, I do not want to have a relationship with you any longer. Now, I think what's so fascinating about this argument about promoting estrangement

is that a lot of the people that are saying this are saying, this didn't happen like this before. This is totally new. It's rampant. It's everywhere. And you guys know, I have publicly disagreed with that narrative over and over. I think one of the main things happening here is, again, we were not talking about it as much before. We have very murky, complicated definitions of estrangement. The way people are defining estrangement runs such a wide perspective that we're all talking about different things. And it's very much in the eye of the beholder.

You might think that's estrangement to somebody else that's a normal relationship with their mom where they see them twice a year and they text occasionally. But for that other family member that wanted to talk every single day, they see it as estrangement. And that's, I think, what makes this seem even more rampant than it actually is. I've also talked about the role of social media, email, tracking apps, all these different ways that we can keep in touch with one another, texting, phone calls that have made it feel like estrangement is much more consequential and severe when it happens because you are so used to having constant contact and connection with that person.

And there's so many more reasons and ways to cut them off because of all that access, right? And so if someone won't respect boundaries and they have a hundred ways to contact you, you often have to assert that estrangement in a much more aggressive and deliberate way than before when you just had a phone in your kitchen that was attached to the wall and you could say you were out all day and didn't answer and you can't afford a plane ticket back home for Thanksgiving and there was no other way for that person to find you. It's much more complicated today. And I think estrangement used to be so widely hidden because people did not want to be labeled in these ways. They didn't want to be seen as cold, unloving, disloyal. And I actually think

for the most part, throughout history, therapists prioritized the family. The family. in a much different way than they did other relationships. And I have even worked with therapists. I know therapists. I hear this all the time who would say like, it's your mom. It's your family. It's your sister. You can't do that. There actually was a lot of hesitancy. And I think there still is in the field to even say you might need to end this relationship. And so that's why I think for outsiders who see their kid or their sibling going to therapy and then being like then they wanted to cut us off. That's why they cut us off. You don't actually know what's going on in that room. And in fact, most of the people that join our estrangement groups at Calling Home report some sort of story

about needing to get through like five therapists before they found someone that said, hey, this relationship seems really bad for your life. Are you sure being in it in this way? makes sense and helping them navigate that decision. We know a lot more today also about generational trauma, family dysfunction. I think a lot of therapists are learning more about the ways that things can be passed down. We also see these relationships lasting for much longer and being much closer, again, because of all the forms of communication and also people living longer lives, that the field has had to adjust to helping people manage these relationships in a much different way because they've become increasingly more complicated. I also think that psychology looking at

parents as a source of trauma is not new. There's a lot of conversations, especially among estranged parents who post on social media about their experiences, that modern psychology blames parents for everything. The looking to parents as a source of pain has truly been happening like since Freud. I actually think if anything, we do it a lot less today. Today we are much more aware of all the other layers and systems that interact with someone to cause them to be the way that they are, whether that's genetic, socioeconomic status, social influences, what's going on at that time in their life, the environment that they live in. There were times in psychology, in the psychological field where a mother was blamed for everything that was going wrong with their child.

You know, we used to have these kinds of theories. And I think today things are a lot more nuanced than they were. You would be hard pressed, I think, to find a school of thought that just says, you know, parent did this, it equals this. Now, of course, parents have influence and we're going to call that what it is, but it's not A plus B equals C. And it used to be a lot more of that. I don't think that that has become even more rampant than it was if you look back at the history of how parents were framed in psychological theory, you know, dating back that far. Now, I think the reality that we need to consistently check in when we are talking about the promotion of estrangement is that people want to be close to their family members. There is an innate desire to stay close to our family, especially our

parents. We want to feel known, loved, and understood by the people that we are connected to, that we grew up with, and we were raised by. I have yet to meet anyone who did not long for this in some capacity. Now, some people rejected and they give up on it and they try to find other groups and other ways of belonging because they couldn't have that with their family. But for the most part, when someone is able to root themselves within their community, their culture, their family system, the people around them, they get a lot of enjoyment out of that and fulfillment and peace. It is wonderful to be part of a group that welcomes you and commits to you and shows you love,

affection, respect, is able to model closeness and that you have fun with. And some of this is luck and personality and temperament. But the other part is, you know, families who really prioritize those relationships and creating a cohesive unit that is full of a lot of different types of individuals. And not all families can sustain that or do it, right? And we know that members of a family are human. They can have addiction, mental illness, trauma, shame, personality traits that make them difficult, distant, or cruel. And so this makes it even harder for some people to remain part of those groups or to feel like they have membership in those communities. But often what happens in these families where people estranged themselves is that the culture has been promoting the wishes and needs

of the most dysfunctional people in that family for generations. And we have reached a point in time where people have so much access to other communities, groups, and people who will accept them. And some of those groups are not good for them. But they will at least be accepted and welcomed and encouraged and they may even get validation from those groups. And so they look at that and say, this feels a lot better than being part of my family. And I now have the privilege and the ability to access those spaces. And so I'm going to go there because I can. And throughout history, that wasn't as easy as it is

today. And so this is why I don't treat family estrangement as some like edgy internet concept where we have to be like so unbiased and never take sides because people don't do this for fun. They do it because they're out of options. I think that there are voices that know. I've noticed this because whenever I get emails, you know, from people calling home who are upset about the price of something or, you know, whenever I get angry emails, they always include some sort of pointing at me and saying, I know that you care about people. And if you actually cared, you wouldn't do X. And this is a manipulation strategy, right? That someone knows that because of what you do, you probably have feelings around trying to be helpful and kind and preserve families.

And they look at that and say, that is a point where I can explain. that person, right? I know that they want to be good. And this has probably happened to a lot of you where people say like, oh my gosh, but you're a therapist. I can't believe that you would say that. Or like, you're somebody that's always talking about boundaries. I can't believe that you would do something like that. And this is a way of taking something that you know is important to the other person and weaponizing it, right, to get what you want. And I think that this is what is happening to therapists who talk about this on the internet, the more that I see it. It's this, there's a group of people that are looking and being like, oh, these therapists, they want to help. They, they care

about that. That's something that I can hurt them with is by telling them, you're destroying families, you're evil. You shouldn't have a license. I can't believe that you would do this. And I have taken the bait a lot of times of like, I cannot believe someone would accuse me of that, because it is so misaligned with my values. And it's not a triggering of like, I know that I'm doing that. And so I want to defend it. It's a defense of like everything that I believe and that I have built and worked for of like, wow, I must not be communicating well if that's what people are taking from this.

And then when you take a step back and realize like, no, this is actually being. said for another reason. This is being weaponized as a way to constantly put you on the defensive, to make you feel like you're doing something wrong for pointing out that this is an option for people and to refute any other work that you've done. Because I cannot tell you how many times I have made posts about reconciliation, repair. I have an entire content library on Calling Home, literally dedicated to helping families become stronger. I think we've talked about estrangement one time in two and a half years at Calling Home. We talked about that topic, I think maybe twice. We did like family estrangement and estranged adult children.

And we have 30 plus other topics on boundaries, repair, active listening, emotional maturity, and I will still every day get comments saying, all you do is promote estrangement. And so that tells me that it really doesn't matter what I do. That is going to be the accusation because I think that what people want to hear me say is that this group of people wants to hear me say, under no circumstances should you cut off your family. Your parents are always right. And you should listen to them. And anytime you don't listen to them or you have a different opinion from them, you need to find a way to reconcile that so that you can have a relationship with them. Your parents' memories are more right than yours. And if they don't agree

with your memories, it's because you're wrong. You are the child and they are the parent. Find a way to work it out. If I don't say some version of that, I'm promoting estrangement. And so that's where I rest my case now. I promote estrangement as an option. And I promote it. as an option because I think that family relationships are fundamentally different from every other relationship on the planet, especially those between a parent and a child. But the ways that they are different don't make these relationships easier to leave. They make them even harder to leave. It is far easier to cut off a random friend or leave a job than end your relationship. with a family member. The consequences are much greater. The bond that you have built is bigger.

The social fallout and taboo is even stronger. And you have this hierarchy and these norms in your family that have been there for your entire life. And you've learned and modeled for yourself that closeness to these people equals survival. Because for many years, that was true. And I think that even as an adult. The psychological power that your family members or your parents have over you doesn't just disappear. I know people who have been estranged for 20 years and they still say, if my parent apologized to me today, it would make me fall apart. I would cry. I would not know what to do with myself because it would be the most meaningful, shocking thing to me that could happen. And we talked about this a little bit before. But a lot of

cultural and religious symptoms emphasize honoring parents, often without any nuance. And if that's what you have learned your entire life, you feel like doing harm to your parents or turning away from them makes you a bad kid. And when families are healthy, they are such an important, meaningful pillar of society. I think they can be the foundation for all of your growth. They make us function better. I want healthy, strong, cohesive, integrated families. I think it's beautiful. But when those families are unsafe, they are destabilizing. They are so bad for society. And I would rather have a healthy functioning individual that has their own community than a person that is trapped in a family where they are being abused and the consequences of that abuse

radiate out onto the world. And we see that. happen all the time. So when I say that I promote estrangement, I promote it as an option in the same way I believe anyone should be able to leave any relationship where they are being routinely harmed, abused, or control. And if you're listening, you're not going to ever hear me say all estranged parents are toxic. I've met parents who have irreparably harmed their children. I've also met parents who learned, changed, and repaired. And I don't think everyone should become estranged from their parent. I think it's the last, or their family members. I think it's the last stop on a long road. I think a lot of people get there

after trying so many things. And only you can decide what is safe and right for you. It is my job as someone who speaks on this topic to present you with the options and to let you know that I am going to support you and help you navigate whatever option that you choose. Because I don't have to live your life and I don't have to endure the consequences of that decision. I can tell you what I've learned, what I know after all my experience working with this population, and you can decide what to listen to. what not to listen to and what choice to make. But I am never going to tell you that estrangement

is 100% the right answer for everyone and that staying in a relationship with someone is 100% the right answer for everyone. Their options and they all come with pros and cons, benefits and consequences and they're unique to every single person. But I will say this. if your family members continue to harm you and you continue to be harmed because of their actions, you have the right to protect yourself in the same way you would in any other harmful relationship. And I think it is so important that therapists name and honor this option as an option that is available along with all the other options because some clients are trying everything. They're doing boundaries, scripts, lowering expectations, limited contact, therapy, reading books,

and they are not able to make a dent in what is happening to them, and it's ruining their lives. And sometimes estrangement is the only option when all other attempts at reconciliation and repair have been unsuccessful. And we need to honor that for people. How long do we tell them to keep repeating things over and over with someone who isn't doing, any of the heavy lifting on the other side. It's not therapist's job to keep families intact at all costs. It is a therapist's job to help someone find safety, get clear on what they're working with, and make an informed decision that works for them. And I think that if clinicians cannot tolerate the idea of estrangement, they can also accidentally pressure

a client into continued exposure to severe harm that can lead to very, very dire consequences. And I think this is the same for therapists who cannot tolerate discomfort with divorce, leaving other types of abusive relationships. We have to hold the same energy for all these relationships and understand that family relationships can actually do even more harm to stay in when they are abusive. I think some people hear estrangement and think of it as a punishment or a force of destruction. And I hear it often more as a form of self-preservation, of healing, of finding space to live your own life when it's done correctly and in necessary moments. I deeply understand this accusation of the destruction of families and promoting estrangement because I deeply understand.

I think that people want a villain. There is a lot of panic, grief, humiliation, misunderstanding. You know, adults who decide to become estranged from a parent especially are often breaking the social contract that a lot of these parents, especially those that are part of the boomer generation and the silent generation grew up with. And that social contract is, if I do X, I, I do. get why. If I work at this job for 50 years, I will get my retirement, my pension, I will get to clock out, say I did a good job, and I have, you know, contributed to society, and now I go and I do this. And for a lot of them, that came true. That has not been the case for millennials and a lot of Gen X and definitely not Gen Z and Gen Alpha that were kind of looking in this and being like,

what promise? I'm not promised anything. If anything, I was promised things and they got taken away. And I think that social contract has also been applied for those generations to the relationship between parent and child. I keep a roof over your head. I feed you. I take you to school.

Maybe I go to some soccer games and take you on a trip and throw your birthday party. and that means I get your loyalty for life. And if you don't give me that, you are breaking the contract that I was operating under. And so it is very, very destabilizing. But calling estrangement a trend or blaming therapists is just a way to avoid the most painful question at the core of this. what happened in my relationship with my child that made my child feel safer without me?

Whether it is your fault or not, whether it's something you did or someone else did, there is something here that needs to be attended to. And this doesn't matter if your child joined a cult, if they have an abusive partner, if you think they got brainwashed, I don't care what it is. Something has interfered in your bond and has led to the destruction of one of the most powerful and important relationships that anyone can experience. And that is worth digging deeper than just finding one villain and yelling at them. because when you do that, you get to move into the position of victim and you get to stay there.

And victims don't have to look any further when they put themselves in that position. I am a victim of therapists. I am a victim of estrangement culture and the no contact trend. And because I am a victim to this outside force, there's nothing I can do about that, but try to get rid of this force and then my child will be brought back to me. And instead, I want you to step back and think about, okay, if this is true, if a therapist got between me and my kid, how did that happen? And what do I want to do about it?

Even if I feel like it wasn't my fault, even if I feel like my child has a severe mental illness that I had nothing to do with and was caused completely by genetics. I'm still their parent. What do I want to do about it? What role do I want to play in that? Even if I feel like my child's other parent turned them against me and I did nothing wrong. Okay. If that's the story, if that's the truth, what do I want to do about it? What role do I want to play? How do I want to show up? because the choices you make in that moment are what's going to dictate how the rest of this goes. It's not about faults or blame or finding an enemy. It's about how you're going to show up in your child's life when this disruption has happened.

Because yes, the disruption can be not your fault. It can be something outside your control. You still get to decide how you show up in that moment. I also want to point out that estrangement doesn't happen overnight, and it usually isn't repaired very quickly. It's deeply entrenched patterns. And so, again, even if we're talking about these big outside sources of watching social media videos, joining another group, being convinced by a partner or another parent, these things happened likely at least over. over the period of six months to a year. And so can you look back at maybe what started to happen between you and your adult child

during that time period? Were there ways that you reacted that maybe didn't help or that harmed the situation? Are there things that you can look back to and say, I need to respond to that? I need to work on that. because it is never that everything was perfect. They opened up TikTok, they watched one video, and they cut you off. That did not happen. It just doesn't make sense psychologically.

Even with things like drug addiction and mental illness, they often unfold over a period of time, often beginning in young adulthood, things like that. So it did not happen overnight. And I think we have to remember that when we are also trying to talk about promoting estrangement and finding a villain, that even if there was a villain that came in, it still happened over time and progressively. And there are things that we can look at that happened along the way. I want to close this with saying that I'm actually very wary of any clinician who says estrangement should never happen or who says estrangement should only happen if. there was X level of abuse and I'm only going to accept that there was X level abuse if the parent verifies that there was X level of abuse because there is a ton of data from analyses of court

cases, DCF involvement, CPS involvement that abusive parents are rarely honest about their abuse and they always have, I shouldn't say always. Most of the time they have some sort of explanation for why their abuse was justified. There are a lot of studies on this. It's very Googled. And so I think that if you're saying that as a therapist, you're really saying, like, there's no level of harm that justifies leaving a family relationship or leaving a parent-child relationship. And that it gives the same energy to me as I'm only going to support this domestic violence survivor that says that their spouse has been beating them, if their spouse verifies that they've been beating them. That doesn't happen, guys. We've seen domestic violence cases where someone has a black eye and the other

person's like, I didn't hit them. They fell on the stairs. Like, it's just not possible. And this is why you can't be so, like, unbiased in these situations, right? That is, like, you can't put clients back into harm and say you're promoting healing or family values. We also, as clinicians, cannot ignore power dynamics, trauma history, the way that these things play out and also that we often do not know what happens behind closed doors. I believe that family relationships are valuable, extremely valuable, one of the most valuable things that we have. That's why I've dedicated my life to this when they are supportive and safe. I also believe that being related to someone does not give them lifetime access to harm you. If estrangement is what creates safety,

stability, and a chance for you to heal in your life, then yes, I promote it as an option. And if you needed permission to admit, this relationship is destroying. me. I want you to know that you might just be responding to your actual reality. This is not about making anyone the enemy or being biased. It's just about noting that this is an option that needs to be available to people. And this is my official statement that I will no longer be defending myself against accusations that I am promoting estrangement because I do believe that it is a valid, vital, and respectable healthy option for a lot of people out there. 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 Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Holmes Terms of Service linked in the show notes below.