CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Introducing New Episodes Coming Every Thursday

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

This week is a very special solo podcast to introduce new episodes that will be on the feed every Thursday. Whitney receives so many great questions from listeners, that each week she will be dedicating an entire episode to answering those voicemails. This introductory episode starts with a listener that shares her struggle with her mother's abusive behavior towards her daughter, leading her to cut off contact. The second caller discusses a strained relationship with their brother-in-law and sister-in-law, seeking advice on how to reconcile. Our final caller shares a successful reconciliation story with her mother, highlighting the importance of open communication and the potential for change over time.  Have a question for Whitney? Call Home at 866-225-5466.  Join Whitney’s Family Cycle Breakers Club for further support and discussion on family dynamics at CallingHome.co. Follow the Calling Home community on Instagram or TikTok.  Follow Whitney Goodman on Instagram or TikTok.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome back. We have a bonus solo episode this week because I wanted to take a moment to introduce all of you to a new episode style and thing that we're going to be doing every single week on Thursdays. Today you'll get to hear one of those episodes. then after this, you will start to get a new episode. For those of you that are subscribed to the podcast, please go subscribe on Apple or Spotify. So the episodes automatically drop for you and you never miss one. You will get to hear these new Q&A episodes. I have been getting a ton of questions and calls from you all on the voicemail. And I found that it was really hard to work

these messages into my solo episodes. My solo episodes have really been dedicated to like one topic that you all want to hear about. And so I thought, why don't we do some Q&A episodes every week? They'll be short, like anywhere between one to three questions, depending on how long-wind did I get in the answers. But this will be a perfect place where you can call in, ask me a question, and then I will choose those questions for the upcoming episodes. And if you want to call and leave a voicemail, you can call home at 866.6.6. 225-5-466. And you can leave me a voicemail with a question. Some of you have left really interesting like stories or success stories that you've had with repairing relationships with family members.

All of those are great things to call in and leave a message about. So I'm so excited to dive into that new episode format today. Let's go ahead and get started and hear from our first caller. Hi Whitney. This is Asana. I'm a mom to a five-year-old girl. This question is more about a family dynamic that I'm in. I'm navigating my mom who raised us with a lot of emotional and verbal abuse and a lot of yelling. And recently that situation carried over to my daughter. She yelled at her and it just brought up so many emotions and inside of me. And right now I've decided that not talking to my mom and not engaging with her is the healthiest for my daughter and myself. I don't know if what I did is right if I'm, you know, going overboard as what some of my family members have told me and to, you know, be respectful and that, you know, she's my mom and my mom is someone who helps out a lot is wonderful otherwise, but she has no boundaries in the way she speaks and wants

to parent my daughter the way we've been parented and doesn't want to respect my boundaries. So I just didn't know how to navigate that. If you could help me out with that, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you so much for calling in with this question. I first want to say that it can be incredibly difficult and triggering to see your parent act in a way towards your child that you remember as being very negative or hurtful to you. And I think when we are parents who are trying to break some of those patterns, the second that you see something like that repeating itself, your instinct, like to be protective really go in to overdrive and you enter this mode of like, oh, no, we are not

doing this again. And I'm going to do whatever it takes to protect my daughter from this situation that I did not enjoy or appreciate as a child. And so what you're doing in this moment actually tells me that you're a great mother who's very in touch with what was hurtful to her, what was a struggle for you, and also just what might be developmentally not helpful to your child. And so I don't think that you were going overboard in that moment. I think you were having a reaction to something that was quite triggering and overwhelming. And so it's very possible that in that moment you really just went into like fight or flight of like, I have to get my daughter out of this situation. I'm not going to let her be spoken to like that, and I'm going to protect her from

something that I wish I was protected from as a child. Now, that being said, I think there's a couple of things that could happen here, right? And I don't know if you've already had these conversations with your mother, but I want to affirm for you that you are the parent, and so you get to set the limits here, and you get to decide the way that you're daughter will be parented and your mother can choose to join you in that or not, right? And so if you are saying, I do not want to yell at my daughter. And of course, we are all going to have moments where we get triggered, we get upset and we raise our voices and we can apologize and repair after that. There's a very big difference between that and saying yelling at this five-year-old

is a key part of my parenting strategy and it's something that I'm not going to try to avoid and I'm not going to stop doing. And so I would want to try to see where your mother is at on that spectrum, right? And maybe you already know this information. Maybe you have said to her, Mom, I have decided that I do not want to yell at my child. And anybody else that is involved in raising her or taking care of her also needs to try their very best to not yell at her. That is not going to be how I'm going to parent her. And your mom could say, okay, I am going to get on board with that. I might mess up sometimes, but I'm really going to try and I want to learn other strategies and I'm going to join you in this. Or she could respond on the other extreme of

that's what you have to do with kids. Kids need to be yelled at sometime. I'm not changing. That's how I raised you, you know, some of these more like dismissive type of statements. And so depending on how your mom responds to that boundary, I think that will tell you what you need to know. Now then there's some other steps along the way here that you might say my mother's yelling and the way that she chooses to interact with my child is so extreme to the point where I don't think I can allow my mom to be around my child because I think it's going to do harm to my child and I need to protect her from it. You might say, I'm okay with my mother being around my child if I'm present and I'm there to mediate and I don't

think that she will yell at her with me present, but I do think it's going to happen when I'm not there. I also think it's important to talk to your daughter about this, about why people yell what that says about adults when they snap and they start yelling. You can explain, you know, how people get dysregulated and how that's something that we're not trying to do. And you can also repair after anything like that has happened, you know, especially after an incident like this one where your mom yelled at your daughter. Can you have a conversation with her about, you know, I didn't like how she spoke to you like that. I don't think that it is okay for adults to speak to children like that. You did not deserve to be spoken to in that way. And you can really initiate a lot of repair in that moment and allow your daughter to know that it wasn't about her without necessarily demonizing your mother in your child's eyes, but just really having an honest conversation with her at a developmentally appropriate level. about how it is not her fault when adults react to her in that way.

And I think that could also be really healing for you to have some of those conversations with your own child. And then, you know, after considering all of these different ways that you can approach this, I think you have to decide again, like, what is the risk reward here? You know, does your daughter get a lot of other benefits from this relationship and you feel like you can mitigate some of the way that your mom responds through yelling, or is it to a point where you feel like I cannot allow my daughter to be around this person and having an honest conversation with yourself about am I being really triggered by this?

What would it look like for me to have a conversation with my mom about this? And what do I need to do to make myself feel like I am being a protective, engaged, good parent in my eyes. These things are really, really challenging. And I don't want to understate how difficult it is to have these conversations with our parents when they are behaving in ways with our children that we are still healing from in adulthood. And so I think you're asking a really great question. And I wish you all the luck in the world with handling this dynamic. Hi, Whitney. Our relationship with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law has been rocky on and off for the last 12 years.

Contact eventually just went between my husband and my brother-in-law. Then after some things happened, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law decided to go to no contact with us and let the ball in our court to mend the relationship. We were hurt because it seems as though the destruction of the relationship has been put solely on us when there's been hurt from both sides, probably more so. us than them. Unfortunately, we sat with our anger for a year and a half before we decided to reach out and try to reconcile through email.

We were met with anger online now. Are we trying to reconcile what have we done to heal ourselves? And if we were ready to take accountability and responsibility for hurting their family, we let them know we take accountability and responsibility for hurting them, but we also wanted them to take accountability and responsibility as well because they've also hurt our family. Their email back to us was short and through the point they believe reconciliation is not possible at this time with us and wish their family well. I'm wondering if they didn't want to reconcile because we asked them to take accountability as well.

Do we not speak about our feelings and only speak to how we hurt them? How do we move forward if our feelings are acknowledged? They feel so one-sided. We truly want to reconcile, but we think we messed it up with the way we went about it. about it. Can you please help on how we can better move forward to reconcile with them? Thank you so much. I enjoy listening to your podcast. It's been a wonderful outlet for me. I'm learning a lot, truly. Thank you. Thank you so much for calling in and for asking that question. I think you're speaking to something that a lot of people deal with. And I first want to say that it is so hard when you're

ready to reconcile with someone and take accountability for your part or express how you've been heard and the person on the other side isn't ready or willing or able to hear where you're coming from or to have a conversation with you. And so that's the really difficult position that you're in right now, right? It's like we took our time. We decided we wanted to share how we are accountable. And now we really want to express how we've also been hurt in this relationship and this person or these people are not giving that back to us. This is also a different type of relationship, right, than the one that I normally talk about in these situations. And I think that this is more of a relationship among equals, right? We're talking about siblings, brother-in-law, sister-in-law,

and you are all kind of on equal footing in some way when it comes to, you're talking to, to the makeup of the family versus when we're talking about maybe a parent and their adult child. And so I think that's what can make this also a little bit more complicated and tenuous. Something that you did bring up, though, is that we're afraid that we made mistakes, you know, with how we handled this. And I want to speak to that because I was having a conversation yesterday with Lindsay C. Gibson. She's the author of the book, Adult Children of Emotion, And she spoke about this, that these kind of relationship dynamics and problems, they don't come with a handbook per se. There's so many unknown and unreliable variables that we're all walking

into these situations really blind at first and trying our best and just kind of like throwing spaghetti at the wall and trying to see what would stick. And it sounds like you took the space that you needed to take at the time because that's where you were at. And you may have needed to take that time because if you would have gone to them in that moment, you may not have expressed yourself in a way that was in line with your values. You may have been angrier or more vengeful or more hurtful than you wanted to be. And so I think now that you're looking back, like in retrospect, you're thinking, oh, man, maybe we waited too long.

But there's no way to know how this would have all played out if you didn't. handle things the way that you did. So I would definitely give yourself, you know, some compassion with that and I'm really not try to get into this game of like, what if we did this? What if we did that? Now comes the tricky part of like you have this person that has said, it sounds like in no uncertain terms, you know, we cannot reconcile right now. And when I'm presented with that, I think we have to listen to what people are saying and we have to respect that that is the place that they're in and it's very uncomfortable and it's very disregulating. It really hurts to not feel heard or to be forgiven and to be walking around knowing that there are these people out there that you love

and care about that cannot see your side or do not want to hear your side. I do think that during this time, it would be wise to focus on yourselves and building the life that you want to lead and being the people that you want to be and really just trying to extend compassion from a distance to these family members until they are ready to come and speak to you and trying to respect their boundaries as much as possible. Now, I don't know how you left things off with them after they shared kind of their stance at this time, but you could say something to the effect of I understand that and this relationship is very important to us. We want to work on it moving forward and we're here when you're ready to talk. And sometimes that's something that you can reiterate

over time, you know, periodically to let people know that you're still there and you're thinking of them and that this relationship is something that you do want to salvage and that you do care about. And each time I think you go into that with no expectation of them saying yes or saying no, but really you're just doing it to communicate your stance and where you're at in this moment. I do think that to your point about you all feeling like you should be able to share how you feel, it makes sense. And I do think that. that you should be given that opportunity at some point. When someone cannot hear you, though, and when they're unwilling to hear you,

it really doesn't matter how loud you yell that point to them or you try to get it across when they're telling you, I'm not ready to listen to you. And I don't want to hear it. And so I think getting comfortable with your experience, your truth, what you feel happened for you is very important during this time. and really just knowing that hopefully when they are ready to have this conversation with you, they will come back and you will be in a place and be ready to explain the hurt

that you also endured and they will be ready and willing to take accountability for that. These things, like I said, are very complicated and sometimes people take more time than us or they're feeling a lot of guilt and shame, embarrassment, whatever it is, around the process of taking accountability, and it's blocking them from being able to do so. And that can be really, really painful. And so again, I would go back to this, like, do I feel like I behaved in line with my values when I was trying to repair this relationship? Have I said what I wanted to say, am I respecting their boundaries and am I being the person that I want to be in this relationship? And how can I continue to show up as that person in the future if and when

they're ready? Hi, Whitney. I wanted to share a story about reconciling with my mom earlier this year. I'll try to be really brief. I had gone to the library and was looking at books about a of family relationships, parenting, I just enjoy those topics. And I found one called fault lines, fractured families and how to mend them by Carl Tillimer. And two of his points really stuck out to me when I was reading them. One was the negative health consequences of estrangement, like high blood pressure, depression, chronic stress, and that estrangement has ripple effects and doesn't just affect you and the person you're estranged from.

but also your children and your siblings, it has a ripple effect across the generations. And these things really stood out to me and just made me want to try again for myself. I really wanted to do it for myself because the estrangement was really weighing on me and made me very sad. So I reached out to my mom and she agreed to go to therapy with me. And I don't think that hashing out the past is always necessarily effective, but I feel like She gave me a gift and let me express all of my anger about what had happened. And for me, after I expressed it, it was just gone.

And I don't feel that anger anymore. And we've been able to connect other topics besides the things that happened that were so hurtful. I think also my mom has changed a lot. Several of her kids left her religion. She's deconstructing that religion. her, my brother came out as gay and she that deeply affected her because she loves him so deeply and it changed her worldview. And so I just want to say over the past three years, my mom has

changed a lot. And so have I. So I think that a two and a half year strain, but over that time we changed a lot. And sometimes it does not just take time, but new experiences, but I don't know. People change. I'm personally glad. we've reconnected. I have not reconciled with my dad and don't plan to, but I'm really glad to have reconciled with my mom. She's still with my very abusive dad, but you know, sometimes there's a way to find out how to have a relationship with one person, even if they're married to an abusive person. It's tricky. I hope this story's helpful, and thanks for letting me share. Thank you so much for calling it and sharing this story. I think it's so rare that we get to hear these types of

success stories in this world. And so I'm so happy for you that you found a path that works for you and your mom because you're right. Like you mentioned in that book, Fault Lines by Carl Pilamer, I'm actually trying to get him on the podcast because I think that's a good resource for families. there are a lot of negative consequences to having any type of relational strain. And what I'll say in response to that is that there are also a lot of negative consequences to continuing relationships where there is abuse, violence, emotional manipulation, things like that. And so we can find that in certain situations, one is more harmful than the other to people. But I do think you're highlighting the

a huge importance of being open throughout the life cycle to allowing people to show us that they've changed when they truly have. And it sounds like you giving your mom this opportunity to sit and listen to you with a third party present like a therapist was tremendously healing for you. And I imagine that it was because you like a lot of adult children are expressing this need of like, I just wanted them to hear me and to not tell me that I was wrong or I was making it up, but really just to hear me. And after that, we could move forward. And the past could stay in the past and we could establish this new relationship. And I think it's wonderful that your mother was able to give you that and that you were able to give that to her. And the two of

you were able to say, okay, now we're going to redefine our relationship as adults, despite everything not being perfect. You know, you described your mom still being in a relationship that might be abusive or dangerous. And I'm sure that is still a very tricky thing to navigate. It doesn't mean that all of these reconciliations will be like butterflies and rainbows, but they can certainly still be good, solid relationships that keep us connected to our family. So for anyone listening, you know, this may not be the outcome that you have. It all. also just may not seem like a feasible outcome right now, but it could in two, three, four years. And so hearing stories like this, I think, gives people hope, and it's immensely helpful

to hear how people have improved. I hope that you enjoyed listening to some of these call or questions and answers today. I loved all of the calls I received, and it's really great to be able to hear from you and to interact with you all in this way. As a reminder, you can always call in and leave a voicemail at 866-225-5-466, and I will listen to your questions and pick a couple of them to respond to every week. You can also look out for these new caller episodes to drop every Thursday starting this Thursday. As always, if you're looking for more content just like this, if you're looking to take your family relationship healing to the next level, we would love to have you inside the calling home community. That is really the next place to go if you feel

like this podcast has been helpful for you, but you'd like to take it to the next level. We have worksheets, workbooks, videos, courses, groups, groups with other families. cycle breakers, articles, really anything that you could imagine that would be helpful to help you navigate some of these relational issues that we hear about on this podcast every week. We have the Emotional Home Improvement Association, which is our one article, a week level of membership. It's like $6 a month and you get four articles. It's really an economical way to stay engaged with this community and get some extra content. And then if you're looking to join the Family Cycle Breakers Club, that's where you're going to get access to

those workbooks, groups with their family cycle breakers, videos, courses, all that additional content. And I'm telling you guys, the groups are really like the best part of our membership. Our groups are full every week. We have a lot of amazing people. And to me, you are just getting so much value for your membership out of just attending even one of these groups a month. So please visit www.callinghome.com to join for the the month of March, we are working on what happens when you grow up in chaos and how to break up with chaos and adulthood and find more peace. We'd love to have you and let me know what you think about these new Q&A episodes. I will see you all next week for another

solo episode and we'll have another caller episode just like this this Thursday. Have a great rest of your day. Oh, oh.