CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - No One Wants To Be The One From A Dysfunctional Family

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

In this episode of the Calling Home Podcast, Whitney shares insights from the Family Cyclebreakers Club group this month: the grief of not having a supportive family the challenges of navigating dysfunctional family dynamics (your in-laws and your own family) the sacrifices individuals make to avoid family conflict 00:00 Introduction to Family Dynamics and Relationships 02:26 The Impact of Family Dysfunction on Romantic Relationships 06:49 Navigating Dysfunctional Family Relationships 10:32 Sacrifices Made Due to Family Dysfunction 12:58 Understanding Estrangement and Acceptance Join The Family Cyclebreakers Club: www.callinghome.co/join Have a question for Whitney? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466. Follow Whitney on Instagram: www.instagram.com/sitwithwhit Subscribe to Whitney's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@whitneygoodmanlmft Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Hey, welcome back to the calling home podcast. I'm going to do something a little bit different today this Thursday and I'm going to share my three little epiphanies still, but I'm going to do them

for the month and go a little bit more in depth instead of doing some caller questions today. And that's because we had such a eye opening and transatlantic. formative month in our groups this month at Calling Home. And for those of you that don't know, every month at Calling Home, we dedicate ourselves to a specific topic or issue that's impacting adults and their family relationships. And this month, we were talking about how your family dysfunction impacts your romantic relationships. So every week this month, our members of the Family Cycle Breakers Club would get an article, a video, a worksheet, and a script or a guide to help them with a specific situation related to their family relationships and their romantic relationships

or their marriage or partnership. And we talked so much about how not only does our childhood trauma or the way that we were raised impact our family relationships and our romantic relationships, but also how is our family and the family drama that we're dealing with impact our relationships today? And what is it like to have a chaotic dysfunctional or a meshed relationship that impacts your marriage or your partnership or who you're dating and how that can really get in the way of some of these relationships? And so we met for groups every Wednesday and dove deeper into these topics. And I learned so much from the people in these groups this month that I wanted to talk to you about the biggest three things that I learned, my three little epiphanies for this week. So the first thing that I realized was so common among all these group participants this month

was that not everyone who partners together, not everyone who gets married, who is in a relationship, who decides to join their life with someone, also gets a family with that. And I think that marriage, you know, historically has been all about joining together two families, right? It was more about financial incentive, about joining together families to consolidate power and resources. And what we see today as partnership and marriage and as being valuable is a lot more about two individuals joining together, about loving one another, creating a partnership. And I think for a lot of different cultures and families, there is this juxtaposition of this is what we think families are about and this is what you're saying your family is about

and your relationship. We see a lot of people who are choosing to not include all of their family in their wedding or to even have their parents meet, you know, before they get married. And I think that there are pros and cons to all of this. But what I noticed was being brought forward by the members of our groups was that they were kind of doing this out of. of self-preservation and out of a need. And there was a lot of grief actually around not being able to create this new big extended family. And a lot of those people wanted that. They were not saying my family is wonderful and great, but I don't want them to meet my partner. Or I really want to have this big extended family, be like, oh, it's just too much work, so I'm not going to do it.

What was actually being said was, like, my parents won't meet my partner because they don't approve of them. Or I want this big extended family, but because I am not of the same religion or race or cultural background or I'm not what they expected me to be, they're icing me out. And they won't let me, you know, join in these family traditions or I'm being purposefully excluded from family events. And some people were joining families where there is this big like family is everything motto, but they were not being included because they didn't fit that definition or that criteria of family. And I think there is so much grief surrounding that, right? Because it's what you expect when you join a family is to be welcomed and included. And I think even for the person

whose family is not being welcoming and not being inclusive, there is a lot of grief because you're basically being told, we don't think that your partner is right for this family. And we don't support you and who you're bringing into this family and this, you're bringing into this family. And this, you know, being excluded and being denied that by your own family is extremely painful. I think that it's so painful for people on both sides of it, the person that is being excluded as the partner and the person who is bringing that partner into the family who's also being excluded and being told that they're not good enough and we're not going to do this for you. So if this has happened, you know, in your family, I wish you could have been

a part of these groups this month and maybe you'll join the Family Cycle Workers Club in the future so that you can hear stories like this and feel less alone. But I have just realized that not everyone who partners together also gets a family. I was taken aback by how many people in our groups had talked about that their parents had never met their partner and had never shown any interest. Or there were people who said, I'll never let my parents meet my partner because I don't want them to get hurt. And I don't want my parents to do to them what they've done to me. And that's a really painful situation to be in. So if you've been in that position, I want you to know that you're not alone. And I know that doesn't always make things feel better,

but I think it makes them feel less lonely. My second epiphany this month that was really, you know, as a result of this community, is that it's hard to be the one in a relationship with a dysfunctional family. And I talked about this in my podcast interview with Elizabeth Earnshaw. We did an episode on in-laws that I think was at the end of 2023 or early 2024. And we talked about this some, that nobody wants to be the person who has to, to say, I need to protect you from my family. And there were stories this month in our groups about, you know, I am the person that is always getting people in and out of rehab, picking people

up from jail, having to field phone calls late at night. I have to make excuses for my family members. I have to defend them. I have to explain to my partner or their family why my family is this way. And if you are in partnership or married to someone who has a really solid, like, good family foundation and there isn't all this drama and chaos, it can always feel like there is something wrong with you. Like, you are the one that's messing everything up. You're the one that's going to make your kids, like, have damage or inherent mental illness. Like, you can create some of these stories in your head that, like, I am the one that's the problem and people are going to get tired. of me or maybe they will associate me with this dysfunction and think that there's something wrong with me. And we also heard, you know, from people who are estranged from their families as a way to protect themselves and their partner or their children from the dysfunction

and them feeling like, well, maybe I'm the common denominator here. Maybe I'm the one that something is so wrong with me that I couldn't maintain relationships with my family. And I think that no matter what position you're in, whether you're choosing to have relationships and that chaos is kind of all around you or you've pulled away and you are estranged as a way to mitigate some of that damage, it still can always feel like you are the one with the problem. You're the one that has something wrong with you and your partner and their family needs to be protected from your family. And that can be really challenging. And so if you are in a situation like that, I want you to know that if someone has chosen to be with you and to have you in their life and they know this about your

family, they are choosing to be with you for a reason. They are willing, you know, to put up with that and to be around that because they can see value in their relationship with you. And they clearly feel like you are lovable and that they see your position and that they want to partner with you. And you, of course, need to set boundaries and have kind of a safety net or wall up so that your relationship doesn't get so negatively influenced and damaged by these people. But just because these people are related to you doesn't mean that you are the same as them or that you are a problem or that you are someone that is like damaged goods is able to see you for who you are and the value that you bring to the relationships and the way that you bring to the relationships

and the way that your family behaves in acts is not your fault. It's not something that you need to always feel responsible for. The other thing that came up, my third little epiphany for this month, is how often people give up on the things they want because of family dysfunction. And something I was struck by was how many people this month were talking about not having a wedding and not having a celebration, feeling like they didn't want to have an engagement party or whatever it was because of their family dysfunction. And so I want you to think about that. What have I given up on that I wanted

when it comes to like romantic relationships or family or partnerships because I was afraid of how my family was going to handle themselves or because I didn't want to set a boundary with them. And so instead I just made myself be the one that suffered and swallowed the pain. You know, did any of you not have a wedding, not have an engagement party, not have a birthday party for your kids? You know, not do any of these big life events because you were fearful of what that was going to do to your family and how they were going to behave and who you were going to have to invite and set boundaries with. And like, are we really doing that to protect ourselves or are we just giving something up that we really want. I think that this is so important to think about

because you might, in an active self-preservation, actually be giving up on things in life that could have brought you joy and unfun just because you're avoiding what needs to be done with your family, what boundaries need to be set, what acceptance needs to be reached in terms of how those people show up or maybe avoiding those things because your parents didn't approve of your partner or how you wanted to throw the celebration or the wedding. And so you decided just to scrap it all because you didn't want to disappoint them or didn't want them to like, you know, put on a show or be disruptive. And I think that that's something we need to think about more is like what are we sacrificing because we don't want our families to be upset or to be upset or

to show up in a negative way or to complain or to express, you know, their concerns to us. And the last thing I want to bring up just kind of like a bonus realization from this month that I think really connects to a lot of the things that we have been talking about in our estrangement groups, in our adult children, emotionally immature parents groups, and also that I talked about in a Q&A episode a couple of weeks ago. And I want to credit, you know, the group for really bringing this forward. is that we had a lot of group members over the last couple of months talk about how they were the ones to cut off a family member and assert their power in that way. And we also had some group

members who have been, you know, abandoned by a parent in adulthood or who have been cut off by a sibling. And this is the really unique thing about our groups at Calling Home is that we are able to see a lot of these issues from multiple sides, and we have people that are coming in and speaking compassionately about their perspective, and they're able to get feedback from people who are on the other side. And we've also had members who have experienced things from both sides. They have been the one to be estranged from, and they have been the one to assert estrangement. And something really interesting that came out in the groups was that there is still pain and a need for acceptance, no matter what side you're on. And even when you think that you are coming from a

place of power, when you really get underneath it, there is still a lot of that pain. And I talked about this in that Q&A episode where I said to this caller, you know, it sounds like you're trying to be the one to do the cutoff first so that you can feel more powerful and you can avoid pain instead of like allowing the relationship to kind of just like naturally dissolve in a situation where no one was even speaking to each other. And so this desire to say like, oh no, I'm cutting you off was really just coming from a place of wanting to be the one that said it, not because there were any boundary violations. The relationship was already estranged, right? They were not speaking and they weren't in contact with one another. And it's so interesting

to hear that on both sides of this, you know, whether the relationship naturally just dissolved and there is no contact or there was this no contact estrangement that was assertive and put in place, that the pain really was the same among all of our group members. And we really all came to this discussion of like, I still lost this person. I'm not able to have a relationship with them. It is very painful and I can look at you who the person just stopped speaking to you and they weren't violating your boundaries and you are still feeling like you didn't get that closure and I can say I asserted myself and I told them no contact and we both are still here saying wow this pain is so similar no matter how we got to this place that acceptance was still

at the root of like getting to the other side of all of that pain. And so I think maybe we have to start looking at all of these situations from that lens that there can be power and acceptance and radical acceptance of like this is the state of my relationship and I am still in pain and this still hurts and I'm still working on myself and I'm confused how the relationship got to this place, that this is not where I expected it to be, and that everyone can kind of get to that place regardless of how we got there. Right. And I thought that that was a really powerful realization that I think can only come from being in spaces with people who are a little bit different from you and who have different stories. And that was something that another group

member said in one of our groups was just that I'm able to pull something from, everything that was said, even if the situations are so different. And that really stood out to me. And so maybe I'll do one of these kinds of episodes at the end of the month, you know, to kind of help you see some of those findings get to a place where you can really understand, like, how we move through the content and some of the realizations that were had by a lot of our group members. These realizations are not specific to any member in the group. They're not things specifically that were said. these are general themes that I found kind of came out across the board over the last four weeks of our groups that I think were so important and powerful. So I want to thank, you know,

everyone that attended our groups at Calling Home and that helps make this possible because the groups are what they are because of our members, not because of me. And if you've never been to one of our groups before, I hope to see you in one soon. Next month, we are going to be talking about supporting and having relationships with a family member who has a mental health condition or a mental illness or struggles with substance use. And I have found that there really are not a lot of places that exist for family members to talk about these things, of course, in an empathetic and compassionate way, but to also be honest about how difficult, you know, it is to be the person who is, you know, always on the other end of the phone receiving those types

of calls and being helpful and feeling burnt out by the system and the lack of resources. So if you've ever been in that position and would like to meet other people like you, whether that person is your parent, your sibling, your child, this is a space that you can come to where you know that people will understand the unique position that you're in. Thank you so much for listening today. We will be back next week with another episode on Tuesday. And I will put all of those links for how to join the Family Cycle Breakers Club in the show notes. Have a great rest of your day.

And I hope to see you guys at that soon. 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 Colling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.