CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: A Family Secret Revealed & Boundaries with Mom

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

In this Q&A episode, I’m discussing the discovery of sexual abuse in the family and providing practical advice for someone struggling with boundary violations from their mother. We explore the concept of true boundaries and concrete strategies when nice requests aren’t working. Have a question for Whitney? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466 Connect with Whitney Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠ ⁠Follow Whitney on Instagram⁠ ⁠Follow Whitney on YouTube⁠ ⁠Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity⁠ Learn more about ad choices. Visit ⁠podcast.choices.com/adchoices⁠ This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everyone and welcome back to the calling on podcast. I'm excited to be back this week with a Q&A episode. Last week we skipped the Q&A because I did my coverage or my analysis of that childlessness and therapy article in the New York Times. You can go back and listen to that episode from last Thursday if you missed it. Also, you may have noticed we are now doing video for the podcast. This is very exciting. So every week you'll be able to watch the episodes. on Spotify and our YouTube channel at Whitney Goodman, LMFT, on YouTube. And I'm super excited to be bringing video episodes. I know a lot of you've been asking about that for years. And so amazing that we have this now. All right. So typically for these Q&A episodes, the first thing that I like to do is start with my little epiphanies for the week, which is really just like things I've been thinking

about watching, talking about. I go into these deeper in my Monday email newsletter every week as well. So you can always sign up for that at calling home.com. It is also called Little Epiphanies. So what's been going on this week? I've been super anxious. I don't know about you guys, but I have been dealing with a lot of heavy anxiety, a lot of changes in my own life that have been going on and different like scheduling things

and just like a lot that I've been handling. And on top of that, I've developed a really terrible relationship with my phone and the news and talking about the news that has not been helping anyone in the world and has only been hurting me. So this week, actually starting today when I'm recording this episode, I have been back to using the brick on my phone. If anyone from Brick is listening to this, please sponsor me because I have. I've sold so many bricks to my friends and family, and I've gotten off track with using it, but this is not sponsored. I have one of those brick devices. I put it on my fridge, and I actually just saw that brick came out with this, like,

scheduling feature because right now you have to go to the device or use the app on your phone to brick your phone and you have to decide to do it. And sometimes I just forget to do it, and then I'm already upstairs in my bed with my phone, and I'm like, oh, I'm already doing it. So I'm not going to go back downstairs. So now I think you can schedule it so that every night when I go to bed, even if I don't go and like brick my phone on the square on my fridge, it will brick it for me. And the great thing about this, what I love about it, is that then it stops me from going down rabbit holes in the evening and when I'm going to bed and from the phone being the first thing that I look at in the morning when I wake up. And so if you have

no self-control because social media is part of your job and you're someone that opens your phone to thousands of like comments and DMs and things like that and you have to really control yourself to not like go down the rabbit hole of social media or the internet on your phone or even your email. This is a really great thing to do. So what I do is that the only apps on my phone that are accessible is like someone can still call me if there's an emergency. I can still see my baby monitor, but I can't go on social media, things like that. And it even will block them in like the web browser. So if you have blocked Instagram, you can't like go to Instagram.com on your phone, which is something I hate to admit, but I used to do when I would use like the iPhone

features as my way of stopping myself from going on these apps. And I'm also trying to do like five minutes of meditation in the morning. I have noticed I started wearing an aura ring. I am stressed like all day long. And I'm waking up stressed and that's not good. And so if any of you are feeling this way and you want to do something about it, I read a lot of studies over the weekend to kind of see like what types of meditation seem to work, how long I need to do them for daily to be able to really assess if this is having like the right impact on my heart rate variability and my stress throughout the day. And so I'm committing to doing like a minimum of five minutes of meditation every morning for the next six weeks. There's a lot

of strong evidence that that seems to work. And so that's what I'm trying to do. But I came across this concept online when I was on a social media rabbit hole about how confusing it is for our brains that we are seeing certain things on the news and then seeing like normalcy in our lives and how hard it can be to see like maybe violence or war or chaos in these places and then look around your neighborhood or you know when you're out at dinner and be like all these people seem so normal and like am I really the one that's crazy is this actually going on. Why do I feel like this? And so if you've had this feeling of like, my life kind of seems normal, but the world doesn't seem normal. And I even find myself

sitting around being like, is everyone thinking about what I'm thinking about? Does everyone feel as anxious about this thing as I do? Do they feel this way about it? And you do this sort of like surveying all the time, but then you don't want to talk about it all the time with other people or it's just a lot right now. It's a lot. And I think that the way that our lives are set up. Some things are just very impossible to ignore and governmentalize and we're not supposed to and we shouldn't be because then we ignore it. And so it's like what level of anger and discomfort and upset is actually productive for me. And I think for each of us, that's different because we all have different lives right now. And so something I keep coming back

to as mother is like, my kids only get one childhood. And they are living their childhood at this point in history. And it's my job to set them up for success and to be a good mother to them. And that means that I have to be really selective about how and where I direct my advocacy and picking the ways that is the most impactful and the least negative of a outcome for me. And so that doesn't mean that I'm saying like, you know, when people say like, oh, I'm just going to like go into my bubble and ignore the world and just wait for this all to be over. Not what I'm saying for you to do. Some of you may have to do that depending on what you're going through. There are people who are very sick. There are people who have lost jobs,

have lost children, are going through things where they don't have anything else to give. And so I think we all have to look at our own like individual capacity, our life circumstances, and then make decisions from there. And so that's just something. that I've been kind of working through if that's helpful for you and what you're feeling at this point right now in our wonderful world that we live in. The other thing I want to talk to you about is I started watching the show The Better Sister on Amazon Prime. If you are looking for a show that really plays out the dynamic between siblings who had very different childhoods and then had very different adulthoods and paths because of that and they are judgmental of one another.

It's kind of similar to Sirens, which I've been talking about recently in like that sister dynamic. But this one does have more themes of abuse and does talk more about sexual abuse. So if that's something that is not good for you to watch, skip this one. But I'm going to do some videos on this for TikTok kind of breaking down some of the dynamics here because I think it's a really helpful one to help people understand the whole like different childhoods for different kids thing. And then let's do a couple of updates for calling home. So we have been in our groups every month, you know, that we have three group facilitators now, including me that run groups every month at Calling Home. As part of the Family Cycle Breakers Club membership, you get access to unlimited

groups every month. And we have groups for estranged adult children. I just got out of running one of those today. And it was such a helpful group. And I want to tell you all, like, the thing that happened today that was so helpful was that someone was about to start a new type of therapy. And they were like, I haven't done this before. I would love if I could get some feedback from you all, especially for those of you that have dealt with childhood trauma and estrangement. And the group was able to be like, oh, I tried this. And some people had good experiences. Some people had bad experiences. I shared about my own experiences with that therapy and the trainings that I've had and what they could expect in the first sessions and what to look out for. And, you know, we have people

in these groups from so many different backgrounds. And I thought it was a really cool way just to be able to see, like, how other people experience this type of therapy. And these are people that you know and you trust because you're in groups with them all the time. And they understand what you've been through and they've had those types of life experiences as well. And so I think you can really trust their experience versus what you read online or maybe talking to a friend who hasn't been through even close to what you've been through and they don't get it. And so that's something that you can really get out of our groups. And this month at Calling Home, we are talking about childhood trauma. So every Wednesday we do have a group that is specifically focused on childhood

trauma and all of the content that I am uploading to the Calling Home website, Callinghome.com. CEO on Mondays is going to be about childhood trauma for the month of June. So every Monday as part of your membership, you get a worksheet, a video, a script, and an article that are all produced by me. And I really loved the content this week. I put up an article about what it's like to actually like remember your childhood trauma as an adult and going back. We have a video that's a great like pep talk for anyone that feels like they're too broken or they're doing this too late. I also uploaded a trigger tracking worksheet that I think is really, really helpful and some scripts to help you talk to anyone after you've had, like, an episode where you were reacting to your

past. You were triggered. You responded in a way that you didn't want to. It's a great script to help you talk to friends, family, even your kids in those moments. All right, let's go ahead and dive in to our two caller questions today. I just want to warn you that I am going to be talking about sexual abuse in this episode. The first caller has left a message about a sexual assault that they learned about in the family and how the family is reacting to it decades later. And then our second caller is calling in about a complicated relationship with her own mother. So if you don't want to hear that first voicemail, you can go ahead and skip to the second one. All right, I'm going to play that first

voicemail for you. Hi, Whitney. I was calling because in my family, we've just learned about a sexual assault that occurred within the family from an adult against a child, you know, decades ago. And we're all devastated to hear this news and trying to cope with it. And, you know, everyone is, you know, deciding where they stand on, you know, dealing with the perpetrator and the kind of relationships that we're going to have and what family gatherings are going to look like moving forward. And I was wondering if you had any advice for people who, dealing with family members, who do not agree and, you know, see things differently and how that, you know, see things differently

and how that works in the lines of, you know, estranging this perpetrating adult and, you know, possibly trying to keep some relationships with other members of the family. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for calling in and asking that question. I think that this is very difficult, right? because I imagine that this was maybe a shock to some people in the family. And we also have to remember that some people will hear news that confronts their perception of reality and how they feel about the world and about other people to such a degree

that they simply cannot integrate that information, right? They cannot take it in and they can accept it. And so for those people, they might respond with this, like, I don't believe it. It didn't happen. It wasn't that bad. That type of rhetoric. And I think that people who we typically experience as even being, like, quote unquote, good people to us and nice family members can have this type of response. I see it a lot.

In fact, in the show, the better. that I was talking about in the earlier part of this episode, this is a type of thing that happens in that episode. And I do think that this happens often because people just cannot accept or integrate that new information. Now, I'm going to make some assumptions about this caller situation and kind of speak in line with those assumptions because I don't know all the details here. But it sounds like some of the family members, want to maintain a relationship with the perpetrator, and some do not. I also do not know what the victim's ages now or their role in the family, but I know that they were a child at the time of

this happening. And so in this situation, I am first and foremost, you know, most concerned about the victim. We're talking about a child who was assaulted by an adult family member during their childhood. And so for them being believed and supported and seen is very, very important. And you can really hurt someone with how you choose to handle this situation. And so I think if there are some people in the family that are trying to, quote unquote, like see both sides and be like, well, it happened a long time ago. And this guy, you know, this person's not a bad person. They've made amends. like, that can be very, very challenging for the victim. And I don't know where the victim stands in all of this, but that is something that I would want to know first. And I think that's

something that you as a family need to consider first is like, how does the victim feel? What is their interpretation of all this? What would make them feel supported and understood? Do they still have a relationship with this person? Like, what does the family look like? And And if this person is saying, I don't want to be around them. I don't want them at family events. Like, I'm going with them on this because this happened in a situation where there was such a distinct power dynamic. There are no two sides to a story. When someone takes advantage of a child sexually in a violent manner or otherwise, they are the perpetrator and the child is the victim. There is no world where the child could have been doing anything that would convince me otherwise because adults fundamentally know better and they have the power in that situation.

And I can't tell you how many stories I have heard of kids not being believed or of especially daughters being told that they somehow brought this upon themselves because they, you know, led the other person on. We need to wipe that completely from like our cultural lexicon and understanding of this type of abuse. It is wrong. There is no way around it. And so if the victim feels uncomfortable around this person, unsafe does not want them around, I really truly believe that that's what the family should do when the victim is there, especially if this adult family member has not taken responsibility, been accountable, apologized, and tried to seek some type of remediation for this through therapy, going to some type of program, something

to help them, especially if this is a secret that was being hidden in the family for a long time. There is, there also needs to be an understanding of how do we keep future victims safe. You know, what were the circumstances of this situation? I think that that has to be top of mind. Is this person around children still? And what is the risk there? It can be very, very harmful and hurtful to a victim, especially a victim of childhood trauma for their family members to still associate with their abuser. And so something I want you to imagine here is that if a child in your family was assaulted by a stranger or even a friend, someone at the school, would you invite them over for Thanksgiving and say like, oh, well, they've learned it was a mistake. Like, no, you absolutely

wouldn't. And so I tend to really err on the side of victims here. Now, if there's someone in the family that says, I believe this person, they didn't mean to, you know, they're signing with them and they want to choose to have a totally separate relationship with that person, they can choose to do that. But they shouldn't be surprised if the victim in this situation does not want to have a relationship with them. And so I think the thing here is that we have to prioritize safety and the wellness of the person that was taken advantage of first. And then after that, we can decide what we want to do. And I could absolutely be putting words in the victim's mouth here. Maybe they feel differently about this than I'm saying. But what I find a lot of the time

is that when a victim says, oh, it's okay. I don't mind them being here. They're doing that because they're afraid that if they said, I want you to choose me over them, you wouldn't. And that the family would choose the perpetrator. And so sometimes people do that. because they're scared of not being chosen because they are fawning, freezing, getting into this position of like, I feel like I did something wrong and like I'm damaged and I'm afraid that my family is going to pick this person over me. They could have even been told that all these years. They are certainly victims of child sexual assault, child sexual abuse that are told if you tell your family about this, they won't believe you. or they won't take your side. And that can continue into adulthood.

Thank you so much for calling in. I'm sorry that your family is going through this. I think that is very, very difficult. And I can imagine that this has thrown everyone for a loop and is very, very difficult for everyone involved. All right. Let's go ahead and get to that second caller. Whitney, I wanted to thank you so much for this podcast.

It has helped me so much, especially since I've become a mother. And a lot has come up as I've been dealing with my own childhood trauma as I've been for to parent my own strong-willed child. But I know this month we have been talking about grieving complicated relationships. And boy, do I think I have a complicated relationship with my own mother. I had my own, my first child at 36 and about to have my second at nearly 40. I knew that I had to take action early on in life after I left to my parents' house and got married to work on my own mental health so that I wouldn't bring those same complicated relationships and generational trauma to my own kids. But my question is, as I've become a mother, I've noticed that my own mother, who,

I have been distant with just because we have differences in terms of parenting and she just is honestly a ball of anxiety and doesn't know how to parent her own kids. I have three younger sisters and she wants to be their best friends. She wants to do that with me. Yet she also wants to still parent me and parent my own child, but also expect me to have the same love and gratitude and return. In addition to that, she overgifts considerably. We live in another state from her, so she likes to send huge boxes of things that are not age-appropriate and are just overwhelming for me and also not needed. So how do I deal with an emotionally immature mom who doesn't seem to honestly listen to my boundaries?

I have been nice. I have been starting to become a lot more stern with my. boundaries, but she still seems to not understand and or listen. So I don't know if the next step is to cut her off completely because she doesn't seem to understand the clear set boundaries that I have placed. I've sent her numerous text messages, emails, voicemails. I think the end of the voicemail got cut off there. but I definitely feel like I understand some of what is going on here. So I want to speak to the dynamic of feeling like you're not being listened to or heard within the relationship with your mother.

It sounds like this caller has really been focused on becoming different for her own children and is recognizing what is unfinished and not right in her relationship with her mother. And I think that this is a really hard thing that people go through when they first have children is kind of this noticing of like what's missing in your relationship with your own parent or the things that trigger you. And sometimes your parents start behaving in different kind of like re-triggering ways because there is a child now and you're seeing some of those things play out from your own childhood with your child. I think the bridge that this caller has gotten to is, like, you have tried to reiterate your boundaries, explain them in a lot of different ways, and it seems like the person is not changing their behavior. And so this is where I would say that these are maybe not actually boundaries. These are requests.

They are you explaining what you would like the other person to do. And in a lot of normal situations, those work. right? So saying to a mom, like, hey, can you please not send so many packages for the kids on their birthday? Like, we just don't have room for all the stuff. I love that you love to get them gifts, but it would be great if you could just send them one or two things. And let's like space this out around the year. Now, a person who's emotionally mature and has a good relationship with the person would hear that and be like, oh my gosh, I didn't even think of that. Like, I can totally do that. I will cut down on the gifts. And maybe they'll even be collaborative the next time and be like,

hey, I was thinking about sending your kids these three things for their birthdays. Is that good? What do you think about that? I could maybe send one for the birthday and one for Hanukkah, whatever it is. And they realize that this isn't an insult to them, but really more just a collaborative process to try to figure out, like, how they can give gifts that are also going to be well received by the other person, right? But when we're dealing with emotionally immature people, and I think sometimes there are some emotionally immature people that really the only way they know how to achieve any, like, connection or show any type of affection is through gift giving, is through just like sending stuff. There's very little vulnerability there. It's just like easy. I see this a lot with like

the gift-giving thing keeps coming up. And so I think that now that you know that your mom is not going to respect those wishes, you got to figure out what you can control. And so let's live in a world for a moment where your mom is not going to stop over buying gifts and she's not going to stop sending them. A couple of things you could do, right, off the top of my head. When those gifts come, you can open the box without your kids and pick out two things and donate the rest. You can put them up in the garage or the attic and slowly take them out over time and give them to your kid. You can donate them. You can send the package back to the sender.

And you don't have to do this in a rude way, but you can explain any of those scenarios from their perspective of, hey, mom, thank you so much for the gifts. I'm not sure if you remember, but I told you that we just don't have space for all this stuff. And I can't keep these gifts at my house. I'm going to send the package back to you. We took out one thing for the girls. The rest I'm going to send back to your house. You can keep it there for another time or you can return it. But I didn't want the stuff to get thrown away or not get used. So I'm sending it back. Now, some of you listening to this, I'm going to be like, oh my God, if I did that to my mom, she would absolutely lose her mind and I would never hear at the end of it. Okay. That's your next data point, right? But you've

tried this thing. You've tried the, I'm going to nicely tell her and explain to her so that I can try to get her to buy in and understand and do this because she understands me and she cares about my feelings. She's not taking the bait on those. She's not doing it. So you need to then go to the next thing and you have to decide which one of those options is better for you. Now, you cannot control her reaction to any of those things. And because you haven't tried this, maybe you'll be surprised by her reaction or maybe sending the gifts back or donating them or putting them away is going to elicit a horrible reaction from her. But if and when that happens, that's when you can make another decision, right, of, okay, now I see that my mom became verbally abusive and was yelling

at me and threatening me when I sent the package back. So now I know that that's how she's going to respond to this. And then I might have to decide to protect myself even more. But I would think that it's wise to try something like that if you feel like you can handle it, the potential consequences, which range from her yelling, showing up the door, getting upset with you all the way over to her saying, oh, yeah, I'll keep the package at my house or I'll return everything. And you know your parent best because they've reacted this way in other situations before. And so you know how they're going to respond. But if you're up for it, I think those are some other things that you could try before just saying, oh, I tried to nicely explain this to her.

she didn't change her behavior. And so now I'm going to go full-blown estrangement because the consequences of that might be too extreme for you or might not be something that you're willing to handle at that time. Now, there are others of you that could say, I know all my parents are going to react. She always yells at me and becomes verbally abusive and even becomes threatening, shows about my doorstep whenever I try to set any more extreme boundary with her. And so this is just the last stop on a long line of boundary violations. And now I'm tired and I don't want to do this anymore. And I would say to you, totally fair. You just have to figure out where you're at in this process. And I don't know where this caller is at in that process. So I'm not going to make

that recommendation. But I think that there are things that you can do. And when you have a person in your life who does not change their behavior when you nicely explain to them that something is bothering you, then you got to stop asking them. And you have to just control it yourself because that is not enough motivation for them. They are not changing their behavior based on a request and being in a reciprocal relationship where we both try to do what is best for the other person. All right. Thank you so much to the two callers they called in today. And as a reminder, You can always call me and leave me a voicemail, and I may pick your question for an upcoming episode.

The number is 866-225-466, and you can leave a message, I think, up to three minutes, and I'll answer your question. I hope to see some of you inside of our groups at the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. You can join Calling Home at Callinghome.com, and I will see you next week for another episode. Bye. 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 Collincombe or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Collingholm's terms of service linked in the show notes below. Thank you.