CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: Becoming Like Your Parent

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Whitney explores patterns around adult children who mimic their parents' harmful behaviors, the complexities of maintaining boundaries when a parent struggles with addiction, and how illness can be weaponized in estranged families. In the Q&A, she answers a caller's question about navigating grandparent illness during estrangement. 00:00 Introduction: Darker Family Patterns 02:59 Airport Observation: When Adult Children Treat Parents Like They Were Treated 08:11 Real Housewives SLC: How to Show Up for a Child Struggling with Addiction 10:55 Q&A: When Grandparent Illness Becomes a Manipulation Tactic 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? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466 Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠⁠ Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft ⁠⁠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 and welcome to the Calling Home Podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Goodman. In today's episode, we are exploring some of the darker patterns that can play out in families. We'll look at what happens when adult children start treating their parents in the same harmful ways that they were treated growing up. And why repeating those patterns doesn't actually create power or healing. We'll also talk about how illness and even death can be used as manipulation in estranged families and the deep pain of, of watching an adult child struggle with addiction. We're going to get started with an interaction that I overheard between an adult son and his parents at the airport, move into a striking scene between Robert Jr. and Mary Crosby on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and finish with a caller whose grandmother is in the hospital while she remains estranged from her parents. Before we get into all of that, I want to tell you. about October at Calling Home.

Every month inside the family cycle breakers club, we focus on a new topic. And October is all about illness, disability, and end-of-life caregiving in dysfunctional or estranged families. Illness doesn't erase dysfunction. It complicates it. And this month, you will get weekly content drops with articles, worksheets, and videos on topics like medical decision-making, executor duties, guilt, and boundaries. We'll also have live support groups led by licensed therapist, including me,

where you can process grief, resentment, and guilt with people who understand. It's a judgment-free community and a place where you'll never be told you must care for that person just because their family. This month isn't about telling you what you should do. It's about helping you see what you can do and supporting you each step of the way. Inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club, you'll find an entire content resource library, a safe community, and therapist-led groups to guide you through illness, care, and family dysfunction. You can visit www.callinghome.co to join the Family Cycle Breakers Club.

New content and groups begin on Monday, October 6th, and all the content is yours as long as your membership is active. So last week, I was traveling and I was going through airport security and I saw a family with adult children and they were like one person ahead of me in the line. And as we're coming out of the chaos of security and I'm putting everything back in my bag, I hear this adult son that was probably in his late to mid 20s really laying into his father. and saying things like, it's like traveling with a toddler with you, you're so dumb, I can't believe that you would leave that in your pocket. Like, it seems like something went on in the security that caused an issue, you know,

for the father and the child was really upset about this. And I was struck by how much this interaction sounded like a really authoritarian parent sort of reacting to their child doing something wrong and quote unquote punishing them, telling them like it is, putting them in line, whatever we want to call it. And it got me thinking because I think it's very easy in these moments to be like, wow, this adult child is really treating their parent poorly. And that is the case. That's valid.

This adult should not have been speaking to their parent in this way. But what I was struck by was there was also a woman there that I believe was their mother. and there was another adult child there. And no one was reacting at all to this type of interaction between these two family numbers, which leads me to assume that it happens often. And this isn't the only time it has happened and it is normal for this family to behave this way, even out in public, right, at the airport. And they sort of just, you know, I watched the whole interaction go down and I'm waiting for

my husband. And then they go like, okay, we're done. and let's like go get food and they walked away and it seemed like they had this moment everyone just sort of was like whatever and they kept it moving which again leads me to believe this is likely something that happens often or is routine in this family and i think it's very easy in this moment to be like okay this adult is you know rude and not respectful and all of that and yes true but we need to think about what can often be happening here in the families is that there is a role reversal when a parent gets older and the adult child is now

in a position where they have more authority in the relationship than they did as a child, where sometimes the child starts acting in the same ways that the parent did towards them. Now, I don't know this family. I don't know what their childhood looked like. But I'm using this as an example to show you how this can happen. and why it typically doesn't work. I think when you are an adult and you get to talk to your parent in the way that they talk to you and you get to mimic these patterns can give you this false sense of authority, power, and control.

And in some ways, maybe it feels good to speak to your parent this way. It's like, oh, I'm finally going to give them back, you know, what they've done to me. And some of the criticism I think that I get or other therapists get is this belief that when you are the victim and you are even a survivor of childhood abuse or you're the victim in the relationship with your parents and how they treated you, especially as a child, that now you have to be better than them and you have to speak in a more palatable way and you need to be more kind and appropriate. And I understand why people who have been victimized don't like to be told that because we don't want to be told that we need to like be kind to the people that have harmed us. But you are not going to get the satisfaction that you think you're going to get out of being like your parent to them. it might be short-lived. It feels good for a second, but it is certainly not in line with your values or who you want to be, how you want to act, or what you want for your family. And I think that when you act that way in some relationships, it carries over into other ones, potentially into your

marriage or your partnership, into how you parent your children, the way that you act at work. it's very hard to totally turn that off and only let it come out in that one relationship. And so I was just thinking about how some of you might feel very like this false sense of empowerment of being able to treat your parent or your family member that has harmed you in the way that they treated you and how that sense of power is so short-lived. It's not good in the long run. and it doesn't actually help you grow and become the person that you want to be. Stop leaving savings behind at the pump.

Get up to 7 cents per liter in value every time you fill up at Petro Canada. That's 3 cents per liter in instant savings plus 20% more points when you link an eligible RBC card to your Petro points. Find out more at RBC.com slash Petro-Canada. Conditions apply. The second thing I wanted to talk about today before we get to that caller question is the episode last week on the Real Housewives of Soli. City. And you all have heard me talk about this relationship before, but there is a woman on the show who is a

mother of an adult son and he has dealt with addiction issues. And he's an adult and he has consented to being on the show. And they've really done a good job, I think, of showing how difficult it is not only for this young man, but also for his mother and for their relationship. And I have spoken positively about the ways this mother has handled her relationship with her son in the past. And so I think if you have any experience of this in your family, I would go back and watch this scene. I think it's the episode that came out last week, like the last week of September. And she's sitting with her son in the bedroom. And it was immediately apparent to me that he was under the influence. And I think I was getting the sense that she was afraid to ask him

and to verify that information from him because he had been to rehab and presumably doing a little bit better and the nature of addiction where it's so up and down is very scary and very overwhelming. And I just thought that the way that this mother reacted to her son was so powerful and she was so engaged and present and kept her emotions and her fear in check, which I'm sure she had a lot of that and was trying to be encouraging and empowering and non-shaming. And it's, it's just so, so hard to do that as a parent. And this is why I always say, I think these types of rifts or difficulties in relationships between adults and their parents when there

is addiction involved are often quite different from the other types of estrangement that we talk about our relationship difficulties between adults and their parents. We are looking at a relationship here where one person is struggling. They are not themselves. And the parent really can be such a leader, a presence and a force of calm in these relationships. And that allows the preservation of the relationship long term, even in the face of addiction. Having a child that struggles with their mental health or their addiction does not have to lead to estrangement. It is not a guarantee that you will not have a relationship. And so I think that this is just a really good example of what that looks like in action.

Now let's get to our caller question this week. Just a reminder, you can always call and leave me a voicemail or send me a question in a voice note or in text to Whitney atcallinghome.co, and I will answer one question every week live on the show anonymously. All right, let's go ahead and play the caller question this week. Hi, Whitney. First, I just want to say a huge thank you for your amazing podcast and website. I'm calling for some advice around navigating very low contact or estrangement.

I've been very low contact bordering on estrangement with my parents for two years now after setting a boundary with my mom that she didn't take very well she called me a bunch of names and said a bunch of really hurtful things which was a pattern that had happened throughout my whole life and I decided that I wanted her

to reflect on what she said she refused I have since offered joint therapy twice she has refused to do that too so occasionally contact me like just with a like a photo of flowers or something like that.

But more recently, she has added me to a group chat about Christmas and invited me and my family to Christmas with them. And this feels like a completely superficial gesture, sleeping things under the rug. I've really clearly asked for some reflection, and I feel given really direct ways for us to reconnect, And we're starting with that reflection and then doing family therapy together, which she is unwilling to do. So I feel like it'll most serve the narrative of, you know, that she can say to my brothers,

I'll look how hard I'm trying, you know, while actually not doing the one thing that I asked for. My husband and I decided to ignore the group's discussion. We stayed out of it. We archived the chat. and since then she's contacted me a couple more times yesterday saying that my grandma has been sick in hospital for a few days and she's out now and would like to come and visit me with them

however nobody told me that my grandma was in hospital my mom actually messaged my daughter before she messaged me to tell her that my grandma was in hospital my daughter's 13 And so it just feels like another manipulation tactic. I did say to them, actually I'm on placement this week, so I will contact Grandma directly in a few days and arrange to go down and visit her.

She's about two hours away. And my mom has come back with another message saying, she would really like to see you, is it not possible for us to make this happen? as though like seeing grandma is contingent on her coming up with them. And part of this feels like an extinction birth kind of behavior. You know, that psychological term where things get worked before they get better because I'm not buying into the usual sweeping things under the rug.

Patterns that my family said for many years. So first I want to say that I understand why this feels like a manipulation and why a lot of those things that were sent to, like, you know, pictures of flowers or, like, the text just inviting you to Christmas when things haven't improved, feel kind of empty and hollow and, like, you're just not sure what to do with them. I recorded an episode with Kate Gray, who is codependency Kate on TikTok and on Instagram, where we looked at an estranged parents YouTube channel, and this is something that we talked about a lot, like why some of those empty gestures don't feel good and they can be very conflicting because it's like, oh, this is nice on the surface, but it rings hollow because we haven't actually fixed or repaired anything from this relationship. And your question is such good timing because

we're actually going to be covering issues like this related to illness and end of life at calling home in the month of October inside the family cycle breakers club. So if you can relate to this caller, you'll definitely want to join us for those groups and the new content every Monday starting on October 6 next week. But I think that it is okay for for this to not change anything that you've done or are doing unless you want it to. And by that I mean your grandmother being in the hospital doesn't mean that things need to change with your mother or with your family. Them inviting you to the holidays doesn't mean that you need to do it.

I think that we can sometimes get caught up in this feeling of like, well, if someone is not doing well, they're struggling with their health, that means that I need to make amends and I need to fix things. Now that being said, your relationship with your grandmother can be totally separate and totally different from your relationship with your mother or your family, right? And so if you want to try to visit or see your grandmother or talk to her under different circumstances or different conditions that feel comfortable for you, I think that's also a good thing for you to try if that's important to you and if that's in line with your values. and how you would like to see this go.

I know that it probably feels hurtful and concerning that you didn't even know that she was in the hospital and now the timing seems a little bit suspect for this to be being used as a way to like get you back in the fold. But I'm curious if there's a way for you to honor your grandmother, see her communicate with her that maybe doesn't involve you having communication or contact with your mother. because you certainly don't have to miss out on all of these moments with your family or not get to say goodbye or, you know, give your grandmother that if that's something that you want to do. And I don't know how that relationship is or how it was leading up to this or if that's

something that's possible in your relationship. But that's definitely something to think about. I think that there can be a deep sense of guilt and regret and resent. meant when someone is sick and not doing well and you have to think about like how do I want to be in this moment and what will the impact be of my choices you know and I do think there is a fantasy for a lot of estranged families that someone could get sick or something could happen and then we're all going to like reunite and come together but illness doesn't improve things typically it often just complicates them and makes them more challenging.

And so you have every right to step back, think about how you want to handle this, and know that the choice that you make is rooted in the reality of the situation. And if other people don't understand that or they have things to say about that, they may not truly understand exactly where you're coming from. And I want to add this other caveat that if you do want to show, up in moments when someone is sick or at the end of their life and you have a bad relationship with them, that's okay too. You don't have to kind of follow these like hard, strict rules that know we're estranged

and I'm not allowed to go back and do this. It's more about being informed and having the support and consenting to that and doing it because you want to because you think that it's the right thing for you and your family and that relationship and the stage of life that you're in. But there's nothing that says you can't make either decision. It's really just about what's about what evaluating what is right for you. Again, we're going to be talking about this theme for the entire month of October at calling home. We just had such a great group on family secrets. We wrapped up our final group. I was so taken aback by how many of our members said, like, I couldn't have gotten through

this month without these groups that they didn't think that they were going to share. And then they ended up talking. And we had some members sharing some really big, impactful, like, very difficult family secrets. And I was so just like in awe of how our group members handled that information, how they showed support and how many people kept coming back for a group every week, you know, for this topic. So I hope to see some of you there for our October month on illness, caring for a family member, an end-of-life care in dysfunctional or estranged family members.

As always, thank you so much for listening. I have been blown away by the amount of you that have been listening to the podcast, leaving comments, reviews, subscribing. It is so, so helpful. This podcast is like my number one. right now and I'm really trying to grow it and get it out there. So thank you so much. I appreciate you. And I'll see you again next week. 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 Colling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below. Thank you.