CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: God Told His Parents Not To Speak To Us

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

In this episode of the Calling Home Podcast, Whitney Goodman discusses emotional maturity and the complexities of family relationships, particularly when spirituality and religion create barriers. She addresses a caller's question about navigating relationships with emotionally immature family members who use spiritual beliefs to justify their actions. Whitney emphasizes the importance of empathy, acceptance, and support in these situations while highlighting the pain of rejection that can arise from such conflicts. The second caller is a twin who has had to set boundaries with their twin sibling. Whitney discusses why adult sibling relationships can be so challenging and how to help someone in a dysfunctional or abusive relationship. Join The Family Cyclebreakers Club: www.callinghome.co/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. Hey everyone, happy Thursday and welcome to the Calling Home podcast. I'm so excited to be here with you today for another Q&A episode. Before we jump in to the two-collar questions for today, I just wanted to remind you that we are talking about emotional immaturity and emotional maturity for the entire month of January at Calling Home. So you can join the Family Cycle Breakers Club and get access to an article, script, video, and worksheet. every single Monday to help you become more emotionally mature and also help you deal with emotionally immature people in your life. And you can join us for groups every single week where we'll be talking about emotional maturity, how to improve it, how to deal with emotionally immature people, all that good stuff. And then we also have two groups for adult children of emotionally immature parents this month. And then I will, of course, be hosting a Q&A and our open house group where you can come and talk about anything related to your adult

family relationships or family dysfunction. So I hope to see some of you there, and you can always visit callinghome.com to join the Family Cycle Breakers Club. All right, let's go ahead and get to those callers. Hi, I have a question about just how to navigate with a parent and also grandparent who uses a spiritual reason as to why they aren't in relationship with their child and their child's family. We have differing views on parenting and a situation occurred two years ago that was out of the blue as to the level that it went to when our kids were being kids.

So they were three and five years old, being noisy, whining. And we ended up leaving because it wasn't coming to a peaceful discussion and have reached back out to want to many times. to want to talk it out, to have some repair done, and see if there's a spot we can just agree to disagree and how we can still maybe compromise on having a relationship. They have since that point, continue to say it is not time that God says

that they should not have a relationship with, their child right now. So I guess I think it is my in-laws and how do I best support my spouse because that is painful when it's your parent and what do you do when it's, they're not straight out saying I don't want to or they're using God. I don't know how often you hear that, but yeah, that's my question. How do you navigate when spirituality? to being used. Thank you. I really enjoy listening to all your questions that you answer.

Thank you so much for calling in and leaving this voicemail. I want to break this up into a couple of parts here. First of all, I don't know about anyone else listening to this, but for me, as a human being, as a person, I don't believe in a God that would not want me to have a relationship with my child. And I'm sure there are a lot more details and situations, you know, missing from this story because it's a short voicemail. But it sounds like there's quite a difference here maybe in how children are being raised, what the expectation is from the grandparents or the in-laws, maybe that the ideas about spirituality or religion or parenting. are not aligned.

And so for that reason, the grandparents are saying, I can't be involved with you or with your children, which I think is just incredibly sad. I don't think that that's a positive use of religion or spirituality in the ways that we know for religion and spirituality to be helpful. I think there are a lot of helpful pieces. to being part of a spiritual or religious community, but this is not one of them. And unfortunately, I think some people are raised and entrenched in communities where there are these very strong and strict rules, right, about this is what you have to do or you are going to be condemned or you are

going to be looked down upon. There are certainly a lot of instances where parents feel like they have to do something to their child in the name of God or in the name of religion in order to be saved or to save that child. And I just think that that is so unfortunate. You know, when religion or spirituality gets in the way of you being able to have a solid, reciprocal, honest relationship with your adult child and with your grandchildren because you have a fear of what's going to happen to you, you know, if you maintain that relationship outside of the confines of what is expected and allowed within your religion. And so first of all, I want to say that I think that sounds incredibly painful to be

dealing with something like this on all ends. You know, it's got to be incredibly painful for the grandparents as well to kind of be living in this system where they're trying to to follow these rules and it's maybe separating them from even a relationship that they would want to have, whether they're aware of that or not. It's incredibly painful for the parents of those children and also a huge bummer for the children. Everybody kind of loses here, in my opinion. Now, I know there are some people who are quite religious who would say, you know, this is what has to happen. This is the right thing. And as far as what I prescribe and talk about, this podcast, I do not think it's helpful or effective when rules from religious communities get

in the way of family relationships like this and tell certain family members that they should not associate with others because they're going to like go to hell if they do so or the church is going to exile them or their religious community is going to look down on them if they have a family member in their family that is XYZ criteria. I think that's, a huge loss for the family and is not helpful. So that being said, the biggest, you know, part of this question is really like, how do I deal with this? How do I support my partner whose parents are doing this? And I think that you have to understand. And I've said this in another episode previously. If you want to listen to more about this, I have an episode called, you know,

how to support your partner when they're having issues with their parent. I think that you have to be aware that this could be much more confusing, much more painful, and much more difficult to understand for them than it is for you. It's often a lot easier for us to recognize things and come to terms with them when they are not happening to our family, but to our partners. And so I always recommend that you tread lightly and carefully and give people the time and space that they need to come around. Sometimes we feel so pulled to quickly be like, you need to just cut them off or what they're doing is wrong or speak badly about them because we think that that's going to make the other person feel better when in reality sometimes

it just feels like too much for them and too much pressure and they're having difficulty coming around. The other really difficult thing here is that we talk a lot about adult children who cut off their parents. We don't talk a lot about parents who abandon their children and childhood or in adulthood. And I think that's more of what's going on here, is this feeling of being excommunicated, rejected by your family because of a disagreement. And then it being kind of cloaked in this thing that like, oh, this is about God. God is telling us not to have a relationship with you.

And that is so painful because the God thing, I think, kind of ends up being just a a way to say, like, we're not going to have a relationship with you. You know, saying God told us not to have a relationship with you doesn't make it any less painful for the adult child to hear that their parent does not want anything to do with them or their children. And this is also a mechanism, I think, that some parents use to assert control is to say, you know, God is telling us we can't have a relationship with you. we will pray for you. We hope you're okay. When you're ready to come around and come back into the

light, we'll be here waiting for you. And really, let's translate that. What that means is I have this set of beliefs. I cannot associate with you unless you share my exact set of beliefs and you meet this criteria for being in relationship with me, which might include following my same religion and practicing it in the same ways and parenting your children in the same ways. And until you do that, God's going to tell me not to talk to you. And at the end of the day, regardless of who's saying it, God or the parent, it's still very painful to hear that your parent is not going to have a relationship with you and doesn't approve of you or how you're raising your kids. Or, you know, I know this caller spoke about an event, which sounds like it was probably a situation that was the straw that broke the camel's back. And from there, it became impossible to maintain this relationship.

but I'm sure prior to that there were likely instances, you know, that we're leading up to this moment. And so I would say that it's important to even just take the God part out of it. You know, if you're somebody that your parent has told you, oh, I can't have a relationship with you because of this thing that you're doing that goes against their religion, that's their choice. That is their choice to not have a relationship with you. And if the two of you cannot find a way to accept one another and the ways that you are navigating religion in the world and parenting your kids, then it's going to be impossible to have a relationship. And saying, God's telling me not to have a relationship with you until you do this or until he says it's time, I think, and often, like I said,

be a control tactic to try to get the adult child to resume previous religious practices or commitment to the religious group that the parent approves of. But at the end of the day, I think it's very important to have a deep sense of empathy for your partner that's going through this, to stay connected to one another and have a clear understanding of how you want to approach this relationship. What are you both willing to tolerate? What are you both willing to do to have this relationship? And also helping them just be in this acceptance phase of like, regardless of the reason,

your parents are not speaking to you right now. They're not having a relationship with us. And that's very painful. Whether it's their choice, God's choice, whoever's choice. they are basically saying we do not approve of you or the religion that we follow does not approve of you and that's painful. That's a sense of rejection that does not feel good. For anyone that's going through this, it might be helpful to go on the Calling Home website

to the content page and under topics, we have an accepting your parents section and parents who won't apologize. And there are a couple of different scripts and things about when parents use religion as a way to try to change you, shame you, or spirituality. And I really think that regardless of what reason the parents are putting forward, you approach this the same way with acceptance, strong conviction in what you want, and trying to align with your partner and be supportive. Thank you so much for calling in, and let's go ahead and get to the next caller. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful banking of

Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.com. Bank more oncores when you switch to a Scotia Bank banking package. Learn more at scotiabank.com slash banking packages. Conditions apply. Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think. Hi, I was just wondering if you had any thoughts regarding estrangement amongst twins.

I recently had to go no contact with my twin sister after her fiancé kicked my bedroom door down. and she didn't stand up for me at all. So I was just wondering what your thoughts on, like, dealing with estrangement amongst twins because it's like a super complicated and convoluted dynamic. Thank you. Wow. You know, I haven't done a lot of estrangement work with twins. And I imagine that it's got to be extremely challenging to see yourself different.

from this person to see them differently from you because you literally feel like you're the same person. And so I have done a lot of sibling relationship work and adult sibling estrangement work. And I think that the principle that I like to bring up the most about that is that you can grow up in the same house as your sibling and have wildly different childhoods, right? And have completely different experiences of your parents and of life. And one of the things that happens a lot between adult siblings is competition over parents' time, resources, energy, you know, feeling competitive with one another, parents instilling competition in siblings.

And so I would imagine that that happens a lot also among twins and that it would be even more difficult for the parent to really separate the two of you as like these unique individuals. And so without knowing much about this caller situation, I want to just speak generally to sibling estrangement and some of the unique things that might be coming up in a twin relationship. And then also here we have this instance that there is a partner involved. So when you have adult siblings that are having conflict, I think one of the most important things is to keep the conflict between the siblings and not bring parents into it. Parents can often influence these dynamics in negative ways, even after childhood, and can also repeat some of the existing dynamics that have already developed between the siblings. that would make it worse.

And so I always recommend that, you know, the siblings try to work it out between the two of them, keep the estrangement, talk between the two of them, and really involve parents only to the degree that you need to when it comes to logistics and things like that. Now, a lot of times parents will contribute or participate, of course, in these dynamics because, one, they don't want their children to be fighting or to be estranged a lot of the time. And I don't blame them. And so sometimes that can cause parents to really start meddling and acting in ways that actually make the estrangement worse. And it's kind of up to you to try to keep those boundaries.

And often I find that there's like one sibling that's typically more enmeshed with the parent that is bringing some of the dialogue back to them. or the disagreement and bringing the parent into the dynamic. So even if you are trying to set those boundaries, it can be difficult. And sometimes the parent does end up getting involved anyways. The other thing that's really important here to talk about is the role of a partner. Now, of course, third parties can be negative influences sometimes. And we all probably know somebody that has been in a relationship with someone that was toxic to them, someone who was abusive, harmful, who had a bad influence on them. And sometimes estrangements happen because of the person your family member, your sibling in this case, becomes when they are in a relationship

with that person. And you have every right to set boundaries around that behavior to say that I'm not going to tolerate being around this person or this type of behavior. it's also possible that your sibling is going through something very difficult, and sometimes you have to, like, sit back and wait, you know, and say, I'm here for you. If and when you want to work on this, you want to talk about it, you want to leave the relationship. You can point out, you know, what's going on, the specific types of behaviors, what you see happening to them, coming from a genuine place of caring. I don't want you to be in a relationship. like this, you deserve better, and trying to show them that you will be there for them if they

want to leave. What I do find is that when family members, including siblings, become really hellbent on making the partner look bad and saying you need to leave him, he's an asshole, get rid of him, these kinds of things, like, I can't believe you're with this person, it can sometimes drive that couple even closer together and make it even harder for you to get through. root of them as the relationship intensifies or, unfortunately, gets worse. And so it is important to share your feelings and your concerns make them known, but can you do it in a compassionate, loving, and understanding way? I know that people who are in abusive relationships don't want to be treated badly. They're often there because they feel like that's what they deserve.

They don't know any better. They don't know how to get out. They've gotten stuck in this relationship. they're being manipulated by the other person, and you kind of have to be this, like, steady person on the outside being like, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm ready to help you when you are ready to do something. Now, that being said, that doesn't make it easy, especially for twins, when you are watching one of your siblings be treated poorly or make choices that you would never make, and you see them struggling, and you might be saying to yourself, well, we grew up in the same house. We had the same access to resources. We literally came out of the womb together. We share DNA, all of this stuff that, like, I don't understand why this is happening to you. What's wrong

with you? Like, it can be maddening to watch a twin make those types of choices and be so different from you and be making poor choices that you didn't make or you wouldn't make. And to watch your lives kind of go in separate directions as siblings, as twins, as family members can be very challenging and very overwhelming. And so giving yourself like the space to process that, you know, you're calling into this show, you're listening. So I know that you're doing some of that, but making sure that you have therapy or groups like we have at calling home something where you can go and talk about how this is impacting you and the impact that it's having on how you see yourself might be something to explore, how it's impacting your relationship with your parents and other

family members, and also just how you see your twin, because it can be so hard to watch someone that you grew up with and looks like you and that's related to you go through some of these issues. So thank you for calling. I will definitely try to do some more stuff on twins in the future because I think that's a really interesting conversation, especially when it comes to how certain things like mental health disorders, mental illness, family dysfunction, manifest among twins. All right, well, those are our callers for today. Thank you so much for calling in. Next week on Tuesday, I will be back with an episode about how to deal with emotionally immature people. And I'm going to give you three strategies that will help you deal with emotionally

immature parents, family members, siblings, etc. that you could implement right away. And I hope to see some of you in our groups this week every Wednesday about emotional maturity and emotional immaturity. Thank you all so much. Have a great day and I'll see you next week. Thank you so much to everyone that called in this week and asked questions. I love being able to help you with these family situations and hopefully help you find a way to better navigate them with your adult family relationships. You can always call and leave me a voice and I may pick your question for an upcoming Thursday episode of the Calling Home podcast. Just call 866-225-5-4-66 and leave me a voicemail. I do these episodes every Thursday and I love

being able to get to help each and every one of you with your family relationships. If you're ready to work on your adult family relationships outside of this podcast and take what you've learned to the next level, we do have the calling home community. You can join us for weekly groups and watch videos, take courses, get access to worksheets, and more. And those groups are run by me so we can actually meet. And you just need to go to www.callinghome.com and join the Family Cycle Breakers Club. Thanks and I will see you all on Tuesday for another episode. I don't know.