CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: I Told My Sister The Truth About Our Abusive Parents

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Hi! I'm answering two caller questions today. Caller 1 was abused by her father, and now he's getting remarried to someone with young children. Caller 2 told her sister about their parents' abusive behavior, and it didn't go as planned. In the first ten minutes of the show, I recap some dysfunctional TV family dynamics in Sirens and Nine Perfect Strangers. May at Calling Home - Grieving Complicated Relationships: ⁠https://callinghome.co/grieving-complicated-relationships ⁠ 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 Order Whitney's book, ⁠Toxic Positivity. ⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Calling on Podcast. I am your host Whitney Goodman. I'm excited to be back today with another Q&A episode while I would be answering two caller questions. But before we get to that, you know that I like to start with my little epiphanies segment, which is just where I talk about something interesting that I found this week. And this week I'm going to be focusing on some television family dynamics. And I just committed the ultimate sin and podcasting and did not have my mic turned on and I recorded for seven minutes straight about the show that I'm about to tell you about before I noticed that my screen and my mic were not lighting up. So you are getting this second time around. Hopefully it will be even better this time.

But back to what I was saying, I just started watching the show Sirens on Netflix. And if you haven't watched this yet and you're planning to and you don't want there to be any spoilers, then skip ahead because I'm going to be talking about something that happens in episode four of the show, which I think only has five or six episodes. I haven't finished it yet. But I want to talk about the dynamic between the two sisters in the show, Simone and Devin. And I'm going to use this to talk about the ways that adult siblings can have wildly different outcomes and perspectives about their childhood. And I also want to use this as an opportunity to talk about the ways that we decide to care for our family members in adulthood, depending on what happened to us and the stories

we tell ourselves about that. So for those of you that haven't seen the show, there are two sisters, Devin and Simone. Devin is the older sister. Simone is the younger sibling. I believe they are about five or six years apart, maybe a little bit more. In the show, we meet the sisters when they are adults. And ultimately in episode four, we find out a lot more about the trajectory of their lives. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about their story just so you have some understanding about how they ended up where they are today. But essentially, you know, there was a mother and a father. And in the show, the mother dies by suicide. And when she is taking her own life, she attempts to also take.

take the life of her younger daughter Simone. They're in a vehicle and I believe she dies by like carbon monoxide poisoning and her younger daughter Simone lives. So both daughters lose their mother in their like preteen teenage years. In the wake of this death, the father becomes quite unstable and he is left to take care of his daughter, Simone, who I believe is 12 at the time. And And in the process of this, the older sister, Devin, ends up going away to college. And as she describes it in this episode four, scene where they're sitting and talking about their childhoods together, she says that she was away getting drunk at Ohio State while all of these things were happening to her sister.

In the time that her sister, Simone, was left with her father, her father ends up becoming so depressed and unwell that he is unable to take care of his daughter. and she ultimately is removed from his custody because of physical abuse, neglect, etc. And the daughter, Simone, is forced to testify against her own father in this case. And her sister, Devin, ends up coming home from college to take care of her. And I believe that this is really where the two sisters get put on these two different paths of how they are going to make sense of what happened to them and make choices in their adult life. And so for any of you listening that have had to make a decision or been put in a position of having to take care of a sibling, I think that this is something that you will relate to. But ultimately, Devin comes home and she takes care of her sister. She is like a single mother to her and raises her into adulthood. And Simone becomes successful. She graduates. She ultimately gets a scholarship for law school. And she drops out of law school and goes on to achieve this career where we find her.

her in the show, which is being an assistant for this very wealthy woman and her family. But Devin seems to be ruled by this guilt for the rest of her life. And we see this play out through her choices in partners, her alcoholism, addiction. She ends up, you know, getting a DUI, going to jail. She's really self-sabotaging and seems to not like herself very much or not believe that she deserves anything good in her life. where Simone becomes estranged from her family, basically. She does not see her father, you know, after she's taken out of his care. It's been about a decade since they've seen one another, even though her father is now quite ill and suffering from like Alzheimer's or dementia,

she does not believe that it is her place to care for him and ultimately says to her sister, you know, why would I take care of him? He didn't take care of me when I needed him. And I had all of these horrible things happened to me when I was put into foster care before my sister, you know, came and got me in, like, I don't feel like I'm obligated. Where her older sister, Devin, seems to ultimately conceptualize family and duty and guilt in a really different way. And she is giving herself at the expense of herself to her father. And her sister is saying, you know, like, look what you're doing to yourself. And she's saying, well, you know, who's going to take care of him if I don't? And they have this moment where there's this really big

clash of values and perception and memories of the past and how it's impacting them today and the decision to care for family at the expense of oneself and to care for family that maybe doesn't deserve their care and how they framed that as adults. And I think Simone, the sibling that left and made a life for herself and quote unquote ran away, sees herself as a story of perseverance. and independence and saving herself and achievement where Devin, I think, really sees herself as being burdened by duty and guilt and obligation and needing to act on that and also seeing that as a way of achieving something in life. But what's really interesting in this moment is that

Devin does not know who she is outside of caring for other people in her family. But she also blames those people for her lack of joy in life or maybe achievement. And Simone is really saying, like, I took ownership of my life, even though all of these bad things happened to me. And while you may view me as someone who was maybe selfish or ran away, I'm also looking at you and saying, why are you doing this to yourself when you don't have to be? And I think that these are some of the very distinct ways that two siblings can experience life within their family and have such vastly different perceptions and outcomes because of who they were in that moment, their age, their position in the family. So if you can relate to any of that or you're interested

in learning more about that type of dynamic, this show, and particularly the conversation between Simone and Devin in episode four is really enlightening and a good view at this dynamic. I think the writers of the show did an excellent job kind of constructing that type of dynamic, especially in that conversation. The other show that I've been watching that I wanted to talk about, and I've only seen the first episode of this show, that it is the show, Nine Perfect Strangers. It's in its second season on Hulu. and there is a mother-daughter dynamic and a father-son dynamic that is going to play out on

this show. Both of these are adult daughters and adult sons with their respective parent. And I want to talk first about the mother-daughter. So the first thing that we see in the first episode, and I think maybe I watched half of the second episode of this show, is that there is an adult daughter who is going to this retreat with her mother. And she believes that they are going to work on their relationship. And the mother arrives. She is a very like flamboyant over the top wealthy woman who arrives with a very young boyfriend at this retreat where she is supposed to be going to work on her relationship with her daughter. This is like a wellness retreat in the show that is being run by the actress Nicole Kidman, who does

these sort of like psychedelic type of wellness retreats. And we see the nine strangers arriving. It's very like white lotus vibes where you're getting to know each of these individual characters. But the mother is like very emotionally neglectful, emotionally immature. She does not seem to at all understand why her daughter would be upset that she showed up with this boyfriend. They're all sharing a hotel room and like the mother didn't even consider that her daughter might not want to be staying in a room with this random man. This man is very close in age to the daughter. And we see that there is another adult son there whose father is a billionaire and he has not arrived yet. He's late and has not communicated about being late. And this adult son is very clearly starved for affection and

attention from his father as well. And we see that this daughter, her name is Imogen and the adult son, who I can't remember his name, sorry, they meet up at the bar and they ultimately end up sleeping together that night. And these two are clearly, we're being shown that they are bonding over the lack of emotional availability that they are getting from their parents. They, you know, the daughter, Imogen needs a place to sleep. Her mother has brought a boyfriend with her. and they're in the room together, and so she ends up going and staying in the room with this guy whose father hasn't shown up yet. And so I think that this show is going to continue to show us some really interesting emotional neglect and emotional immaturity dynamics that play out

between adult children and their parents, particularly parents who are wealthy, have power, are used to being in control, and who maybe have provided. their adult children with a lot of material things or even connections, things like that, but have not given them the emotional connection or maybe even physical presence that they are looking for. And so in these dynamics, sometimes the children, the adult children in the scenario, even look like they are being emotionally immature or reactive themselves, but they are ultimately responding to what the parent has.

always been giving them. So I hope to give you all some more analysis on these shows as they play out. But I think if you're looking for some adult child parent dynamics being reflected on TV, these are some great ones to check out. Before we jump into those two-collar questions, I want to tell you a little bit more about the Family Cycle Breakers Club by calling home. If you listen to this podcast and you'd like to take the information that you're learning to the next level actually implement in your life and make a change. The Family Cycle Breakers Club is for you. We have a membership community at Calling Home where we focus on a different topic every single month and you get new content delivered to your inbox and on our website every Monday. I will send you a worksheet, an article,

a video, and a script to help you navigate tough conversations, heal from different wounds and have better family relationships in adulthood with your family members or get the space that you need from those relationships. Members of the Family Cycle Breakers Club get unlimited access to support groups every single month. We upload our group calendar at the end of the month before. You can visit callinghome.com backslash groups to learn more about our group programs. We have groups for adult children of emotionally amateur parents, estranged adult children, family estrangement groups. We also have a monthly topic group every Wednesday with me where we dive deeper into the topic that month. So for the month of June, our topic is going to be childhood trauma.

If you have ever wondered if you experienced trauma, if you've told yourself it wasn't that bad or you can't seem to get past some of the things that you endured in childhood and they are showing up in your everyday life in adulthood, this is the month for you. We will be talking about adverse childhood experiences, how to move forward, how to heal from different traumatic experiences. And you can also spend time and get to know a lot of other people just like you that are trying to end patterns of generational dysfunction in their family. And this is one of the only ways that you can work directly with me. I would love to see you in June at Calling Home. You can visit Callinghome.com. to register for the Family Cycle Breakers Club, and I'll see you there soon. All right, let's go ahead and get to that first caller.

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Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency App for details. Hey Whitney. I am calling because, well, I have a question. So I am an adult child and I'm no context with my dad because he was very abusive growing up. And I recently learned through various means that he is getting married very soon to his, you know, second wife after, you know, he divorced my mom. So this would be his second wife. And that this woman has some very, very young children. And obviously, I have done my due diligence to see if there's any way I could

potentially warn them about the mess that they're about to walk into because he was very abusive and they have only been dating for three months and they're about to get married. And obviously that did not work out. And so I guess I'm just asking, how do I process the fact that my abuser has moved on, has got a new family, and also that he's probably going to continue to inflict abuse and harm to other people and that there's really nothing I can do about that. And how do I heal through that? Thanks. All right. This is a very difficult situation, I think, to be in because there are children involved. And you're, of course, thinking about what's going to happen if these kids go through

what I went through. And so I understand why there would be a lot of fear and anxiety and concern about that. I'm not sure how old this collar is, and not that everything changes with time, but this collar does sound on the younger side. I'm going to make that assumption that it has not been that long maybe since you endured abuse from your father. And that's also why there's a lot of concern here about like has there been any change? Is he's still the same person that he was from when I was growing up and are these kids or his new family going to experience what I experienced? So because you've given me the context of this person getting married to your father after three months and having young children, I'm going to assume that they either

don't know what he has been like in the past or they don't believe it or they're not concerned that it's going to happen to them. Maybe they have no idea. And I think when you think about how this can be handled, they obviously know I would assume on some level that this person is estranged from their adult child or adult children. And that's not a red flag for them or not something that they've chosen to explore further, and they're still deciding to marry this person and have them be around their children. And so you could find a way to warn this person or to tell them, but I have a feeling that that might backfire or that this woman might not listen or want to know or be open to hearing about what you have to say. I think we always have

have to consider protecting the children in this situation, and their mother is the one right now that is tasked with doing that. And until something happens, it's impossible for you to do anything. I think that's what's really, really challenging about this. So I am going to focus on you processing this. The first thing I think you have to think about is that you are not able to maybe protect someone else, but you can protect yourself and you can reiterate to yourself that you are safe, you are not in danger, this person cannot harm you anymore, you can even like reinforce that safety in the place where you live or by reminding yourself of some of the boundaries that you have in place. I think sometimes it helps to tell yourself, you know,

like nothing has happened yet. If I find out that something is happening to these kids or that they're in danger, like I can try to protect them in the best way that I have access to. But I think sometimes right now the little version of you starts to speak up and feel very much afraid or in danger because the pattern could be repeating itself. And so I think you have to validate for yourself. like it makes sense why this feels scary to me. It makes sense why I'm concerned. It makes sense why I don't think that this person should be around little children. And I have to remind myself that

I'm not a small child anymore. I'm not in danger. I am okay. I will continue to be okay. I can take care of myself and that this parent must be making a decision with the information that they have. And I have to trust that they are able to take care of themselves and their children, too. But I think during this moment, as much as you can, you have to bring it back to what you can control and what might be empowering for you in this moment until you have more information and more resources. but very difficult situation to be in. Thank you so much for calling in and asking that question. I appreciate it.

Let's go ahead and get to the second caller. Hey, Whitney. My question is about sibling dynamics in an abusive family system. I was physically and emotionally abused by my parents as a teenager. And my sister, who was a year and a half older than me, was not. And this was something I'd never talked to anyone about. I just kept it a secret because my mom was very manipulative. and gaslighted me into staying quiet.

And so I never knew if my sister even knew about it. My sister and I are both in our 40s now. And I recently told my sister about this abuse. And a few weeks later, I told my parents and kind of confronted them with this. My sister has since told me that I put her in a bad position by telling her first about this abuse before confronting my parents

and that she felt stuck in the middle and that she had to choose a side. And I explained to her, you know, from my perspective, because of the shame and how scary it was, I felt like I wanted to tell her first. It was really helpful for me to share this with her. And she kind of responded with some generality

of any therapist could tell you that I should not have put her in that position. And just so interesting because I did talk to my therapist about this and we determined together, like, okay, your sister's, like, possibly the safest person to tell. Turns out we were wrong about that. But anyway, I feel really hurt and confused by this response from her. I feel like she's blaming me for taking up space or for needing support instead of putting the blame where it belongs, which is on my parents. and a part of me feels like maybe it's just too hard for her to face the reality that my parents were abusive because she is close with them

and relies on them for support. So anyway, I would just love any of your thoughts on this dynamic based upon the little information that I shared here and I would just love to know, like, where are some ways I can go with this to maybe either put some boundaries around this with my sister or try to discuss this with her in a way that, maybe is honoring to me, but also is caring of her. Thank you so much. Bye. Okay. So the first thing I want to say here is that there's very few things that I think we can

be so black and white about with saying like no therapist would ever do that. No therapist would ever say that that's okay because the conversations that you have with a therapist are so very, very nuanced and unique and dependent on your situation. and that's why sometimes shows like this are very high level and we can't get as into the weeds on advice or what we would do because we don't know all the context. And so to do that would be dangerous. And I get very wary about people who say like a therapist would never say that or they would never do that because with the exception of like abuse and mandatory reporting and maybe like

diagnostic practices and ethical boundaries that we are are bound to. ethical guidelines, like there is a lot of variety of the kind of advice and input and, you know, recommendations that you're going to get from a therapist. And so I don't think that it's totally out of bounds at all that maybe in conversations between this caller and the therapist, they decided that the sister would be the best person to talk to. And what I'm going to kind of break down here is maybe what your sister might be feeling and why she's reacting, the way she's reacting based on what I know about these types of family dynamics and then what you can do moving for. So in family systems where one child is abused and others are not, even if the

child that is not being abused doesn't explicitly know what's going on, they often know on some level that they are being spared from something for some reason, right? So they might realize that they are the favorite or that they're getting more support in some way or, you know, they're the golden child. And they are playing a part in order to continue securing that. Because parents who are abusive to one child are not this like magical, healthy parent to another child. Like that's just not possible. They're typically different shades of bad with each child and sometimes they're better or less harmful to one child because that child is easier for them to parent and relate to or that parent or that child has figured out a way to

fawn and kind of give back this specific version of themselves to the parent that is more palatable to the parent. It's not that like the parent has this healthy, secure relationship with your sister and is abusive to you. I would find that to be really hard to believe. And so I think on some level, your sister may have always known that she was getting different treatment, even if she didn't see exactly how that different treatment was playing out. This caller used some very specific words here of like, sister is close to the parents and relies on them. And so I don't know what this reliance is, but I would bet that that plays a very big role in this feeling that your sister is reporting of like, I.

feel like you want me to take sides or pick a side and she feels like that is threatening or dangerous for her to pick a side because of that reliance and that closeness. And this can play back to those childhood dynamics of like if I pick aside or I take the stance that like I believe my sister and I think that my parents are bad, like that's going to disrupt the flow here. It's going to disrupt my standing in the hierarchy. And when I feel like I have to perform to get my parents' love and I have to be a certain way. Maybe I always have to agree with them or whatever it is. I know that I might get abused or I might be rejected if I start to take sides. And I think something we have to remember is that a lot of times the dynamics that are

playing out with siblings in adulthood are not adult dynamics. They are siblings behaving almost as children with one another because they are getting transported back to that time within the family when these dysfunctional family dynamics are playing out. So much in the same way, like how when you go home and you're around your parents, you kind of revert to acting like a child in some ways. That can happen with siblings and is even more likely to happen when we're talking about a dysfunctional family dynamic. So I wonder if that is some of what is going on with your sister. She is feeling these old feelings of like, I only get to remain. reliant and close to mom and dad if I do X. And you are the one that was being harmed by them. They

clearly don't like you or respect you as much. And so it is risky for me to align myself with you. And I'm not saying that that's the right thing for her to do at all or that it's kind or respectful or rooted in like any type of reality. But that is what she has been trained to do to survive in the dysfunction, right? And so I can imagine that after having these conversations with your therapist and you felt like my sister might be the best person for me to bring this to and she responds in this way that you feel very, very alone and very isolated and like, who's going to protect me and align with me now? This is just like childhood if my sister as an adult can't even see what's going on here. And so that can really also transport you back

to some of those old family dynamics. Now, if your sister keeps behaving in this way and she is prioritizing, you know, her needs and her unheeled wounds, like, over this alignment with you, I think you have to decide how you're going to interact with her moving forward. And your ability to discuss this with her really depends on her level of emotional intelligence and emotional maturity and ability to hold space for like these multiple realities that, hey, I may have had this relationship with mom and dad and I'm reliant on them, but they were pretty awful to you. And without knowing more about the situation, it's hard for me to give a recommendation on that, but I would really think about that. How does she typically respond when I go to her

with pain or information? And also giving a little bit of space here for the fact that like when you told your sister this, it might be the first time that she was confronted with this information and maybe she had a hunch or a feeling. But now it's like really being put in front of her. And sometimes that can be very jarring for people to hear like mom and dad were abusive to me and to hear the specifics is very different for some people than just having a feeling that that was going on. And sometimes people need time to accept that. And then they're able to come back to you and say, hey, I should not have reacted that way the first time that you told me that and what they did to you was wrong. And now I want to talk to you about it. And so maybe

she would be willing to do that. But I think that that's something like you kind of have to run an experiment with and see how that plays out. Now, if you're not able to have conversations with her and she cannot tolerate those differences in experience, this might be where some boundaries have to come into play of like what is our relationship going to look like if you're not able to validate or understand that experience if we can't talk about it if you're still going to maintain this type of alliance with mom and dad and maybe they're not also validating it like the whole family gets kind of a shake up here and everyone's figuring out where they stand if this is now the thing that's being known or publicized to everyone.

one in the family. But none of this changes, like what you endured and how lonely that can be to realize that you were harmed at the hands of your family and now your family isn't even trying to repair. I remember in the episode that I recorded with Nate Possible Wade that's called trauma from a survivor's POV. He talks about this, like this moment where he came to his family and said, like, this is what's going on. This is what I'm upset about. He expected it to be this moment where everyone kind of, like, came clean and it made sense. And there was, like, they met his grief and pain with not only understanding and recognition, but also with change. And I think a lot of survivors and also adult children have this moment where they think, if I just clearly

explain everything to my sister, to my mom, they're going to be like, oh, my gosh, that makes so much sense that you feel that way. And it sounds like that's not how this moment went. And so I don't like to rule people out on one moment where they didn't respond 100% correctly to very emotional, highly triggering information. But if it becomes part of a pattern, if it's something that cannot be explored or even remotely discussed if the person is just like, I don't believe you, I don't care what happened to you, you know, mom and dad treat me well. And so I'm not going to talk about with you anymore, then that becomes more of a pattern and something that has to be dealt with sometimes individually and in your own relationships outside of the family,

which can be very, very difficult. So that's where I would start. I really appreciate you calling in. Thank you so much. All right, those are our two-caller questions for this week. I want to remind you that you can always call me at 866-225-5-4-66 and leave me a voicemail. And I will answer two-caller questions every Thursday on the show. You can also join the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home at www.callinghome.com. And please remember to leave us a comment on Spotify, subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review, that is what helps me keep this show free for all of you and

keep it growing. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you on Tuesday. Bye. and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Collingholm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Holmes' terms of service linked in the show notes below.