CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: Intent vs. Impact and Forget Them Kids

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

In this Q&A episode, I explore a quote from the book Forget Them Kids authored by an estranged parent that perfectly illustrates how many parents use "good intentions" to avoid accountability. I then answer listener questions about reconciling family political differences and navigating coming out to unsupportive parents for a second time as an independent adult. 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 [phone] 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

Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. Hello and welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. Thank you so much for bearing with me last week before I was sick. I am excited to be back recording today with a Q&A episode and we will get to those call our questions in a second. But it's your lucky. Jay, about two seconds before I got on to record this, I discovered a new book written by an estranged parent. And I want to say, full disclosure, I have not finished the book. I just

started it, but I read something in the introduction that I want to talk about today for this little epiphanies segment. And it just kind of like cracked something open in me about how maybe a lot of parents are seeing this issue. So I want to read this to you. The name of the book is Forget Them Kids, challenging the one-sided narrative of the estrangement epidemic and the biased therapy trends that fuel it. Here it is by Vivian King PhD. It's my understanding that she does have a PhD, but it is in something unrelated. And she is an estranged parent. I have not found any evidence that she has a PhD in psychology or something related to psychology or is practiced as a therapist. And in the introduction of the book, she says something

really, really interesting that I think is a view into the mindset of a lot of estranged parents, or those of you adults who are estranged from parent that are trying to kind of understand the mindset there. And that is, but what even is abuse? Today, words like abuse, toxic, and neglect are thrown around so casually that they have lost much of their original meaning. The legal definition of abuse refers to actions that intentionally cause harm or injury to another person. The key word is intentional. And the word intentional is italicized, obviously, for emphasis. And this is making so much sense to me now because yes, the author is correct that under the law, at least in the state of Florida, where I live,

intentionality is a huge component of a child abuse conviction, which is kind of crazy if you don't know that, especially if you are someone who understands emotional neglect, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, and other forms of child abuse other than intentionally trying to harm your child. And we can see some reasons why this might exist under the law that, of course, accidents happen and kids get hurt. And the system has certainly been weaponized against certain people. I know of cases where children were removed from the home under, like, the guys are protecting them from abuse when there wasn't even any abuse going on in the home and there was an accident. There have been cases like that over the years. But using this as a reason why adults

cannot be feeling hurt or upset or harmed by what their parents did is very interesting here. And there's a reason behind it, right? Because if you are a parent that can say, I did everything in my power to give my children a good life. My intentions were always good. And you are using this logic that something can only be harmful and can only be abusive if it was intentional, then you will never be harmful and you will never be abusive. And everything that your children are discussing with you is really being done in this like flippant, dramatic way. and it certainly can't be real. And so it must be that they are being brainwashed into thinking that you had bad intentions

and that you did something wrong. And I actually think that a lot of abusive and neglectful parents have very good intentions. Some people are abusive and neglectful because they don't have resources or education or knowledge or support. Not every neglectful and abusive parent is like evil at their core. Some of them have no idea what the impact of their actions are going to be. But yes, I will say this, intentionality matters. I don't think that we can take that out of the conversation about adult children and their parents and estrangement.

I am not one of those people that will say point blank, like, intention. never matters, only impact matters. Because in relationships, intent does matter. And knowing that someone has your best interest at heart and is trying often feels different and gets interpreted differently than thinking that they wanted to hurt you and that they were being like devious and intentional about it. That's different. But that being said, we have to hold them at different weights when we're having these conversations and we cannot be judged solely on our intent. And while I know that that feels so bad and shame-inducing when someone accuses you of doing something bad when all you did was have good intentions, it sucks. It feels terrible. And I think that shame is what

stops a lot of parents from repairing and from having any level of accountability. because they don't want to be seen as bad as someone who would try to hurt their child. No one wants to be seen in that way. Like, I don't want to be seen like that. And I would be hurt if my child assumed that I was intentionally trying to harm them. But I know that I could do it unintentionally. And we have all of those great examples that you hear thrown around, right? Like, I can step on someone's foot and say, oh my gosh, I'm sorry.

see you there, but I still stepped on their foot and I still hurt them. I can get in a car accident and it be an accident. I didn't mean to hit your car, but I'm still going to be held accountable for doing that. If I rearend someone, even if I didn't mean to, it's still my fault using this. This is a real life example that happened to me a year ago and I didn't mean to. In fact, I thought another car caused me to have to slam on my brakes and then hit this car. But it doesn't matter. I still had to be held accountable for that because it was still my fault. My car was the one that hit their car. And so I think we have to get really comfortable in separating our actions from our worth and how we see ourselves as people. You can hurt someone,

and that doesn't mean that you're bad or evil. And I wanted to give you guys a little bit of the data on this because I think what we really have to remember, remember is that some of this is not necessarily an opinion. It's been well documented for decades that unintentional acts can still cause harm. Right. So the adverse childhood experiences study that many of you are familiar with, we talked about childhood trauma last month at calling home. And in this study, they found that adverse experiences like emotional neglect, exposure to substance, use, or family instability, whether intentional or not, are strongly linked to depression, chronic illness, addiction, and early death.

In the body keeps the score, Bessel van der Kolk talks about how chronic emotional misattunement invalidation and a lack of safety in childhood, even without physical abuse, can result in long-term nervous system dysregulation, poor self-worth, and difficulties in adult relationships. Then we have attachment theory that is really well researched and documented. It's a very old theory that children raised by caregivers who are emotionally inconsistent or unavailable, often develop insecure or disorganized attachment styles, struggle to regulate their emotions and have trouble trusting others, even when the caregiver had no harmful intent. And then the stillface experiment that was done in the 70s. Infants showed visible distress, withdrawal,

and efforts to reconnect when a caregiver became emotionally unresponsive, even briefly, demonstrating how essential attunement is to early development. And also, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network reports that neglect, especially emotional neglect, is one of the most damaging forms of childhood trauma and often goes unrecognized because it lacks overt abuse or malicious intent. And so I think we really have to work on this part of the argument that yes, when we're having healing conversations, when we're having discussions about boundaries and current behavior, we can talk about intent. And we can talk about how you're not a bad person and you're not trying to hurt someone and you're not doing this because you want to be

abusive and you're not bad and you can still hurt someone even if you didn't have bad intentions. I am going to keep reading that book because I have read every single book by a strange parents that are on the market. I find them very interesting and I think that it gives a good insight into how people are feeling about this. And I think that the titles are super interesting. forget them kids, done with the crying is another one. There's a lot of books by estranged parents out there, which is so fascinating to me that people feel like this is a very one-sided argument when I think actually, you know, when I was pitching my book, the majority of books out there about estrangement are written from the parents' perspective. Actually, I think it's like

all of them. There isn't really a book other than adult children of emotionally immature parents, which isn't specifically about estrangement that is written specifically for adult kids and from that perspective, which is why I am writing this book and I am especially interested in tackling this as a clinician who is a parent and also someone who is not estranged from their parents and is not writing about it from my personal perspective, but more based on my clinical knowledge and my experience with this topic. So before we get into those caller questions, I want to tell you a little bit about what we're doing at Calling Home this month. So every Monday of the month, we send out a article, script, a video, and a worksheet to the members of the Family Cycle Workers Club,

which is our membership community at Calling Home. And each month we focus on a new topic. And this month, we are talking about narcissistic family systems. So these are family systems. So these are family systems that are basically huddled around the narcissist. And I am going to be helping you work through why these types of family systems exist, why they're damaging, and how you can either survive within them or break out of them, and ensure that your new family that your building does not also take on these same dynamics. So each Monday, this is going to start next Monday on July 7th, if you're listening to this episode on the day that it comes out on the third, you will get those resources. And then our weekly groups, our Overthinkers Anonymous group,

is going to be about narcissistic family systems on Wednesdays at 12 p.m. Eastern time, 9 a.m. Pacific time with me. And so each week, you can come dive deeper into the content, listen to other people's stories, ask me questions, and we have a really great community. it's usually about 20 to 35 people in each group. So if you want to share, great. If you just want to be there to listen, amazing. You can attend as many groups as you're able to. I always bring discussion questions to those groups to help get the conversation started. And they are really interesting, really supportive. And I would come even just like for the discussion questions because those are questions that you can use in your own therapy for your journaling, et cetera. And then of course,

with your membership, you get unlimited access to all of our other groups. So, adult daughters with difficult mothers, estranged adult child's group, adult children of emotionally immature parents, our family estrangement group, and those are all scheduled like throughout the week and the month. So to join this month and get access to all of that amazing information, you can visit Callinghome.com and join the Family Cycle Breakers Club. All right, let's go ahead and get to those two caller questions. Hi, Whitney. My name is Samantha. I've really been enjoying the podcast. and unfortunately it resonates all too well.

My question was around feeling like I don't even know who my family is and just feeling almost like my whole childhood was like kind of a lie. Right now, I am completely 100% diametrically opposed to some of their viewpoints as it concerns to kind of what is happening in the U.S. and, you know, that includes saying very, very terrible things about multiple marginalized groups and just a lot of stuff that I feel like it's, like, very hateful and not kind. And so I've really been struggling with just feeling like, you know, like, do I even know who my family is? Like, are these the people that raise me to be kind and generous and good to others?

I just feel like I'm kind of on an island and honestly just feeling like my childhood was just kind of like fake or you know wondering if I really interpreted kind of my upbringing you know accurately I just feel like a lot of you know mental I would say frustration in terms of kind of where I'm at with them

I am currently no contact so sorry I'm rambling but I just wanted to kind of understand from your point of view like how do we reconcile, you know, how different we are from our families and, you know, kind of processing that, you know, maybe, you know, how we felt about our upbringing is maybe not really what the reality was. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for calling in and leaving a voicemail. I first want to validate that like this is a normal experience to kind of see what you're seeing now, look back, try to reconcile and in figuring out like, gosh, did I not

see this. And I think that might be some of what your brain is trying to do is be like, oh, did I miss all of this risk or these red flags or how did I not see it? That can be a way that we make sense of situations, make sense of the world. And it's kind of like you trying to have some control. People do this whenever something bad has happened to them. They might go back and replay things, how they could have handled it differently, what they should have done instead, signs that they missed out on it. But sometimes that stuff isn't there or you didn't miss it. And I think that it's really unfair to make your child version of yourself or teenage or young adult, like responsible for having noticed all of these things about the adults around you,

especially because they may have not been acting that way at the time. Because you were a child, because their beliefs have changed. Like, I think we've certainly seen over time lately the intensification and radicalization of fringe groups and of certain types of hate speech, blaming of marginalized communities, of minorities. Like, this has absolutely intensified. And I think some of that has to do with the internet and how aware we are of it and how easy it is to share some of these beliefs and get them validated online in ways that people

were not able to do in the past. And so it's very possible that the people in your family have always had those beliefs and are now feeling more comfortable sharing them or that they didn't have those extreme of beliefs and now they have changed over time. And so this to me is one of those both and things that I'm not sure how. much value it brings you to go back and say, maybe my childhood was all a lie. Maybe it was all bad. Maybe everything I remember wasn't really accurate because there's no way of knowing that and it's not fair to do that to yourself. You're allowed to have good memories of people. You're allowed to have good experiences with them even if it is bad now, right? I think this is all about

figuring out what is going to be the best for you. Now, it sounds like you have a lot of disagreement around how your family members see the world, their cruelty, the policies they support, et cetera. And there are big gaps between, you know, how you feel and how they feel about things. And so this might be that today in your relationship, there's a lot of incompatibility. It's very difficult for you to have a relationship. Maybe you don't have a lot in common or you are upset or even disgusted by some of the things that they believe and they say. And so that to me is really at the heart of the work that you can and will do here is figuring out what does my relationship look like with them today and what can I control? what do I want to tolerate?

What do I want to experience within this relationship? Because this whole like going back and trying to figure out, what did I miss? When did they become like this? Have they always been this way? And I just didn't notice it might not be very productive for you with this type of material that we're talking about in the relationship. I think that puts a lot of blame on you as being the one that needs. to have known what was going on and the one that should have recognized it.

And it also doesn't have a lot of utility in the day to day. And so that being said, it is very difficult to be so different from your family. It's very difficult to feel ostracized and to feel like freaked out and scared about their beliefs and the things that they think and to wonder like, how did I come from these people, how are we so different? Especially when you find those beliefs to be harmful and bad for the world. And so some of it, I think, is just the adjustment to the fact that, like, you are so different from your family. And that's really a tough place to be in. And it's a hard thing to work through. Thank you again for calling in. I really appreciate it. All right. Let's go

ahead and play that second voicemail. Reading, playing, learning. Stealth Pellist lenses do more than just correct your child's vision. They slow down the progression of myopia. So your child can continue to discover all the world has to offer through their own eyes. Light the path to a brighter future with stellar lenses for myopia control. Learn more at SLR.com. And ask your family eye care professional for SLR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. Hi, my name of the pod.

My question is about coming out a second time to unsupportive parents. integrating my true self into a family that cares more about roles and appearances rather than authentic relationships. Basically, I came out as gay when I was 17 and my parents were very hostile about this. They're not necessarily

religious, but I think this negative reaction came from a combination of fear, like fear for me and how my life was going to show, but more of like a loss of control of me and also how this would look to others outside of our family. Basically, after a period, or fighting with my parents, I stopped bringing it up because I couldn't take the verbal abuse any longer. Since then, neither of us have brought it up and we all pretend that I don't have

a sexuality slash just avoid the topic altogether. I'm now 24 with a serious partner of several years and I'm starting to feel ready to address this again now that I'm more financially independent and I live in another state. I'm looking for advice because this feels a little different than coming out for the first time because they do already know on some level. I guess My question is, how do you think I could go about bringing this up for a second time, particularly given the fact that they're so invested in ignoring this part of my life and maintaining a surface level, quote, normal relationship with me? Also, at what point do you think I might want to consider taking space in them

and how would I start to do that in a family that is controlling an appearance focus? I would be really sad if the outcome of this confrontation is a strange chance because there are aspects of my family that I do, you know, really enjoy. However, at the same time, obviously, my sexuality and relationships are non-negotiable parts of my life, and I'm not sure how much patience I have left in me. Yeah, that's my question. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for calling. And I think this is a really interesting situation because, like you said, there are parts of your family that you enjoy and that you want to maintain.

And I would love if you're able to do that. And I think that you're right, you took the words right out of my mouth that, like, your sexuality and who your personality and who you're partnered with and your relationships are a big part of your identity. And it probably wouldn't seem feasible to most people. Personally, it wouldn't seem feasible to me to continue a relationship with someone that didn't see my partner like them or want to hear about that part of my life. That would be really challenging. And so it seems like your parents have made it pretty clear that like there are parts of this that are difficult for them to handle. And maybe just, it sounds like scary for them because they are thinking they're going to be

judged or criticized or there's like shame coming up. And I don't think that any of that is yours to take on. It's more just my personal analysis of what they might be feeling. So that being said, I think there's a couple of ways that you can handle this, right? You can have a conversation with them individually and bring it up again. And you can call out the fact that the first time that you had this conversation, it didn't go well or that it was disappointing for you. You can also validate for them that that may have been a hard conversation to have with you when you were younger. But now that you're an adult and you love them and you want to have a close relationship with them, this is a part of your life that you want to share. I think coming at this from the angle of positive intent makes it a lot. more likely that it's going to go well. So saying to your parents, I'm saying this to you because I want us to have a close relationship because I love and care about you. I want to share my life with you. I want us to continue having a relationship. Sometimes that can put people in a more receptive

place than starting with like, I know you're not going to accept me. You acted like this when I was 17 and I'm telling you this, but I expect you to be hateful and horrible. You know, then people really do get on the defensive. Now, that being said, I think it's also important that you prepare yourself for a potential of outcomes here, that they could act a little bit strange, defensive, critical. They could mimic some of the behavior that they had the first time. It's possible that one of your parents will have a different reaction than the other. And working through that, whether that's with a friend and a friend.

a journal, with your therapist, just like having some awareness and not maybe living in this fully idealistic space that everything is going to go perfect and then feeling that disappointment because that would not be good. Right. Now, another option is that because you mentioned a partner, that is something that you could do is that because you know that you've already shared this with your parents and they know you could just arrange for the them to meet the person that you're in a relationship with. And I think sometimes acting like this is normal, like you already know this information and I'm expecting you to be receptive of it can be good, especially if there is some level of trust with your parents that you feel like they're not

going to be abusive or overly cruel or critical. I think also having that relationship support can be helpful. Sometimes people actually are a little bit better in front of other people because there's more of that threat of like shame or rejection of them showing that side of themselves in front of a stranger. And so sometimes that can be like a safety thing that you put in place. But I know that's not true for everyone. I think the other thing you could do is try to have like a private conversation with them, with a therapist. You could write to them first. If that feels safer, you could do it over the phone or like the first thing I said of doing it in person. You could tell them that you have a partner or that you're in a relationship and start telling

them about that person. Because I think what's happening here is that they already know this. Everyone is just pretending not to know. And so the reality is that there is, is that there is is some foundation built there of information that you're not going into this, telling them all of this for the first time. Them being like willfully ignorant or like obtuse about this is a choice. It's not that they don't know. And so you could choose to disclose it again to them and kind of repeat this information or you could build on the information that's already known.

And that being said, I think it's really important that you, have a lot of support and a foundation for yourself and good coping skills before you engage in this because it's obviously going to be very overwhelming and very disappointing if this doesn't go well, right? And you have said that you want to protect this relationship. But I think that there's a very big difference between having a relationship with someone where you can only show a little bit of yourself and having a full relationship. with them. And maybe that's something that you also propose to them and tell them is that I want to have more than a surface level relationship with you. I want to be able to share

my life with you. And if you can't accept this part or talk about it, our relationship is going to have to be pretty limited. And that might be their choice and that would be really hurtful and sad and a huge bummer. But I think it is wise to to be prepared for all of that, especially because it sounds like you don't want estrangement to happen and you want to be able to have a relationship with them. Thank you so much for calling in. I hope that that was helpful for you. As a reminder, you can always call the show and leave me a voicemail. I answer two questions every week on Thursdays, and you can ask me anything about your dysfunctional family dynamics or your family relationships. And this month at Calling Home

Inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club, we are talking about narcissistic family systems. We had so many new members just joined. So I'm really excited to get to know some of you in our groups this month. I will be facilitating that group every Wednesday. And then I also run the estranged adult child group and the adult children of emotionally immature parents group. We also have groups for adult daughters with difficult mothers and a family estrangement group. And with your membership, you get access to our entire content library. We have over 50 different topics. You can go to callinghome.com and search for whatever topic you're looking for and all of those resources will show up. To join the family cyclebreakers club, visit callinghome.com. And join. All you have to do

is pay one time and that covers you for either six months or a year of membership. I hope to see some of you soon. Thank you again so much for listening. As always, please leave us a review or subscribe and leave a comment. That is what helps keep this podcast going. And I am so grateful for every comment and review that we receive. Thank you again and have a great rest of your day. 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 Collin-Colm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Collingholm's

terms of service linked in the show notes below. Thank you.