CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: My Dad Kicked Me Out At 16, Now He Wants To Have Lunch

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

Hi! In this Q&A episode, I am talking about my three little epiphanies this week: why it's good to be a little bit delusional, a new podcast from NPR about conspiracy theories, and accepting imperfection in our family relationships. We also have two caller questions: Caller 1 is trying to set boundaries with her in-laws and does not want them to drink around her child. Caller 2 is unsure if she should re-connect with her dad. He kicked her out of the house at 16 and wants to have lunch. Watch me on Tamron Hall: https://www.hulu.com/watch/f9b07570-9030-4979-8700-7a9bd317326b Join The Family Cyclebreakers Club: www.callinghome.co/join 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome back to the Calling On podcast. I'm your host Whitney Goodman. Today we have a Q&A episode and I have two great caller questions that I think you're going to learn a lot from. But first I want to dive into my three little epiphanies for the week, which are just like three things that I've noticed. I've learned that I really want to tell you about. I was interviewed for a podcast this week. It's going to come out later, but it was about my rejections. story and failures that I've gone through and toxic positivity. And she asked me, you know, what my relationship was with rejection and kind of how I feel about rejection. And I think that it's good to like fail a little bit every single day. I feel like I fail a little bit every single

day. I feel really okay with being rejected. And something that I've been thinking about is, you know, how it's good for all of us to have a little bit of a healthy level of delusion sometimes, especially when it comes to business or pursuing a goal. And something that I did recently was I went on Tamron Hall show in New York. And this was the first time of my life that I have been like flown out and gone on a live TV show. And I've never done this. You know, obviously, spoken in front of crowds, but I've never done like daytime TV. I didn't know what they were going to ask me. I didn't know who else was going to be there, but I was like, let's do it. This sounds amazing. I feel like I have enough of the knowledge and the credibility to take this risk and

try something new. And it was such a cool experience. And you can go and watch that episode of Tamron Hall. It's available for streaming on Hulu. I'll put it in the show notes, but it was a really cool experience and I was just thinking about how I had to feel like maybe I can pull this off, I don't know, and be able to try it. And it was really cool to be able to get the experience and practice and hopefully be able to get to do it again because it was so cool. So always try to have a healthy level of like, huh, maybe I could do this. And I think that that can really help you mentally with any goals that you're trying to achieve. There's a new podcast that I came across that I haven't listened to yet, but I am definitely going to, and it's from

NPR, and it is called Alternate Realities, and it's on the Embedded podcast, and it is about producer Zach Mack and his dad who made a bet for $10,000. It was a last-dish attempt to bring their family back together after Zach's dad's obsession with conspiracy theories had pushed them into two different realities. But is it possible to change someone's mind, and what will happen to Zach's family if he can't. I'm super excited to listen to this, and I would love to hear for many of you that have experienced this in your daily life where you feel like the news or media or a social media algorithm has had the power to separate you from your family to such a degree that it feels like you are living in different realities. This is a story

that I am hearing more and more from people, and I am really excited to listen to this podcast. I will also link that because I think it's going to be fascinating and probably something that some of you have experienced as well. The third thing I wanted to talk about is something that I have been talking about a lot with other clients and friends and family members is about accepting imperfection in our family relationships. And this message is not for anyone that is in an abusive relationship with family. it is not for anyone that is estranged and that is tried really hard.

This is for the people that are feeling like I just am unhappy with like a couple of little things in my family relationships and I'm going through a transition period with my family. And I think that there are many moments in our lives as we age, as our parents age, as our siblings, get married, get different jobs, move away where we really. realize that maybe we don't have as much in common with certain family members or we wish that they shared the same interests as us. And these can be moments of grief. And so I want to challenge you that if you are someone in this position to think about what are two or three things that I can connect with this person over? Is there a way that I can have a relationship with this family

member that is maybe a little bit distant or only includes this one thing and isn't as close or as connected as maybe I wanted or I expected, but still allows me to maintain a relationship with them that is somewhat satisfying for both of us. And I think that the more that we're able to kind of tolerate that our family relationships often cannot check off every box for us and they can't be everything and that those people are going to have a lot of deficits that we wish they didn't have. Sometimes the easier it is to accept where those relationships are at at this point in time and allow them to grow and change as we grow and change. All right, now let's go ahead and get into those caller questions. I will

play the first voicemail for you now. Hi, Whitney. Thank you for doing coming home. Breaking Cycles is a tough subject, and I appreciate you talking about it for us people who are brave enough to do it or trying to do it. I have a difficult situation. I'm personally estranged from my mom and my dad. My mom is emotionally immature, manipulative guilt trips. I don't think she's a bad person, but she can't respect boundaries, so I've taken some space from her in the last year. over the holidays I've had a difficult situation with my in-laws and so it's turned to question if I'm the problem but I don't think I am

completely I'm sober I'm almost two years sober my in-laws or my family in-law has had alcoholism run through the family from generation to generation my husband's dad

was an alcoholic he passed since then and his sister now is an alcoholic and she also has displays passive aggressive behaviors put downs to try to help with her self-esteem and it's I think it's gone too far now with having a two-year-old I don't want him to think this is normal or a good example of behavior so I try to put boundaries around no drinking around him whether it be elsewhere or at all our house. It didn't go well. It was kind of like a my house, my rules type of speech from my

mother-in-law who enables her daughter, who's very worried about her mental health. And it kind of unraveled, became very disrespectful, became to be a personal attack to me. And I'm just not sure how to navigate this all. I want to speak to my sister-in-law directly. So I wrote to her, and she's feeling a little confused by all this and I understand but I don't because then it makes me feel like she doesn't see her behavior as problematic and I'd like your advice to help me approach this subject how can I talk about her alcoholism and her behavior and how can we move forward without destroying a family I'm hoping you have some tips thank you for listening Thank you so much for calling in with this question. I know that it can be really difficult to be

estranged from your own parents and then be having issues with your in-laws. And I actually think it's healthy to step back and ask yourself, okay, could I be the problem in this situation? Is there something that I could be doing better or be doing differently? Like we're, none of us are immune from that type of questioning, right? And it's healthy that you're doing that. And it lets me know that you have some level of self-awareness where you're trying to evaluate what is going on in your relationships. But I think it's also important to separate whatever happened with your parents from what is happening with your in-laws and likely look at them as two separate and different situations. And so that's what I'm going to do here. What I'm hearing is that,

with your in-laws, there is now this issue of, I do not want there to be alcohol around my child, especially in a family where there is a history of alcoholism and there's active alcoholism happening right now. And it seems like not everyone in the family really understands that. And so when I take a step back and I look at this from the lens of I cannot control how other people see their drinking and the relationship that they want to have with drinking in their life. And maybe you don't even want to take on the task of trying to help these people conquer this issue in their life. If you do, great. But I think that that's separate from the boundaries that you're going to set and the way that you're going to interact with this issue

when it comes to your child. You have every right to protect your child from addiction, alcoholism from the behaviors that result from it. There is absolutely nothing that says that you have to expose your kids to this just because they are family. And I actually think that it's really a sign of good intuition as a parent that you are thinking like, oh, this is not really something that I want to expose my child to and have them be around. And let's not kid ourselves, right?

Like addiction and alcoholism can absolutely put your child in. in danger. It can cause problems. There's a lot that can go wrong from exposing your child to that. And so if you have decided, hopefully along with your partner, that this is not something that we want for our child, then you need to approach this from the lens of what can I control. And so what you can control is where you go, how long you stay, and what you are around. You cannot control other people's drinking. And so the boundary might have. have to be that if you come to my home, you cannot drink in my home. If you drink in my home, I'm going to have to tell you to leave. I do not want anyone drinking around my child. If I bring

my children to your house and you decide to drink, you can keep drinking, but I am going to remove my children from the home and we're going to leave and go somewhere else. You may also choose to only do events that drinking isn't involved in. So maybe if this person is not someone that drinks at breakfast or lunch, that's when you decide to have the activities that you have because you are not going to be around drinking. And so it's important to say if this person is going to continue drinking and I cannot make them stop, what can I do? And then, of course, if that continues to escalate to the point where every time you go over there, they still drink and you have to leave or they yell at you and they get upset when you tell them that

you're going to leave because they're drinking, then you might have to institute more extreme boundaries. And this is often where people get to the point where they say, I'm just not going to be around this person anymore because they will not stop drinking around my kids. And our needs are incompatible. Their needs are to drink and my needs are to keep my children away from drinking. And so if they cannot not drink around my children, then it looks like our needs in this relationship are incompatible, right? And obviously that's a very like cut and dry and like sterile way of looking at this and there's way more emotions and complications involved. If anybody in a situation like this, I want you to stop focusing on how can I get them to stop drinking and how can I accept that

they're going to continue drinking and so how am I going to interact with that? And that might mean that you don't have a relationship with them or it might mean that, hey, the kids only see them for breakfast or at activities where there's no alcohol. We only FaceTime. We speak on the phone. I have to remove my children whenever there's drinking involved. They can't be around them without me. There are a lot of different layers of protection that you can put in place depending on the situation. And if in the process of this, that family member decides that they would like to stop drinking, then that's their choice and they can do that. And you can help them with that if you would like to and if they are looking for help from you. But you do not need to continue

putting your children in harm's way or exposing them to things that you do not want to expose them to because this other person will not stop drinking. And often if you are waiting for them to stop doing this, you're just going to continue being put in situations that you do not like and that you do not want to be in. Thank you so much for calling. in and asking that question. I really appreciate it. Let's go ahead and get to the second caller. Whitney, I've listened for a long time but never submitted a voicemail until now. And I'm just wondering what the process would look like of me reconnecting with my estranged father for a little backstory. My parents are divorced. And a week before my 17th birthday, my father, my father

kicked me out of his home and then I'm now 26 and have not spoken to him since then. He has reached out twice via Instagram DM just saying like, hey, next time you're in our hometown, let's get dinner. But no sort of apology saying, hey, like what I did when you were 16, 17 wasn't okay and I'm sorry for that. And I don't think he will ever do that, but that is sort of what I would need to, reconnect. I don't really know why now, after all these years, I'm thinking about it for the rest of my family, including his mother and twin brother, also are not in touch with him because they

chose his kids, I guess, basically over him when I got kicked out of the house. It's very complicated. I don't even know if it's possible, but it's something that I've been thinking about, so I figured I would ask you. Okay. Thank you so much for all your help. Have a good one. Bye-bye. Thank you so much for your question and for calling in this week. I think it makes a lot of sense why you're struggling with this decision. And I apologize, I didn't catch exactly how old you are, but it sounds like some time has passed some years since your dad no longer allowed you to live in the house and he's maybe reached out a couple of times to meet up. When there has been no apologies and no accounting,

you are kind of at a crossroads in a relationship with a parent. And I think that there are some people that are able to say, okay, your behavior has changed enough that even though I didn't hear that apology or that accountability, I'm going to try to have a relationship with you moving forward. And there are some people that say, like this caller, like, I don't really know if I can have a relationship with you if you don't realize that what you did was wrong and that you hurt me. don't know that I can feel safe around you or that I can trust you with anything after that. Because if you don't think that that was wrong and you're not going to apologize or be accountable for it, then what's going to happen moving forward in this relationship?

And this caller is saying, I don't think he will ever do that, but I think that's what I need to reconnect. And so that's the piece that you have to listen to. If you're telling yourself, that's what I need to reconnect. and you know that, then you have a couple of options. You can relay this to your dad and say, you know, this happened when I was 16. I would love to have a relationship with you moving forward, but this is what I need from you in order to make that happen and see how he responds if you're willing to take that

risk and you feel like you can handle whatever happens from that interaction. You can say he hasn't apologized and he hasn't taken accountability, so I'm not going to reconnect and I'm not going to reach out until he does because you feel like he should know that what he did to you at 16 was wrong. You could choose to have some type of intermediary like a therapist where you say, I'm willing to have a conversation with you, but first I want to go here and have this conversation and tell you how I'm feeling. You could decide. to meet up with your father and get lunch or coffee and see what they have to say and kind of assess where they're at at this point in their life. Do they seem like they've done any reflecting or

changing or growing? And once you have that information, you can make a different choice. I think the most important thing here with whatever choice that you make is that it comes from a place of knowing that you are an adult, you get to decide what next step you make, how these interactions go, and what kind of relationship you want to have with this person. You can set the tone for that relationship. But they also have to decide how much they can give you and how much they're willing to give you. And sometimes they're not capable of giving you what you want.

And I have a free checklist for adults who are evaluating their relationship with their parents that are in this position that I will link in the show notes because I think that that could be really helpful for any of you that are in this position. And it's really just a checklist, honestly, that can be applied to any relationship, but you can go through it and check off some of the positive nor negative things that exist in this relationship and evaluate where you're at and what you can handle. There's also the reality that you can pursue reconnection with a parent on a very surface level, entry level, test the water, see what it's like and then make a decision, especially if you haven't had contact with them in a long time and always know that you can try something and you can change your mind. It does not have to be permanent. And I think that that's really important to remember to empower yourself with that agency and that ability to decide what. happens next in the relationship and just to make sure that you have the support and the infrastructure in your life if things do go wrong and you do feel hurt and you feel like you really need the support because it didn't go the way that you expected. Thank you so much for those caller questions and thank you so much everybody for listening. Just a reminder that you can join the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. That is our membership community for anyone

that's listening to this podcast and like, oh, I just want to take it to the next level or I want to meet other people like me that are working on these issues. We have groups every month for adult children of emotionally immature parents, estranged adult children, daughters with difficult mothers. We have a general family dysfunction group. And we also have our monthly topic focus group, which this month we are talking about how mental health issues and mental illness impact the family and how you can be a better support person to the people in your life that are struggling. So I hope to see you inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. If you like this podcast, you will love what we are doing at Calling Home inside our membership community. And I will

link that in the show notes. Thank you all so much again for listening. And I will see you on Tuesday for an exciting interview episode. Thanks, everyone. 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 Collingholm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below. Oh, no.