CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: My In-Laws Say They'll Help But They Never Do

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

In this Q&A episode, I’m addressing why some mothers copy their daughters' appearance and behavior and what to do when in-laws constantly offer help but never follow through. As part of my Little Epiphanies part of the show, I also discuss emotional immaturity and enmeshment in parent-child relationships as seen in the Netflix show "Ginny and Georgia.” 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 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, 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. I am going to be answering two caller questions today. But before we get into that, we are going to be. to do my favorite segment of the show, which is our little epiphany segment. And this is where I just talk about some different things that I have been noticing, reading, watching whatever it is.

First thing I want to talk about is last week I talked to you all about how I was trying to meditate and use the brick on my phone more. And I'm happy to report that I have now been doing a meditation every morning, I think, for seven days. So that's really exciting. And I have been breaking my phone at night and I already notice such a drastic change in my mental health when I am not trying to like open up my phone and see videos of catastrophic things happening in the world the second that I opened my eyes and I instead save that for later in my day during my like news intake time. I'm also noticing that the meditating is helping a lot. I've started wearing an aura ring. I think I mentioned that. And I've been doing the

meditations that come on that app and they're really great. So if you have one of those, that's a good way to kind of start the meditation journey. Something else that I've been thinking about. And I posted a video about this on my TikTok. So some of you may have seen this is the idea that a lot of emotionally immature adults and emotionally immature parents have never, had a truly emotionally connected relationship in their life. And this is what I mean by that. We know that there are a lot of adults who do not have close friendships where there is emotional exchange, right? We know that there are a lot of adults who are in very unfulfilling and distant marriages where there is no emotional connection. There are people

out there, emotionally immature people who truly do not know what it is like to be in a emotionally fulfilling relationship where there is like emotional material being passed back and forth and there is vulnerability. And I think these are the type of parents who are the most likely to be absolutely shocked when their kids become estranged or go no contact. Because for a lot of these adult children, they're saying, hey, my parent is emotionally immature. I don't feel connected to them. I don't feel like we really share that much or get along. But the parent is saying, like, well, this is like every other relationship that I'm in. I don't think that this feels strange. In fact, I feel close to you. And so this can be very shocking and jarring for the

parent who is being estranged from because they don't understand that their adult child has relationships with other people that actually feel a lot closer and more established than the relationship that they have with them. And so some of you might be able to relate to that. I've also been watching the show Ginny and Georgia on Netflix. And I saw that Stephanie, who is one of our group facilitators at Calling Home, post. this question online of like, is Georgia in this show a good mother? And if you haven't seen the show for context, Georgia had two children very young and she has a daughter named Ginny who is in high school. And I think Georgia is about like 31, 32. I think she had her daughter at 16. And she is very

meshed with her daughter, highly overprotective, but has also done a lot of things to keep her daughter safe to protect her from people that were trying to harm her. And she has been a very loving and overprotected mom. But I also would argue that Georgia is an extremely emotionally immature mom. And I want to share some of the ways that I see her emotional immaturity showing up. The first caveat I want to give, though, is that like a lot of emotionally immature people, Georgia is the product of her experiences. She's experienced a lot of trauma, a lot of relational trauma, and most of her life has been spent living in survival mode. But I think that these mother-daughter dynamics, the way that they are portrayed on TV, sometimes feel like we want

to have a relationship like this with our mothers. If any of you have watched, like Gilmore girls. This is another example of a very emmeshed relationship between typically a teen mom or a very young mother who now has a high school age child that she is like best friends with and completely enmeshed with. And I think that on the surface sometimes these relationships look like, oh, this is such a close, fun, like friendship relationship, but it can actually be quite damaging for the teenager or the young child that is in this dynamic. In the show, Ginny and Georgia, there is a major blurring of the roles between mother and daughter, right?

A lot of the time Ginny, the young girl, is doing a lot of the emotional labor for her mother. She's the one looking out for risk, pointing out when things are not going well. She can tell when her mom isn't doing well. It almost feels like sometimes they. share the same brain and that the daughter is trying to anticipate the needs of her mother. Ginny also spends a lot of time helping her mother with adult tasks and she is very immersed in her mother's adult world. I think that Georgia also struggles with impulsivity and emotion

regulation. She makes a lot of decisions to move around, get a different job, have a new partner, move to a new town based off of survival instincts and fear. And sometimes that fear is rooted in reality and they have had to escape dangerous situations. But a lot of times in her desire to protect her children, she's moving so quickly that she doesn't think about how it's going to impact them and sometimes puts them in even more dangerous situations in an attempt to protect them from the already dangerous situation that they're in. Georgia also really struggles to take accountability for anything or to acknowledge how her kids might feel about her decisions. And I think it's in like episode two or three of the most recent season. We see this dialogue

coming up between Georgia and her daughter Ginny where she's kind of making fun of her setting boundaries and keeps incorrectly using words like boundaries, gaslighting in this really like antagonistic and also passive aggressive way. And you can really tell that she does not have any tolerance for other people's feelings or perceptions of her actions. And she thinks that everything that she's doing is the right thing. Everyone should be okay with it. Everyone should be grateful for it. And she never needs to apologize or take accountability for her actions because she's always quote unquote doing what is best for her children. And even when Ginny is sort of like laying this out in her face and being like, mom, this is bothering me. I need space.

You know, at this point in the show, her mom is in jail for, you know, being accused of murder. and she's then on house arrest and she still cannot see how her actions, even if they were being done with good intentions or in the service of protecting her children, still have really destabilized their life and been very difficult for them to manage. Georgia and her daughter, Jenny, are also extremely emmeshed. And I talked about that blurring of roles earlier, but you'll see that Georgia cannot see that her daughter is a separate person. She very much is like, oh, we share the same brain. We have the same thoughts.

Any differing opinion or perspective is kind of seen as dissent or rejection of her as a person. And it is very hard for Georgia to see her daughter as a separate, unique human being. Georgia the mother is also very overprotective and controlling. And so while there are situations that she has been able to protect her children and keep them safe, and we can't argue that, she also tends to try to keep her kids in a bubble. She overprotects and also under protects in the same breath. Like she's putting them in a lot of danger and then swooping into save them. She also is overprotective in moments when maybe she doesn't need to be. And it seems like her radar for threat and potential for harm is a little bit off. And it's miscalculated. And she has trouble understanding

when and how to react. So if you want to see a mother-daughter dynamic where some of these signs of emotional immaturity are clear and on display or some emmeshment dynamics. This is a really great show on Netflix to check out and you can kind of watch it and be like, oh, that's what she was talking about. I can spot this here. All right. Let's go ahead and get into those caller questions. I am going to play the first voice mail now. Hi, Whitney. I just had a question for you regarding my relationship with my mother. Um, I've noticed. recently that she has begun to, what I interpret as copy, for example, like putting her hair up in a certain way that I've always worn it, she hasn't, using certain types of like hair ties that I have used, and she has never those types of things. And it really irritates me, and I guess I'm just kind of trying to see if that's a really irrational response or what that's kind of linked to.

This has happened before with my mom, where I felt like, especially when I was dating my husband and boyfriend, where it felt like she was trying to. kind of hang out with us and be a part of our relationship in some way. I think there's always been some triangulation between myself, my mom, and my dad. So I don't know if this is just a process that happens or what or if, yeah, I think the copying me feels very, um, inauthentic and it feels like it's infringing on my autonomy a little bit so I just wanted to get your take. Thanks so much and I love the podcast. Thank you so much for calling in and leaving that voicemail. For those of you that are watching this on video, I'm sure you noticed my reaction when

she said like this has happened before. I was waiting for you to say something like that because Typically, in these situations, I think it's not really about the hair ties or the hairstyle. It's more about a feeling a lot of the time that, like, I am not my own person or my mom is in competition with me. There's some jealousy or my mom sees us as one. and just based on on what you're telling me here, you know, I don't feel like I have enough information to really go too deep one way or the other, like with certainty, but I will tell you that I think it's important for any one that feels this way to get in touch with like, what is the part of you that is being activated when your mom tries to be like you? And so some

ways you can think of this is like, what age do I feel like when my mom copies me or when I notice that she's doing something that I have always done? Is there an age that I feel? Maybe it's you feel 12 or 13. Can you remember the first time that you felt like this? Can you remember the first time that this happened and you noticed it? and you had a reaction to it. And sometimes getting in touch with, like, that part of you can be super helpful. There's also the idea that we can get super fixated on what the person is doing. Like, she's wearing her hair a certain way.

She's copying this when we need to pay more attention to how it's making us feel and what feelings it's evoking. So do you feel a sense of? of confusion, of jealousy, of discomfort, what is the body sensation that's coming up for you in that moment when your mom is doing things like this? And can you think about what emotion you are feeling and labeling it in that moment? So when my mom does that, I feel irritated. I feel like I want to be my own person and she's not letting me and we have to do everything the same and I just want to be my own adult person. And are there other ways that I feel

like I'm not being allowed to be my own person? So for example, are there opinions that I feel like I'm not allowed to voice or hold. Are there ways that I'm being judged in the family? Areas where I feel like I'm stuck because I can't be myself or express myself in this way? Or is it more of a, this feels like we are competing with one another? You know, sometimes that happens with mothers and daughters where as mothers age, they want to continue to be in competition. even with their teenage or young adult daughters and being like, oh, I still want to feel like I am your age and I am your peer. And that can feel a little bit confusing and like disturbing as well. And so I really would encourage anyone that feels this dynamic with their parents

to try to get underneath the feeling that is being triggered in these moments. Now, There is a small chance that, like, you have a parent who doesn't really realize that they're doing this and could have an open conversation about it. And you could ask in a kind, compassionate way and bring up that you've noticed it. But I would say that that's, like, a really small percentage of people that are going to be able to handle that conversation. So it might be that that actually causes more grief than it's worth. And instead, you end up with someone who's highly defensive and feels attacked by that question and denies that they're doing it. But I would bet that the way that you're feeling in the present is likely tied to something

in the past. And sometimes if you can resolve that connection, it makes it a lot easier to tolerate the behavior in the future and to see it for what it is and to not create your own narrative about it, especially if you can feel secure in the sense of like, I am my own self. I am a separate adult person. I am not one with my parent. I can make my own decisions, have my own opinions, be my own self, even if they cannot see or identify the ways in which they're behaving. I hope that that helps. Thank you so much for calling in.

Let's go ahead and get to the second caller. The new Mitsubishi Outlander brings out another side of you. Your regular side listens to classical music. Your adventurous side rocks out with the dynamic sound Yamaha. Regular U owns a library card. Adventurous U owns the road with super all-wheel control. Regular side, alone time. Adventureous side journeys together with third.

The new outlander. Bring out your adventurous side. Mitsubishi Motors, drive your ambition. Hey, Whitney. I just had a quick question about, I guess, mother-in-laws and feelings towards them and how to deal. Basically, my issue is that my in-laws are the first people to say that they are willing to help or do anything to help. And when it comes to helping with my kids and when it really comes down to it, they aren't. They don't help.

They have very strict schedules in terms of availability of when they can help if they aren't out of town, traveling or doing whatever. It's caused a lot of resentment on my part and, like, built up animosity. honestly, it's just, like, terrifying knowing that, like, we have, I have another child on the way, so we're going to have three young children, and I just, like, the only people that we kind of have in town and close by to help us really don't help and aren't available. It's even more so annoying because they help with their daughter's kids all the time, who are older. But anyway, so yeah, I mean, I guess my question is kind of like,

how do you deal with the resentment of knowing that they won't really help, even though they say they will? And how do you deal with, like, just knowing that that's kind of our life, actually, because it causes issues, especially when we have to see them for dinners and stuff. It causes issues with me, just like me being personally angry because they are not as supportive as they act like they are. Anyway, thank you so much for your help. I love your podcast. All right.

Bye. Thank you so much for calling. And this is a great question. I think a lot of people are going to be able to relate to your voicemail. I've heard this from so many. people in my life and in our groups at calling home. The first thing I will say is it doesn't really matter what people say, right? If someone says, I'll help you anytime, but they never help you, what they're saying is really like a non-issue. And that is they're saying it just to say it kind of thing.

And so I think this is where acceptance has to come in for you, that every time you hear them say that, you recognize it from that perspective of like, I don't know why they're saying this because it's not rooted in any reality that we have experienced with them. They are not people that we can rely on for help. And sometimes that's where the resentment is coming up big time is that you are hearing from them. We want to help. We will be there to help. And then they're not helping. And so there's this gap in between, which is where your expectations lie. And it's totally fair for you to have had expectations that are in line with what they are telling you. And it makes sense why from the start, if someone's telling you, I will help you anytime with the

kids, you would believe that. But now you have some evidence to the contrary, right? And so I think that's a moment where you have to allow yourself to feel the disappointment, the overwhelm, the burden of that. And I think in an ideal world, everyone would have to have. have a lot of support and help from their in-laws or their parents with their children. That's sort of like that village that we get sold, right? But that's not the case for a lot of people, for a variety of reasons. There are grandparents who just don't want to help. There are grandparents who can't help because of their health or their work schedule,

their finances, distance. there are grandparents that you don't want to help you because they are not good influences on your children. And so I think this belief that we are going to have this intact, helpful family often gets shattered by reality, you know, when it kind of hits you in the face when you have children. And I think you mentioned you're expecting another child. And so that can be a deeply anxious time, I think, before anyone adds another child to their family of thinking about how are we going to do this? There's a lot of unknown. Every time you add a new child, you know, I think especially when you're going from like the zero to three range, each time

you add a kid, it is this new mastering of your new normal in your life of like, how are we going to figure this out and handle it. And when you start to then take inventory, of your life of like, wait, we really don't get any help from your parents or your in-laws, whoever it is. It can feel even more daunting and you might have this, these anxious, like, intrusive thoughts of like, well, think about how much easier in my life would be if they did help me. And this is where I kind of have that like tough truth of like the acceptance is my in-laws are saying that they will help us and they are not helping us. And so I have to release this belief that they are going to help us, that they should be, that I want

them to be, that they need to be, and live in the reality that my in-laws say they will help us and they don't help us. And so really all that matters there is that they don't help. And it's okay to have that feeling of like, I am disappointed that they help with their other grandchildren and not with mine. And this is a point where I would say that's something your partner needs to take up with their own parents. And that's something that if they wanted to address that and say, hey, I feel like you're always helping with so-and-so's kids, but not with ours. Can we work on that? Is there something going on here? How can we problem solve this? Then maybe they can have that type of discussion with their parents.

But I think that that's something that your partner has to handle. So there's a couple of things here then. It's one, accepting the reality and acknowledging it and knowing that actions speak louder than words in these situations. Two, allowing your partner to address this with their parents, if that's the right approach for you all and if that's something they can and want to do. acknowledging that you are allowed to feel disappointed and upset and hurt, that your family is not operating in this ideal way that you wanted it to when you had children, acknowledging that

you might be feeling overwhelmed and a little bit like you need extra support just because of the season of life that you're in and that you will figure this out when you have the next child and you and your partner kind of orient yourselves to that change in your family like you always have. And then thinking about how can we get more support if that's what we feel like we need. If these grandparents are not available to support us in the way that we feel that we need support, then we might need to work with other families in the neighborhood, find other family members, hire help, like the paid village is sometimes even better than the one that you have. There are all these different things that you need to do or that you can do, I'm sorry,

to try to split up the labor and lighten the load a little bit. Now, that being said, I think at the crux of all of this is this feeling of being like, you told me that you're going to help and you act as if you are so helpful. but you're not actually helping me at all. And so I could see how then when you spend time with these people, that is how it starts to feel like, oh, I don't like how this feels. I feel upset and I feel angry and it makes it feel awkward. And so I think that releasing of the expectation and having that acceptance can really help with some of those feelings. Because then when they say things like, oh, we would love to help, but they don't, you can have this

inner knowing and almost even like play a game with it and laugh about it in your head and be like, oh, there they go again, offering help and trying to like come across as nice and giving and helpful even though that's not what they're actually doing, you know, and you can know that for yourself, even if they never stop doing that. It's a tough position to be in. I see it a lot and I really appreciate you calling in. As a reminder, you can always call the show and leave me a voicemail. I pick two caller questions to answer every week. I also wanted to let you know, I put up a poll on the calling home Instagram at calling home.co to ask what we should focus on next month in the family cycle breakers Club, and the standout winner was narcissistic families. So for the month of July, I am going to be

focusing on narcissistic family structures, families that have a narcissist within them, and we'll be talking about that in our Wednesday groups every week for the month of July. So if you're not a member yet of the Family Cycle Briggers Club, and that is a topic that interests you, we would love to have you. You get new content delivered to your inbox every Monday. That's a new worksheet, article, video, and script. And you also get access to our entire content library. Thank you so much for listening today. And I hope to see you inside of a group soon. You can join the family cycle breakers club at calling home.com. Thanks for listening or watching. Please don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, leave a comment.

it really helps keep this podcast going. Bye. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Collin Colm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this,

please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below. Thank you.