CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: My Sibling Keeps Sharing Info With My Estranged Parent

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Today, we have two caller questions. I also talk about my three little epiphanies for the week: The most ineffective way to resume contact with someone after estrangement is by demanding a relationship with them. For some adults, their parents are their biggest haters. There’s a big difference between not wanting kids and feeling like you can’t have them because of your own childhood wounds. 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

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Hey, everyone and welcome back to the calling home podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Goodman. Today we have a Q&A episode with two callers. But first, as always, I'm going to dive in to my

three little epiphanies for the week. If you want more on these, you can always sign up for my email newsletter. I send on an email every Monday. And it's just a great additional asset to use with this podcast. If this podcast has been helping you, I'll put that in the show. notes. All right. My first one for the week is that the most ineffective way to resume contact with someone after estrangement is by demanding a relationship with them and demanding a relationship with them in a really cruel, abrasive, critical way. I cannot tell you how many times I am hearing stories like this where someone says, I need some space from this relationship. This doesn't feel good to me. I don't like when you do X. And the person starts firing off first text messages

saying, like, I can't believe you're doing this. You can't abandon me. You have to have a relationship with your mom. You're so selfish. You need to talk to me. Then they often get blocked. Then this person starts doing this via email. And then a lot of them are escalating to letters. And it's just not going to work out in your favor to continue demanding a relationship with someone who does not feel good about the relationship to have a relationship with you in a really cruel and abusive and abrasive way a lot of the time. Second one, I put up a video about this this week, is that people seem to be shocked by this, but for some adults, their parents are their biggest haters.

And I think this is something that I keep coming up against in the estrangement community is that there are adults who are like, every time I had a win, I got a promotion, I went on a vacation. I got an award. My parent was the first person to say, like, that's not that big of a deal, or why are you bragging? Must be nice. I wish I could do that. You should help me more. And they become truly the most negative force in your life when something good is happening. And I know that for those of us that grew up in family systems that were not that way, it's very hard to believe that there would be a parent out there that would not want their child to do better than them. But I find that that's actually a really common denominator in this

population, is that a lot of these adults feel that they're being extremely held back and almost like being tripped by their parents every time they get up and start running towards something that's meaningful to them. And so they feel like it's very impossible for me to achieve my goals when this person is in my way. And I think that in most situations, if you had a friend, a coworker, someone in your life that was telling you that everything you achieved means nothing, that it's not that big of a deal. They're trying to dissuade you from achieving your goals. They're really like your biggest hater. We would be telling them, get that person out of your life because they are not helping you. But for some reason when it's a parent, it's like,

oh no, they love you, they're happy for you. And it's like, well, all evidence points to the absolute obvious opposite. And I think that that's just important to know because I think a lot of you that listen to this podcast have experienced that and that is something that I'm noticing to be a common theme. My third one, I don't want to take credit for this thought because this is something that got brought up in one of our calling home groups this week is the idea of deciding not to have children but feeling like that was not actually your decision but that that decision was taken from you. And I wrote in my email newsletter this week that there's a big difference between not wanting children and feeling like you can't have them because of your own

childhood wounds. And so some of you might feel like you are just unfit to be a parent because of what you experienced, that you could never be a good mother, you could never be a good father because you just don't have the skills. And that belief was instilled in you throughout your childhood and is likely representative of a larger phenomenon in the family of you feeling like you were just never good enough. There are, of course, people, and I've said this on my episode with Amanda White, about regretting having children who do not want children and should not have children. Full stop. But I think that there are some of you out there, and I hope that you're joining the Family Cycle Breakers Club this month because we're talking about parenting and choosing

to have children after childhood trauma. And I have a lot of great. articles, videos, scripts, worksheets, and groups for you about that topic to help you, that many people might actually have this feeling inside of them of like, I think I kind of might want to have kids, but I just feel like I'm going to hurt my child or like I could never do it or my family is just too dysfunctional to bring a child into it. And you may feel like you're making that decision off of beliefs that are not totally yours and things that are not completely factual, you know, that your child doesn't have to experience the childhood that you went through. But I also have a video up this week in the Family Cycle Breakers Club that went up

on Monday that is about how you do not have to have children to be a cycle breaker. And so I also don't want people to feel like the only way for me to break generational patterns in my family is by having children because that is way too much of burden to put on our child's shoulders when they had nothing to do with the family environment and the history that they experienced. Let's start with those caller questions. Here's caller number one. Hi, thanks for taking this call. I'm looking for advice about my stepmom or as my siblings call her, my father's wife. My parents got divorced when I was in my early 30s. They'd been married almost 40 years.

They're both very happy now. That's kind of beside the point. My dad ended up marrying, getting remarried, someone who I think is a good match for him. But she has some really challenging personality characteristics. She's a really consistent, one-up her. She has a hard time letting any story or, or any conversation take place without entering herself. And she's gotten really in this habit since, you know,

they got married and started dating, I'd say about five or six years ago, I was starting to, like, make jokes. I'm a joky person. I can laugh at myself, you know, definitely. But she makes a lot of jokes. Some of these kind of lean towards fat jokes, eating a lot. and she tells them over and over again. It is really impacting how much I want to see my dad

since he is like attached to her at the hip. Recently at my wedding dinner, which was a very small dinner, she made a comment at one point that I just remember things, how I want to remember them about my childhood. But she wasn't there for. She did not know my father then. And I'll just say he had a very strong-handed, strict parenting style.

He was very different from how she knows him. And I don't really know how to handle it. I don't want to cut my father out of my life. He really is not emotionally mature enough to have a conversation with me about this. And he's moving far away after he's retiring at the end of this year. So if you have any advice, I'd appreciate it. Thanks so much. I love the podcast. Bye. Okay. I want to first say that I understand why this is bothering you.

And I can tell that there's definitely some, like you said, challenging personalities going on here. But I also hear at the core of what you're saying is that you would like to maintain a relationship with your father. And I agree that it sounds like that's certainly possible. And that you feel like both of them are not really capable. of handling a conversation about this. And so my first option here would be to talk to her about it. I don't know that it's wise to tell your dad to say something to her about it. That's probably just going to paint you as the enemy.

She is going to be put into like a victim role and probably pull your dad in to protect her. And that's just going to create some triangulation. and I don't think that it would be the best way to approach this. With people who are one-upping and making a lot of negative jokes about bodies and eating, I typically would make the assumption that that's coming from a place of very low self-esteem. And while it's annoying and unerving in social situations, it's really not. painting her in a very good light, actually, for people who have a little bit more of a level

of awareness and are watching this person interact with people, especially at like an event, I think it's kind of like, oh, why do you keep making jokes like that or saying things like that? And I think that you'd be surprised how many other people probably pick up on that and think that it's kind of strange. Whenever someone is making jokes like that, I think you have a couple of different options, right? You can ignore it and change the subject, walk away, talk about something different. You can smile and nod. You can laugh if you want to placate that joke, that that is probably just going to encourage more of it. You also can ask people, what does you mean by that? Or what are you trying to say with that joke. And sometimes when you kind of put people on the spot to explain

things, they have to backtrack. And they're not really able to explain why that was okay to say in an actual, like, cohesive way. The other thing I think you can do here is consider that these jokes are a reflection of how she's feeling about herself. And so sometimes it's okay to respond to these things with a little bit of a rebuttal. So when people around me, you'll be like, oh, oh my gosh, I'm feeling so fat, I ate all that food. I might say something just like, oh, I love that we got to have a good meal together tonight. Or, yeah, that cake was so good. I really enjoyed it. I'm so grateful that so-and-so cooked or that we went to this great restaurant. And you can kind of neutralize what's happening there, especially if you do this a few times with

people, sometimes they stop bringing it up because they are not getting what they want from you in that moment, which is to join in on it with them or maybe to give them a compliment in return or tell them that, no, they don't actually look like that or don't worry about it. It's okay that you ate that. And when you just try to make it into something that's centered more around like neutrality or gratitude, that can be helpful. I think. for people who talk about their bodies a lot or how much they ate, if you are recovering from that or trying us to do it as much, you notice it a lot more too when people do it. And it's kind of sad when you notice it. Like things like people being like, oh, I'm being bad tonight. So I'm going to

have cookies or like these chips are dangerous. Get them away from me. It's like, whoa, they're just chips. Like it's okay. But you can see the mindset that that person is in where they may have some anxiety around food, some old programming. They're feeling bad about their bodies. And I find sometimes if we can approach that from the lens of like, oh, I see that. And I have compassion for you. And I could tell that maybe you're struggling with this. It's a little bit easier. I think the same approach with like the one-uping and the storytelling is that like you can see this as a person trying to feel superior or empowered or better about themselves. And typically when people do that, it's because they feel inferior, disenfranchised, insecure, and they're trying to find a way to boost themselves.

And really, it has like the opposite effect. People typically see that behavior as kind of like annoying or an insecurity when they are aware of it. And so again, I invite you to kind of take this bird's eye view of like, okay, this is someone that clearly doesn't really feel great about herself. She's also making comments about your childhood from the perspective of someone that has absolutely no authority on that perspective. And so that's another thing that you can be like, wow, this person feels very confident making comments about something that they know nothing about. That's odd. Like, you can look at this as an observer rather than somebody who needs to like get in the mud and control the behavior. And

sometimes it's good to even make a joke about it in your head. Like, oh, there's Jennifer being Jennifer. She did it again. There she goes, wow, she's made five jokes about being fat this evening. Or she really tried to want up me on that story. And when you can make a game out of it in your head, sometimes it's a little bit easier because you cannot stop this person from doing it. You can point out the behavior, help make them aware of it if you so choose to. But again, that has consequences. And this sounds like a behavior that is, I don't want to put words in your mouth. It might be worse than what I'm hearing. But it sounds like it's annoying. It's a little bit grating. It's aggravating. It's something you don't want to be around. And because she is someone that your dad brought into the family later, that has its own

intensity to it that makes it more complicated. And you described a little bit of emotional immaturity or maybe not connection with your dad that I'm it would be nice for your dad to notice this and be like, lady, stop. Why are you doing this? But he's probably not going to do that either. And they are probably going to find a way to defend one another, right? Because that is the makeup of the family. And so sometimes for adult children, it can feel like, wow, I don't want you to put this step-parent, you know, in front of me. And it doesn't feel good when your needs aren't being seen in that moment. But if you were to surrender to the fact that you cannot change this person, you can't do anything different. How could you engage with

it differently if the ultimate goal is to be able to spend limited time around family, engage with them, and maintain the other relationships? Thank you so much for calling in. Let's go ahead and play that second voicemail. Hi, I'm calling because I have a specific question and I don't really know how to phrase it, so I'm just going to get into it. I am no contact with both my mother and my father, and before I went no contact, I told both of my brothers that I was not going to be in contact with my parents, specifically because, like, we had a family event coming up, and I just wanted to let them know that I wasn't going to be there, and I wanted to ask, you know, for us to keep having a sibling relationship outside of the context of my parents. And I found out recently that right after I got off the phone with my oldest brother, he turned around and he called my mother and told her that I was going no contact with her before I even had a chance to talk to her or tell her that I didn't want to speak to her. And I've chosen not to confront him about it because I really value our relationship as siblings, but as time has gone on, he has also violated a couple of other no contract boundaries, specifically, um, this past October. I got a new job and my father emailed me in an attempt to contact me and mentioned in his email that my older brother had shared that personal. detail with my father that I had gotten a new job. And now, as a result, I've been trying to grow

the relationship with my siblings, but I feel like I can't trust either of my siblings because I am fairly certain that whatever I say to them is being parroted back to my parents. And I don't know how to go about having the conversation with my brothers of, please do not repeat what I am telling you or share things about my life with the people that I am no contact with because that is part of being no contact is I'm choosing that they do not have access to my life. So I guess my question is, how would I go about having that conversation with them? And yes, I guess that's my question is, how do I have that conversation with them? Because I want to maintain a relationship with some of my family, but I don't want to be in a relationship with siblings that will violate those

boundaries. Thank you so much for your podcast and thank you for all that you do. And I hope you choose my question. Okay, so first I want to say, I'm very sorry that your trust was violated in that way. And I'm going to try to look at this from above as I look at the family. I'm not knowing your family, but I'm going to try to take a optimistic view of this situation and say that I'm going to make the assumption that your brother's intentions are good rather than evil and that doesn't change the impact that it's had on you. But I wonder if we can take that approach before we make a decision about what his behavior means and what you want to do about it. And what I mean by that is when you ask how you would start this conversation,

I think you absolutely need to have a conversation with your brother because you need to know why he's doing this. And I have worked with a lot of families in this situation where a sibling like your brother has lived in the role, and I'm making assumptions here, has lived in the role of peacemaker or in that type of dynamic with the parent for a long time. And that is how they achieve their worth and closeness with the parent. Now, there are, of course, siblings also who are just meddling and want to be cruel.

But I can't know that without you asking your brother about that. And so I'm wondering if there is a world where your brother believes that he is giving this information. to your parents so that he can try to fix things between all of you or because your parents are asking him to and he thinks that that's the right thing to do. Or there's a world where he's doing this, he knows he shouldn't be doing it and he's doing it punitively to make himself look better in your parents' eyes, betray your trust, whatever it is. But without knowing that, I think you need to come from the position of like, I'm not going to make a determination of what this behavior means until I ask about it. So that might even be the first question is, you know, I told you

that I wasn't speaking to mom and dad. But now I see that you're telling them stuff. And I just want to know, why are you doing that? And some of the answers that he could give are, you know, I think it's crazy that you cut them off and I'm talking to them because I feel bad for them. He could say, I thought that I was doing the right thing by telling them stuff. And I wanted to help. He could say, I didn't realize that you didn't want me to do that. And I think all of those different responses open up the conversation for boundaries and a discussion, right? So if there is a world where he says I was trying to help or I didn't know that you didn't want me to do that, you could reinstate that boundary of I do not. I do not want you to share with mom and dad the things that we talk about. I would love to have a

separate individual sibling relationship with you. And in order for me to do that, you can't share this stuff with our parents. And they can agree or not agree to that and you can decide whether you want to give them another chance. If they respond with something, you know, along the lines of like, I think this no contact thing is ridiculous. I'm going to tell mom and dad what you say because I feel bad for them, then you have another decision to make about can I have a relationship with my sibling if this is how they feel about what I'm doing. But I think it's possible for siblings to maintain relationships outside of a parent-tidal child estrangement, but there certainly has to be an understanding of how that's going to be handled and the boundaries in place. So that's

where I would start. Thank you so much for calling in, and I hope that that was helpful. If this podcast has been helpful for you, I hope that you'll join us inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club, our membership community for people who listen to this podcast. This podcast is really just a way to, like, dip your toe into the information, but the real work happens inside the community with other people just like you who are reading our articles, watching videos, doing worksheets, getting our therapy guides, book recommendations, and coming to groups to talk about it. And the best thing about calling home is that you can use our resources on your time in the way that fits you, your family, and your goals. So you might be taking our content with you to therapy,

to work on with your therapist. Maybe you're doing it on your own at night in a journal, or maybe you're just attending groups so you can vent and share. You can join the Family Cycle Breakers Club for $150 for six months of access. So that's about $25 a month that gives you access to unlimited support groups per month. It's really like such a good deal. Plus every month you're going to get four worksheets, four articles, four scripts, and four videos about the topic of the month. And as long as you have your membership, you can go back and look at any of that content. We have a really great search feature on our website now where you can search for any topic and it's going to show you what you're looking for and give you any of our resources to help

you with that issue. You can also get all of our resources delivered to your inbox and your email every Monday so you don't even have to go on the website looking for things. And it's so much faster and easier. I would love to see you in a group sometime. You can visit callinghome.com and join the Family Cycle Breakers Club. I will see you next week on Tuesday. Bye. that called in this week and asked questions. I love being able to help you with these family situations and hopefully help you find a way to better navigate them with your adult family relationships. You can always call and leave me a voicemail and I may pick your question for an upcoming Thursday episode of the Calling Home podcast. Just call 866-225-4-66 and leave me a voicemail.

I do these episodes every Thursday, and I love being able to get to help each and every one of you with your family relationships. If you're ready to work on your adult family relationships outside of this podcast and take what you've learned to the next level, we do have the calling home community. You can join us for weekly groups and watch videos, take courses, get access to worksheets, and more, and those groups are run by me so we can actually meet. and you just need to go to www. calling home.com and join the Family Cycle Breakers Club.

Thanks, and I will see you all on Tuesday for another episode. 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 Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Holmes Terms of Service linked in the show notes below.