CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: My Twin Brother Must Hate Me (UPDATED!)

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Wow, so sorry for that mixup. My advice for Caller 1 has completely changed after I heard the entire voicemail, not just half of it. If you've already listened, this is an updated version of that episode. May at Calling Home - Grieving Complicated Relationships: ⁠https://callinghome.co/grieving-complicated-relationships ⁠ Have a question for Whitney? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at ⁠866-225-5466⁠. Follow Whitney on Instagram: ⁠www.instagram.com/sitwithwhit⁠ Subscribe to Whitney's YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@whitneygoodmanlmft⁠ Order Whitney's book, ⁠Toxic Positivity. ⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everyone. If you started listening to this episode earlier and noticed that it was taken down, that was on purpose for some reason, and I take full responsibility for this, the voicemail that I listened to and the voicemail that got put in this episode were not the same thing. The voicemail that I was responding to did not include like the whole second half of the details went for that twin story. And that has totally changed my response. So I'm cutting out the end of my response and I'm dropping in another version of this. So even if you already listened to the episode, I would totally listen to it again because my thoughts are a little bit different now.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Calling On Podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Goodman. I am excited to be back today with a Q&A episode. But first we're going to get into our Little Epiphany's segment where I share. three things that I read, loved, thought of this week. I go deeper into these every week in my email newsletter, little epiphanies that I send out every Monday. So make sure that you sign up for that list. I'll put it in the show notes if you want to hear more about these three things or get links to the little epiphanies that I'm talking about. First thing I wanted to talk about was when I woke up this morning, I read Nedra Tov email newsletter that she sends out on Substack Nedra Nuggets.

She talked about the idea of obligation within families, which is something that we're talking about a lot here at calling home. What role does obligation play? What are we obligated to provide our families? And something really interesting that she said in this article was that she talks about when her grandmother was sick, that her mother decided to take on the majority of the care and that her siblings, I think she had several siblings, decided not to help with this care. and that her mother needed to be honest with herself that she was making a choice and that by telling ourselves we have to do something for others, it makes us more judgmental of those who don't make the same choices. It can also damage our relationships when we resent family members for not

stepping up in the way we expected them to. She then goes on to say that when we step in to care for a support of family member, it can be many things. It can be kind, loving, compassionate, or generous, but it is not an obligation. Unless we're parents to a young child, when we do something for someone, it's a choice, not a requirement. I'd love to know what you all think about that. I think discussions of obligation are so nuanced and cultural within families and really specific to each family's unique dynamic. So let me know what you think about that. You can comment on these episodes on Spotify, by the way, and I personally read all of those comments and respond to them every week. So I would love to hear from you. My second little epiphany this

week is something that I've been thinking about a lot. I've come to a temporary conclusion that there is something very important happening in healthy, functional families. And it is that they hinge on this belief. It is that they have this foundational belief. that I will be there for you and you will be there for me. And when we have that belief within a family, something really incredible happens. I think that those family members don't necessarily have to always be totally up to date on what's going on in each other's lives. They don't have to agree on everything.

They don't have to speak all the time. But their closeness is facilitated by this underlying belief. that if I ever need you, I can call on you. And I think that that's a very important role that families play in our society, in our world. And some of you might say that those people that I think of when I think about who has my back and whose back do I have are not necessarily related to me by blood or by genetics, and that's okay. But to me, that is one of the fundamental components of who we believe our family is, is this foundational belief that I can count on you and you can count on me. And I'd love to hear about how you feel like that is carried out within your

own families. The third thing I want to talk about is this Ask the Therapist question from Lori Gottlieb's column in the New York Times. And the title is, I was a bad father. How do I live with the regret? Obsessing over the past is taking over my life. And this is something that I hear from a lot of parents, especially estranged parents, that are actively doing the work and trying to move forward.

This person asked, At 60-something, I am often troubled by regret over interactions with my three children when they were young. During their preteen and teen years, I would lose my temper as a result of their doing something I now recognize as insignificant. For example, my son accidentally threw away $10 and change when he was getting ice cream with his friends, which resulted in me screaming at him in anger. I am a surgeon, and I'll think about my ridiculous behavior at various times, sometimes when I'm operating on a patient and have an overwhelming sense of regret. Can you suggest any strategies to resolve this problem? As an aside, my father bailed out on our family when I was eight.

We were moving to a foreign country and he never came to the airport. As you can imagine, my subsequent relationship with him was spotty and dysfunctional. So this is a feeling that I hear come up among a lot of parents who have difficult relationships with their adult children. And I want to say that I really enjoyed what this person was saying in this question to Gottlieb. Because I think that this regret and this rumination is actually a very good thing. It's a sign that accountability is being woken up, that there is an awareness, and that there is a desire to be better. And what we have to be careful of is not to get stuck in this place, right? But instead to use this as fuel.

And what I would say to any person who can relate to what this parent is saying is that most adults tell me that they want an apology and recognition from their parent. And so if you are this parent who is saying, I think about my behavior and it was ridiculous, I regret it, I don't like it, I invite you to share that with your adult child and to talk about it with them and to ask them how it made them feel and to have an honest conversation. And I think you will be so pleasantly surprised at how that goes. All right, those are my three little epiphanies for the week. I will link all of them in my email newsletter that goes out every Monday.

So if you want more information or links to those articles, definitely sign up for my email newsletter in the show notes. Now we have two caller questions this week that I am going to dive into. Caller number one is talking about betrayal trauma between twins and estrangement from a twin brother. And caller number two wants to talk more about the difference between autism and narcissism, which I discussed in a previous episode. And they're talking about how they can relate to some of the pop culture symptoms about people with us. autism and ADHD and the relationship to childhood trauma. Let's go ahead and listen to caller number one.

Hi Whitney. I love your podcast. It's so amazing. I can't thank you enough for all the great content that you put together on estrangement. I'm hoping that you can focus a little of the content on twin estrangement and betrayal trauma. specifically with twins. I've been dealing with a estrangement from my twin brother since 2019. He was getting married

and the date that he chose for his wedding is a date of significant trauma for me in terms of the loss of a child. And I just have not been able to really reconcile how somebody who said they loved me so much and cared about me so much was capable of doing that.

and in thinking that he did the right thing by calling me one day, and in his mind he was asking for permission to use the date, which was never what he said to me. He never said, would you give me permission? It was implied, I guess, in him telling me he was using the date. And I told him that his wedding was not about me. It was all I could kind of come up with. I was so taken aback and so shocked,

which in his mind implied, I guess, that I had given permission. and he went around telling my whole family that I had given him permission once I told him a few months later that I was not going to be going to his wedding and I was able to actually get out everything that I thought and felt about his betrayal to him. He didn't take it well. He said that he thought he did the right thing in setting it up that way. So even if I would have gone to his wedding, our relationship was over as far as I'm concern the day he called and told me that date, I just can't even fathom how somebody could do that

to me of any person, let alone my twin brother. So I've subsequently lost all the relatives in my family to this dynamic, and I feel very alone. There's nothing necessarily I feel like I need to get over. It's just the ongoing betrayal is really what is so painful to me, and I thought it would dissipate by now, and it certainly has some, but just knowing that a twin was capable of doing this to me, he must really hate me as all I can come up with. So thank you for the content on your show and all the ways in which you help so many people. Thank you. Bye. Thank you so much for calling in and leaving that voicemail. I can tell that this is very painful for you, and it seems like at the root of a lot of your questions, is this sense of confusion and grief around how this could

happen, why this is happening. I think that something unique happens between twins, twin siblings, that may not be as true for other types of siblings. There can be a deeper sense of connection between twins and even a sense that you share the same brain or that you've had the same life experiences. I think projection can be very common among twins of like we have moved through life at the same pace literally since we were in utero. And so I kind of assume and you assume that we are going to think the same and feel the same. And it's very jarring when we don't. And this is one of those situations where you're saying, I don't understand how someone you use the words, like especially a twin, could do this, you know, with how well that we know each other

and how well we are connected. Because twins begin their relationship in utero, you know, they're sharing physical space, sensory experiences, and they form a primary attachment relationship with one another. And this bond can really lead to you sharing a sense of identity and a sense of comfort from one another. And I also mentioned that you can have heightened empathy towards each other and even feel like you can sense each other's emotional states or discomfort. And you're sharing genetics and life experiences and you have this intuitive understanding of each other's feelings. And you probably have a long history of that throughout your life, right? I'm sure you can think of so many situations where it felt like you and your twin were on the same page and sharing

the same feelings and life experiences. And so this might be one of the first or maybe the only or one of few moments where you really feel like, wow, we do not understand one another. And you're saying that he thought he was asking you and you did not feel like he was asking you at all. You mentioned, you know, the only option for this being that he hates you. And that must be really, really terrible to feel. Based on what you're saying, wow, I'm so glad I went back and listened to this episode again after I put it up because I did not hear all of. of these additional details about the wedding happening and you not going to the wedding. So this is the key part that I did not hear when I was given this voicemail the first time

to respond to was that you had already tried to bring this up with your brother and his response was not good and you ended up not going to the wedding. And I can't even imagine how much of a betrayal that felt like that the wedding still went on on that day and your family was there and especially for this to happen with a twin sibling. And I understand why you feel like this is something that I cannot get over and that I don't feel like I need to move past. It would be pretty hard to move past that and to restore the relationship without there being some recognition. of wrongdoing and accountability on his part and even on your family's part for no one stepping up and saying, hey, maybe this isn't the best day for you to have your wedding for a variety

of reasons, right? And so I think right now what you are certainly grieving is like the loss of not only a sibling, but a twin sibling, a feeling of betrayal and your extended family, no one really realizing how hurtful that could have been to you. And I think allowing yourself to grieve that and to really feel like that was a betrayal and that was wrong is, is okay. And the fact that you've made your feelings known, I think is good. And he has the right and the opportunity to kind of reflect on that and to try to come back to you and you can decide if you want to listen to that if and when that happens.

I am so deeply sorry for my first response to this voicemail that did not reflect the full context of this voicemail. And now that I know everything that I know, my answer is certainly different. So thank you again so much for calling in and I hope that helps. Let's go ahead and listen to that second caller. Hi, Whitney. My name is Angela. And I recently listened to an where you address the differences between autism and narcissism, which got me thinking about childhood trauma symptoms and how I seem to relate a lot to some of these pop culture kind of symptoms that we've been seeing on TikTok, you know, about people with autism, people with ADHD and some of those symptoms, and I find myself really relating to a lot of these symptoms that

people are really casually talking about on TikTok. And it got me thinking, well, do I have these neurodivergent disorders or do I just have childhood trauma? It seems like there's a lot of overlap and I experience a lot of, you know, those symptoms. So I wondered if you had an insight about that and if it's something that I should just sort of think about in a childhood trauma sort of way. Okay. Thanks, Whitney. Bye. Thanks so much for calling in and asking that question. I think that it makes a lot of sense that you're seeing content and relating to it because that is the purpose of that content, right? Something that is a little bit scary, though, is that there was a huge onslaught of ADHD content on social media. And I think that's because of a rise in,

you know, digital providers and things like that. And I think it's great that people are learning about ADHD and neurodivergence and the people who need this help are getting it. But unfortunately, a lot of studies have found, you know, one study recently did find that I think around like 52% of ADHD-related videos on TikTok had misleading information, and a lot of them are being made by people who have no experience in the fields, and there are just a lot of inaccuracies. And I know that self-diagnosis is an important component of getting access to care, but sometimes we're not looking at the whole picture, because you're right, there is a lot of overlap between neurodivergence and ADHD and childhood trauma.

So I'm going to give you a little bit of an explanation of some of that overlap. So when we're talking about ADHD, and I want to give the caveat that I am not an expert in ADHD, that it's not something that I've worked extensively with. I'm going off of like diagnostic criteria here. But ADHD can cause symptoms like issues. with emotional regulation, difficulty with executive functioning. So that's going to be like poor planning, organization, time management, difficulty with attention. You might have a lot of impulsivity. Sometimes you might struggle with interrupting or regulating your behavior and social interactions. There's also some issues with sensory processing, so feeling hypersensitive

to stimuli. And there can also be issues with low cell. self-esteem. So a lot of people that I have worked with who had neurodivergence, ADHD, autism, things like that, especially when undiagnosed in childhood, they may have experienced constant correction or underperformance in comparison to their peers. And this can lead to low self-esteem or issues with their self-image. Now, when we're talking about childhood trauma, there can also be, you know, some impaired executive functioning and ways that you take in stimuli. So hypervigilance, you can dissociate, have intense emotional responses. Trauma or having PTSD or complex PTSD can also disrupt executive function. And trauma survivors who have not

had proper treatment can also be distractible and hypervigilant. And they can be implacable. And they can be impulsive, especially when they are kind of operating within that survival response. People who have a history of trauma can also have a lot of difficulty trusting people. They might be avoidant or be very anxious around others and they likely will have sensory sensitivity often when they are stuck in this state of hyper arousal, which does happen to a lot of people who have a history of trauma. And, you know, this is similar where this diagnosis can often be overlooked or minimized, especially for people who grew up in homes with stability or where the adults around them felt like what they went through really, quote unquote, wasn't that bad. And so you

might see a lot of adults, especially women, minorities, people of color, ending up with some of these diagnoses like PTSD or ADHD or neurodivergence in adulthood simply because people missed it or didn't know what it was in childhood and they thought it was a behavioral problem or something that they would quote unquote grow out of. I think the thing that we have to remember here is, you know, that trauma can alter the brain in ways that resemble ADHD symptoms. It can also exacerbate them if it's already there. So it's not necessarily, that like trauma caused the ADHD, it can seem like that's what happened. It can be those symptoms. This is the problem with all of the overlap, right? Executive dysfunction is common

in both, in attention and focus issues can happen with both. Impulsivity can happen in both. And I think you can have social difficulties as a result of both diagnoses for different reasons. And so it really comes down to, like, what have been your unique experiences in life that are contributing to your belief that you feel like it could be childhood trauma? It could be this. And sometimes I am less concerned about the actual diagnosis and more about what are your symptoms and what are the unique ways that you are being impaired in your daily life as an adult. And how can you get help with those? And for some people, understanding the origin is very important. And for others, it's more about, like, how can I actually treat and work on what is happening?

If you have a very clear childhood trauma history, then it could be the case that that has led to these symptoms. It could also be that you already were genetically predisposed for having ADHD or some type of neurodivergence. and the childhood trauma exacerbated that, made it worse, made it more likely that it appeared. There's also situations where people can have ADHD or neurodivergence without experiencing any childhood trauma. And so I think when people call in with questions like this, to me it's more about getting to the core of like, why is it important to you to understand exactly what it is? What are the unique ways that this is showing up in your life?

and how can you help yourself move forward and have agency in your life as an adult? Thank you so much to those callers for calling in this week and asking questions. I'm so grateful to all of you that call in, and I will answer more of your questions every Thursday. If you'd like to give me a call, my number is linked in the show notes of this episode. I want to remind you this month that if you are grappling with the pain of complicated family relationships, You can join the Family Cycle Breakers Club this May and discover monthly resources dedicated to grieving complicated relationships. With expert articles, worksheets, and interactive support groups, you will gain clarity and a sense of community. Do not let your feelings of overwhelm linger.

You can take the next step and take control of your life today. You can join me every Wednesday for a group about grieving complicated relationships, whether you are grieving the loss of someone who is estranged, the loss of a relationship, or just trying to find clarity after grieving someone who hurt you. This is the perfect month for you. Members of the Family Cycle Breakers Club will get access to all content and our entire resource library as long as your membership is active. And you also get unlimited access to support groups every single month with me and other licensed therapist. You can join the Family Cycle Breakers Club at www.callinghome.co or click the link in the show notes below. Thank you all so much and I will see you

again on Tuesday. Bye. Thank you so much to everyone 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 866-2-25-5-4-66 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.callinghome.com and join the Family Cycle Breakers Club. Thanks, and I will see you all on Tuesday for another episode. 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 Home's

terms of service linked in the show notes below.