CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Special Events and Community

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Whitney talks how to navigate events and celebrations with a highly dysfunctional family, offering tips on how to deal with difficult family dynamics, such as setting boundaries and preparing for situations that may arise. Introducing The Calling Home community, a platform offering support groups, exclusive content, and Q&A sessions with experts. Listener questions: Dealing with family issues during significant life events, such as weddings and funerals. This week's sponsors are: Alzheimer's Association - join the Walk to End Alzheimer's and help us make a brighter future for all those affected by Alzheimers's. Make a difference today Hello Fresh — use code 50home to save 50% and get free shipping Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everyone and welcome back to another solo episode of the Calling Home podcast. This episode was created by you and made for you. Today I'm going to be talking about events and celebrations when you have a highly dysfunctional family. And I know today is Halloween. Some of you might be doing things like trick-or-treating or spending time with family, trying to navigate the holiday with grandparents, in-laws, whatever it may be. And I hope to give you a couple of tangible tips that you can use tonight if you need them to deal with some difficult family dynamics. But before we get into that, I have a really exciting announcement. So after my book, Toxic Positivity came out in 2022, I really had no idea what to do next. So I started to

newsletter and I was sending out weekly emails about adult family relationships. The response to these emails was wild and unexpected. And so I've spent the last year writing, researching, listening, trying to create something even better than that email list. And calling home was always meant to be more than a podcast. And you can now become a member of the calling home community and get access to support groups, written in video content, and exclusive Q&As with me and other exciting experts. Listeners of the Calling Home podcast get 10% off with the code podcast. That's podcast, all one word, at callinghome.com. Registration is open until 1159 p.m. Eastern time on November 5th and won't open again until 2024. I can't wait to hear what you think, and I hope that you guys will use this code

and go and register today. All right, now let's get back to events with dysfunctional family members. So a couple of weeks ago, I posted this Instagram post, and I said, if you have a highly dysfunctional family member, you know the stress that comes with major life events and weddings and other celebrations. You're probably thinking, are they going to be okay? Will they say anything weird? Will they be okay sitting next to that person?

Will they get drunk or high? How do I manage their needs? will they be in a good mood that day? Will they let the day just be about the event or about me? What are they going to say after? Will someone upset them? Are they going to even show up? And in highly dysfunctional families, holidays and events are not just fun days.

Like, if you know, you know, they are filled with landmines. And if you can relate to this, I want you to know that holidays and celebrations aren't actually supposed to be this way. these days aren't supposed to fill you with dread and anxiety and you may not know that if you've never experienced anything else. So if you spend more of your time trying to control the dysfunction in your family leading up to the event, something needs to change. If you spend the entire day worrying about your family drama instead of enjoying a celebration, something needs to change. You are allowed to make adjustments on these days. I know it's so hard to do that.

I know it's not just like don't invite them or don't go. These things are a lot more nuanced and difficult than that. And I know you may not see another way, but this isn't sustainable and it's not supposed to be this way. So if you saw this post or this is the first time you're hearing it, you can definitely go to my Instagram and find it because the comment section is super validating for anyone that's been in this situation. There are so many comments that are like, I haven't celebrate a Christmas with my family in 12 years or I'm skipping Thanksgiving this year because I just can't do it anymore. Like every holiday, it's a screaming match or somebody gets punched in the face. And like, I know this sounds crazy, but I think you'd be shocked how many people do not

enjoy the holidays with their families and how many people dread this time of year and how many people are like embarrassed of what these days actually feel like for their family. And the reason for this is people talk about this in the therapy office with me. They comment it on my posts where they're around a lot of other people that feel this way, but they do not talk about this in public a lot of the time because it's really weird to talk about. It's frowned upon. Like, think about how many Instagram posts you see on a day like Christmas or Thanksgiving. Everybody is smiling and laughing and happy and there's food and there's people together. And the people who are having drama are not posting or they're faking it and they're putting up something that isn't

legitimate. So all the other people are like, wow, is my family the only one that's like this? Like why can't we just get along? Why can't it look happy? Why can't we be like the people in commercials? Like we don't see a target commercial, you know, people fighting on Christmas Eve. It's just not something that's going to get put out there. Instead, we're going to get the feeling of like your family's weird. This is what it's supposed to be like. But I know I'm a little biased on this because I hear a lot more of like the negative stories just by nature of my job. Like people aren't really coming to my office to talk about how amazing their Thanksgiving dinner was. They're usually sharing the difficult stories or they just don't mention it if it was good. But it happens way more than you think. So, My first goal when I talk on these solo episodes, especially, is to make you feel less alone and to tell you that, like, I know with 100% certainty that if you're listening to this and you're like, holidays and events with my family are insane, I hate them, you're definitely not alone. And there's, of course, a big spectrum to this behavior. So now that we know that

it's normal and this stuff happens, we need to figure out what to do about it. And I think a lot of people feel like, oh, well, the only option you're going to give me is just don't go and just walk away and just, you know, celebrate my own holiday. But like, I don't want to do that. And I get that. It's hard to say just, well, don't see your family on Thanksgiving. And the more accurate piece here might be that you actually like a lot of the people that you see at holiday events. You just don't like some of them or some of their behavior. And so to say, I'm not going to see my niece and nephews. I'm not going to see my parents because I'm afraid that my sister is going to get drunk and start a fight and scream at everybody might feel like not really a fair trade.

And so you have to find a way to navigate this in a way that makes sense for you. So I really see this happening along a spectrum, right? The farthest option is cancel, don't go, book a flight to Hawaii and don't see your family. And then the one over here is like, don't say anything, keep doing things exactly how you have been, suffer and cry when you get home. And then we have all this stuff in the middle. So where I might want to start with is like, what can I control? I can maybe control how I prepare myself going in to this day. So if I was going to control that, I might think about like, how can I set myself up for success today? How can I make sure that I am relaxed? I'm prepared. I know what I'm going to

do in a certain situation if it comes up? And like, what are my non-negotiable boundaries here? If someone yells at me, uses physical force, insults me, like, whatever may be coming up in your family, what am I going to do when that happens? It's also about preparing for what you cannot control and surrendering to that. So if I know that I'm going into a family event where there are going to be people there who are going to be drinking, who are going to be sharing political beliefs that I don't agree with, who are going to be like, I don't know, just saying stuff that's aggravating. And I know that that happens every year. I need to be ready for that and I need to know that I'm probably not going to be able to stop it or control it. I'm just going

to have to deal with it. And so when that person starts behaving like themselves, because they do that every year and they're not going to be a different person at Thanksgiving than they are the day before Thanksgiving. What can I do to prepare me for that moment? I can, you know, think about, I can play the scenarios in my head. I can try to remember the things that they've done in the past. Like sometimes getting ahead of that anger and saying, I know this person is going to say something crazy. And I'm not going to like what they have to say. And when they make that really like off the wall comment about whatever, how can I respond to them or how can I make sure I just don't interact with this person that day? You know, it might be possible that you don't sit by

them, you don't talk to them, whatever it is. But like, get ahead of this stuff. And I think the most important piece here, and I've posted about this before, is don't expect people to behave differently on holidays or events than they do the other 364 days of the year. They are not. going to become a different person on that day. If anything, they're going to show up how they normally do or they're going to be worse in my experience. And so don't set yourself up for failure there. Like set yourself up to know exactly what is coming your way. Once you have that level of acceptance, then you can move into, okay, what can I control about the day logistically? So maybe I'm going to show up late or I'm going to show up early and leave early, depending on how these things

tend to operate. Some families, they know that like after 10 p.m. once people have been there a while, maybe there's alcohol involved, like things start to get a little bit more chaotic or frustrating. So maybe you say, I'm going to go early. I'm going to be like the first to show up And then around 8 o'clock, I'm going to leave and I'm going to have an excuse in place for why I need to leave. I'm going to practice it. Maybe I'm going to tell people in advance. Maybe I'm going to be sick. Something is going to happen that is going to remove me from the situation. And if people try to guilt me or shame me for that, I am going to be strong in my boundary and say, I have to leave at this time. This is what I promised myself I was going to do. I deserve to have a good holiday. you might then say, I am only going to attend certain functions. I'm only going to go to certain events. I know that if my family is doing 10 things for this specific holiday or event, I can only go to this one that's like a brunch in the middle of the day that's time limited. I'm not going to do like the dinner and all the other stuff that's involved. It's okay to opt out of certain

things. And again, people might guilt you for this. They might shame you. They might say, oh, you're so boring or you don't care about us. And you have to be strong in your convictions when this happens of like, I know why I'm doing this. I know that this needs to happen. And I am allowed to, again, enjoy my day. And so once you try to set some parameters around that logistical stuff that some other things that come to mind for me are like, you could bring someone with you that is a good person to have. You can have like a buddy at the event that might be a partner, a friend, a cousin, like somebody else there that sees what you see. And they're like, okay, when Uncle Jimmy starts talking about X, we know that things are going to start to like

go sideways at this event. Or when mom starts to cry or say this, like, this is when we know that we need to get out or things are going to take a turn. for the worst. And you have that system. You can have a code word with each other. You can have like a hand signal. You can have somebody that you can call in the event that things start to go south for you. And some of you might be hearing this and thinking like, if I really have to do all of this, like why should I even go to the event? And I get that. But again, it's about like these things are never going to be perfect in a family. No one on this planet, or maybe some of you do, I just don't know you, goes to a family event and is like, wow, I got along perfectly with every

person there. No one said anything that annoyed me. No one said anything controversial. No one did anything weird. And I left there feeling like 100%, like really ecstatic about every interaction and everything that happened. That is so rare. Now, of course, there are extremes of like, you know, people said something that was like extremely racist, disparaging, critical. Like, there are these extremes that you could be like, I can't be around this person. But I think it's important to remember that no family event has like an 100% success rate. And you have to decide what you're willing to tolerate and put up within those situations. Okay. So once you've got your like logistics down, I've mentioned this a couple of times, but I think

all of this hinges on the belief that you deserve to enjoy this day and this event as much as anybody. So I deserve to have a good time at my wedding. My wedding isn't just about my mom being happy. My wedding isn't just about like, you know, grandma getting along and not getting annoyed with what everybody did. Like, it's also about me. And I can try to make everyone happy up to a certain point. But once that completely destroys and infringes on my own happiness and my own ability to get through this day, that's when we're going to have a problem. And so I want you to take that

away from this episode of, like, practicing, like, the important events in my life are also important to me. They are not just about my family members. And so I give myself permission. And so I give myself permission to enjoy those days and to make them also what I want them to be. If I don't have a plan for dinner in advance, I'm going to end up ordering takeout and spending way more money than I want to and then not having anything to eat the next day. And I'm probably going to feel pretty disappointed in myself. So this is why I'm obsessed with Hello Fresh. Hello Fresh is 25% less expensive than takeout.

So that means you get an easy home-cooked meal on the table and more money back in your pocket. To save on America's number one meal kit, go to hellofresh.com slash 50 home and use code 50 home for 50% off plus free shipping. That's hellofresh.com slash 50 home and use code 50 home for 50% off plus free shipping. Did you know that there is more to the walk to end Alzheimer's than just walking? The Alzheimer's Association invites you to join our movement towards a bright, future for all those affected by Alzheimer's. Join the Walk to End Alzheimer's and help make us a brighter future for all those affected by Alzheimer's. Make a difference today at alz.org slash walk. Now I want to go through a couple of different situations that you all sent me or called in and asked me about different events

and talk through how I would handle each of these. The first one is a family member on my mom's side passed away. I want to be at the funeral to comfort and support my mom, but I have gone no contact with other family members that will be there. It will already be a sad event and seeing them will make it worse. I also don't want my mom to have to explain why I'm not there while she's already grieving. I have no idea what I should do. I think funerals are one of the hardest ones to navigate when there's estrangement. I don't know what it is. It's the combination of emotions of it being like a really sad event for everyone there. You're going to see people you don't want to see. There's the guilt and shame that come along with not showing up at that event. It's just so loaded. So the first thing

you have to navigate here is like this person wants to support their mom. And it sounds like they want to be there to honor the person that passed. But there's this other element of going no contact with other families that will be there. And so I think we have to weigh the options here and the different outcomes, is not supporting your mom and not attending this funeral worse than possibly saying hi to or seeing these family members. And what I mean is, like, which one is going to be harder for you to live with and sit with? When you think about this looking back and you say to yourself, like, I wasn't there. I wasn't there. at that funeral to support my mom or to honor this person. Are you meeting yourself in a place

of I understand why I did that because that was the right decision or do you wish that you would have done that? And there's no way to know exactly how you're going to feel. But I think you have to sit and really ask yourself these questions and be like, how does this feel in my body? How does that feel when I say it out loud? I didn't attend this funeral because I could not see those people. and I didn't want to make it about me. I couldn't be there to support my mom. My mom had to explain why I wasn't there, but it made sense why I wasn't there

because I'm no contact with these people. Or do you want to say, I went to the funeral, I supported my mom. It was very difficult because I had to see these people and maybe something happened in the course of you being at that funeral because of the people that you're no contact with. I don't know the circumstances of that situation. And so that's something you really have to weigh here of like, is it worth it to go there? Is it going to put me so far back,

you know, in my healing or in my progress to be in that space? Are there other ways that I could honor this person or support my mom if I feel like I can't put myself in a position to be at that funeral? And also, what is your mom's level of emotional maturity, understanding, awareness of this situation? Is she going to have a reaction to you not being there? Are you able to talk to your mom about this? How does she think that you should handle it? These are all just things that I would navigate. The next one is, do I just not invite my mother to my wedding? Or take my partner's approach and try to wait it out until she's dead? She's 70 and not ailing. we've already been together nine years.

Your partner sounds a little bit avoided here, waiting it out till she's dead is a wildly avoidant suggestion because you don't know when that's going to happen and oh my gosh, your mom could live like until she's 100. That seems really difficult. I could see why somebody would pick that because it is the most hands-off approach, right? Like we're not going to do anything and we're just going to wait, but I could see how that would put so much stress on you because you're like, I don't know when she's going to die. And also we're waiting on my mom to die until we can get married. And that logic feels shitty, I would

imagine. So I don't, again, I'm going to speak about this generally because I don't know the specifics of this situation. You guys are going to hear me say that like every episode. What I would want you to think about is why do you not want your mother at your your wedding. What are the potential outcomes of her being at your wedding? And if you've decided I definitely do not want my mother at my wedding, I think that's a choice that you have to commit to in some way. And so there's a couple of different avenues to take here. Maybe you elope. Maybe you have a wedding that is just you and your spouse. Maybe you say, we are going to have a wedding without my mother there because this is the reality of my situation and this is

really sad. It's not the way I want it to be. I wish my mother could be different. I wish this was different. And I know what my day will look like if she's at my wedding. And so that might mean having a wedding that doesn't include your mother. And you'll have to think about how you would disclose this information to her. I think there's a lot of different options there from, you know, are you going to call her? Are you going to write a letter? Are you going to not tell her if you are no contact? Maybe there isn't a need to inform her because you don't have a relationship with her. And that's something important about estrangement is that if you are estranged from a parent and you are going to have a major life celebration, the pressure to invite them really comes

from the societal expectation that my mom, my dad, my brother, whoever, should be at my wedding because that's what those people do. But if there was another person in your life that you hadn't spoken to in 10 years and you didn't have a relationship with them and they hurt you, would you invite them to this major life celebration? I imagine the answer would be no. And that doesn't mean that that decision isn't filled with immense pain and grief and suffering even. But it's worth considering what is driving you to have this person at this event. And is that drive rooted in reality or the fantasy of what you wish that could be if that person

was at your event? Next question we have here is, can you talk about how. common it is for families to essentially go rogue during big life events such as weddings. And beyond that, how you handle other family members when they see the behavior, say how bad it is, and then later pretend like nothing happened. I love this question because I think this is such a common phenomenon in families. Okay. So for example, there might be a big life event where someone does something really outrageous. They make a scene. They cause a problem. They cause a problem. whatever it is. And in that moment, some of the people might be like, whoa, that was crazy. I can't

believe that person did that. They shouldn't have done that. And you kind of feel like the tides are turning, right? Everyone's like on your side, like they're waking up to the dysfunction and they're like, oh, that's a problem. And then a few weeks later, everyone starts to pretend like that never happened. And as more time goes by, it's almost as if you're crazy for bringing it up. It absolutely never happened. You're exaggerating and now you're like making this a bigger deal than it needs to be and you're punishing the other person or shaming them or it wasn't that bad. And the family will kind of do this dance to turn and protect the person who caused the dysfunction because to call them out would mean to acknowledge what's going on in the family. And you're left on the outside of this

being like, wait, weren't we all there? Like didn't we see this happen and notice that the this was a problem and it can make you feel absolutely insane when you're like, but I remember seeing this and I remember this happening and you guys were all like, no, that was bad. And now you're not agreeing with me. And so this is common. I have seen this happen. I have heard this happen. I've witnessed it. And it is a dizzying experience. And so I want you to know that if this happens to you in an event. What's happening here is not that the crazy thing didn't happen. The behavior is legitimate. It was there. You witnessed it. But people are now realizing that, oh, that was bad. And if I address it, that means I have to like accept that this is actually

a problem. I might have to do something about it. I might have to own my role in it. And I might have to be like, whoa, we've got some problems in this family. And that's uncomfortable. people don't like to do that. So they would rather just be like, no, that didn't happen or it wasn't that bad. I don't remember it that way and go back on what it was. And if you are the person that's still saying, no, I'm going to stay here firmly rooted in the fact that that did happen. It can feel extremely isolating. And you really can feel like you're being gaslit and like you're insane. And so, yes, that is common. That does happen. It's not just you. Let's do one more. So one more thing I wanted to share with you was this comment that I think really brings us back to how we started this episode. As someone said, I was one of the only kids I knew that hated Christmas. And it stayed with me for a very long time. Christmas was fun and happy for everyone else. But it just guaranteed a scary argument between my parents and I'd always be filled with anxiety and dread. this comment makes me like choke up just hearing this because oh I think um I think this is such a

common thing for people who grew up in families where there was a lot of trauma and chaos and this feeling of like the holidays and events like this they should be fun but they're not for me so what is wrong with me what is wrong with my family and in adulthood the way I see this manifest is that the holiday season can become extremely stressful and overwhelming. And some people drift into like wanting to avoid it completely and others become extreme perfectionist over it, needing everything to be perfect and over the top. And other people become so overwhelmed and dysregulated during this time and they don't know why and they become like a different version of themselves because they have so many

bad, like repressed memories related to these days. And so a lot of like reparenting yourself in adulthood is realizing I have control over how I spend my holidays now as an adult. They don't have to be how they were when I was a kid. I can opt out completely if I want to. I can make any event whatever I want it to be in my adulthood. And if that's like, I think that's the number one thing I want you guys to take away from this episode is that this gets to be how you want it to be an adulthood. You are no longer a helpless child who has to live life the way that your parents or your family designed it for you when you did not have the skills or the resources or the agency to escape. And now you do. And so that might mean that you celebrate Thanksgiving the day before

by going to a Mexican restaurant and eating tacos and then you, I don't know, go home and watch like a Christmas movie or something. You get to decide what these holidays look like for you. You can celebrate your birthday in a completely different way. You can do things alone. You can do things with other people. But like really giving yourself permission to navigate this in the way that you want to and to relinquish that feeling of like I have no control over this and to take back your power is so, so important. I'd love to hear how this episode impacted you. I'd like to do more episodes like this where you all tell me like something that you're really dealing with and we can dive deeper into it than I can in the comment section or on the post itself. So please let me know

if there's anything else you'd like me to cover, especially with the holidays coming up. I would love to do like a bonus episode and give you tips and things that you can use for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, anything you have coming up. Just a reminder that listeners of the Calling Home podcast get 10% off with the code podcast at callinghome.com. Registration is open until 1159 p.m. Eastern time on November 5th and it will not open again until 2024. I cannot wait to hear what you think about the community. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to leave us a review to subscribe to this episode. That is how we keep the Calling Home podcast going. Thank you. And I will see you all next week.