CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Substance Abuse, Abandonment, and Reconnection

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

In this episode of Calling Home, Whitney discusses the impact of parent-child relationships in the context of substance abuse. She shares a story about a young man who was introduced to drugs by his mother at the age of 12, highlighting the long-term effects of such experiences. Whitney emphasizes the importance of understanding the needs that children are trying to communicate through their actions and decisions. She also answers listener questions about feeling abandoned by a parent and how to reconnect with estranged adult children. Whitney advises patience, understanding, and willingness to hear and respect the perspectives of the children in these situations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. I am Whitney Goodman. Today we have a solo episode and I am so excited to be back with you here today. I'm going to be jumping in to some different questions that I got on the voicemail line this week. And I also want to talk about just like a couple of things that I saw this week, some things that I thought were interesting and that related to some of the topics that we talk about on here on this podcast. So let's get started. The first thing I saw, I was scrolling through TikTok over the weekend and I see a lot of these videos of, I guess, people who are homeless or who have been addicted to substances and are living on the street. There's a series where this person does videos. And I think that

you can donate to them and help them access resources. I've seen some of these donations go pretty far in helping these people get housing and things like that. But I saw a video of a young adult, I think he was a 20-year-old, and he was being interviewed by the host about how he ended up on the street and why he was homeless. And this young kid's story really struck me, because he tells the story about how he first got introduced to his substance of choice. And he says that on his 12th birthday, he was alone, and he got home and walked into the garage, and his mom was there, and his mom was doing substances. And it was his birthday. He was 12 years old. He was turning 12, and he walked up to his mom and said, hey, mom, can I have one of those?

And his mom decided she was going to give him one of these pills and was like, yeah, sure, of course. And so this 12-year-olds spent his birthday trying drugs for the first time with his mom. So I think when I talk about parent-child relationships in adulthood, I receive a lot of comments from parents who are like, you know, parents tried their best. They did the best that they could. You should respect your parents, all these things. And I think for anyone listening who, you know, doesn't have a lot of perspective or really insight into adult child and parent relationships that can look like the one that I'm talking about now with this young adult that I saw on TikTok, these are relationships out there that really exist, right? we have this young kid whose life was changed in one split second with his mother. And I want you to think about this from the perspective of the child.

It is your birthday and you're alone and your mom is doing something that she likely does every day if she's a substance user and that you see her doing. And you want to spend time with your mom. you want to connect with your mom, and you want to do something on your birthday. And you know that this is the best way to connect with your parent is to do the thing that she likes doing most and that she spends most of her time doing. That's your perspective. So you ask your mom if you can spend time with her, and she says yes. And this changes your life in the most pivotal way. And we can have deep empathy for the mom in this situation, right?

We can say this is a person who is struggling with substance use. This is a person who is in over their head and needs help. And we can also have deep empathy for this child who, in this moment, was trying to connect with their parent in the only way that they knew how. And so this adult's in this video, the child goes on to talk about how he continued to used substances with his mother every day until her death and that she had just passed away, I guess, the year prior. And this became the way that this person bonded with his mother for the rest of his

adolescence until she died. And I tell this story because I know this is an extreme example. And a lot of you listening might say, you know, well, this didn't happen in my house. My relationships weren't at this level. it wasn't that bad. You know, we make all of these type of excuses or disclaimers. But I think this serves as a perfect example of the impact that these relationships have on our life and the way that these cycles can get perpetuated day after day.

Because ultimately, I think what all children want in life is to find a way to be close to the people that brought them into this world, even if those people are doing things that are not good for them, that are hurtful, even if they're being neglected, whatever it is. This kid, this 12-year-old was going to find a way to be close to his mother, to have something to do with her, to bond with her, and he found it. You know, he didn't know at the time what this was going to do to his life. And now, you know, we see. see how this has impacted his trajectory. And the reason I tell this story is because I think there are a lot of adults who blame themselves for things that they did during childhood, for choices that they

made, for the ways that they acted and what they made their parents do. And I talked about this on my episode last week, that I think we have to have deep empathy for that child's version of ourselves that made choices to be seen and loved and cared for by our parents. And some of those choices may impact you still today. And it's so valuable to take a step back and look at it through that lens of what need was my behavior indicating? What need was I trying to communicate? Because there are some people that would look at this video.

of this kid and say, well, he chose to do drugs. He picked up drugs. At 12, he made a bad choice. And that's impacting him still today because he decided to do drugs and he should have known better. And instead, I want to ask us to look at this kid and say, this is a kid who wanted to be seen by his mother.

This is a kid who didn't want to spend his birthday alone. This is a kid who wanted to feel loved. He wanted attention. he wanted affirmation, and he wanted to be seen. And I wonder if you can look at some of the actions and some of the decisions that maybe you made as a teenager, as a young adult even, and see them through the lens of what need was I trying to communicate in this moment?

What did I need from the people around me who were supposed to care for me, who were supposed to take care of me, who were supposed to show me love and affection and respect. And what would my life have been like? How would it have been different if I didn't have to portray those needs in such a way that harmed me? I hope that that is helpful for some of you, and I hope that that inspires a shift in how you think about these things.

Now let's dive into some of the listener questions. that I got this week. How do I process feeling abandoned from my dad deciding to end contact? About 10 years ago, my dad walked my stepsister down the aisle at her wedding and did a speech for her as her father figure, which was something that he refused to do for me or my sisters. So when that happened, my sisters actually left the room before his speech because they were so hurt, but I stuck around to hear it.

And then we all got the silent treatment for weeks after the wedding until he eventually told me he made up his mind about my other two sisters, but he was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. I told him I wouldn't choose between him and my sisters, but I haven't seen or heard from him since, and that was eight years ago. Before this, he basically cut out his whole immediate family, including his siblings. He did lose both of his parents in a car crash when he was 17,

which is obviously very traumatic, and maybe it was just too hard for him to give us what we needed since he lost them when he was so young. I don't know. Sorry for the long message, but I look forward to your thoughts. The first thing I want to say is that that is really hard to watch your parent give someone else something that they couldn't give you. And I think a lot of people go through that where they're like, why weren't you capable with me? Like, why could you show love to this other child or to this other family or this spouse? And you couldn't do those things for me. And when

people go through that, especially with their parents, they develop a belief often that something is wrong with them and that they are the ones that are defective. And that's why the parent couldn't do that with them. And for anybody going through that, this call or anybody else, I want you to know that that's not about you. And that's really a testament to where this parent was at at this time in their life. And it's a sign, I think, of emotional immaturity when you you don't understand what that could have felt like for your other children to see that happening and to see that happening in front of them. I understand why you would walk out of the room. I understand why it would be hard to visualize that and be like, wow, I can't believe

my dad could do this. It would almost be better if he couldn't do it for anyone. Now, that being said, it sounds like you're doing something that a lot of people do, which is try to figure out why their parent is doing what they're doing and they think if they can figure it out, it will feel a lot better, it won't hurt as much, and maybe they can make sense of it or even repair the relationship. And this is one of those situations where I fear you may not find an answer that makes sense because a parent isn't supposed to do these things to their child, right? we think that it goes against nature to go eight years without speaking to your child or to not show them love in a particular way. But parents do this all the time. You know, parents can walk away

from their children. Parents can hurt their kids. We know that this happens. And the reasons are so complex and so nuanced. And I find that even when you have an answer that makes sense that pain is still there of like this still happened. I get why it happened. I can have empathy for my father for the things that he went through in his life. I can have empathy for the fact that he probably didn't have the education or the resources or the skills to be a good dad or to give me what I need. But that doesn't take away from the fact that he hurt you and that he still hasn't been willing to fix it or to do something about it. So for anyone that's in this position, I would encourage you to try to look back on yourself

and what you need to try to repair that wound in your own life, even if you never get that clarity or closure from your parent. Hey there, I'm going to remain anonymous for this, but I have five adult children and half of them don't speak to me or my husband. And, I mean, it's been years since I spoke to them, to the kids, and my husband and I would really like to talk to them and start up our relationship again, but we just don't know how to go about it. And I fully take responsibility for why they don't speak to us, and we did some messed up things during their childhood. I know that, but I want to move past that, and I want things to get better, and I just miss them, but I don't know how to go about talking to them and starting that conversation.

So, like I said, they are adults. Anyway, thanks so much, and have a great day. All right, so I first want to acknowledge how hard it is to not speak to your kids and to admit like, hey, we did some messed up things. There are some things that we need to take responsibility for. And I know that it's so hard to admit that and then to try to push forward. I also understand your desire to move forward and create a new relationship with your kids. What I would be wondering is like where they're at with all of this, how they're feeling,

how ready they are to move forward, and what has happened to make that possible. So you mentioned that you haven't talked to them in a couple. of years. So I think I would start off very, very slowly and cautiously, and that would be just with trying to open the door for some dialogue. And before you do that, I want to give you a couple of suggestions. You need to be ready and willing to hear what they have to say if you are going to open that door. And so if it's going to be like, let's just leave it in the past, we want to move forward, you may not be ready to open that door and start having those conversations. You also mentioned that there are five kids, and so I would say that there are going to be five

unique perspectives on the past, and that can be really hard to sit with. Some of those perspectives might be kinder or more brief than others, and some of them are going to take longer to get through, and they might be a lot heavier. And I think we have to be ready and willing as parents of multiple kids to sit with all of those different realities and say, I hear you, and I respect that that's what it felt like for you. There is also the chance that some of them may be willing to move forward while others are not. And I think you have to allow for that natural progression as well and not make it a thing like everyone has to move forward together or that one person is better than another for being more

open or more receptive to moving form. So let's go back to that initial contact. I would want to know with each of these individual people where you left things off if some of them had told you not to contact them or if you have certain ways of getting in touch, I think that's starting off with an email, a text message, a phone call could be sufficient and really just saying, I have reflected on what went wrong, exactly what you said to me here on this voicemail. I know that something went wrong or I know that I did X and I want to talk about it and I want to move forward. I think when you tell your adult child that you understand the circumstances of their estrangement and you understand why they made the choices they made and that you empathize with those choices,

it really makes it easier for the two of you to start off on a good foot and to move forward together and to have these conversations. The other thing I want to stress is that patience is going to be required here. The longer an estrangement goes, the more that you have to be willing to invest, I think, into the repair. And so I would consistently remind yourself, write this down, put it somewhere that these things take time. And I am trying to rebuild a relationship that has been going on for this person's entire life. And we've both likely changed, become different people evolved in the time that we weren't together. And so while you have patience on one hand, in the other, I want you to remember that things are going to move very slowly. That's part of the patients, right? And it might

not be that once you say, I'm sorry, I understand what happened, I want to be better that everyone is sitting around the Thanksgiving table smiling. They're likely going to be, I hate to call them tests, but like opportunities to show everyone in the family that things have changed, that they've improved, and that things are going to be different than they were before. And that allows trust to be built and allows people to put their guard down and to move forward cautiously with continuing the relationship. So an example of that might be, let's say you were not allowed to see grandchildren or there was a history of abuse or something in the family. You might apologize and you still don't get those privileges back because you have to show that things are different.

And so that might mean supervised visits, might mean phone calls, face times, different types of opportunities to be around the children to prove that things are different and they're going to get better. And so in those moments, I think you have to remind yourself like, I am being given an opportunity to grow and change and to show them who I am instead of meeting. it with resistance or defensiveness of like, you don't trust me. You're not letting me change. You still think I'm the old person because it can be really tempting to fall back into that. I also think this caller mentioned being married and you mentioned a husband. I'm not sure if that's the father of the children. But whether they are or not, I think it's important that

anybody else in your life is on the same page and is going to support you moving forward in rebuilding these relationships. So that's where I would start. I really hope that helps and good luck. Thank you so much for setting in your questions this week. I hope listening to those questions and the insights helped you feel less alone and maybe gave you the confidence to navigate a difficult situation you're having in your own family. If you would like to ask me a question, please leave me a voicemail at 866-225-5-4-66.

I'll try my best to pick some questions for next time. Until then, I'll see you at home again soon.