CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - The Enabling Parent Dilemma

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Whitney breaks down dysfunctional family dynamics in Real Housewives of Miami and The Summer I Turned Pretty, then answers a caller's question about healing from the pain of having an enabling parent who failed to protect them from an abusive narcissistic parent. Enabling parents are often harder to process than overtly abusive ones and Whitney details what finding acceptance actually looks like. Have a question for Whitney? Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to [e-mail] or leave a voicemail to 866-225-5466 Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles. Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠⁠ Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft ⁠⁠Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity⁠⁠ This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute  for professional mental health advice. 00:00 Family Cycle Breakers Club Community Update 05:02 Real Housewives of Miami: When Parents Take Credit for Your Success 08:19 Family Estrangement After Late-Life Adoption 13:18 The Summer I Turned Pretty: Should Parents Boycott Major Life Events 16:22 Q&A: How to Heal From an Enabling Parent Who Never Protected You Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Goodman. Today we have a Q&A episode. First, I'm going to do a little bit of dysfunctional family dynamics from reality TV and other stuff I've been watching, breakdown. And then we're going to jump in to that caller question. I did want to say, though, we have been having some of the best groups, I think, in the history of calling home this month talking about family secrets. And it has been so amazing. to see how, like, safe and supportive this community is that you all have built, especially, you know, the members of the Family Cycle Breakers Club that show up each week and are there to listen and learn and support one another. And I have been so pleased and just, like, happy to see how many of you have felt like it's safe enough to share some of these really difficult things. from your family that have been kept hidden and secret for so many generations and that have impacted your families. And to watch the group members, like, receive this information

and do it in a way that is so helpful and healing, I think is amazing. So if you've thought about joining our groups or if you've never even been to a group before, like a support group, I know that it can be a little bit scary and intimidating. And our groups at Calling Home are designed in a way to kind of take the fear and the edge off of that, you can join our groups from anywhere in the world on Zoom. And yes, you have to have your camera on, but you don't need to use your real name. You can use your initials or a different name. You can go by an alias. A lot of our members use their initials or only their first name. You can share as much as you want or you can just come and sit and listen. The groups typically have about 15 to 30 people

there depending on the day and the topic. So you don't have to feel like you're going to be pressured into sharing. But honestly, we usually have so many people that want to share that we're working with like the opposite problem. But I have noticed a lot of people attend, you know, two, three, four times before they raise their hand and say, I finally got the guts to share today and to be here and actually share my story and it's so wonderful when that happens because I know that you're coming each time and getting more and more comfortable. You can also attend as many groups as you want every month. Our memberships give you access to unlimited groups. And some of our groups are, you know, we have that topic group right now for family secrets. And we have groups for

adult daughters with difficult relationships with their mothers, family estrangement groups for anyone that's dealing with family estrangement doesn't just have to be adult children and parents and you can be on the receiving end of the estrangement or the person who initiated it. We also have estranged adult child groups, adult children of emotionally immature parents groups, and our topic group changes every month depending on what the topic is. So right now it's family secrets. Next month we're going to be talking about health, disability, and chronic illness and how that can impact dysfunctional family relationships. I facilitate these groups as well as our other licensed therapists.

So if you'd like to give it a shot, you can join the Family Cycle Breakers Club at callinghome.co. Our website is callinghome.com and join the Family Cycle Breakers Club. I'd love to see you in a group soon. And I love to hear how many people were like, I was listening to the podcast and that finally convinced me, you know, that I should give the community a try because it really is 10 times better than the podcast. Like you're not just going to sit and listen to me talk. You actually get to hear from other people going through the same thing as you or similar things or who are 10 steps

ahead of you in this process. And we have had members say these groups have saved their life. It's the most important time of their week. I'm always blown away by how many members come to our groups on their birthday because they wanted to share that day with us or they felt like it would be like such a good use of their time on a day like that. We have so many people that come around holidays and events in their life and it's just incredible. So we'd love to see you there sometime soon. All right. Some TV stuff I want to talk about. I have been watching The Real Housewives of Miami and there are a lot of family dynamics happening on this season. A lot of adult family relationship dynamics. I have spoken about Kiki and her father in the past. And in the

most recent episode, they go to a restaurant and they're eating together. And it's a very striking conversation between the two generations. You have this adult daughter who, I believe she's in her 30s or something. I'm not sure. And her father, who is probably 50s or 60s. And they did not have a relationship for a very long time because he kicked her out of the home when she started modeling around age 15, and it's taken them a while to kind of reconcile. But her father is still very much repeating these old statements, and he says a lot of these stereotypical statements to her during this lunch of saying things like, I was trying my best. That's just our culture.

It's in the past. Why don't we move on? Why do we keep talking about this? And you can tell that his daughter just keeps bringing this up in so many different ways to just get him to say like, I get why that was hard. I get why that was hurtful to you. I understand why it was so terrible when you had this, I had this new woman living in the house with us and she didn't want you there and she kicked you out and I didn't defend you or say, no, that's not okay. And I prioritized my relationship over my daughter. You know, there's there's so many things he could have said. But instead he sort of goes like, but look, at you now. Look at all these cameras you have on you. Any gestures, you know, to the to the crew that's filming and sort of implying or taking credit for the fact that the things that she had been through in their family and in her life were the very things that produced all this success in her life, which we all know is not an accurate, you know, conclusion to make. But sometimes that is something

that we tell ourselves and we try to use as like a comforting tactic to say like it's a good that I went through all of these horrible things in my life because it got me here. And it's one thing if you want to say that as the person who has been through the stuff. It's another thing when someone else is telling you that you should feel that way and is telling you that that is the reason for your success. And so I think this is just a perfect example, you know, that anyone can go and watch who wants to see like what it looks like when someone is not being overly abusive or cruel in the moment, but is certainly not showing any level of accountability or understanding and really just wants to like move on and get over it.

there's another dynamic happening on the show where there is a couple there are two women that are married and one of the women has two adult daughters and from a previous marriage and she is now not in contact with those daughters or in what sounds to be like very very limited sparse contact and this has happened as a result of this woman, the adult daughter's mother, adopting two toddlers. And I'm not sure what the order of operations here was. We don't have a lot of context. But I'm getting the sense that there wasn't a lot of consulting of the adult daughters when this happened. And it was sort of just dumped on them, that now their mother was going to be the parent,

of these two young toddlers who I do not believe have any access or relationship with their biological family at this time. And it's likely, you know, a very difficult situation where you have these two young kids who are experiencing some trauma at this time. You know, they're, they're in a new home with new parents. And while it's a wonderful thing that they're being adopted, it's also a difficult process. know, that everyone has to be involved in. And these two women are older. They have adult. One of them has adult kids that are in their, you know, mid-20s. And they are really starting over completely in this parenting journey. And this is not to stigmatize adoption or who is adopting, but it's

it's something to consider. And we've talked about this on episodes before, how when parents sort of start a new life later in life, it can feel like a huge abandonment to their children that are already there, especially if that relationship was not very strong or the adult children feel like they are not getting any love, attention, recognition from their parents or their parents are not considering the impact that this will have on them. And it does have a huge impact to decide in your 50s and 60s to adopt two toddlers when you have adult children and you have a whole life established. And while that can, yes, be a wonderful thing, it's also something that is likely very destabilizing for an already potentially fragile

family situation because there has previously been divorce, remarriage, identity ship, there's a lot that these adult children have been through in the family. And you can see in the show, you know, how they're really displaying how difficult this is for everyone involved. And we don't hear from the adult children. We're really only seeing this mother's perspective. And it's very sad and overwhelming for her. And I think that she's very much caught between almost like these two lives. And I can understand from the adult daughter's perspective why this is a really big change and transition and why there might be a little bit of resentment or even just growing pains. And so these are moments when I think permanent estrangement can happen if they

are not handled correctly. If everyone involved doesn't try to understand each other's perspectives, really try to be compassionate and kind and be a good listener and think about why might even this really honorable kind thing to do for these kids also be very, very difficult for my other children. And I think we can sometimes be very quick to be like, oh, that's selfish. They're doing this great thing for these kids. Why can't the older kids see that? But this is also their parent. And it could be, you know, triggering some old wounds that we don't know about. And there's a lot of context missing of all the decades that came before this decision, right? This doesn't exist in a vacuum. And maybe how this decision was handled wasn't

perfect. So just a really unique life event that can happen in a family, you know, when someone gets remarried, has more children, has a younger family after their kids are grown, typically like an older male marrying a younger woman who then has children. It's tough. And I did an episode called Blending Families about a year ago. So anyone that's in this positioner wants to learn more about this, that might be an interesting episode for you that we talk about blending families in adulthood and how that can be totally different than having your family be blended when you are a young child. The last TV thing I wanted to talk about is that I finally started watching the summer I turned pretty. I didn't like it at first. I resisted it. I have a lot of

trouble when a show is like big in the cultural zeit guys not being a part of it because I think it's such a good opportunity to like connect with people and understand and talk about like different different themes because of something that's that's resonating with a lot of people. So I was sick like for an entire three full days basically in bed. And I binged the entire show and caught up to where everyone is now that I'm like ready for the finale that is going to come out on the 17th. So when you're listening to this episode on the 18th, the finale will have come out the day prior.

But I was so fascinated by the relationship between Belly and her mother in season three. And there's a lot of these moments where you see the friction between her and her daughter, particularly when Belly is deciding, like, I want to get married. And the mom doesn't want to go wedding dress shopping with her. And I think she's trying to get her daughter to change her mind by holding firm and having this stance. And I'm wondering, like, what you all thought of that if you think that that's a good approach, if that's what you would have done as a parent, I found myself being like, what would I do? I think my personality and like what I know, if she wasn't like in danger, I probably would have

gone along with it. And it's hard for me to project that far into the future. But I think I would have wanted to make the best of those moments and not like opt out of them out of principle, like wedding, dress shopping and being part of the wedding. And I would know that me saying I'm not going to do all that was only going to cause pain. It wasn't going to change my kids' mind. And her mother does come around and you can see, you know, through the subsequent episodes after that, how she becomes a lot more understanding of the fact that she probably can't control her adult daughter and telling her what to do isn't really like an effective strategy. But I'm wondering, like, is that a strategy that your parents used where they would just,

if you were doing something that they didn't want you to do, they would like abstain and not be involved and say like, we're not going. We're not going to help you. Or would they try to still be supportive and engaged in the process? And what do you think that you would do with your own children if they were getting married in a time that you thought was too young and rushing or maybe you didn't like the partner that much? It's an interesting thing to think about. And I think that it can take a toll on a relationship between an adult and their parent. All right, let's go ahead and get into the Q&A. So every week you all can send me your questions.

You can send me a voice note via email to Whitney at callinghome.com or you can leave me a message. We have that voicemail number in the show notes. And I answer a question every week. So now I'm going to play a caller question. and I'll give you my best answer. And reminder that I do not listen to these questions in advance, I am live reacting and responding to them in the moment.

Hi, Whitney. My name is Stephanie, and I'm a huge fan of your podcast. My question for you today is, how do you heal or get over the parent who never protected you from the narcissist parent when it was there? job to protect you, to make sure that you had a safe space. I always felt growing up I never had a safe place and that, you know, my mom never protected me from my dad who was the narcissistic parent, who I considered was the enabler.

She did send her to my dad. I'm just wondering how do I, how do I essentially heal from that and basically just like how do I let go? Because I find it's really hard for me to find the acceptance when this person does really deserve by acceptance. Thank you. Thank you so much for calling in. This is something that we've talked about before inside the family cycle breakers club at Calling Home. I know in our narcissistic family systems content block on the website, we have a a lot of stuff about the pain of the realization about the enabling parent. And I think for a lot of you, including this caller, like, it's much easier to recognize and accept and name like the

obvious abusive behavior, whether that's narcissistic or abusive, physically, emotionally, whatever it is, that is a lot easier to call out and say, I see what that is. I get it. There's a lot of stuff out there that makes me know what that is. My therapist is talking about it. There's books, whatever it is. But that enabling parent is a much harder thing to navigate because a lot of the time that parent is your quote unquote good parent, especially in comparison. They might be the one that did most of the stuff for you, you know, that made sure you were fed and clothed and got to school and your homework was done. Or, you know, maybe they even went above and beyond and they were actually like a really great parent in terms of meeting your physical needs. They also

could have potentially been emotionally there for you in certain other tangential ways that maybe weren't related to this part of the family. There are also those of you that had enabling parents that were not good, but they were just a little bit better than your, like, overtly abusive or harmful parent. And so I think that kids don't want to call their parents abusive. They don't want to recognize they are. They don't want to name that. And so if they have one parent that's a little bit better, they're especially going to cling to that. And even more so in the wake of realizing this parent is not good and has harmed me, right? So, So it takes a lot longer to get to the place of wanting to address this.

And once you're there, it can be incredibly painful. And I think that this caller, it sounds like you're saying, you know, like I know that my mom never protected me. I know that I want to let go. How do I heal from that? How do I find acceptance? And I think the acceptance is really just in naming reality, which you're kind of already getting there. Acceptance doesn't necessarily mean having a relationship or saying it was okay. It's more just

like, this is what happened. This is how things were handled in my family. This is what this person did. I accept that I cannot change that, that that is reality, et cetera. But I think what the biggest thing you have to look out for here is, is what are they doing in the present? How do they talk about what happened. How do they treat me when I bring these things up or I talk about my feelings or my experience? Are they remorseful, attentive, understanding? Have they discontinued that behavior? That's what can make all of the difference. I think when you have those things, you can have a really good relationship with someone who may have been an enabler or, you know, they were in a position where they didn't make the best choices.

And that's what's really tricky also about talking about these dynamics is often the enabler is also being abused within the context of the system. And that doesn't mean that you have to absolve them of all their responsibility or ignore what they did. I think it's more just about how can we talk about it today and repair and make things better. Now, when that's possible, it's great. And I think you can have a good relationship with this person. But if they are still being dismissive, denying their role, continuing the enabling,

continuing being defensive of that person's behavior, allowing the abuse, et cetera, it's very hard to have a relationship with that person because we're not talking about childhood anymore. We're talking about what's happening right now today and things really haven't changed. And if they haven't changed, what does you? your relationship look like. So I ultimately think you can achieve acceptance, understanding, release yourself from being responsible for that, and approach this relationship also from a new position of adulthood, empowerment, understanding the dynamics that we're at play,

and giving this person a chance to surprise you, do something good. And if they don't, making a decision in the present about the behavior that has continued has not been resolved and has not been there hasn't been any accountability for. I hope that that's helpful. Thank you so much for calling in and leaving a message. As always, you can send me a voice note or a question to Whitney at calling home.co. That's my email. You can also call us and leave a message or you can write me in a question if you prefer that and I will read it in the episode as well. I would love to see some of you inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at calling home, whether that's in a group or just on our email list.

This podcast in that community is where you can get the most from me and the most out of our content. My social media has really just like become, I don't know, 5% of the things that I produce. And so if you really want to get deep into this work and make a different, in your life. I definitely recommend continuing to listen to this podcast. Like, subscribe, leave a review, and join the family cycle breakers club at callinghome.co. Thank you so much and I will see you for our next episode. Bye. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice

from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Collingholm's terms of service linked in the show notes below.