CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - When a Parent Pulls Away

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

In this Q&A episode, Whitney answers questions about parents who pull back instead of facing accountability. In question one: a father goes silent for a year after his daughter discovers he secretly bought her sister a house. In question two: a mother wants a third family therapy session, after quitting the last two the moment the therapist named something she didn't like. 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. Have a question for Whitney? Send a voice memo or email to [e-mail] Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.coFollow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivitySign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0oThis podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to the Calling On podcast. I'm Whitney Goodman. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and this is the show where we have honest conversations about the family relationships that are complicated, painful, and do not come with easy answers or solutions. Today is Thursday. That means I am answering two caller questions. The first is from a woman who had 40 years of a good father, who was reliable, present, and someone who showed up. And then a few years ago, he started pulling away and now he doesn't speak to her at all. She wants to know how to make sense of losing a parent that you actually had. The second question is from someone whose mother had just started therapy and wants her to come to a family session.

It would be the third one in 20 years that they've tried to do together. The first two therapy sessions ended the same way with the therapist naming something. Her mother really didn't like to hear it. And then her mother quit therapy. And so she's asking a question that I get a lot. how do I stay open to this without handing over another piece of myself just to be dismissed? Before we get into those questions, just a very quick reminder about some things happening at calling home. We now have monthly memberships. This was the number one thing you all asked me for,

and now they're available. You can do a six-month or a 12-month membership for the low price of $299 a month or $2499 a month. You get unlimited support groups, discussion boards, It's 45 plus topics with worksheet, scripts, videos, articles, and courses, and you can find all of that at callinghome.com. If you're already a member, don't stress about it when your membership comes up for renewal. We will help you switch over. We also have those two new peer support groups starting in September, the difficult in-law groups and the adult sibling relationship groups, plus a new time for the family estrangement group. You get access to all of those with your membership. and in September we are going to be talking about healthy differentiation.

So staying connected to your family while still being fully yourself. Every month at Calling Home, we focus on a new topic and that gets added to our content library. And I think you'll hear a lot about that topic in today's episode. All right, let's go ahead and get into it. I am going to read you question one. First, thank you for your thoughtful and important work. Your podcast has helped me feel less alone as I grapple with one of the most painful and shocking times in my life. Thank you for listening.

I am a woman in my 40s who became a mother after many years of infertility. My relationship with my father was, for decades, one of reliability. He always showed up for me, and especially as a young adult in my 20s and 30s. I felt loved and seen. I never questioned that he cared. He started pulling away late into my pregnancy around four years ago. Things were going on. He was diagnosed with cancer, and my sibling was facing a very messy divorce.

He just seemed less interested and less engaged, even as he got better. and the divorce finalized. My sibling moved into a spectacular and very expensive home with her children when my son was about six months old. My parents and sibling repeatedly told me she was renting this home, even when I expressed concern about her financial situation and explicitly said they should buy her a reasonable home. About two and a half years later, via a deed search, I discovered that my parents had secretly purchased that home for my sibling. I expressed anger, but willingness to discuss. Despite my repeated calm request to discuss and start to heal our once close relationship and my utter sadness, my father has almost completely withdrawn. Aside from a

handful of brief logistical texts, he has not spoken to me for the better part of a year. Ouch. There has been no conversation, no curiosity about me or his grandson, and no attempt to repair the relationship. Listening to your recent episode, I wondered about the advice to accept a parent's lack of curiosity if that's simply who they've always been. But what if it wasn't? What if the parent you knew for 40 years suddenly became someone who is repulsed by me? Why the secrecy? Why the silent treatment? How do adult children make sense of a relationship that wasn't defined by lifelong neglect, but instead by what feels like a profound rupture? Is acceptance different when you're grieving not the parent you had, but the parent you feel you've lost? For what it's worth,

While this is the most egregious example, there have been significant favoritism toward my sibling throughout our lives. And I've noted it calmly and respectfully, but repeatedly, including via a message sent days before the home purchase. This type of situation, I think, is so confusing to see your relationship with your parent sort of change on a dime, it kind of seems like, before your eyes. I think that the road that you've traveled to this place is probably quite different than what I had described and outlined in that curiosity episode, which is one of the most popular episodes of this show that I've done if you'd like to go and listen to that. You can just type in curiosity calling home and the episode should come up. This grief is quite different as well because I think

when you're grieving the parent that you never had, that grief is hypothetical in a sense. It's an sense. It's like there's nothing else to compare it to other than sort of this fantasy that you've created in your mind. Now, grieving a parent that you actually had is different because you have those experiences. And I think that people go through this in a variety of situation. One that comes to mind for me that I've worked with people, you know, people who have a parent who has gone through Alzheimer's or dementia or who has become addicted to substances. They had a mental health crisis. married someone, they've gone through this change in their life where they have become a profoundly different person as a result of illness, disability, or some type of life change. And those people

have something directly to compare it to. It's like, I can remember the version of you that I knew before this happened. And so that's a very different grief than this like fantasy grief. Now, I think the wound that this person is particularly talking about is like, how do we answer that question of why? Why did this happen? Why this change? Why does everything feel like it got different a few years ago? And that can leave you really feeling crazy of like, what is going on here? Is there some sort of medical or psychological reason? Is there something that happened, something that I did? Why does it feel like our relationship kind of just like fell? off of a cliff, right? And you're trying to compare these two sets of evidence that you have for the relationship that you had one day to the relationship that you have today. And I think this is something that a lot of estranged people experience, people who have been on the receiving end of a cutoff, they describe this feeling of it being very dizzying and not knowing what happened. And I think here we're talking about a little bit different of a dynamic because we're talking

about you being the adult child with the parent. And when a parent suddenly distances themselves and you feel like you didn't do anything or there wasn't a conversation, that type of dynamic can be confusing in a different way, but equally as disorienting and confusing. This caller did mention that there has been what I believe was lifelong favoritism towards another sibling, right? And I think that that's something that might need a little bit more attention in this scenario, right? That favoritism didn't come out of nowhere. It's kind of already existed. And you are calling it out by talking about this house. Your sibling getting this home, maybe there being favoritism among the grandkids, among the children, who's getting access to

what, who's being afforded, what privileges. And that might be something that your parent really did not want to contend with or have to address. It kind of sounds like every time that got brought up, it was pushed aside or maybe there were lies being told of like they're leasing the house, they're renting, we're not buying it for them. And then once you are overtly calling out this favoritism like, hey, you're buying my sibling a house and you're not doing anything for me, that becomes something that then they have to either choose to acknowledge and address or hide from and act like it's not actually happening. And so I think that I don't want to act like I can possibly know exactly what's going on here, but I think it's less about being repulsed by you or not

liking you as a daughter, but more that maybe there is a dynamic here that's being called out that nobody wants to address or face. And parents have reasons for why they prioritize one child in certain ways over another that sometimes they do not want to face or acknowledge why they might be doing that or the fact that they're doing that at all. Okay. There's also a lot of things happening in this family that I want to pay attention to. So there's a cancer diagnosis. There's a sibling getting divorced. Your pregnancy, new motherhood, all of this is happening, right? When people get diagnosed with an illness like cancer. And this is not an excuse, but sometimes they reorganize their lives in a way that doesn't

make sense. They want to feel useful. They have one child that they can help in a certain way, maybe one that doesn't quote-unquote need them as much. And so they start just orienting themselves towards one. They feel very overwhelmed. There's something that's getting activated in them as a result of this diagnosis that makes it hard to have a relationship.

I think that while all this can be true, it is still very very important. painful for you to have a parent that maybe cannot embody their role as your parent while they are going through these things. But it happens. These diagnoses are hard for people. It reduces their capacity. They may not have been able to allocate energy to this. And sometimes in families, it is easier to attend to the child that needs us the most, the one that is having the biggest emergency or the one that we can even fix the emergency in an easy way that's not vulnerable, like with money, right? It seems like this might be a situation where your siblings going through a messy divorce. You said they need help. And you were kind of like the functioning

capable one at the time. And so maybe resources were finite and they were directed towards that sibling. There's also history of favoritism. So these patterns tend to start to play out again, especially when the family is low on bandwidth and energy. I think that this is more a case of avoidance and shame than anything. And the injury here for you might be more about the secrecy, right, that you're being told by your parents like, no, it's a lease. No, we didn't do this. And then you're sort of feeling like my guts telling me this is actually something else, which to me is proof that you've felt this before maybe. And so you look up the deed and then you're being like, wow, they did lie to me. And so I think that's the question of like why the secrecy, that might be

what is bothering you as well. And this feeling of like I had to find out by looking this up myself, why did they want to hide this from me? Why would they not want me to know about? this and I think that that's probably about conflict avoidance on their part more than it is about your worth. Again, still painful. Now, if you're raising the issue of favoritism in the family before they bought the house, they're buying the house anyways, they're lying to you about it, I think that, you know, they know what's going on then, right? They're making that choice, even if you feel that way, and they're entitled to do that. But maybe it would have felt better to say, hey, we're buying your sibling this house

because they're going through a divorce and we want to help them out. And I wonder if that level of honesty would have made you feel better about this. But I think sometimes silence is someone knowing that they can't defend their position. They can't come to you with this. They can't talk about it because their decisions. sort of back up your claims and so they're just going to not talk about it with you. The feeling that you feel like your dad is repulsed by you, I don't know that that's what's happening here. I think that nothing you're describing is evidence of disgust. A lot of it is evidence of avoidance. And a person who's

like hiding from what they did, a person who doesn't have a lot of energy or bandwidth. Those are not the same thing, right? It's still very painful, but one is about you and one is about them. I think acceptance here, which we've been talking about radical acceptance for the entire month of August at Calling Home and that module of content is all up on the site if you want to look at it and help you with this. But I do think that you can hold both of these realities at one time. My dad was a really good father to me for many years. And right now I don't feel loved by him and I don't feel close to him and that is hard. These two things, one doesn't cancel out the other.

There's also this idea that there's a lot going on in the family right now and maybe you can also hold space for that. That it's like, oh, my father isn't showing up that great in a moment like this because he might not be able to. And I feel hurt by the repeating of these patterns of favoritism where my dad is showing up for my sibling in these ways and not showing up for me. And I think that acceptance really is just saying, I am living in the reality of today that my father was a very good father to me up until this point.

And with all these factors going on in our family right now, he has not been able to show up in the way that he normally would. And so I might need to live my life in a different way right now. Doesn't mean that he won't return to how things were. It doesn't mean that he might not have more bandwidth. in the near future, but that I can, like, leave the door unlocked and not just stand in the doorway and keep asking him for something repeatedly that maybe he can't give me right now. I think that you have tried from what you're sharing to communicate this respectfully and

kindly and to the best of your ability. And so maybe it's like, right now it's just telling yourself, like, I'm not being a difficult daughter. I'm calling a pattern out that's hurtful to me that I think my parents either can't or don't want to see right now. And it doesn't feel good to not be able to be like attended to. And I can take a step back and look at those feelings and how I'm communicating them. I can validate that like this hurts. It doesn't feel good to be in a relationship with my father at this moment. And maybe this is more of a reflection of my father's capacity, not an absolute. refuting of all the good years that we had together and not an indictment of me as a daughter.

And sometimes if you can just pause in that space, things can and do get better in the future. And I hope that when your father and maybe when your sister's life kind of chills out, that maybe you guys can have a conversation about this favoritism and what it has felt like in that moment. I do feel like as a parent who's maybe engaged in what you're calling favoritism throughout the life cycle, if you feel like that's what's been going on in your family. And you say to your parents, I feel like you're, you know, prioritizing my sister or I'm sorry, I forget the gender of the sibling. I think it's a sister.

Right now I don't, I'm like offended that you're buying her this house. You know, I'm putting words in your mouth that if they in that moment we're like, well, we're going to buy her this house and we want to buy it. and we don't want to have to say we're not playing favorites because we're going to buy this house, then their only other option is like to not talk to you about it and just do what they wanted to do. I think that's how they're coping in this situation. You know, by being like, well, we're just going to pretend that conversation didn't happen. We're going to buy the house and we're going to keep it moving.

And so it can also be that that they just cannot and don't want to get into the emotional material that is being present here. And they also don't want to not help your sibling. They wanted to do that. And it is very hurtful for you to feel like you are then being ignored and pushed aside, especially if this is like an old dynamic. But I hope that that gives anyone in this kind of situation the ability to like step back a little bit, not draw sweeping conclusions based on just this very high stress and overwhelming time in the family and maybe see a when things start to kind of like chill out, you guys can have a conversation and maybe also this is something that you can talk about with your sibling as well. All right, let's go ahead and

do that second caller question. I'm going to read you this question. Hi, Whitney. Thank you so much for your amazing content. I've been listening to your podcast while I've been working through processing my own CPTSD and navigating a difficult dynamic with my mom over the last two years. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Some brief background. My mom was a single mom. My dad was out of the picture since I was three. I understand she has had a lot of trauma and difficult life experiences working through my own therapy process and research. I believe she is emotionally immature and truly not capable of empathy, especially consideration of me and my feelings, emotions, well-being, etc. She has never taken accountability, apologized, or made changes in how she talks to

me and my sister. About a year and a half ago, a situation came up that crossed a line and showed her cruelty and gross lack of consideration of us. I set a boundary that this moment was the last straw and something had to change in order for us to move forward with a meaningful relationship. I stated that we had to have open and honest conversations and accountability all around in order for us to take next steps to building a better relationship. Until she is open to that, I have to maintain distance. This was about a year and a half ago and we have been low contact ever since. She recently reached out that she started therapy and the therapist wants to do a family session with my mom, my sister, and me. Over the last 20 years, this will be the third time I have

gone through some kind of session with my mom and a therapist. They have been different every time. However, each time they said things like she didn't like to hear that she parentified me needs to develop better listening skills and needed to work on considering others outside of herself. Each time the therapist gave this kind of feedback and validated my experience, my mom stopped going to therapy and acted as if nothing ever happened. And of course, nothing changed. My question is, what can I do to protect myself as we go through this upcoming family therapy session?

I will always leave an open door as I believe my mom can change if she wants to put in the work, be vulnerable, take accountability, and have open communication. And working through a therapist is great, but I can't help feel the disappointment that I felt the last two times we did a family session where I was vulnerable and put a lot of effort and energy into what I just shared just for it to be dismissed. It makes me feel like I do not want to share as much or be as vulnerable to protect myself, but I do want to support her being in therapy. I think what I'm hearing here is that you're not actually like afraid of the session and it sounds like you've made the decision that you are going to go and do this again. And you are kind of

scared of the hoping and being let down again, which makes a lot of sense. You know, if you prepare, open up, you get validation by the professional and then you watch your mom quit and it resets back to zero. Like that aftermath is very difficult. Okay. And I think that we can focus also on the fact that like when you have been in these situations and you've been with the therapist that they have supported you and they've helped you, even if that therapist worked with your mom, I think that that helps to reflect on that like, I know that what I'm saying is real and that I'm allowed to say it and that multiple professionals that I've met with that have worked with both me and my mom have recognized the dynamic and they've been supportive of me when I've brought

it up. I know you said this is a different therapist, but I think that that's something to reflect on that like you're not crazy and you have someone in your corner that is helping, right? And if your mom doesn't see it, again, not a reflection of you and your communication and the validity of what you went through. It is a reflection of her capacity. And sometimes going in with that mindset can be helpful. I think if you approach this session as a point of data collection with openness but still preparing to protect yourself, it will help. So going into this session, not with, I hope my mom responds well, I hope we can repair things, but instead just saying, I'm going to watch how my mom handles this feedback in real time.

I am going to be able to leave knowing more about my mom's state right now than I knew walking in. Good or bad, I will be able to collect data. And so the goal is to learn something about her and your relationship, not to make sure that she changed and to go in hopeful that she has changed, right? I also think it's helpful to go in really, if you're only starting with one session, of like maybe thinking in advance of what you would like to share and going a lot like lower risk. Don't bring up the absolute worst thing, but what is some vulnerability that might not be as

intense or harder to recover from if you decide to share that in the session. It's also okay to ask at the beginning of the session to ask the therapist, you know, what is the goal of this session? I want to make sure that I am prepared and understanding of what we are trying to do here. I think that it's also fair for you to ask a for a pre-session call with the therapist, you know, just to get their assessment on what they might be trying to do. with this with the in this session. I think that if this therapist has spoken to your mom and they've agreed that it's a good idea to have you come in, they probably have some sort of plan for what

they're trying to establish there. Right. And so you want to get on the same page so you know what you're walking into. Right. I think that the first session that you have with your mother, don't go in expecting like a breakthrough and a, and a full repair. What are some signs that would make you feel hopeful. Some that I can think of would be that your mom is able to sit there and listen and allow you to speak and nod and just hear what you're saying without defensiveness. I think that would be a really good first sign that some more conversations and sessions are possible. You also want to look for observable behavior. So is your mom, again, able to sit in that room with you for the full hour, the session is, 50 minutes, whatever, and allow you to speak.

Is she able to communicate her goals for the relationship and what she would like to happen? Does it feel like the therapy is collaborative or is it more just about getting you to come over to her side? Is the therapist aware of the actual dynamic between the two of you or do you feel like they're not really aware of what has happened? I think that going in understanding what you're going to be able to measure is important. Now, I think that the test isn't really the session. It's what happens after it, right?

So does your mom stay in therapy? Does she continue working on the things that the two of you discussed? I don't think that you can make a decision or have like a verdict on just how the session felt. So if you were going to attend this session going into it with an open mind that like this is just us sort of cracking the door and barely stepping through. It is, this is not where the whole thing is going to happen and tell me everything about it. Right. And I think that you can say like, you know, I'm willing to come to this session, but we are going to need to continue working on this. I don't think that we can resolve everything in one session. And I would like to

have a plan moving forward. And that's something you can discuss too if the session goes well, that like we need to continue with this. And I would like to see how this develops over time. Now, when we're talking about like how can you protect yourself, I think it's that you're setting realistic expectations. You're knowing that you cannot control the full outcome of this. You can only control how you show up and what you share and that you are allowed to have limits on, you know, how much you will participate, how vulnerable you are going to be while also being engaged in the process. It's also good for you to have a plan for how you're going to take care of yourself after this. You know, do you have your own therapist, your own support system? Are you able to leave

the session after on your own and not have your mom like blowing up your phone? trying to rehash everything or repair right away. I really think having healthy established expectations and boundaries right off the bat for what this process is going to look like, not expecting one therapy session to fix the relationship is very important. Thank you so much for sending in that question. Thank you to both of the people who sent in questions today. You can always send me a question to Whitney at callinghome.co. And it can be in written form or a voice know. I think today and this month that calling home for the month of August, we're talking about radical acceptance, that acceptance is not the same thing as understanding, right? You may never really

figure out why someone stopped talking to you. You may never get the full apology or the reason and you may never hear them fully say it out loud. And I think waiting for that, being stuck and that is what keeps people stuck for years. You know, you can support your mother going to therapy and decide that you need to protect yourself throughout that process. And you can also leave space in your life for this gap between the parent that you had, the parent that they are today. You can be disappointed in them. You can leave room for things to change in the future while also radically accepting what is today. Just as a reminder before I go, monthly memberships are now available at Calling Home, and that gives you access to unlimited

support groups, discussion boards, over 45 different topics with worksheet, scripts, courses, etc. You can learn more about this topic of radical acceptance, and for the month of September, we are going to be talking about healthy differentiation, which is staying yourself while maintaining closeness with your family and what it looks like when that isn't possible. We also have those two new peer support groups, the difficult in-laws group, and the adult-siblings relationship groups as well as the new Tuesday time for the family estrangement group. I would love to see you in one of those groups. You can join the Family Cycle Breakers Club at callinghome.com.

And please don't forget to like, subscribe, leave us for you and comment on this episode. Thank you so much for being here. I will see you next week. 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 is not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Collingholm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Holmes Terms of Service linked

in the show notes below.