CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - When No Contact Doesn't Stop the Contact

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of emotional abuse, ongoing harassment, and a mention of suicidal ideation.In this Q&A episode, Whitney answers a woman whose parents keep sending guilt-laden texts and showing up uninvited. In the second question, a listener's therapist keeps telling her to decide what she wants from her parents before she feels ready.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] the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.coFollow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmftOrder 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.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Calling Home Podcast. I am your host, Whitney Goodman, here for a Q&A episode today, which means I am going to be getting into two different caller questions. The first is from someone who said that she has ended the relationship with her parents, but they continue to call and text her. The second question is from someone who's an individual therapy and wondering if her therapist's approach to her relationship with her parent is the right approach. I'm Whitney Goodman. As a reminder, I am the founder of Calling Home and the Family Cycle Breakers Club. You can now join us for a low monthly fee of 2499 that gives you access to unlimited support groups, 45 plus topics. So if anything today resonates with you in this

episode and you're like, I really need to work on that. I'm going to encourage you to take it one step further. Listening to podcasts is great. But if you actually want to do the work and be surrounded by other people that are doing the work to, come visit us at callinghome.com. All right, let's go ahead and read that first question. Now, this is a little bit of a longer question, so I might try this time, like breaking it up and responding to things as they go through it instead of reading the whole question at once. Let me know in the comments what you think about this approach, or if you like the whole

question to be read first. Dear Whitney, I've been estranged from my parents for four years and my two older sisters have been estranged from them for six to seven years. After my parents took my older sister to court seeking grandparents' rights, I attempted low contact and family therapy. Why are all of your parents taking you guys to court? This is like the fifth question like this in the past couple of months. I just did one on a Q&A on this. I think it was the one last week about going to court over grandparents' rights. With no change in behavior and constant boundary violations, I felt I had no choice but to go

completely no contact. Today my parents have no relationship with any of their three children or nine grandchildren. Ouch. They've never met two of the grandchildren because they were born after we went no contact. They also have no relationship with any of my dad's siblings and only one or two of my mom's siblings. Wow, there's a lot of estrangement in this family. My parents are very controlling and authoritarian.

They use manipulation, shame, and guilt to continue the conflict. I believe my mom displays traits consistent with narcissism and borderline personality disorder, although she has never been diagnosed. My dad has always been uninvolved and has primarily served as her protector rather than ours. These are simply my personal observations. Here's my dilemma. Despite repeated requests to respect our boundaries and stop contacting us, my parents continue to text and call every three to four weeks.

Sometimes it's my dad sending short, guilt-filled messages to me. Here's a snapshot of the past few years. Okay, so these are some of her text messages that she's gotten from her dad that I'm going to read you. how do you sleep at night knowing that I want you in my life? I will die without my grandchildren knowing me for me and not what they have been told. In all caps, you need to pray for what you have done to me and I still love you. Gosh, we'll get more into these in a second. He also sends group text to my sisters and me saying things like, I need to know if you've always hated me. I feel like you never loved me. No matter what happens good or bad, I will always love you.

unfortunately, I don't feel that you ever loved me. If you could save my life, why would you? Happy anniversary to us. Without your parents, you would not exist. Have a great day. Okay. He has also sent messages like, the past years, a lot has happened. Birthdays missed, children born, etc. I am very sorry for being a terrible father. Your lives had to be total hell. I really tried hard for you to have a good life and a bright future. I believe that's what you have. Unfortunately, you cut your parents out of your life. I want all of you to know, I forgive each of you because it's how you feel about me and I can't change that. I believe that I will go to my grave without seeing you again. So I want to say, I love you. I love you. Okay,

then we're going to get into her mom. So let's go back to the dad here and talk about some of these messages. The first thing here is this caller is asking, you know, that we've made all these repeated requests to not contact us. And he keeps contacting us and kind of like, what can we do about that? And to that, I would say, you cannot make someone stop contacting you outside of blocking their number, getting a restraining order. Like, you have to either block the communication or take the legal route, right? Otherwise, all you can really do is say stop contacting me and not respond to that contact. So I think you've really probably taken it pretty far here in terms of asking for the contact to stop. But are you willing or do you

want to take it further? Or would you prefer to just ignore the communication that you're receiving? Or would you want to block their number? Do you feel like the contact has gotten so incessant and severe and harmful in your life and disruptive that you feel like you need to take even further of a step. I'm not sure, but I think when you're asking, like, what can I do here? I don't think you have much recourse, you know, other than not responding to the messages and blocking their number. Those would be the easiest ones. Let's take a second with these text messages and talk about why these don't land well. And this is going to be helpful for parents who are estranged from a child, anybody who sent messages like this, and for those of you that have received them, I think. Most of these messages are

very, very focused on the person sending them. Okay? How do you sleep at night knowing that I want you in my life? I will die without my grandchildren knowing me. You need to pray for what you have done to me. I feel like you never loved me. I don't feel that you ever loved me. If you could save my life, would you? Without us, you wouldn't exist. Okay? all those messages are very, very centered on the parent and their experience or on the person sending the message. All of these messages from the parent are ultimately asking for one thing, right? I want you to help soothe me. I want you to tell me that it's okay, that you do love me, that you do care about me, that we are going to connect again. And it's okay for the parent

to feel like this. Of course, any parent, myself included, if your child is a child, is not speaking to you or answering you or anybody that you know that you love, you are going to be looking for reassurance. The problem is that you cannot look for reassurance here, especially with your child and especially with someone that you have hurt. So if this is an adult that's saying, my parent has hurt me over the years, it has gotten to the point where I needed to stop speaking to them because the ways that they were acting towards me were so hurtful and harmful that I have taken space away from them, I am not able to soothe them or to help them in this way until we fix what is going on between us until there's some sort of accountability or repair.

So understandably, when a person receives messages from the person that hurt them that are looking for soothing and reassurance and connection, they are going to want to reject that. It is not going to feel appropriate for that bond. A lot of these other messages include the words, I love you, but the messages do not feel very loving. And that's what can also be quite confusing when we're talking about communication between parents and their children. These are often relationships where love has been a very confusing.

experience, where love has been used as the umbrella for abuse and neglect. And so when you grow up in a system where love gets contorted to mean a lot of things that it actually doesn't, it is a very, very dizzying experience. And then to see these words paired with I love you is super confusing. She then goes on to say, other times it's my mom sending late the messages either just to me, to me and my husband, to me and my sisters, or to the entire family. She often brings up prior family conflicts and places blame on everyone except herself and my dad. She uses words like slander or tells me I need to be in therapy because I was never emotionally abused. Meanwhile, she throws the Ten Commandments in my face and tells me I need to go to confession and beg for

forgiveness. They seem convinced that our childhood was perfect. Even though my sister and I agree, it was a toxic, controlling, unloving upbringing. And that was because other people tell them what great parents they were. We should obediently comply with their wishes. There is zero accountability for our experiences or feelings, only gaslighting that our perspective is wrong or that the things we experienced never happened. So this is an impasse that I think a lot of adults who have a strained relationship with their parents come to. And this is something I see people fighting about a lot in the discourse

online. Who gets to be the authority on if a parent was a good parent? Is it the person who was on the receiving end of that parenting? Or is it community members who witnessed some of the parenting? Is it the parent themselves? I think we could all argue this a million different ways, but I would say that the child that experienced the parenting certainly gets to have quite a bit of say in how that parenting felt for them, especially when they are an adult. Now, that doesn't mean that like a five-year-old who's not allowed to stay up until midnight is an accurate observer of the fact that like their parent is a cruel, terrible person. But certainly they can also be a judge of how it felt to be in that relationship with their parent if they felt loved and respected and

taken care of and seen. Those are feelings that exist outside of maybe just like small parenting actions. And I would say that someone who didn't live in the home and witness the parents when they were privately parenting probably doesn't have the best assessment of how that parenting was going. This is also something very interesting about the debate of like who gets to be the arbiter of if someone was a good parent is that a lot of times these types of types of types of of parents, the ones who remain perpetually estranged from their adult children, they end up preferring to side with the perspectives of strangers and people in their community versus their own children. And they're ultimately going to promote anyone to a position of authority

that agrees with them. The caller then goes on to say, she calls my kids her grandchildren, as if they are a possession that she has earned and has every right to, despite her poor treatment toward me. I consider both their past and present behavior to be emotionally abusive. For the past two and a half years, I have ignored every message and phone call. I haven't responded once. Occasionally, my middle sister becomes frustrated and sends a simple stop contacting me message. That usually results in even more messages about how hateful we are and how we should just be kind. Any response seems to feed the narrative they've created. One experience still stands out. Six days after I gave birth to my fourth child via C-section, my dad showed up uninvited at my home.

He shamed me for not having a relationship with them, told me it was a shame that I didn't love him, and then threatened suicide before getting in his truck and driving away. Gosh, that is terrible. I was home alone with my newborn and utterly devastated. I called the police and requested a well-check. My mom sent text messages to my sisters and me that afternoon, blaming us for not being there for him during a medical crisis. never acknowledging the emotional toll his actions took on me. I spent several years filled with anxiety that he would show up again. I would watch every vehicle that passed by making sure it didn't pull into the driveway.

My entire body was filled with stress and anxiety all the time. Because of experiences like this and because they've taken my sister to court before, I'm terrified that I may someday need evidence of harassment. For that reason, blocking them doesn't feel like an option. Okay, so that speaks to what we discussed a little bit earlier in the episode. So my question is, how do you find peace when going no contact doesn't actually stop the contact? I feel stuck. I read the books, listened to podcasts, and done years of work. I can identify the manipulation, gaslighting shame and guilt. I can usually regulate myself

through journaling, prayer, and breathing exercises when I'm triggered. But part of me is exhausted. I'm tired of waiting for the next message, tired of bracing myself, tired of feeling like I have to stay on guard, tired of looking at the window when a car similar to theirs drives by, and fearing that they are showing up to my home uninvited again. I'm trying to heal and become the best version of myself for my husband and children. I want to break the cycle so my kids never have to experience these dynamics either now or as adults. My biggest fear is that because I'm still so triggered by my parents, I'll unintentionally pass some of that hurt down to my own children.

That's a really common fear. Every time I receive some sort of communication, my body feels it. I feel the anxiety and stress, and sometimes I allow it to consume my thoughts, which usually impacts my mood for the entire day, even if I recognize that it's happening and try to change it. Sometimes I fake it and put a smile on my face, but inside I'm devastated that I didn't get the parents I needed and question how I can make it finally stop. How do I truly move forward when the source of pain keeps finding ways to reach me? Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. I appreciate all your insight. I want to focus on your questions here because I understand that on the

one hand you're saying, like, I feel like I need to have evidence of harassment if I'm ever going to do anything legally about this. I get that and I hear you. And I want you to consider that maybe you're not doing everything in your power to stop the harassment from arriving at your doorstep by keeping this communication open. If you truly feel like them contacting you is this destabilizing, you're not able to look at your phone, see it, and move on, then you need to do something about that. If you are a parent of multiple children, you're trying to get through your life, you've done all of this work. And I wrote a post about this the other day that, like, the goal here isn't to become so regulated that someone can harass you and abuse you and show up

at your door and you're just like, cool with it. You know, these are still your parents. And when they are not listening to your boundaries, they're showing up during some of your most vulnerable moments. They're making threats. They're trying to provoke you. That's not something that you're going to be able to like podcast and book and listen, you know, and learn your way through. I wish that it was. But sometimes we are still enduring harm and feeling it and having these symptoms of it because we are still experiencing it. So if I allowed someone to come into my house every day and insult me, even though I have all of these tools and things that I have done and I have learned, I'm going to feel hurt. I'm going to get bothered. I'm probably going to have

some sleep disruption. I'm going to start feeling bad about myself. You do not need to invite this stuff to your doorstep. Okay. So how can I mitigate the damage? You know, I think blocking the phone number is one way, maybe leaving email open. Maybe they still might send you letters, but those are typically like next on the wrong. And so if they usually fire off text messages, that might be a good way to eliminate it. Something I realized, I think that this is true. I think that if you block someone's messages on your iPhone, they will still come through when you open up like I message on your computer. Don't, don't quote me on this, but check into that. Because I think there's a way of like not having it come through the device that you are always on and still being able to have those

records and see it somewhere else when you need it. But you also have, you know, your parents have shown up at your door uninvited and things like that. So if you ever needed to show proof that you were being harassed, I think there's going to be more than text messages. And maybe this will just help cut back on it. Because when someone is not listening to the limit that you are trying to set, you have to be. build a higher wall sometimes. It can't be on them to abide by that boundary, especially when they're showing you time and time again that they are not going to do that. I ultimately think that you move forward from this by taking control of your life and doing what you need to do. And the reason this is

so hard is because it's your parents. But if an ex-boyfriend or a former friend or coworker was sending you these types of messages showing up at your door, not listening to your boundaries, you would probably feel quite differently about this. And so I understand why it is so, so much harder when it is a parent. And if you feel like you want to say to them, hey, I really don't want to block your number. And if you keep sending me these threatening and overwhelming types of messages, I am going to have to do that. The next time you do that, I am going to block you. you can do that. And maybe they still have email open or maybe you can tell another one of your family members that they don't contact as much. Like, hey, if there's ever a health issue or something

particular that you want to know about, will you let me know and like create a plan if there are things that you're worried that you're going to miss out on by blocking them. I also understand how blocking feels like, you know, a lot of people have explained it to me that like it feels childish, it feels extreme. I feel like it's something I'm not allowed to do. Like, it's really the final nail in the coffin. And I get it. But at some point, you have to say, like, this is like me, you know, I'm letting them into my house every day by allowing them to contact me on this phone. Like, I've had several people on my, like, social media account that literally would comment harassing comments on every single post multiple times a day. Like, I'm pretty sure they had

an alert when I would post and they would come on and just rant every day. And I kept letting them be there because I felt like, oh, I need to tolerate it. I need to allow differences of opinion. I need to like be open to it. And finally, I was just like, I actually don't. Like this is like my house, my page that I have created here. And these people aren't my parents. So I know it's different. But we all get into this mode sometimes, especially those of you that intellectualize, which I tend to do that a lot too. Like, I just have to learn to tolerate it and be more mature and not let it get to me. And like, this is your mom and dad.

It's going to get to you. So you have to decide what filter you're going to put in place or you need to mitigate the damage in some way, especially if you're finding that this is sort of like knocking you off for the whole day. All right, I hope that's helpful. Let me know what you guys think about me breaking up the question like that. It felt a little bit better to me. All right. Now I'm going to go ahead and read the second question.

This is a shorter question, so I'll read it to you, and then we'll get into it. And just so you know, you can always email me, Whitney at callinghome.com, to send me a voice note or a written question, and I answer two questions every Thursday on the show. I also host a Q&A that's live and recorded every month for members of the Family Cycle Breakers Club, where you can ask me anything about your family relationships, things that you want to learn more about. And those Q&As are private. I just jump on audio. you can submit as many questions to me. It's totally anonymous and it doesn't end up on the podcast

episode. So if you want to join the Family Cycle Breakers Club, that's another way to also get access to Q&As. Okay, let's read that question. As someone who is currently an individual therapy, I am struggling with how to approach my therapist regarding my trauma from my parents in the form of emotional immaturity. This therapist knows I started seeing her to potentially do parts therapy or somatic therapy, but also wanted to work on my relationship with my parents. This is after doing one therapy session at two different times with each parent and me walking out feeling completely devastated that my parents owned nothing. Every time I meet with her, we discuss my parents and she tells me I need to figure out

what kind of relationship I want from them. But I don't think I can even think about that because they don't even acknowledge that they did wrong. She basically said they might never. Should I just accept this and see if we can have a relationship? or should I try a different therapist that has worked with clients like me? I'm not even sure if you can answer this. I've listened to a lot of your podcasts and they make me feel so seen, but then I go into

therapy and feel like I'm trying to explain why I don't feel understood. And she basically tells me I need to stop always explaining why I feel a certain way. And I know it's because I have been made to feel crazy for my thoughts my whole life. I'm going to answer this generally about trying to find a therapist that works with issues like this and what to look out for. This feeling of going into therapy and over explaining yourself is very, very common for adults who have a strained relationship with a parent. It's very normal for adults who were raised in homes where there was a lot of emotional neglect, emotional immaturity, emotional abuse,

abandonment, and for children who experienced a lot of childhood trauma. This idea that, like, I need to sell the story and make it believable. is a very, very common feeling. And so you're going into therapy. It sounds like trying to sort of sell your therapist on the story. And it sounds like what's happening here is that there's a little bit of a mismatch in what's going on. You were explaining yourself to the therapist because you don't feel understood. She also maybe is not understanding you.

And then, I'm assuming the therapist is a woman, it could be anything. But then you are continuing to explain yourself and the therapist is telling you like, you don't need to explain yourself. And you're feeling like, yeah, I do because you're not getting it. I think I have that right. So then you guys get stuck in this loop of like, I don't feel understood. You need to stop explaining yourself, but you don't understand me. And you are likely reenacting like a pattern that you typically have in the relationship with your

parents in this therapy session. I don't think this necessarily means that this therapist can't help you or that you need a different therapist, but they may not understand the function of your over-explaining. And so even if you want to keep working with this therapist and you feel like it's a good match, otherwise, if you can sort of explain that in a way or mention it of like, I am used to over-explaining myself. I feel like you're not going to believe my situation with my parents or if this is true for you, you know, people always believed my parents over me. Nobody took my story seriously. Like trying ways to explain the function of your over-explaining. And I know that that also feels like, yeah, you're having to explain yourself more.

But sometimes this is what happens at the beginning of therapy before a therapist really gets to know and understand how you communicate. and why you communicate the way that you do. Now, this whole piece about needing to figure out what kind of relationship you want to have with them, that could certainly be a goal of therapy. And I'm really excited as I'm reading your question because that is a huge part of my book, the parent you have that's coming out in February that I think is really going to help you with that process. But since you don't have that book yet, I think that first, I feel like you have to start

looking at what has happened in the past and in the present with your parent. Most adults that I talk to say, it's not really about what happened then. Like, I can get past that. It's the fact that they keep repeating it in the moment. They won't take accountability. They won't acknowledge it. They won't do anything about it. And that's why I can't have a relationship with them. And then the question becomes, if my parent never acknowledges, never takes accountability and doesn't do anything about the past, can I have a relationship in the present with them based on how our interactions go and the type of relationship that we are able to have? And some people will say, yeah, I could have a very, like, limited relationship with them, one that's very boundaryed, one that's limited just to, like,

tasks and helping and things like that, or I could have a very close, more adaptive relationship with them. But first, I have to really figure out what is going right and what is going wrong in this relationship and what is the actual harm I'm being exposed to, what are the consequences of having a relationship with my parent. And I think first, you got to get to know yourself and get confident in yourself and what you believe and what you've experienced in this relationship before you can jump into how you're going to relate to them and what kind of relationship you're going to ask them for, which it sounds like that's maybe what the therapist is talking about. So I would take a step back. I think first you got to build up some self-trust,

some ability to know that you can believe what you experienced and what you're feeling, building confidence in your ability to be the narrator of your own story and your own experiences, and to not constantly feel like you need to tailor your story in a specific way for the therapist, even. If you still feel like your therapist really doesn't understand the power dynamic between you and your parents, they don't really understand the long-term impact of emotional and maturity, then, of course, you know, it might be worth finding a therapist that has a little bit more awareness and experience with this type of issue. All right, those are our two questions for today. Thank you so much, as always, for trusting me with your questions for sending them

in. I answer two questions every single Thursday. You can send them to Whitney at callinghome.com. Anything about your adult family relationships. And hopefully I will tackle one of your questions next week. We are finishing up. We have two more weeks left. of our topic about differentiation and individuation, becoming your own person while still being close to your family, and what to do when that isn't possible. Our groups on this topic have been really amazing this month, and we have two weeks of content, worksheets, articles, videos, and scripts already up on the website to help you become your own person and figure out how to do that with your family. We'd love to see you inside the family cycle breakers club at

callinghome.co. Thank you so much and have a great rest of your day. 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 Colling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Collingholm's terms of service linked in the show notes below.