CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - When You Love Your Family But Can't Keep Doing This

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

In this Q&A episode, Whitney answers two questions from people who love their families but are struggling with dynamics that aren't working. First, someone who spent their whole life as the family mediator and peacemaker, has done years of their own healing work, and is now asking how to stay connected to people who have never really shown curiosity about who they are. Second, a husband navigating the tension between his wife's need for distance from his parents and his own desire to maintain a relationship with them. He also asks what role, if any, his parents should have with their child.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.

Today's episode, I think, is really for anyone who feels like they love their family, but maybe they can't fully relax around them. They feel like they want to be close, but there's some issues, and we even have some in-law drama kind of thrown in there. So the first question that we're going to talk about is from someone who has spent their entire life being the mediator, the peacemaker, and the one who tried to create closeness in the family, but they feel like they they never really got anything back from that. They've done years of their own healing work, and now they're asking the question that a lot of you can probably relate to, which is, how do I stay connected to people who really don't know me? And what do I do when I feel like I might need some distance?

The second question comes from someone who is navigating issues with a parent with their partner and a child in the picture. He wants a relationship with his parents, but his wife needs space. And now they're trying to figure out how to honor everyone's needs while also protecting a child in the picture. All right, let's go ahead and dive in to those questions. I'm going to read you that first question. Dear Whitney, first, let me thank you for everything you do. Your videos have given me a lot of perspective and made me think deeper on my position in the family dynamics. I'll try to keep this short, but it is a lot.

To preface, I love my family. I've always been there for them. I've done everything in my power to try and create deeper connections over the years. I took deep interest in them and tried to connect. Always mediated conflicts, sacrificed myself to broker peace, and recently gave up due to my trauma healing journey. I know that I am not perfect. I know that I exhibit some traits which are unhealthy as I grew up in unhealthy dynamics, a long history of trauma, including sexual abuse or on age five outside of the family. medical trauma from 2 to 38, I was bullied, my entire upbringing, and emotionally neglected. I was undiagnosed with autism and ADHD, but formally diagnosed at 38. Grew up in a rough environment with lots of drugs and violence, addictions to cope, etc. My father was verbally abusive, emotionally neglectful, cheated, and had a hidden child.

He was reclusive and isolated a lot, lack of responsibility until very late and only partially fulfilled duties at best. My mother, I would describe as enabling, passive, away most of the time due to working to feed, shelter, et cetera. Sister was always the focal point, got all the money, the emotional support, the adoration, created a lot of chaos. Family always ran to clean up. I don't blame her, a lot of factors at play here. I got physical support when I was sick, helped driving, etc. I'm 38. I've done five years of somatic IFS. healing and becoming a new person. I spent my entire life reflecting, doing psychedelics since 17, and have always tried to improve myself. I want to heal our dynamics. I want to talk about the lack of

emotional connection. I don't know how to approach it. Silent treatment happens if I put up boundaries. The immaturity level is quite high. Both had a lot of hard trauma from infancy. They always talk about themselves. I've never been of interest. They literally know nothing about me. Never ask, turn convos on to themselves, and I've learned their behaviors after having to move back home for years due to chronic illness. Doing my best not to replicate the abusive dynamics from the home. I don't want to give them an ultimatum. I also don't want to force them into therapy or confront their painful past, but I simply cannot live with this dynamic. It is eating me up on the inside. I feel like they see me as an extension of them, not as a separate

adult individual. They hold a lot of anger, resentment, and confusing emotions. I have a friend who I connect deeply with with no judgment and I feel seen, appreciated and cherished goes both ways. I'd still like that with my family, moving out of their home soon, going low contact to get some clarity. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated, much love. There's a lot of history here. And as always, I like to remind you all, I am a therapist. I am not your therapist. I am not going to give direct advice to this person, but I am going to speak generally to a lot of the themes that I've highlighted in this question and things that I think a lot of you will be able to late to and work with. I want to start out here by highlighting that this person has said, I love my family. Okay.

And I think that we need to take a step back and really listen to that. Because a lot of times, times when we hear questions like this from people, when we hear about people wanting to take distance, I think there is an assumption that there is a lack of love or a feeling of being cold-hearted, like this person is being rejecting or cold towards their family. And this person is directly saying to us, I love my family. And I want you to hear that in their question. They are asking, how can I make this work? How can I be closer to a family like this?

So if I hear from someone, I love my family, I've always been there for them, and I want to heal our dynamics. That's what's being said here. That's the position that I am going to work from, okay? That that is the goal for this person. And if you can relate to this person, if these are things that you've said, that I'm speaking more generally to you. Now, this person also says, I know that I'm not perfect. I know that I exhibit some traits that are unhealthy. I think that's great.

It's great to have that ownership, even when you know that a lot of that probably originated from growing up in unhealthy dynamics with a long history of trauma. There was sexual abuse, medical trauma, not getting the correct diagnosis for many years. These are all factors that are at play here. And this person is still able to say, I know that I developed some patterns that may it difficult for me to sustain relationships, and I have been working on that. Now, just because you have that awareness doesn't mean that then every person that you come in contact with or try to have a relationship with, including your family, is going to be

successful because we know that these things take two people with that level of awareness, right? But I think that awareness, that accountability, that recognition and the desire to work on those things for yourself is commendable and a wonderful quality to have. Okay. This person also seems to have great awareness of the patterns that come up in their family and the way that everyone is participating in the dynamic, which again, great to have that intellectual and emotional understanding, but that understanding doesn't always fix

relationships or make them better. Okay. Now, ultimately what this caller is saying is that I want to heal our dynamics and I don't know how to approach it. And when I put up boundaries, I often get the silent tree. Okay. So this tells me that there's probably a decent amount of emotional immaturity in this family. There is an inability to tolerate boundaries or limits. And so when those are set, the people kind of pull back, go silent, wait for things to change. They don't want to operate under someone else's rules or how they choose to operate in their relationships. Okay. And I think that you're very right here of saying,

I don't want to give an ultimatum and I don't want to force them into therapy or confront their painful past because you can't. And giving people ultimatums who don't respond well to boundaries, who are not curious about boundaries, who don't want to learn how to love you better, who ultimately shut down, they likely are not going to respond well to ultimatums, to confrontation, or to being forced into therapy. That won't be successful for them until they are choosing to do that themselves and are willing and able to do it. So I think that that's right.

You're also saying, I simply cannot live with that. this dynamic, it's eating me up on the inside. I feel like they see me as an extension of them, not as a separate adult individual. That could be true. That happens a lot in families that cannot tolerate boundaries. When they see you as an extension of them, they see the family as a cohesive unit that should operate as one. It is hard for them to understand how you couldn't want to live a different way. Okay. So probably right. This person is also sort of registering that they're able to have close and connected relationships with other people, which is an important thing to check in on for yourself. So I would say that moving out and

maybe getting some distance from this family is probably very important and may allow you to have a different dynamic. I do not think that one person in a family can heal the whole dynamic. And I want you to maybe step away from that goal because taking that on your shoulders and saying, I'm going to heal our family, I'm going to make it all better is probably going to end in disappointment. And you feeling like you weren't able to achieve that. And so instead, I want you to step back and you know that I like to operate from this place of saying, if I can't change them, if I can't make them do anything, what am I going to do?

how do I want to live in the confines of how this family is acting? And if I want to have a relationship with these people, what does that look like if they never change? And if I cannot fix them and I can't heal this family. I feel like they are not curious about me. They don't have any interest in me. They don't want to be connected. And so if I am going to have a relationship with someone like that, whether they are my family or not, it's probably going to be a pretty distant one. Probably going to be surface level, maybe going to include seeing each other occasionally on holidays, checking in, having this type of surface level dynamic. How does that feel for me? When I say I'm going to abandon the expectation that I can heal this family, make them different,

make us be close, fully connect, have this emotional connection with them, and then say instead, I can realistically have this type of relationship that's more distant, superficial surface level. How does that feel? Does that make it feel a little bit better? Does that allow me to exhale and say, like, this isn't my fault that the family is like this, that that's the capacity of these people? do I feel like that's something that I want to engage in and that feels good for me? If you were a person that says, I love them, I want to have a relationship with them,

can you accept what that looks like? Can that be enough for you? Or is that going to be really painful and distressing for you? And thinking about if I cannot force them to change, how do I want to show up in this relationship? And if I have friends who can meet my needs and who I have a relationship with, can that be enough? And can I not expect this from my family members who are not able to give me that? And for some of you, you're going to hear this and be like, no, I don't want to have relationships like that in my life. I don't want to be in a relationship with family members that is

surface level disconnected. They don't see me. It feels like I'm talking to an acquaintance or a stranger. And for some of you, you're going to say, that seems better to me than cut off. That feels okay. I have other relationships in my life where I can get that from. And this is going to be okay for me. And there's shades of gray in between those two, right? But the ultimate thing here, I think if you can relate to this caller, is saying, like, if I love my family, I want to have a relationship with them. I'm trying to figure out how I can have that with this family. How can I do that without them changing? And if that's not possible, you're like, no, they're going to have to change. Then you might have to think about, okay, well, then what's that going to look like? Because I cannot

change these people and I cannot make them something different. Thank you so much for sending in that question. I really hope that the answer and feedback on that was. helpful for a lot of you, and let's go ahead and get to that second caller question. My wife and I have been dealing with painful dynamics with my parents our entire relationship. Blame, scapegoating, emotional outbursts, not respecting boundaries, inappropriate behavior, et cetera. And it intensified when we had our child. At this point, my wife needs distance and doesn't want to see my parents or have a relationship with them. While I am navigating my own desire to continue a relationship with them and for them to have a relationship with my son,

while maintaining boundaries both my own and my wife's. We are about to move away from my parents, which will help in creating distance and will bring up new questions about how to navigate visits to our new home. My question is, what advice do you have for us when we have very different ways of navigating this relationship. I want to respect her right and need for space. After all, these are my parents. At the same time, I want to be able to have self-determination when it comes to how I navigate my relationship with them.

And then, of course, there's our child. And we have different levels of trust and different desires for the level of a relationship and access my parents have. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. This is an extremely difficult position. to be in. And it sounds like this person is approaching it with intention and a great deal of empathy for themselves, their wife, and the parents. And I want to applaud you and everyone that's in this

position that might be doing this, you know, for trying to make a decision that considers the entire family. And I think that someone is probably going to feel like they are losing or not getting everything they want in this dynamic, no matter how it is handled. I want to pause on one of the phrases that was used in this question. This person mentions inappropriate behavior, emotional outbursts, and not respecting boundaries. Those things mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But they need to be taken seriously, okay, especially when there are children involved. And without knowing specifically what behavior you're referring to here,

I can only encourage you to really evaluate the risk that is here. What is the inappropriate behavior? Because some people describe even what could fall under the umbrella of sexual abuse or assault as inappropriate behavior. Some people call emotional outbursts, someone name-calling, hurling insults, throwing chairs, screaming, they call that emotional outbursts. when really that could fall under the umbrella of verbal abuse or physical abuse. And not respecting boundaries could be something like they came over 20 minutes early when we told them to arrive at this time and they always do that and we keep reiterating that boundary to them and they just show up whenever they want.

It could also be really serious stuff like things with your children, you know, I've heard so many things over the years. Like, I've heard things go as far as, like, they don't think that my kid needs to ride in a car seat. They smoke cigarettes around my child, you know, with the windows closed. They feed them food that they're not supposed to have. All kinds of violations that are really dangerous and bad for children. So these phrases are doing a lot of work here. And I think that you need to use your discretion with really,

evaluating the risk of inappropriate behavior, emotional outbursts, and not respecting boundaries, because those are, those mean a lot of different things, like I said. Now, when you evaluate that risk, there's the other piece here that these are your parents, okay? And your wife is going to have considerably less tolerance for their bad behavior because they did not raise her. And they do not have the same relationship with her. They don't have the same built up, you know, emotional attachment that you have with your own parents.

And there's a good side to that and a bad side to that, right? So this can be a positive thing because she's more likely probably to see this behavior and call it out because she's coming into the family with, fresh eyes, different circumstances, and a different understanding of the family dynamic. There can also be the flip side of that, that she may be more willing to end a relationship over the behavior because she sees it for what it is. She doesn't have the attachment and she doesn't have the desire maybe to invest much more in this because they are not her parents. And she's like, they're treating us horribly. They're doing this around our kid. They're not

listening to us. And I don't want to deal with it. Now, there is also another piece to this that often the in-law, the new person in the family, gets unfairly blamed for being the one to point out the bad behavior. But that is simply because they can see it. And the adult child in the family is often more likely to have a fantasy image of their parent. This is well documented in the research on parent-child relationships to have kind of buried their head in the sand and to not want to see certain things because it is their parents, even if it is blatantly happening. However, this caller did not say that their wife is telling them that they cannot have a relationship or that the husband cannot have a relationship with his parents.

And so this gives me maybe some insight. I'm making some assumptions here that she may understand how much more challenging this is for you. And she's not saying you and our child are not allowed to be around your parents. That's not being disclosed here. It sounds like the wife is saying, I don't want to be around your parents, which you're correct that you and your wife both have the right to self-determination and the right to decide who you include in your lives. And if she does not want to spend time with them,

then this is something that the two of you will need to navigate. And I want to say this, that grandparent relationships are only valuable to children if it is a healthy relationship. And this is where you need to use your discernment. Has your parent behaved in ways that are cruel or harmful to their grandchild or your wife? the mother of your children? Has their safety been threatened? Are there inappropriate behaviors, emotional outbursts, and boundary violations that are things that you do not want your child to be exposed to? Are your parents able to augment their behavior around the child and serve as positive

role models? Your relationship with your parent is your own, but the relationship that your child has with them is something that you must share with your wife. And we know that witnessing or becoming involved in disputes between parents is associated with poor mental health, increased stress, behavior problems, and poor school functioning. And so we can extrapolate, I think, reliably that children will experience the same adverse outcomes when exposed to fighting between their parent and a grandparent. And so do you have faith that you can manage this dynamic in your relationship with your parents? And if your parents cannot treat your wife well, what message does this send to your child to see their mother,

50% of them being treated in this way? Young children love the their parents to a fault. And they also want to be around people who treat their parents well. They notice the jabs and slights at their parent. They notice how differently a grandparent treats one parent versus the other or if they treat their parent horribly and treat them well. And if a grandparent truly wants a healthy relationship with their grandchild, they must find a way to be a positive relational role model in that child's life and model healthy communication with their grandchild's parents. If your parents cannot treat you or your wife well, this is something to think about. And I don't know if that's the case here. I don't think that this is such a black and white thing of like you should absolutely allow your child to have a relationship with those grandparents and your wife to not have a relationship with them.

This might even just be temporary. It's more about you evaluating your ability as a parent to make sure that your child is exposed to a healthy dynamic with those grandparents, with their other parents. and with you. And if that's feasible, if you feel like that's something that can be achieved here, then absolutely go for it and talk about that with your wife. There may also be things to consider with your partner in this relationship that your child is going to have with their grandparents about certain activities that they may not do together because that wouldn't be safe environments that they might be in with the grandparents versus others. Maybe they only go out to lunch and dinner and do things in public and have holiday visits versus going over to their home where

maybe the parent is more likely to be drinking or engaging in activities or feeling more comfortable with these emotional outburst. We had a question, I think it was in the Q&A episode last week, about seeing grandparents only in public versus in their home because when it was in the home, there was a much higher chance that there would be a lot of this bad behavior. So I think it's all about how much control do you have over this? How can you and your partners still feel like you are a team because you are when it comes to parenting your child? And also can you consider the reality that you would like your parents to be able to have a

relationship with your child and what is that going to look like given how your parents have behaved around all of you, their emotional maturity, their capacity to respect boundaries and follow rules. And how will the two of you handle that so that it feels like it really is a team effort and a family decision? Thank you again for this question. I think a lot of people will get a lot of benefit from this. And if you are someone that is looking for more resources around grandparents. We have an entire topic module dedicated to grandparents in the Calling Home Content Library. So if you join the Family Cycle Breakers Club at callinghome.co, just go up to the search icon at the top and type in grandparents and you will get so many resources,

articles, videos, worksheets, decision trees to help you figure out these relationships with grandparents, why only healthy grandparent relationships are important for children, and all of our members get access to that. We also do tend to have a lot of parents bringing up questions about estranged grandparents, emotionally immature grandparents, et cetera, in our groups at calling home. And so that might be something that and on the discussion boards that a lot of you would be interested in if you're looking for more support in that area. If you related to either of the caller questions today, I want you to know that you can love your family and still feel like the current dynamic isn't one that you want to keep participating in and you can love your

family and accept that it is not your job to change and fix them. Sometimes you have to get clear on what is within your control and what isn't. Thank you so much for trusting me with your questions this week. I know that these can be difficult questions to ask and to put out there. But if you want to get some help working through any of these challenging family dynamics. You can always join a group inside the Family Psychobakers Club at Calling Home or send your caller question in a voice note or written like the questions today to Whitney at Callinghome.com. I will see you on Tuesday for another episode of Calling Home. And next week on Tuesday we are going to be talking about is estrangement only for rich people.

I am looking forward to that episode. I think it's going to be a really interesting one, and I will see you there on Tuesday. As always, please don't forget to like, subscribe, leave us a view, a comment. That's what helps keep the show going and keeps it free for all of you. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. 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, see Calling Holmes Terms of Service linked in the show notes below.