CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - When Your Family Doesn’t Know How to Listen (And Maybe You Don’t Either)

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Did you ever feel like you’re in a conversation where the other person is just waiting for you to stop talking while they load up something to say? You can talk to members of your family every single day and still feel completely unheard. And it works the other way too. Whitney breaks down the real difference between hearing and listening. In this episode, you’ll learn: Concrete tools for listening on both sides of a conversation How to actually listen when someone you love is hurtingWhy our instinct to fix or reassure often backfiresHow to ask for what you need when you're the one who doesn't feel heardWhitney 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.

I talk to my family all the time. We're on the phone constantly, and I still feel completely alone in this family. Like no one actually knows what's going on with me. I'm reading that to you because I think a lot of people assume that if they're talking, if the calls are happening, if the texts are going through, if everybody's in the group chat, then they're connected. That the talking is the relationship. And this is a comment that someone left. on one of my other videos that I think really captures what's happening here. You can talk to someone every single day and never once feel heard by them. And you can sit in total silence with someone and feel more understood than you have in years. Sometimes it's not about the talking, it's the listening. Welcome back to the Calling Home podcast.

I'm Whitney Goodman. This is the show for people who are breaking cycles and navigating complicated families. Today we are talking about listening, specifically how to actually listen to the people in your family and what to do when you're the one who doesn't feel hurt. By the end of this episode, you'll be able to tell the difference between hearing someone and actually listening to them. You'll have concrete things to do and say in a hard conversation, and you'll be able to know how to ask for what you need when you're the one who doesn't feel hurt. And I know that

be a better listener sounds like the most basic relationship advice on earth. It sounds easy, but it's not easy. Really listening and hearing someone is hard because it can bring up a lot of stuff for us. And there's actually a lot of research showing that being genuinely listened to changes people. They get less defensive, more open, more willing to. More willing to. You to change without anyone pushing them. When people feel heard, they want to open up and they want to be more connected. This episode is for the person who keeps getting told you don't listen and who doesn't fully understand why. It's for the people who feel invisible in their own families, no matter how much they explain themselves. And for anyone who wants the people they love to feel that someone is paying

attention to them. If you are in a relationship with someone who is actively abusive, cruel, or who weaponizes your openness against you, this episode is not a tool to make you listen harder to someone who is hurting you. Listening is not the same as absorbing abuse, and we will come back to that later. And because we are very big on self-awareness and accountability here at Calling Home, there's a real chance that as you listen to this, you're going to see parts of yourself in the profile of a bad listener. Try to stay open to that. Most of us are both, including me, depending on the day and the person. Before we get into it, the Family Cycle Breakers Club is our membership community at Calling Home. It's a community of people actively breaking

generational patterns with structured support, real tools, and clinicians who get it. We're in the final week of our monthly theme, you and your father. And in July, we're going to be going into something I'm really excited about, which is daughtering, the invisible labor that daughters end up carrying in a family. If either of those are something that you need, come find us at callinghome.co, and the link to that is in the show notes. If you like this podcast, please don't forget to like, subscribe, leave us a review or comment. I do deep dives like this one on Tuesdays, and Thursdays are the Q&A episodes. You can send me your questions in a voice note or written to Whitney at callinghome.com. I'm going to ask you to be brutally honest with yourself here. And I'm guilty of this too.

Most of what we call listening is actually just you waiting to speak. You're quiet. Your mouth isn't moving. But the whole time the other person is talking, you are loading up your response. You're deciding whether you agree, getting ready to correct the part they got wrong, or defend yourself. Or to jump in with the thing, that happened to you that was just like this but worse. That's not listening. And people can feel it. There's a reason you can be mid-sentence with someone and just know they've already left the conversation in their head.

Let's look at the actual definition of listening. The International Listening Association, which yes, that is a thing. And I love that that exists. Defines listening as the process of receiving, building needs. from and responding to what someone is communicating, both with words and without them. Most of us only do the first part and barely. We receive the words. We don't build any meaning or we build our own meaning of it without clarifying.

And then we respond to something that we've made up or deduced in our heads. And I'll give you an example. Imagine that your partner walks in the door and says, I'm home from work. Then imagine they walk in the door and say, wow, what a day. I'm so glad to be home. The information is pretty identical, right? They are home from work. Both of them are telling you that. But the meaning is completely different. The second person is telling you that something happened today in what they're saying. They're telling you they might need something. A minute, a hug for you to notice, to ask them what happened. They're saying that they are so glad to be home. And if you say welcome home and go back to your phone,

you technically responded. You heard the words, but you missed the entire message or the opportunity to get curious about that message. And when you do that, a million times over throughout a marriage, a childhood, or a lifetime in a family, you end up feeling like, I am talking to them. but this person is never responding to the information that I'm giving them. You don't feel like you know this person anymore. When you genuinely listen to someone, you're not just gathering information. You're sending them a message that you care about them. You are saying you matter to me.

What you feel is important. And I respect your thoughts even when I don't agree with them. I'm not trying to change you or fix you. I want to understand you. And I think that you're worth listening to. That is honestly one of the most loving things that you can offer another human being. And I think most of us are walking around wanting that experience, even starving for it, because you want someone that is just trying to understand you, not just manage you or shut you up. You want someone that's actually going to know you. And here's the really really. positive thing about this is that listening is actually contagious in a family system.

And whoever has the most power in the family sets the standard for it at the time. So the people at the top, the parents, the grandparents, whoever is like in charge of the emotional weather system at that point, if they listen actively and they model that, the whole family learns that this is a place where you're allowed to share and we are going to hear you and listen to you. If that doesn't happen in the family, if every feeling gets corrected or dismissed, it turns into a lecture, people stop bringing their feelings and their needs to the table. They learn that in this family, we don't actually want to know what you think and feel. We just want you to be fine. We want you to exist in that box over there.

So let's talk about why this is so hard and what gets in the way of it happening in some families. When someone we love comes to us with a problem, our instinct almost always is to change how they see it. We want to fix it. We want them to feel better fast because watching them hurt is very uncomfortable. So this is when you start reassuring, minimizing. saying it's not that big of a deal, problem solving. You're doing anything to get them away from the feeling because the feeling is hard for you to sit with. I am very guilty of this. And that's rarely done maliciously. I think the person doing it really usually thinks they're helping. I talk about this a lot

more in my book, Toxic Positivity. And the parent who immediately offers advice, I think, thinks that that's their job. If your partner is jumping into solutions, like, I don't think they're trying to make you feel unheard. They genuinely believe that they are showing up for you. So if you recognize yourself here, which I recognize myself in this place, a lot in my relationships, and you're realizing, like, you're the fixer, the advice giver, well, have you tried type of person, and want you to know that your intentions are probably good. The problem isn't like your love for this person, but you're confusing fixing with listening,

and they are not the same thing. One of the hardest, most adult things that we have to do in our families is let our family members see the world differently than we do. We have to stop trying to manage how they feel about their own life. and what looks simple to you might genuinely feel very complicated for them. When you let go of the constant need to influence and force something, you can finally just be with them. And I understand how scary and overwhelming that can be, especially as a parent or when you have someone in your life that you are worried about, that you're fearful of what's going to happen to

them like I really can relate to that feeling of I just want them to be okay and I feel like they could just do things the way that I am telling them to they'll be okay and there's some safety that we cling to in that. So let's get practical here to deal with that feeling when it comes up. I'm going to give you a handful of like concrete things that you can do and some will feel right for you and someone. One is to listen for the feelings, not just the facts. So underneath what someone is saying is how they feel about it. Your job is to try to catch both of those things. Don't just track the content. So it's not like when you're listening and don't just listen for, oh, she didn't invite me to the thing. Track the feeling underneath it. This is what therapists are doing a lot. You'll notice this if you're in

therapy or if you come to groups at calling home that you're telling a story and the person's asking like, okay, so when she didn't invite you, what did you make of that? What did you think? What happened for you when you weren't invited to the party? Did you feel left out? I would have felt left out or I would have thought this and give the other person the chance to refute that or to agree with you. you know, trying to get that, get to the meat of what they're actually saying. They're probably not just telling you, I wasn't invited to the party. They're telling you this for a reason. So the feeling is often the real message that we're trying to track in some of these heavier, more loaded conversations. You also want to practice restating what you've heard, especially if you didn't understand. And I know

that this sounds very simple and even kind of annoying, but it helps. So what I'm hearing is you're exhausted. It sounds like you feel really overwhelmed. Is that accurate? Are you asking me for help? Do you want suggestions this? Do you want me to listen to you? I feel like you feel misunderstood. Like just asking. You don't have to label the feeling for them. I say a lot, like I might be wrong. is this what you're feeling? And tell me if I'm not getting this right. And then you need to be okay when they tell you that you're not getting it right because you're not always going to get it right. And you're not agreeing in this moment. You're not fixing. You're just confirming that you're receiving the correct message. And people really relax in this stage when they feel like you're

actually trying to listen and understand. In this stage of, of, of, getting curious and trying to understand the meaning underneath is asking open-ended questions and not questions that, like, lead them where you want them to go or questions that are invasive or domineering. Really, like, being curious, what was that like for you? What were you feeling? What did that mean to you? What did you do next?

What do you need right now? Things like that. Now, there are moments where people feel very overwhelmed by questions. And so you can even say, I want to make sure I'm getting this right. Can I ask you a question, especially if someone is really overwhelmed? Or if they're just talking and it feels like they just need to get everything out and they're not stopping, like what they're saying, like let them speak. You don't need to intervene with questions all throughout if the conversation isn't flowing that way. The next thing is validation.

So, and this is not agreeing. It's just saying it makes sense that you feel that way. Or of course you're hurt. That would hurt me too. You can validate someone's feelings about a decision even if you don't fully agree or even if you wouldn't make the same decision. Now, the next thing is to try to use I messages instead of telling them how you think they feel. So instead of saying things like you're overreacting or you're really sad, you're so upset,

you can say, and again, I said this before, something like, I might be wrong, but it sounds like you're feeling left out or it sounds like you're feeling like overwhelmed. Is that what you're feeling? Am I understanding you? You're offering a guess, not a verdict on their feelings. and you have to give them room to correct you on that and be okay with being wrong. I am wrong about what people are feeling all the time and I do this as a job. The next thing to really remember and try is to ask before giving advice. So before you launch into what they should do, asking them, you just want to vet right now, do you want to know what I think about this?

And also, the more you guys do this, the more that you guys do this, the more that you're the people around you will say, hey, can you help me work through this issue? Or can I just vent to you for a second? And they will lay out what they need from the start. And if they do want your advice, they will invite you to give it. Okay. Because feedback that no one is asking for, it almost never lands, even in therapy, where you have actively come there, presumably for feedback or getting some type of like questioning or curiosity on your feeling. it still, I think, needs to be built up over time and invited. The last thing is to pause when you need to. If it's getting heated, you're talking over each other.

They're really flooded, like so emotionally overwhelmed and they can't think straight. Like, it's okay to pause. That's not avoidance. You can protect the conversation. And of all of these things that I just gave you, the main thing I want you to focus on is how none of these are about saying the perfect thing. You listening is not a performance or something that has to be done in this exact way. You're just like pushing your agenda aside so that you can have real conversations with the person in front of you and allow them to feel heard and seen and

interact with you like a human, not a robot. Now let's flip this because I think a lot of you are the person in your family being like, no one hears me in my family. I don't feel known. And I want to talk about what you can actually do other than just getting louder about how you feel. I think sometimes we first need to get very clear and understand what we are actually feeling before we decide that no one else understands us. Sometimes we feel misunderstood because we're not clear with ourselves yet. So if you can't quite name what is going on for you. If it's, if it's too much for you, it might be hard for like an untrained regular person to track it accurately. Sometimes you just need a little more time to figure things out. And you can even say to the person, I haven't totally figured

this out yet. I don't really know what I'm feeling. And I just want to talk it through. And that can help you also with the listening when someone says that to you that they may not be totally ready to answer a lot of questions about their experience or they might feel overwhelmed by that if they're just trying to vent and kind of get everything out on the table before they start working through it. And if you're like this, this doesn't mean that you're like too much or you're dramatic. It's just that sometimes we need to flesh through things, feel understood before people can understand us, like feel understood within yourself. And the next thing I want you to try. And I know that this can be really hard when you feel invisible or misunderstood, but try not to go

straight to blame of like, you never hear me. You always do this. You don't even care. I can think of several instances, you know, throughout my career as a therapist, where I have been so shocked to learn how people perceived the way that I said something or the way that I did. something like ending a session in a certain way or maybe not attending long enough to something that they thought was really important. And on my end, I know that I wasn't being dismissive or cruel or mean in the overt sense, but that because they felt misunderstood and small and unheard for such a long period of time, just the way that I maybe didn't ask a question about something or wrap things up too quickly or ended on time when they wanted more time and it wasn't

available to them can trigger some of these reactions. And so sometimes we have to take a step back and be like, okay, what am I reading into here that maybe isn't happening? Now, sometimes, yes, people are absolutely blowing you off, not being a good listener. They're being abusive. They're being neglectful. And there's a pattern there. And sometimes it's a one-off. And we have to have discernment to know what's happening there.

The third thing that you can do and you can name this directly. And I do this all the time. I do this with my own husband. I'm saying like I don't feel like you're understanding me right now. And I like make sure that you know you get what I'm saying because I feel misunderstood. And they can try to show you if they understand what you're saying. And sometimes when I'm feeling misunderstood or like I don't understand myself, I also feel misunderstood by the people around me.

And it feels like I'm not communicating clearly and that they can't understand, but it's more of an internal feeling. So if you save people in your life or a therapist especially, you can ask them, like, do you understand what I'm saying? Like do I feel like I'm not being clear? Is it clear to you? And they can try to share with you what they're hearing. And then that's a good point to be like, oh, they are understanding me or they're totally

not. And this feeling is genuine. You can also narrate your own experience, which is kind of something that I just explained to you that I do sometimes, you know, saying like, I feel like I'm getting defensive. So I want to slow down. Like, let's take a break. Or I feel like I'm not feeling understood and like I have to explain myself a lot and I don't want to do that right now. So let's just pause. Naming your own reaction out loud can be very disarming, especially when you're interacting with someone who tends to be a little bit more sensitive to rejection or being misunderstood or they

tend to personalize everything, that you can just call it out what you're feeling and make it your experience rather than saying like, this is something you're doing to me. Because sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't. Sometimes it's an internal sensation. There is a real difference between someone who is struggling to understand you and someone who is actively trying not to understand you. And some people will make you feel confused or unclear on purpose. So they will act very baffled, twist your words.

They'll keep you stuck in this cycle of explaining yourself forever. And they want you over explaining and confused because then they don't have to take you seriously. And that's not a listening problem that you can fix with like better eye statements and better communication with that person your work isn't to communicate more clearly it's to decide how much of your energy you're going to keep putting into someone that just like is holding the door shut and won't even try it with you and sometimes the answer in those dynamics is that you stop explaining everything i've said today is about listening as an act of care between people who on balance are safe with each other. It is not about absorbing anything that anyone throws at you. And if a conversation

turns cruel or becomes full of contempt or abusive, you're allowed to disengage from that conversation. You can say, I am not going to keep talking to you if you're going to speak to me like this. Listening doesn't mean that you sit there and take it. Being a good listener and having a backboat, and boundaries and self-respect are not opposites. You can do both. And I think some of the healthiest best listeners also have clear limits. They're not listening out of fear or like something bad is going to happen if they don't sit there and just take all of this in.

They're listening out of choice and from a desire to be closer. And they're not listening because they're seeking control or more material so that they can be abusive and purposefully confuse you or harm you. So if you have been using like, I just want to be a good listener or I'm just trying to understand them as reasons to keep yourself engaged in a cycle of hurt, that is not necessarily listening. And you can't be present and listen to someone effectively when you're constantly like bracing for impact or you are listening to someone just abuse you. Now, if you come from a family where everybody talks and no one feels heard or you feel like no one has been listening to you, I think that going to therapy can be a really beneficial place to work on this or even attending groups like the support groups that we have at calling home or groups in your community because you can feel in real time and see what it feels like to be listened to and to be in a room with people.

that are listening to one another and that are taking what you're saying and actively like translating it back to you or asking you a question and being in that moment with you. And you can see how, okay, I talk, they listen. We have a conversation. This is really good modeling and a great example to feel if you do not have any other reference point for this. If you are the one in your family who's always fixing, jumping in with a solution, advice, trying to get somebody to see the bright side. I want you to try something this week. The next time someone you love starts telling you something hard, I want you to do nothing, but listen, don't solve it. Just try some of the tools that we talked about today. Watch what happens to them when they realize that you're actually there

having this conversation with them. Put down your phone. Get rid of the distractions. Actually, look, make eye contact. Be in the room with them. You know. The room with them. You know, them, it will help. If you're the one that feels invisible in your family, you keep explaining and explaining and you feel like your needs are never met and that people don't hear you, I want you to know that it's normal to want to feel heard in your family. And there is a real difference between people who are struggling to understand you and people who refuse to understand you. And it's very hard to learn to tell those two things apart, but it might be one of the most important pieces of discernment that you can create for yourself. And if you've recognized yourself today as the person

who doesn't listen well or doesn't listen at all, that's really good. It means that you can change it. Most bad listeners never even notice this. Before you go, the Family Cycle Breakers Club Inside Calling Home is where we do this work together. We have an entire section on the website dedicated to active listening where it's a worksheet, article, script, a video to help you with this. And like I said, our groups are some of the best places for you to practice active listening and to feel what it's like to be actively heard and listen to with other people that understand what you are going through. And so if you want to practice even being a better listener, coming to these groups, sitting for an hour, trying to not be distracted, be present with these

other people and even writing back to them in the chat of like, I hear that you're saying this or I love that you said that or can you talk to me more about this is a really low-stakes way to practice this skill before you take it to other more intense parts of your life. And you can find more about the Family Cycle Breakers Club at calling home.com. Remember that we always have deep dives like this one on Tuesdays for the podcast and Q&As on Thursday. If something in this episode brought up a question for you, can absolutely send that to me in a voice note or written to Whitney at

callinghome.co, and I might answer it on the show. As always, please remember to like, subscribe, leave us a review or a comment on this podcast. That's what helps keep the show going. I love seeing your comments on Spotify and YouTube. So thank you so much. And the podcast has been like number 17 in the relationship category on Apple for like a week now, which was so, so cool.

Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you on Thursday. 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 Collingholm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.