CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Why I'm Stepping Back From Instagram

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Content warning: This episode contains a description of a traumatic birth, postpartum complications, and abuse.Before the Q&A, Whitney opens with an unscripted reflection on taking a break from Instagram. She then moves into two listener questions from people who have stopped waiting for an apology and are asking what comes after you finally see your family clearly.In this episode, you'll learn:- How to handle being the only person in your family willing to talk about the past- What to do when you've accepted a parent won't change but they still expect the same closeness and access- How to think about titrating contact- Why the fantasy that a parent will soften at your lowest moment is so commonWhitney 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.

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Calling On podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Goodman. I am back today for another Q&A episode, but first I want to speak from the heart, I think, about something that I've been experiencing in this space and something I've noticed. I did not prepare this in advance. So if you want to just go ahead and get to those questions, you can skip ahead. I don't know if this will interest all of you. But some of you may have seen that the other day I shared that I was going to be taking a break from posting on Instagram. And I have been creating content online, specifically on Instagram, for over eight years now. And I don't think I have ever taken more than a few days off from posting. I think if I ever took time off from posting, I think if I ever

took time off from posting, I certainly haven't taken time off to, like, stop looking at the platform and people engaging with my content and messages that they're sending me. And I have continued posting on Instagram and TikTok and on my website over the last several years through, you know, the birth of three kids, two miscarriages. Like, I just, I have not really walked away. And even though I have done a lot to kind of disengage sometimes from the platform by, I schedule my posts like way in advance. I batch, create things.

I noticed that during the writing of my book, which I think it's been like really the last year and a half, almost two years, that I have become really, really, really, obsessive about like engaging on the platform and listening to everybody and always trying to see what is going on particularly as it was related to the topic of my book. And which for those of you that don't know, my book, The Parent You Have will be coming out next year and it is a book for adults who have a difficult, distant, emmeshed or strange relationship with a parent. And while I was working on this book. I was also working on the profile of what I call the perpetually estranged parent. These are not all parents, not all estranged parents. It is a very unique subset of the

population of estranged parents. And a lot of those parents tend to be very active online. And so I needed to really engage with the platform a lot to continue creating. this profile and doing this qualitative research that I was doing. And so that involved me being probably a little bit too engaged with people's opinions of me, with how they felt about my work, etc. And then this started to drift into other clinicians, speaking in ways about other professionals that I find to not be good for the field. Now, I'm not talking about disagreeing with something that someone is saying because I do that all the time. I have done that. I know there's certainly professionals out there that I have disagreed with. But doing so in a way that I think is really for

clicks and engagement and notoriety. And there can kind of be this weird feeling of like I'm going to build my brand on top of hating you and what you've done. And I find that to be really distasteful given what we do as professionals. I think there's a really big difference between calling out theories that don't make sense to you, offering valid critique and saying, I am going to get people to like engage with my comment section in bandwagon and stitch this video and pay for my stuff by engaging in hating the same person. I think those are two really, really different things.

things. And I've seen an influx of professionals, particularly those who've started to talk about estrangement as of like three months ago, I think, because they saw the rhetoric around it and how much it was exploding. And I think that can be enticing for people to try and do that. And it has really been bothering me to such a degree that I felt like I was living on another planet when I would see some of this stuff. And when I would see some of the argument. being made, you know, about physical abuse not being a reason to even remotely disengage from your parent. When I see other professionals validating and engaging with adults who have documented criminal records associations with child abusers, with child sex offenders,

these things are really bothersome to me as someone who advocates for. for adults who were abused as children. I think that it is really not a good look for the profession. I think it's something that we need to contend with. And I found myself really snapping under all of this. You know, and this is not me sharing this so that you guys like offer me positive support and be like, oh, you know, we appreciate your work Whitney. That's not why I'm sharing it at all. I'm sharing it because I think it's relatable and I think it's something that you all can learn from. is that I watched myself go from working with a population and trying to understand that population to trying to be a defender and trying to constantly be fighting against forces that I felt were

coming for people that I deeply understood and cared about and wanted their pain to be validated and heard. And I think in turn, that placed me into a role often, that these particular group of estranged parents and clinicians online saw me then as, like, enemy number one, like you are the estranged adult child, you are the picture for them, and we are going to sort of lob insults at you. When I've told you guys many times, I am not estranged from my parents in any way, shape, or form. And so directing this at me, we're all talking past each other and it really doesn't make sense. I'm not estranged for my in-laws. I'm not estranged for my siblings, et cetera. So I think I have come to sort of serve as something for people to project onto.

And I have been absorbing a lot of those projections as if they are really about me because of how immersed I became in this space. And I share this as like a cautionary tale for all of you that might be out there fighting with other estranged parents or fighting with adult children or fighting with therapists that this is not going to fix your relationship. And it ultimately wasn't helping me help you. I was spending so much of my mental energy trying to figure out how I was going to defend and shut down every argument that was being lobbied at me when a lot of these arguments were absolutely not in good faith. You know, in the wake of the Wall Street Journal article where

I think I was quoted twice in that article and the quotes were cut and pieces that I said were not fully included. Not only that, it was a couple of lines. I received so many messages and emails wishing for my demise, harm to my children and me. You know, threats that people are going to find out where I live, that I'm going to rot in prison. I mean, it's really insane. It's really insane. And these are people who were sending emails to me with their full government name and their work address. So I know that these are not just like their work email address, not just like bots and people who are saying crazy stuff.

Like, these are real people sharing these things. And of course, you know, after that article then got picked up by multiple Fox News. syndicates and was being shared on their Instagram. I briefly tried to like engage with it and then was like, what am I doing? Like I have been profiling this population for over a year. I know the exact patterns and behavior and the ways that they operate. And once you see it in action, it is like, it is strikingly consistent. And this is why I'm telling you this, is that I know this. I've written about it. I have pages and pages and pages, thousands of data points on this, okay? And I still can fall into it. I still can fall into the trying to defend myself against

accusations that are not grounded in reality that make no sense, that are just Darvo and gaslighting and, you know, I'm going to hit you with some therapy language that I try not to use. but like all of these repeated patterns that I have seen over and over, I have verified that this pattern exists. And yet I still find myself being like, I need to convince these people why they're wrong. And so I say that to show you that if these people are your parents, imagine how much more of a pull you feel in that direction. because these are strangers doing it to me and I still will feel it.

And so you know that you are going to feel it when it's your parent. And so I want to say like a lot of what is being said in the media especially, and I will only speak about adult child and parent estrangement here, truly defies and negates. They're attempting to negate decades. of developmental science on the relationship between adults and their parents. And what they are saying and what they are claiming ignores every single finding that we have about attachment, the connection between parents and their children, both biologically and emotionally.

It defies literally almost every piece of research that we have to say that, an adult can walk into a therapist office and all of that can just be erased and thrown out the door and doesn't matter. You know, it doesn't make any sense. And I think that's why it makes me absolutely crazy to see some people not attending to any of that nuance when they have the education and the experience to know better. It bothers me. But I am making a commitment today. Just as I said months ago on this show that I was making a commitment to no longer defend myself against like threats to my license that have then, you know, continue to escalate into other types of insane threats that I need to reorient my focus again after, you know, my book

has been turned in. It's done. I can't touch it anymore. And I think that was also adding to this as I was like, oh my God, accusation after accusation being lobbied at me. Am I going to make sure that I am defending these adults well, that I am speaking for them in the best way, that I am making sure that they are heard and understood. And when I kept seeing this, like, grow out of control, this is, mind you, this is lining up exactly on like the last four or five days that I have to make any, you know, legitimate

changes to my book. It became. crazy making for me. And I'm fine. I don't mean it in that way. I mean in the sense that like from an academic intellectual perspective, I'm like, oh my gosh, I have spent the better part of two years working on this book and even longer working on this actual topic. You know, I've spent my career dedicated to working on family relationships. Am I doing it justice? And what is the publication of this going to look like? If this is, is what just this article in the Wall Street Journal looks like. So I say all of that to say, you know, I think there's something about being accountable. And I wonder if all of you will

join me in this, that if any of this has also negatively affected you, where you feel like you are constantly going online, engaging with this type of content, getting in fights with people, obsessing about it, like really sitting back and asking yourself, is this helping? Is this helping me? Am I the person that should be doing this? Is there a better way that I can address this? And I want to say there are people out there, you know, fellow therapists, fellow, you know, other estranged adult children that I see doing this work where they are deconstructing what some of these people are saying. They are breaking down their arguments. They are going up against them. and I appreciate their work and I think that they are doing a great job.

If they can handle it, if it feels like something that is a good way for them to attack this issue, keep doing it. But for those of you that maybe can relate to me and feel like, oh my God, I'm so many years into doing this. This is not new for me. I am not a new content creator in this space. Like I have been dealing with public opinion on a daily basis for a very long time. And eventually, like, you just kind of get tired of people yelling at you all the time.

And again, totally cool with people critiquing my ideas and saying, you know, that doesn't work for me. I love when people will meet with me and share me, share their perspective with me about what they're seeing. I've met with a lot of therapists that I don't totally agree with a lot of what they're saying and I want to hear what they have to say. And a lot of it is that I want to compare sample sizes, level of experience, how many years they've been doing this, who they've been working with, where they're seeing this stuff, what it's like in their office. But I don't agree with like people who just want to say stuff and not have a conversation, you know, and not actually engage with the material.

especially if you're making a big accusation that someone is being harmful or destructive or destroying families, I think that that's something that we should talk about and try to come to an understanding about where the other person is coming from. And there have been many clinicians that have done this with me and that I have met with because they had concerns. And, you know, I think a lot of us are defensive about the populations that we work with and what we're seeing. And I think that in many ways, all of us are right about the perspectives that we have and the people that we are working with, right? We are all correct about our respective experiences and we are all wrong in some ways. And that's why I continually say, like, my work and the book that I'm

writing is for adults who have difficult, problematic, challenging relationships with their parent today. My work is not for an adult who is struggling with a severe persistent mental illness that isn't speaking to their parent because they're having hallucinations. That adult is not picking up my book. My work is not for an adult who is addicted to heroin and their parent is trying to get them into rehab. Separate issue. My book is not for an adult who is in a cult. And, isn't speaking to their child. I think that all of those issues need tailored specific responses to them, not necessarily this generalized approach in the same way that if I'm a therapist that works with estranged parents and I have a parent who is estranged from a child who is in a relationship

where there's domestic violence, we are going to need to approach that very differently than an estrangement with a parent who has been told a hundred times why the relationship isn't working and they still keep saying they don't know why their child's cut off contact with them. These are very different situations. And so I think it's equally important for all of us to clarify who we are speaking to. Now, that being said, I want to start like anew with this. I am going to be taking some time away from Instagram just because I think it's something that I honestly need to bake it into my life every now and then. It's not good to be getting feedback

and responses all the time, especially now that I am engaging with so many different platforms. So in any given day, it's like I am hearing from thousands of people on Instagram, TikTok, my podcast, my email, and it's like you just can't work like that. And so for any of you, even other therapists who are thinking about being public facing, or if you are a creator of some kind that is working on your mental health, I think that's something that you really need to think about. How are you going to manage that? You know, it took me, it took me like eight and a half years to hit a point where the audience was big enough and the issue was getting enough media attention where I was like not offended by it and not hurt or upset by it. I think I have very

thick skin, but it was more like I have got to put a filter on this. You know, I feel like I'm drinking from a fire hose and I cannot tell what opinions I should be listening to and which ones I should be ignoring. Like it's just too much feedback at once. And that's where I'm kind of trying to come up with a way to do that. And that doesn't mean that none of you should ever give me, please give me feedback. Please give me criticism. Please tell me when something upsets you. I want to hear that. That is very different than sending me an email saying, I hope your children hate you and never speak to you again and that you get locked up in jail for the rest of your life. And I enjoy, I'll enjoy seeing you rot in prison. You know, those are too.

very different things. And so I hope that I am making that clear. And I also am aware that it's just a hazard of the job. And if I want to keep doing this work, which I do, I don't want to stop. I have to find a way to manage it. And so that's what I am working on doing. And I love creating content. I don't want to stop. And I also don't want these people who I think are not worth listening to, to be honest, to be the reason why I stop. I think that would be a real real shame. So for those of you that stuck through this with me, I hope that that was helpful in some way to hear kind of my process around this because I think you can apply that to any area in your life where you are receiving too much feedback, too much input, whether that's at

your job, in your family, in your marriage, in your friendships, and you need to sometimes kind of step back and ask yourself, why am I doing this? Do I want to keep doing it? it. What opinions are worth listening to? How can I show up as my most mature, regulated self in the face of some of this? And what do I have control over? And what can I not control here? I think a lot of this I have control over. And I ended up, I was talking about this in one of my supervision groups that I'm in with some other professionals who also are all, one of them is not on social media and the other ones are, about like how it's my responsibility to filter all this incoming information as well and to figure out who I want to listen to and who I'm going to allow in. So I think that is a takeaway that we can

have from all of this. Okay. Let's get to what you guys came here for today, the Q&A portion of the show. Every Thursday I answer two caller questions. Sometimes these are voice notes that you send in. sometimes they are emails and I will read you the question. You can always send your question about your adult family relationships to Whitney at calling home.c.O. Today, like I said, I'm going to answer two questions. And I think both of these people have landed somewhere in their process that a lot of you will recognize. They've stopped waiting for the apology. They've stopped hoping the person is going to like suddenly understand what they did. they see their family clearly and maybe really for the first time. One of them is asking, you know, what do you do when you've accepted that someone isn't going to change, but that person still expects

the same closeness and access they've always had? And the other is asking what you do when you're the only person in your family willing to talk about what actually happened. And everyone else has decided that the past is just off the table. So the theme today is what comes after the realization? Because seeing your family accurately isn't the end of the work. In a lot of ways, it is the beginning of a much, much harder question, which is, what do I want this to look like, knowing what I know now? Which honestly, this is perfect timing because that really is the question that I am trying to answer with my book that I've been writing. All right, I'm going to go ahead and read you the first question. My mother has been emotionally abusive for years,

but I never expected that when I was at my most physically and emotionally vulnerable after having my son, she would respond the way she did. And I'm just warning you that this question does contain some traumatic elements of birth and postpartum and also abuse during that time period. So this is something that you're still dealing with right now. You might want to skip ahead through this question to the second question or listen with caution. I had a postpartum hemorrhage, preclampsia, spent 24 hours on magnesium, and came home on multiple blood pressure medications. Instead of supporting me, she sent me abusive text after abusive text because I wasn't responding to her messages as quickly as she wanted and wasn't giving her the level of access to my newborn and my family that she felt entitled to. She mocked me, called me degrading names, threatened to enter our home uninvited, and told me my children would one day turn against me.

Gosh. Over the past year, I've stopped waiting for an apology. I've stopped hoping she'll suddenly understand how much she hurt me. I also thought I'd move on and forgive, but I haven't, and that's where I'm stuck. She still expects weekly visits, regular contact, and access to my family as though nothing has changed. Meanwhile, I'm still angry and hurt. I feel like I finally see the relationship clearly, and I don't know what to do with that clarity. How do you move forward when you've accepted that someone isn't going to change, but they still

expect the same level of closeness and access they've always had? How do you decide what kind of relationship to have with someone who believes everything is fine for you when it isn't? Oh my goodness. I have on my list to create like a pregnancy and postpartum course for everyone at calling home because this seems to be an issue that just keeps coming up. And I feel like we need more resources on it. So if you're interested in that, please leave a comment on Spotify or YouTube and let me know that that's something you would like.

But I think a lot of people, you know, you start out this question by saying that she's been emotionally abusive for years, but you never expected that when you're at your most vulnerable, that she would respond the way she did. And this is a common fantasy for people, that they can have decades of evidence that this is how their parent behaves during stressful or even happy or exciting situations in the family. And they have a fantasy that when this thing happens, if I ever got really sick, if I had a baby, if I got married, my parent will like wake up and they will do something different. And this fantasy makes sense because I do think a lot of people have experience with this. You know, you hear stories about like my parent really softened and became a better parent

when after I had a child or when they finally met their first grandchild, they stopped drinking. Like, these stories happen. And so for those of you that have a parent that is abusive or harmful or very neglectful, I understand why you are sort of hoping for that hallmark rom-com sort of movie moment to happen because we've been inundated with stories both fictional and real for our lives. Okay. So it makes sense. And then this happens and you sort of get this whiplash of like, oh my God, you're still

really not going to change or do anything different even when I am at my lowest. And I'm very sorry for what you experienced. during this time because I know firsthand, like how difficult that postpartum period can be, especially when you do not have the support or you have someone that is continuing to treat you poorly during that time that is very, very difficult. Now, you mentioned that your mom during this time was mocking you, degrading you, being very invasive, making threats and making threats about your children. These behaviors, when they happen consistently over time, they are things that I think tend to lend

themselves to a person that does not have the emotional intelligence or the capacity at this time to see the impact of their behaviors. And instead, they are behaving in a way that they are hoping will get them what they want. I think a lot of these parents, whether they are conscious of this or not, are engaging in behaviors that they feel will eventually wear down the other person and then they will be given the access and whatever that they want. They are also feeling so ashamed and embarrassed and wrong about the way that they are being treated and potentially even about the way they are acting, even if they are not aware of it. They feel that they are entitled to access and then they

sort of start to have these emotional tantrums for lack of a better word because they cannot adequately feel their feelings, internalize them, and change their behavior. So because of this, they act in these ways. Now, once you've been treated this way at one of the lowest points in your life, especially by a parent, it is very difficult to forget that. And it is very difficult to forgive it when the other person is showing no remorse, no accountability, and no intention of changing. In fact, they're saying, let's just brush this under the rug and kind of get back to the status quo, pretend I didn't do that, and now I want access to your child. And because of that, you are going to feel unsafe around this person.

You are not going to feel like this is a good person to be around your child. It's just the way our nervous systems respond to people that have been threatening, harmful, abusive, and emotionally neglectful in our lives. There is very little you can do other than to completely shut down your survival instincts to allow yourself to give this person all of this access. Now, that being said, and I offer this suggestion to people who do not want to lose full contact, that sometimes there are ways that you can sort of titrate this relationship to be able to make it work for you.

And so ultimately what you are trying to do is try to find a balance between access and protection that feels right for you physically, for your child, for your family, and creates the least amount of chaos in your life. And I know some people are going to be like, well, this mom is being. you know, emotionally abusive, unmanipulative, so you should just get rid of her. Well, I don't think that's as easy as it sounds. I think it's very easy for us to say that about other people's relationships. It's far more challenging to do that in our own lives. And sometimes actually that creates a lot more chaos and a lot more disruption for you. So you have to ask yourself,

knowing what I know about my mom, what do I want this relationship to look like? And what what is actually feasible with her. I probably am not going to want her to be around anymore when I am feeling emotional or down or having a hard time. I might not even want to give her information about that because I know that she cannot meet me there. She's not going to be helpful. And she may even harm me more in those moments. You may say, I don't feel like I can give my mom unrestricted access to my child because of how she has made me feel. You may also feel like I need to see my mom a limited amount and interact with her less because when I do at this moment, I become so dysregulated and overwhelmed that I cannot be a good parent to my young child. And these are all, you know,

I'm putting words in this, in this caller's mouth. I don't know how she feels about all of these things. But these are things for you to think about. What amount of contact, if any, feels feasible? Is it better if I only see my mom in person or in groups? Do I want to try to bring this up to her one more time to try to repair it? Or does that ultimately feel like it's only going to put me in harm's way more and it's a lost cause? And I think also this is a conversation worth having with your partner because they are the other parent of this child. You also have to consider other relationships in the family that might be important and meaningful to you, like siblings, cousins, your other parent, aunts and uncles, grandparents. How does like the ROI, the return on investment

for this relationship sort of stack up? And this is what everybody is doing when they are dealing with parents like this, is doing these mental gymnastics of like, how can I cause the least amount of disruption to my life if my parent doesn't change and knowing what I know about them now. And I want to include in all of this because I tend to lean on the pragmatic side of dealing with that. But there is also an immense amount of emotional grief and pain that is happening here when you realize that your parent, especially your mother, who has had children of her own, is treating you this way in this moment.

And so while yes, you are dealing with all the pragmatic aspects of this, I think you also really need to attend to how this feels for you emotionally, what you are grieving the loss of, what feels very sad about this, that you would have wanted a mother, you know, that does not behave this way during your hardest times. That is where I would start here. I think that at the end of the day, this is a very painful realization. and sometimes you need some space to work through that before you can get to some of that, the more pragmatic elements. So consider that as well. And that might be a good thing to work through also, you know, with a therapist. Okay, now I'm going to read the second question to you. How do I manage when nobody in my family wants to talk about the past but me? I want to in order to heal as a family. Yet the others say things like, I can't handle your drama. I have a family to

take care of, or this is what you do in counseling, or the past is in the past. Or I don't because it's too depressing, et cetera. I also hear how I am too sensitive. I have wanted to speak up to my family members regarding hurt I carry to repair trust and for them to hear my experience. I was not able to speak up to them as a child. I suppressed instead. So now I struggle seeing them when I do on occasion because I cannot help but feel the hurt that cannot simply just go away. I feel resentment. I I wish others in my family would make effort to heal together too or at least be open to hearing one another. I am healing on my own at the same time and I am partially still stuck back in the past. I have been reading Pete Walker's books on CPTSD, etc. Thank you.

Great question. Okay. So I want to offer anybody who's dealing with something like this, a little bit of a perspective here. When I work with adults, particularly those who are struggling to have a relationship in the present with their parent. A lot of it is because of a misalignment or lack of shared perspective on the past. And they cannot move forward until they are able to resolve that. And many times it's because that behavior that they are having an issue with in the past is still continuing in the present and that is still affecting the relationship. And you can't effectively move past something in the

past that is still happening in the present. So that's something I would want you to contend with here. Have they changed their behavior? Are the issues in the past still happening today? It sounds like one of them, one of those issues, is still happening. The issue of being that you're not allowed to talk about anything and you need to suppress and that people think that you are sensitive. Now, that being said, judging by the comments you're sharing here about, I don't have time for that. It's dramatic. I don't want to hear things along those lines. These people probably can't hear you right now because if they could, I don't think they would be responding in that way. Now, there are some ways that you could bring this up.

I think that lead with positive intent that can be very helpful. So saying things like, I want to have a closer relationship with you and I'm having trouble doing that because I'm still thinking about this thing. I know that it's really hard for you to talk about and it would mean a lot to me if you could listen. You know, phrasing things in a way that sort of give a person this on a silver platter of like, I need this in order to move forward and have a close relationship with you can be very helpful. Now, they may not respond well to that. They may. Sometimes in these types of families where everyone's acting like this, it just takes one person to make you feel better.

So who is the person that could hear you most likely? You know, if you can think of one of these people, maybe it's your mom or your dad or a sibling. that could relate to you the most. And also even saying, like, I'm not trying to punish you or blame you, if that's not the case. It would just really help me if you could hear me, if you could try to understand me, even if you don't think that this is an issue. Sometimes people are less defensive when they feel like you just want to be heard rather than you're going to ask them for something in that moment. Now, also, sometimes people come around. in their own time. They don't feel equipped to listen right now because they have too much

shame, guilt, a lack of understanding for themselves. And when this happens, you have to decide is the relationship with them right now at a point where I can continue to engage with them because it is not abusive. It's okay. It feels stable, even though we haven't discussed this yet. And I want to give them some more time to maybe work through this on their own, become less guarded, and then we could have a conversation. And everyone's answer to that will be different. There also might come a point for you in all of this that you have to say to yourself, right now my family members cannot hear me. Right now, they cannot listen to me. What do I want to do with that information? And if and when they are willing and able,

maybe I will want to share with them. But right now, they cannot hear me. So how does that affect the processing that I do on my own, who I talk to about these issues, the way that I see my family members as people that maybe I cannot emotionally connect with, but I can have a different type of relationship with, which is a very different thing if these people are treating you horribly in the present and not reacting well to you on. a regular basis. Now, that doesn't mean that these relationships will necessarily feel very close or emotionally bonded. It's kind of hard to have that with people who don't want to listen to you, but it is your decision on what a relationship can look like with someone who cannot hear you right now.

And I do find that sometimes these people, they come around, they start to see things. It's more of a result of them feeling overwhelmed and unable to sit with it, especially if we're talking about siblings, there's a chance that they are brushing you off because they're afraid what's going to happen to them if they start thinking about this stuff and dealing with it and they just simply cannot handle it. It's not that they don't believe you or that they don't think you have something important to say. You also might have to pull back a little bit from these relationships while you're doing this other type of healing and reenter them later when you feel like you can have a level of acceptance for what these people are able to offer, right?

It's a really good question. Thank you so much for sending that in. So both of these callers today, I think, are grieving something that hasn't technically ended. You know, the relationship is still there. They're still having contact with this person. The other person is expecting some sort of relationship. but the version of the relationship that they hoped for or maybe wanted is effectively kind of gone right now or it's on life support and nobody around them is really treating that like a loss

and that can feel particularly lonely. And I hope that you could hear in my response today that I'm not pretending that there's some sort of like clean answer here that it's either cut off or engaged. you are allowed to have a relationship that looks different from the one that your family expects from you. And you get to decide how much access people have to you, to your home, your children. And you know, you don't have to agree on that. And I think the way that I started off this podcast with my own story about social media even connects to this, that like, we have to hold ourselves accountable and responsible for deciding who we let into,

our inner circle. Okay. And I think these questions really relate to what we are going to be focusing on next month inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. So if you're not familiar, that is our membership community at Callinghome.co. And every month we focus on a different topic. Your membership also gets you access to all the other topics that we've done in the past. I think there's like 36 different modules on there as well as my entire course library. we give you worksheet, scripts, articles, videos, therapist recommendations, book recommendations, all of that every single month. And this month we are going to be talking about radical acceptance. You'll also get access to our private discussion boards and weekly support groups about

radical acceptance that I lead. And we're going to work on understanding your family members, accepting who they actually are, and moving forward from a place of reality rather than from hope or fantasy. And so if that's the thing that you are stuck on, I hope that you will come and join us this month. You do not have to figure this out all by yourself. Thank you to both of the people who sent in questions today. If you have a question you want me to answer on the show, you can send it to me at

Whitney at Callinghome.c.O. And please don't forget to give this podcast a five-star review, leave a comment or a review. It really helps us keep the podcast. going and it helps other people discover the show. Thank you again so much for listening today, and I will see you again on Tuesday for another episode. 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. Thank you.