Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of self-harm, physical and emotional abuse, and a parent expressing suicidal ideation.

We spend a lot of time talking about the person who decides to go no contact, and much less about everyone else who ends up living with that decision. In this Q&A episode, Whitney answers a woman in her 30s who inherited and is now dealing with the consequences of her mother's estrangement from her side of the family. Second, a listener six months no contact with an abusive mother, asking the question: who is responsible for her now?

In this episode, you'll learn:

- How to build your own relationships without betraying a parent's decision to go no contact

- Scripts for handling the question "how's your mom?" without becoming the family messenger

- How to separate compassion from obligation with a parent in crisis

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 [email protected]

Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.co

Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit

Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft

Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivity

Sign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o

This 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.

We have the cure for estrangement: just see your parents as children too. Easy. Case closed. [Read: sarcasm] In this episode, Whitney traces where this sometimes helpful and sometimes very unhelpful idea came from and shows how something genuinely useful got turned into a permanent exit ramp from accountability.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- How "your parents were children too" worked its way into self-help

- Why unfinished business has to move upward or outward, never down to your own children

- What defensiveness in a parent is usually protecting

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 [email protected]

Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.co

Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit

Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft

Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivity

Sign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o

This 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.

Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of suicidal ideation, child abuse and neglect, childhood sexual abuse, and abortion.

Whitney answers two questions about accepting a family situation you never chose and never asked for. First, a mother whose family just lost a three year grandparent visitation case. She is being mandated by family court to send her children on unsupervised monthly visits with a grandmother she doesn't believe is safe. Second, a listener who has been 15 years no contact asking the question: should the adult child be apologizing for how they behaved as a kid?

In this episode, you'll learn:

- How to separate what the court controls from what you actually control as a parent

- How to prepare a child for time with someone you don't trust, without making them afraid

- Why a child's behavior during abuse is never something to apologize for

- When accountability between an adult child and a parent is genuinely useful, and who has to go first

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 [email protected]

Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.co

Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit

Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft

Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivity

Sign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o

This 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.

If you've spent time in the estrangement conversation online, you've noticed how fast it flattens into two camps: the people who cut off and the people who got cut off. Ashley and Jon Lefrandt have lived on both sides of that line. The couple behind Leave Then Cleave joins Whitney to talk about what happened when they asked for space from one family member and ended up estranged from 40 family members. Together they explore what it looks like to hold onto your faith when your faith is the thing being used against you.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- How honor thy father and mother gets used to override every other thing a person believes

- Why a family system escalates when one person stops complying

- What words like grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation actually mean, and who tends to be the one insisting on them

- How to keep a faith that has been weaponized against you

Connect with Ashley and Jon Lefrandt

Leave Then Cleave: https://www.leavethencleave.com/

Jon and Ashley’s Book: https://amzn.to/4fUGi4J

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 [email protected]

Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.co

Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit

Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft

Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivity

Sign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o

This 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.

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 common

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 [email protected]

Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.co

Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit

Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft

Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivity

Sign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o

This 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.

“He's been hard since the day he was born.” “Something in her is just off, and always has been.” “Is there something broken with my child?” Whitney traces questions and the fears beneath them to a centuries old belief that some people are simply born bad. It’s a belief that has changed costumes across religion, science, and psychology but never fully gone away. Whitney brings questions like these into the present for the parents living with a child with a mental illness, an addiction, or a disability they can't fix.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- How the "born bad" idea traveled across history

- Why temperament is real but more complicated than you think

- How to recognize these fears if you were the "problem child" so you don't hand it down

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 [email protected]

Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.co

Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit

Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft

Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivity

Sign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o

This 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.

How do you keep giving to a relationship that isn't giving much back? How do you know when you've finally done enough? In this Q&A episode, Whitney answers two questions that arrived from very different places but land in the same spot: radical acceptance. First, a woman exhausted by in-laws who never make the drive, never offer help, and never seem to notice the effort going one direction. Second, a woman whose gone no contact with parents who keep leaving her voicemails claiming they have no idea why.

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 [email protected]

Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.co

Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit

Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft

Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivity

Sign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o

This 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.

Something goes wrong at home. A glass tips over. Someone forgot to change the laundry, unload the dishwasher. The dog escapes. Within seconds there's a full trial underway about whose fault it is. Whitney breaks down what's actually happening in families that run on blame.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why blame feels like accountability but actually prevents it
• How the scapegoat and golden child both learn about fault
• The three-part anatomy of real repair
• What to do when you can repair and your family can’t
• How to stop the cycle blame with your own kids

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 [email protected]

Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.co

Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit

Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft

Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivity

Sign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o

This 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.

Content warning: This episode discusses childhood abuse, domestic violence, racial slurs, and the death of a sibling.

In this Q&A episode, Whitney reads a single letter from a woman who survived a childhood of severe violence, lost her sister at 24, and is now permanently no contact with a family system that still minimizes what happened. Whitney takes the letter in pieces and answers all three of her questions.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How to grieve a sibling whose life was overshadowed by abuse, without reducing them to what was done to them
• Why thriving after you escape is not a betrayal of the people who didn't
• What it means when an entire family, including the abuser, admits the violence happened and still asks you to come back
• Why grief and boundary-holding almost always have to happen at the same time

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 [email protected]

Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.co

Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit

Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft

Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivity

Sign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o

This 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.

Dr. Lindsay Gibson's first book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, gave millions of people language for what happened to them growing up. Her new book flips the lens for the people who are now raising kids of their own and are quietly terrified of passing it all down. Whitney sits down with her to talk about what actually builds emotional maturity in a child, and what to do in the moments your own immaturity shows up.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the fear of becoming your own parents is often a sign you won't
• What emotional maturity actually looks like at different ages, from newborn to teenager
• Why ruling through fear works in the short term and costs you the relationship long term
• How to repair with your child in a way that actually changes the pattern instead of pseudo-apologizing
• Why you don't have to be the perfect source of everything for your kid

Connect with Dr. Lindsay Gibson

Get her new book, How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child: https://amzn.to/4fbX135 [this is an affiliate link - as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at not additional cost to you.]

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 [email protected]

Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.co

Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit

Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft

Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivity

Sign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0o

This 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.