Kristen Carder 0:00
Kristin, welcome to the I have ADHD podcast, where it’s all about education, encouragement and coaching for adults. With ADHD, I’m your host, Kristin Carter and I have ADHD, let’s chat about the frustrations, humor and challenges of adulting relationships, working and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder, I’ll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential and move from point A to point B. Hey, what’s up? This is Kristin Carter, and you are tuning into the I have ADHD podcast. I am medicated, caffeinated and ready to roll. If you have ADHD and you feel like your family relationships, especially your family of origin, relationships, are really difficult. Today’s podcast episode is 100% for you, most ADHD ers feel like they miss the memo when it comes to relationships. It’s a topic that has affected me my whole life. It’s very near and dear to my own heart, and it’s really important to me that as a community, we ADHD ers understand our role in our families, and we understand how to create healthy relationships so that we can feel safe and supported within the context of our families. Every adult child wants to be seen and understood by their parents, but like how and if you’re a parent of children who’ve distanced themselves from you, this episode is going to have so much encouragement and practical help for you to begin the process of reconciliation. So if this content is resonating with you, please make sure to like, subscribe, leave a comment all of the things I would love to hear from you, and I will personally reply to any comments that are left within the first week of the episode. So feel free to drop any questions or comments from me, and I can’t wait to chat with you. My guest today is Whitney Goodman. She’s the radically honest psychotherapist behind the hugely popular Instagram account at sit with wit. She’s the founder of calling home, the author of the book toxic positivity, and she’s back for a second time. She was here last summer. Our first conversation was wonderful. I know that this one is going to be great for you, too. Whitney helps adult family members have better relationships, set boundaries and navigate estrangement. So please enjoy this conversation. Well, Whitney, thank you so much for being here with me. I am so happy to have you back. You’re a friend of the podcast. Thanks for joining us again. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Will you tell us a little bit about the work that you’re doing, especially with calling home? What’s that all about?

Whitney Goodman 2:41
Yeah, so I launched calling home almost a year ago to provide resources to adults who are struggling with their family relationships. I really noticed that there were not a ton of spaces that adults could come to that were about interacting with their parents or adult family members. So much of what we see is targeted towards people with young children. Yeah,

Kristen Carder 3:02
I think that that is such a difficult road to navigate as you move into adulthood, and then it seems like all of the relationships in your family of origin kind of transition, and some of us really don’t know how to make that transition. What do you see with that transition? Of like, now I’m an adult, and my my parents are also adults. How do I interact with them? Is it the same as when I was 12? What do you notice in that transition?

Whitney Goodman 3:33
You’re absolutely right about the transitions. And I see a couple of major transition points where both parents and adult children really struggle. The main one is, of course, entering adulthood, maybe going off to college, moving out on their own, when someone gets married, when there are children born into the family, if somebody has a new identity that they’re embracing or they’re breaking away from what’s the norm in the family, and then also as parents and siblings age and their lifestyles change, we can see a lot of friction, especially among adult family members that don’t have great communication skills or don’t have the ability to kind of put themselves in other people’s shoes and understand what they might be going through.

Kristen Carder 4:22
It’s so fascinating to me because, and maybe you could just correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like we are the first generation that’s really thinking through all of these transitions and how we want to navigate them. I feel like we’re the first transition that has that feels like we have the option to navigate it the way that we want to is that. Does that feel true to you as well? It does.

Whitney Goodman 4:50
I, you know, I think anecdotally, just in my groups, at calling home, and in my own therapy practice, I noticed that a lot of adults, now, let’s say, like most. Millennials, older Gen Z are asking their parents, like, why’d you decide to have children? And the answer is kind of like, well, that’s just what you did. You know, there wasn’t a lot of this analysis or even expectation that things could be different or that you could choose differently, and now that we have more options, people are saying, like, oh, well, do I want that? And that can also create friction within our family systems.

Kristen Carder 5:27
I always feel like neurodivergent folks, especially ADHD ers, that’s my specialty. Obviously, we just don’t feel like we were handed the rulebook for relationships. Like everyone else seems to know what to do, how to navigate relationships, and we feel like we miss the memo, and we don’t have that rule book. And I’m wondering what you see in your groups, as far as like, neurodivergent folks, like, do you have people that you’re supporting that are neurodivergent? Because when I look at my client group and and we talk about relationships, man, family of origin, relationships come up over and over and over, as a source of pain, as a source of conflict, as a source of confusion. And it really does seem like there’s so much work to be done, at least in my community with people with ADHD on navigating family of origin relationships,

Whitney Goodman 6:26
there are absolutely neurodivergent people in our groups at calling home. And I think to speak to some of those issues that you’re seeing, something that I notice is, you know, we have adults in the groups who have received a diagnosis, maybe, or they’re working through how this is impacting their life, and they have a parent who doesn’t, quote, unquote, believe in that diagnosis or want to validate it. Or we often have adult children with parents who might even share that diagnosis they or they can kind of assume that their parent does, but their parent does not want to acknowledge that or embrace it in any way, and that can create a lot of friction.

Kristen Carder 7:08
Yeah, I’ve noticed that when ADHD ers bring a diagnosis to their parents, it’s it can go one of two ways, and oftentimes it goes in the direction of the parent. It seems like not wanting to validate the diagnosis because of what it might mean about their own parenting, what it might mean about what they missed. Or, you know, are you saying that I wasn’t a good enough parent? Are you saying that I that I should have done more to help you, and so I think that that can be a really painful experience for the parent and the child.

Whitney Goodman 7:49
Yeah, it’s reminding me of someone that I worked with for a while, and I won’t give any details about them, but essentially, it was like a case where this person did not receive a learning disability diagnosis until they were in adulthood, and they struggled immensely, you know, at the hands of the school system and their parents. But it wasn’t really a case of negligence. It was like people actually didn’t know what was going on, and this was how things were handled, you know, 3035, years ago. And so you’re right, there can be such an unraveling there of like, how much of this is my parents responsibility? What did they do? What did they not do? And how much of this is actually, like, just their own lack of knowledge. And I think what you’re saying about, like, how the parent chooses to handle that in the present can make such a big difference. Because you could say, Wow, I wish we would have had the resources to figure this out when you were younger. I can see how difficult this was for you and how challenging it was, and I never wanted you to have to go through that rather than saying, Oh, it was fine. Nobody thought you had that back then, you know, yes,

Kristen Carder 8:57
what is the difference between those two responses? What’s the difference in the parent like, Why can’t every parent say, man, we really missed this. I wish we could have supported you better. Is there anything you need from me right now to, like, repair that? Why is that so hard for some parents?

Whitney Goodman 9:19
I think shame is a big piece. People who have a fragile sense of self, a fragile ego, they’re going to have a lot more difficulty engaging with that pain of like, oh, I maybe let my child down, or I disappointed them, but every parent is going to do that to their child throughout their lifetime, myself included, that we have to get comfortable with upsetting our kids and being accountable and not letting that shame stop us from connecting with them and repairing how do

Kristen Carder 9:56
we get comfortable with upsetting our kids? Yeah.

Whitney Goodman 10:00
Yeah, you know, I I think that parents who are worried about upsetting their children, who are worried about being good parents, are typically not the ones that are struggling with that the most, right, you know? And people say to me, like, I’m so worried about passing this dysfunction down to my kids. I’m like, Oh, I’m not worried about you doing that because you’re so aware of it, and I know that because of your awareness, you’re empathizing, and you’re going to be able to talk to your kids about that. I think it’s the parents who say, like, I tried my best, there’s nothing else I could have done. And they get really caught up in that, like, if I admit that maybe I could have done something different in this situation, it means I am a bad mom, which means I am a bad person, and I cannot

Kristen Carder 10:48
live with that. I think it really takes a special kind of human to be able to hold the pain of your child without dismissing it and invalidating it for your own benefit, and I see that in my first 10 years of parenting my children where I didn’t have the capacity to hold my own pain, therefore I couldn’t hold theirs, and so I had to dismiss them and invalidate them, and that really is how I parented for years, until I gave myself the space to really see myself, validate myself, feel pain, and then I could do that for my kiddos. So it’s so interesting, when a parent is not able to hold space for their child, it’s really or maybe I should ask you, do you feel like it’s because they’re not holding that space for themselves 100%

Whitney Goodman 11:42
I think you’re hitting it right on the nose that, like, if I can’t do that for myself, it’s very hard for me to do that for my child, and also, if I’ve been consistently told and had this belief reinforced that, like, my feelings don’t matter, I need to be tough. I need to suck it up. I need to not be so dramatic, like I might just think that that’s what I need to do for my child in order for them to navigate the world properly. I don’t think that you know the way you’re describing your parenting for the first 10 years came with bad intentions, right? I would bet that you’re not thinking like, I really want to mess my kids up, you know, and and make them hate me, but it’s hard to do something different when you don’t know any different. I think the thing about that is, though, is that we have to constantly be open to learning and not just say, I’m only going to stick with this one method, because that’s what was done with me. Yes,

Kristen Carder 12:38
do you see a very big generational divide in this conversation? And can you speak to that a little bit like, what are you noticing when it comes to people really seeking healthy family relationships? Is that? Is it specific to one generation or another?

Whitney Goodman 13:00
So the really interesting thing about our groups at calling home is that we have people that attend that really run the entire spectrum. I would say we have members from 20 to 75 right? So you can kind of see these different dynamics playing out. And I do find that some members of, let’s say, the boomer generation, they they’re struggling a little bit more with understanding the new language and like feelings, vocabulary that maybe Gen X millennials, Gen Z are speaking with now. We grew up with therapy being much more out there, and now it’s all over the internet. You know, it’s become part of our dialect that I think they’ve been a little bit slower to come around and kind of get on board. We also have to remember that that generation was raised very much with this, like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and, like, figure it out mentality. So I see a lot of friction there, you know, between younger generations and older generations when it comes to feelings, but I do think that I have seen a lot of older people come around and learn this stuff and see some value in it, and we do see some of those success stories, but I think that it all depends on, like, the person’s ability to be reflective. Yeah, you know,

Kristen Carder 14:21
what is required in a human to allow them to be reflective.

Whitney Goodman 14:28
So I I think again, we’re going back to that shame piece, right, that there has to be this level of safety of feeling like I can look at myself and at my life and still know deep down, like who I am and what I value, and you have this, you have a more secure sense of self. I think when you’re able to self reflect. And for some people, reflection feels very scary and very dangerous. That’s why a lot of those people will avoid therapy, right? Because. They don’t want to be seen.

Kristen Carder 15:01
You mentioned that this therapy speak is all over the internet now, and I wanted to ask you, do you think that that’s a good thing or a bad thing? What is it? What are the benefits? What are kind of the risks of all of you know if you if your algorithm is kind of feeding you like lots of therapy, talk lots of narcissism, talk lots of estrangement, talk, I’m curious what you think about the access to so much information. And yeah, I’d like to hear your thoughts about that. So

Whitney Goodman 15:38
I’ll give you my best therapist answer, okay, I think it’s very good and bad, right? I can’t I do. Think it is all in the eye of the beholder, like the person that is taking this information in and filtering it in through their own worldview, their level of knowledge, that certain things can be taken the wrong way, they can be used in the wrong way. They can be weaponized. And so that’s the problem really with the internet when it comes to anything. So when we look at like wellness, or even information about neurodivergence and being ADHD, that there are people that see that and like it has saved my life. If I didn’t know this information, I wouldn’t have been able to get a diagnosis, etc, but there are also people that are going to see that information, and they’re going to apply it in the wrong way. They’re going to misdiagnose themselves. And so I think that we have to remember that any of this stuff on social media has to exist within a broader ecosystem, right, of like checks and balances, of going to therapy, talking about this stuff with friends, making sure that you have the skills and are in a place where you can even take this information in and digest it. And unfortunately for the people like myself producing this content, we cannot control what happens when it lands in someone’s hands. And so it’s a big responsibility, right, which I’m sure you feel. Yeah,

Kristen Carder 17:06
I was just gonna say that I do feel that so deeply as well, because it’s so important to get information about ADHD out there. And you know, in the last five years, there’s been this huge surge of awareness about adult ADHD, especially, which is wonderful. And at the same time the it allows, it allows people with bad intentions to prey on vulnerable people, I think. And so it, it is very it is this give and take, and it does feel like a big responsibility to make sure that correct information is out there. And also, I hope that, you know, we can be educating our listeners, our followers, in how to apply the information. Or like, hey, you know, the internet is not the same as therapy, like, get your butt in the therapist’s chair as well. You know that kind of a thing, because I think you’re so right that it does take more than just an Instagram reel or a podcast episode that can be a wonderful springboard, but the deep internal work, that there’s no substitute for that.

Unknown Speaker 18:26
Absolutely.

Kristen Carder 18:28
Okay, so one more question kind of in along those same lines, I’ve heard, and I’ve even seen in comments, and I’ve heard through the grapevine, like personally, that therapists are pressuring their clients to become estranged from their families, that that there’s this big push by therapists these days. I’m using air quotes like these days therapists are trying to get their clients to become estranged from their families. Can you speak to that a little bit? Are there therapists out there, you know, who are pushing their clients to do this? Is that ethical? What are the what are the kind of terms and conditions around therapists? How are they supposed to be showing up all of that, like, is it the therapist’s fault when an adult child is estranged from their family.

Whitney Goodman 19:26
So I think there’s two things happening here when, when people say that it’s a classic externalizing type of like, defense mechanism of like, I don’t believe that this is my fault. This cannot be my fault. And so I need to find another reason why this is happening, and a therapist on the internet that you don’t know is a pretty easy target, right? And you’re seeing these videos and you’re like, oh my gosh, my kids saw these and now they don’t want to speak to me anymore. Given my experience in the field over the last decade, I find it very, very hard to believe. That someone with a great relationship with their parents sees a video from myself or someone else and says, You know what, I’m going to cut them off because they have so much to lose there, right? Like that’s that’s a really big step to take Now, that being said, there are certainly people who maybe have been on the fence because they are struggling in that relationship, or they’re being abused or harmed by their parents, and this is the first time they’ve encountered someone that’s saying to them, it’s okay for you to step away from this relationship, and I think that’s particularly true for people who are raised in high control religions or cultures where there’s a lot of emphasis put on staying with your family no matter what. And so I understand why people in those circles might look outside and say, Wow, they’re trying to get our kids to leave their families. Now I can speak for myself. You know, as a family therapist, it is my goal in my career to help families function better. That’s why I went to school, to help them be more cohesive, to help all members of the family feel respected and loved within that unit. So to break families apart really goes completely against, like the entire ethos of the profession that I think when I hear that now, it used to trigger me a lot. I have to be honest, like I used to feel this feeling of like, My God, why do they think I’m doing that? And now I have a lot of empathy for people who say that, because I think they’re really stuck, and they’re looking for someone to blame, and their child often isn’t letting them speak to them anymore. And so I found that some parents might even find these therapists as sort of like their next target. I’ve had estranged parents making videos about me, you know, all over the internet, and I’m, like, the same age as their kid, and so I’m just like, okay, I can feel the way that you might speak to them, because you’re doing that to me and you don’t know me, that it’s, it’s you’re watching the same dynamic play out. You know, just inserting somebody else.

Kristen Carder 22:14
A few years ago, I went looking for help. I wanted to find someone to teach me how to feel better about myself and to help me improve my organization, productivity, time management, emotional regulation, you know, all the things that we adults with ADHD struggle with, I couldn’t find anything. So I researched and I studied and I hired coaches and I figured it out, and then I created focused for you. Focused is my monthly coaching membership where I teach educated professional adults how to accept their ADHD brain and hijack their ability to get stuff done. Hundreds of people from all over the world are already benefiting from this program, and I’m confident that you will too go to I have adhd.com/focus for all details. I follow you on Instagram, obviously, and as everyone else should at sit with wit and you had a poll recently asking people how long it took them to make the decision to become estranged from parents or family members. What were the results of that poll? How long does it usually take? And what do you see in your own client group? Is this on a whim? Are people just like, you know, like you said, watching a video and then being like, I’m gonna cut them off? Or is this a process that happens over time?

Whitney Goodman 23:32
Yeah, I’m working on a podcast episode covering, like, all of those results. I’ll definitely speak to that, that a lot of people, the majority, said that it took them several years. Right? With a huge percentage of those people, I can’t remember the exact percentage off the top of my head, but a large percentage saying it took them more than seven to 10 years to make that decision. And a lot of people you know that sent me there, I collected, like, I think, 300 stories of estrangement that people sent me to my email. And most of those included, you know, a lot of attempts to reconnect. It wasn’t like 10 years of constant contact and then become estranged the next day. It was more like boundaries, two steps forward, two steps back, that kind of thing. And I found that very, very few people, and this is echoed in my groups that I run, in my individual sessions, make that decision lightly and on a whim. And a lot of them, when they first do it, they end up going back, you know, and then trying it again. It is. It is so rare that I hear of people just doing this, this overnight. I personally have not heard a story like that, yeah, to be honest,

Kristen Carder 24:47
what do children have to lose when making that decision? Because it does seem like there’s this flippancy when parents talk about it like. Oh, you just woke up one day and decided, and, you know, I just don’t understand, and why are you doing this? And, like, from the child’s perspective, often it’s like, I’ve communicated. I’ve asked 100 times for things to be different. I’ve set boundary, you know, like, like you said, the two steps forward to 17 steps back sometimes. What do, what do adult children have to lose? Like, what are they giving up when they’re cutting off even, quote, unquote, toxic parents, there’s still a huge loss. Can you speak to that a little bit they

Whitney Goodman 25:36
have so much to lose, especially because not every like toxic situation, quote, unquote, is all bad. So when, when someone decides to cut off a family member or a parent, they’re often losing ties to other members of the family. They could be painted in a negative light to those people. They have their reputation kind of ruined, per se, they’re losing ties to their culture, possibly an inheritance, having connections in the community, all of these things that people have to kind of weigh out. I think there still is a large social stigma, especially around big life events, for not having your family members there. And so those people are having to every time there’s a holiday, a wedding, a birthday, kind of recontend with this pain and their decision that they might be losing grandparents for their children. Like, there’s a lot there that that’s why I don’t think anyone just does this like for fun. I yeah, I don’t get that explanation.

Kristen Carder 26:42
Yeah, totally, totally agree. I think that when I, when I look at, I think that’s another reason why it takes adult children that long, you know, seven, five to 10 years or whatever, to make that decision is because they know, they know what they that, that they would lose a lot, and it it has to become this situation where it’s just the the return on investment is just no longer there, right? Like over and over and over, you have to prove to yourself that, okay, yes, I am giving up a lot, but the return on investment of like staying connected is just no longer viable 100% I’m curious what advice you might give to neurodivergent folks who are navigating family relationships. How do you help clients, and what advice can you give us, as far as, like, how do we have healthy relationships with our families? I think, like I said in the beginning, this is one of the hardest things for us as humans. So what tips do you give to your clients to help them to have healthy relationships in their families. I

Whitney Goodman 28:03
think one of the biggest struggles that I hear among neurodivergent people when they’re having issues with their families is like I feel like they don’t understand me, or I feel like I can’t be myself. I can’t show up as my full self, and so I feel like this is a step for anyone, whether you’re neurodivergent or not, is kind of reaching this level of acceptance of like, if my family can’t fully understand me or fully embrace who I am, understand my diagnosis, how I show up in the world, I may need to accept that, instead of burdening myself endlessly to try to convince them to see me, because the truth is that, like people who care about you and who love you, I think in their own way, they’re going to try to learn how to be in relationship with you to some degree, right, especially if they know that you come to the relationship Maybe with a different set of strengths or struggles or difficulties in communicating, and they’re going to want to try to understand that about you. And when you keep butting up against someone in your family that wants you to be like them, that isn’t taking any any effort to understand you, that’s when you usually get to a point of having to say, like, okay, maybe it’s not worth, like, convincing this person to show up for me. Maybe I need to figure out how I can have a healthy relationship with them that works for me without them having to change anything about them. And that’s that’s really

Kristen Carder 29:36
hard. What might that look like?

Whitney Goodman 29:40
So I think part of it is allowing yourself to show up in the way that you are, and if the other person is disappointed with that, if they’re trying to put demands on you that you can’t meet, learning to be okay with disappointing them. Now obviously this is within reason. We’re not saying that you can go. Out and just treat people terribly, and they should be okay with it, but you know, I find sometimes with people who are neurodivergent, maybe they’re not communicating in a way that the other person likes. They’re not being responsive enough, they’re not remembering to call them back. Whatever it is that those kinds of things you have to get okay with, like, disappointing people sometimes, if they are unwilling to understand that you are doing the best that you can with what you’ve got to participate in that relationship,

Kristen Carder 30:32
I think there’s a really fine line between accepting that our family member loves us and wants the best for us and just can’t fully understand or embrace this one aspect of our neurodivergence. But then there’s this other piece, where I see my clients who want to see the best in their family members, who, from what they tell me, sound kind of abusive. And so where do we draw the line of like, oh, they just want the best for me. They just love me. They’re they’re doing their best, and I’ll just accept that they don’t understand me. Where’s the lie between that and, okay, this person is deliberately being unkind to me over and over and over, and that’s just not something that I’m gonna continue to allow in my life. And I know this is a big question, like, this is for therapy, but could you just give us a snippet of like, how do we tell the difference between someone who really does mean well and someone who doesn’t mean well?

Whitney Goodman 31:36
No, I appreciate you bringing that up, because I think we have to clarify that acceptance means looking at this person, how they act around you the majority of the time, how do they treat you the majority of the time, and really saying like, it seems like I can’t change this person. It seems like I can’t make them different. So if I accept that this is how they are, how would I like to be in relationship with them, and so when we talk about like people who are just actually not treating us Well, I think it comes down to looking at, do they ever apologize for their behavior? Do they ever try to be better or to change things? Does everything seem to be my fault and nothing is their fault. Am I the one that’s always having to, like, contort myself and make exceptions, because really, relationships are two way street, and I think this is where social media sometimes messes up. Is that it becomes either like it’s all my fault or it’s all their fault? Yeah, and we have to find it somewhere in the middle. Now, of course, if someone is screaming at you, calling you names, constantly belittling you and criticizing you, using physical force, things like that, that could fall under the category of abuse, and I would definitely discuss that with a therapist to get more clarity on like, what’s actually going on in this relationship, because you don’t ever have to keep yourself in a situation like

Kristen Carder 33:03
that. That’s so helpful. One of the things that my husband has said, and I think might be a common theme, and I’m curious what you think about it, my husband, you know, I started therapy four ish years ago, and I’ve made a lot of changes in my life since starting that process, changes that have affected and impacted him. And one of the things that he’s pushed back on, and I think is really valid, is he said therapists only hear one side of the story. So how in the world, you know, is it healthy to be making decisions, changing up family dynamics and making decisions like this when a therapist is only hearing your side and they’re not getting maybe a full picture. What do you say in response to that?

Whitney Goodman 33:59
You know, that’s the nature of therapy when you come in with any issue, and I think the therapist knows that, right like we know that whatever you’re giving us is your perception, your beliefs, and I think a good therapist will challenge some of those perceptions, or maybe ask you questions. I think there’s a little bit of a false belief that, especially among people who have been to therapy, that you go in and the therapist just point blank believes everything you say at face value and doesn’t really push so if someone says to me, my mom is horrible to me all the time. I don’t like her. I don’t like the way she treats me. I’m not going to start with Okay, let’s figure out how to get some space from your mom. I want to first know, what do you mean that your mom is horrible to you? What types of things does she say? What are you hearing when you speak to her? And we might actually like get to a place with some people, where they figure out. Like, you know what? I have a lot of these insecurities. And so when my mom comes in my house and she critiques things, she’s trying to help, but I hear it as criticism. And sometimes we’re able to, like, actually integrate both sides without the other person being there. But there are, of course, situations where, if someone tells me, you know, my mom’s doing X, Y and Z to me, and I don’t want to have a relationship with her, then we have to start looking at, okay, that’s your decision. You don’t want to have a relationship with her. What’s that going to look like? And let’s talk about what that path might be.

Kristen Carder 35:36
Yeah, I think that you you sprinkled in a great point without making it the main point. But I think that it’s usually people who haven’t gone to therapy who have that pushback, yeah, which is really interesting. And he has since, you know, been involved in therapy, but it really was prior to his therapeutic experience where he would just be, like, they’re only hearing one side, like how, how is that helpful and and it’s a really

Whitney Goodman 36:06
good the other piece, though, that I want to say to that is that I think that also implies that there is a truth right, that there’s one side that is 100% valid, and that if I heard both sides, I would be able to say, as the therapist, okay, this is the truth here, when really, most of the time, you both feel right, both of the people that are telling their story, and so we’re really just trying to work on like, how can we make this good for you? How can you make your life the way you want to live it. Sometimes the therapist hearing both perspectives doesn’t change the outcome.

Kristen Carder 36:46
Yeah, I totally agree. And if you think about a therapist as a confidant, an advocate for one particular person, and then hopefully the other people are also having their own support systems and their own therapists and their own confidants. That way, each person in the relationship is equally supported, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be by the same person

Whitney Goodman 37:10
Exactly, exactly. What would

Kristen Carder 37:13
you say to parents listening who have children that have chosen to either be in less contact with them or no contact with them. What encouragement help? Yeah, can you give to parents who are like it feels like it’s already too late for me, because my kids have estranged from me. Is there hope for for them?

Whitney Goodman 37:43
I think there’s always hope. Or I wouldn’t do what I do as a job. But I I first want to say that, you know, as a mother, I can’t imagine a worse pain, you know, other than my child really not being around, not being alive, then knowing that your child is out there somewhere and not speaking to you. And I think a lot of these parents that are kind of the loudest voices out there talking about this in a derogatory way are the ones that are in the most pain, you know, and not not really willing to sit with that. I think every parent has to stop focusing on the relationship with the child and go back to themselves, and that might mean that you’re going to therapy, that you’re reading books, that you’re listening to a podcast like this, but you have to start from the ground up, about like, what is it about the way that I am showing up in this relationship that makes my child feel like I am not a safe place to come to, I think, especially in, you know, the more extreme cases of estrangement, that’s essential. But there’s also this sort of, like, early level no contact that I’m seeing that I think a lot of parents are not reacting well to, and it’s making estrangement more likely, and that is just differentiation of young adults. We have, like, a big generation of helicopter parenting that is now parenting adults. And so when these adults are going out, you know, going to college, they’re getting married, and they’re making their own decisions, the parents are like, No, that’s not how we do things, I need to be involved in every step and the kids only response to that is to like, reject them or cut them out. And I don’t know that that always has to end up that way if the parent would learn to like, take a step back and allow you know, the adult child to make their own decisions, make mistakes.

Kristen Carder 39:41
What does a parent have to think or feel in order to allow their adult child to start separating from them in a healthy way? What does it take for a parent to like allow that separation to happen?

Whitney Goodman 39:57
A lot of this, I think, is a. Out the identity of the parent, you know, especially if you were stay at home mom for the duration of your child’s life, and now they’re leaving, you’re kind of left, like, floundering. Who am I? You know, what am I doing here? And like, what’s, what’s my role now? And you’re clinging on to that stage, which is totally understandable. You know, I’m gonna feel that inclination as well. And I think you have to have this constant thought repeating in your head of like, I did my job. I trust my kid. I gave them the tools they needed, and I’m here if and when they need me, but I have to let them leave the nest.

Kristen Carder 40:36
It’s interesting. So I My oldest is 16, and I feel like I’m already starting that process. And so I the encouragement I want to give is, like, if you have teenagers, you know, or or if you have littler kids, but like when they become teenagers, you can start that process now. Like, when my kid wants to make a decision that, okay, so, like, that happens all the time, right? Like, I’m parenting a 16 year old boy, I’m never like, yes, you know it’s, it’s a lot of me practicing trust for my own kid. Like, you know who you are, you know what you need, you know, what you want, like you can take those classes, you can go to that sleep, like you can do these things. And I’m here when you need me. And I think that that transition can start in, you know, adolescence, as a teenager, and then I’m thinking like, oh my gosh, in two years, he’s going to be done with high school, I know I can’t crazy. It’s such a fascinating thing, and I’m already starting the grieving process. And I think that what I notice in a lot of families with estranged children is that the parents never actually went through that grieving process, because grief is so painful, and who wants to feel it, not me. But if you don’t grieve the transition, and we’ve mentioned transition so many times, if you don’t grieve that transition and allow things to change, then you’re gonna be like, grasping on to things staying the same, and the kiddo, like my 16 year old, does not want our relationship to stay the same, right? And I think that’s what a lot of and actually, that’s a good question for you. Do you feel like that’s where a lot of tension is, is that the parents want the relationship to stay the same, the child’s trying to change the relationship, and then there’s like, a huge disconnect.

Whitney Goodman 42:43
Yeah, there’s, there’s two things that I think can can really contribute to that tension. And the first one is exactly what you’re saying. The parent wants to continue being like, above the child, right in the way that I’m parenting my three year old, you know, of like, I’m making the decisions for him. I’m keeping him safe, and I have to do that at this age. But if you don’t kind of move into this like side by side position with your child, or even eventually stepping back fully, there can be a lot of tension. And then there’s also this idea that the parent gets to dictate who the child becomes. And I think when your child is choosing maybe not to take the career path, stay in the religion, marry who you thought they were going to marry, all of those are points when we see parents try to shift back into this, like on top position and assert their authority, and the adults saying, Whoa. Like, what are you doing here? And when they don’t have the skills like you’re saying with your 16 year old, for you guys to have a conversation and say, This is what I’m feeling as your parent, this is what I’m feeling as your child, when you’ve never done that before. A lot of these kids, they’re anxious and they’re just going to cut off because they don’t know how else to deal with the disappointment or that conversation with their parent

Kristen Carder 44:03
is this where a lot of like, kind of hiding your real life and like, deception happens as well, like, where kids aren’t really revealing their true selves to their parents because they’re just too nervous to Be like, No, I’m not pursuing that career. I’m not marrying that person. Is it? Is that where we see like, a break in connection as well, where we’re like, hiding our lives from our

Whitney Goodman 44:31
parents totally, especially if you feel like your parents are going to think that your life is unacceptable. I think to some degree, teenagers and young adults, they do some hiding because they want to be adults, and they want to have things that are just for themselves, and it’s secrecy, and it’s very normal developmentally at that age. But there’s another level to that, of like, I feel like I can’t be these certain parts of myself. Wealth around my parents or my family, because I’m going to be judged, ridiculed, exiled, and so I have to hide all of that. And sometimes what we find is that those people go out into the world. They find other people like them who treat them well, and they say, Gosh, my family, you know, thinks that I’m going to hell if I do X, Y and Z or something bad’s going to happen to me. Why would I want to hang out with them? For these people that treat me well, yep,

Kristen Carder 45:31
so going back to what estranged parents can do, yes, is one of those things, just being extremely accepting of who your child becomes, and how, how do estranged parents, like navigate their own values and boundaries and morals in relation to their kids who are making decisions that they don’t agree with?

Whitney Goodman 45:57
So whenever I speak about this, I feel like I always have to add the caveat that, of course, no one is encouraging you to like, accept that your child is like a murderer doing something terrible. You know, people bring up really like extreme situations that what we’re talking about here is, you know, can I accept that my child has different political beliefs than me? Can I accept that my child, you know, doesn’t want to work all the time and wants to travel the country, and I’m like a high powered executive, whatever it is that I think parents have to get comfortable with realizing their children are not an extension of them. They are their own people that are walking out in the world. And can they get to know them as the adults that they are, instead of trying to force them to be exactly like them and also getting comfortable with their child’s going to be safe and Okay, yeah, even if they’re different, I think a lot of that control comes from that place of like, I’m worried about you.

Kristen Carder 46:57
Okay, so this is a question I’ve asked you many times, what does a parent need to think or feel in order to do that? So in order for me to accept my child, what do I need to be? Who do I need to be in order to do that, I

Whitney Goodman 47:12
think you have to be accepting of yourself, right? It goes back to how we started the conversation of like, there are a lot of parents of adult children that are walking around the world hiding many aspects of themselves, right, shutting things down, their parents rejected them for those same identities, or their community or whoever, and so they have to get comfortable with like, wow, my kid is being really brave. They’re doing something that I didn’t feel like I could do in my lifetime, maybe, or maybe I couldn’t do some some people grow up in cultures or countries where they cannot be as expressive as their children in a lot of these ways, and so we have to get comfortable, and this requires breaking so much messaging and conditioning that some of these people grew up with.

Kristen Carder 47:59
So the moral of the story is,

Whitney Goodman 48:04
all parents need therapy and all

Kristen Carder 48:07
parents need to be I mean, is that what it is like all parents, if you’re going to have good, healthy relationships with your kids, and you don’t feel like you do, then like it’s your job to figure out, what is it within me that is making it so that I’m not connected to my kiddos, and how can I hold negative emotion? How one of the things is like, I just don’t feel like older generations are used to receiving help and support. And like, it’s taboo, yes, and so, like, how can I receive support so that I can be a support to my kid? Because that’s all that kids want, is a supportive parent, right? Like, but yeah, if you as the parent are not able to receive support. You’re not going to be able to give it to your child for

Whitney Goodman 49:04
sure. And there’s another roadblock there that I find with a lot of people that I have to kind of counsel them to be like, it doesn’t really seem like your parent has the capacity for realizing that they might have some stake in this, that they might be part of the problem. You know? You’re going to interact with some parents who could have done the worst things, and they’re going to say you were a really bad kid, and that’s why I did what I did, you know? And that’s, that’s a tough position to be in as an adult child, yeah,

Kristen Carder 49:33
for sure. And and then you’re kind of like, where do we go from here? Like, how do we even reconcile that when the relationship is not seen as a two way, Yep, yeah. So anything else, or any other encouragement that you can give to listeners who just really are eager to have decent, healthy enough relationships with their with their parents, with their children. And like, what encouragement Can you leave us with Whitney?

Whitney Goodman 50:03
You know, I think everyone has the ability to have healthy family relationships when the all the parties are willing to show up that way, right? And so you can only control your side, and that’s what I like to always remind people of, is like, keep listening to things like this, working on it, but also have the ability to say when the person on the other side is is not showing up and they’re not doing what they need to be doing. If you notice that you’re blaming yourself a lot, that you’re always the problem, then it might be time to kind of look at, well, who else could be contributing to this dynamic, and how can we both own what is ours?

Kristen Carder 50:43
Thank you so much. Where can people find you? Tell us about your program, calling home. I’m really interested for people to hear all the things from you.

Whitney Goodman 50:51
Totally thank you so you can go to callinghome.co.co. We have groups for adult children of emotionally immature parents. We have topic focused groups every month. And then each Monday, we have a new Content drop with resources for adults who are working on their family relationships. So you’ll find articles, scripts, worksheets, videos, pretty much any type of content you can imagine to navigate that. And then I also have a podcast, which is the calling home podcast, and you can listen to that anywhere that you get your podcasts.

Kristen Carder 51:24
Whitney Goodman, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. All right, my friends, if relationships are a struggle for you, I want you to know that this is a topic that I support clients with on the daily in my coaching program, focused. Focused is a group coaching membership where adults with ADHD from all over the world receive coaching and support and learn how to navigate this path of having adult ADHD in a healthy way go to I have adhd.com/focused to Learn More. That’s Ihaveadhd.com/focused to learn more. You.