

CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT
Calling Home
Whitney Goodman is a licensed marriage and family therapist and author on a mission to help adult family members have better relationships. Each week, Whitney has conversations with influential guests and real people to help listeners find new ways of looking at old family problems.Calling Home is available every Tuesday and Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Oct 21, 2025 • 38min
You, Your Husband, and His Mother with Dr. Tracy Dalgleish
Whitney interviews Dr. Tracy Dalgleish, author of the new book "You, Your Husband, and His Mother” about navigating mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships. They discuss why this dynamic is so challenging, the scapegoating of daughters-in-law, triangulation of husbands/partners, the difference between setting boundaries and being controlling, and a few practical strategies for surviving the holidays together.
Connect with Dr. Tracy: https://www.drtracyd.com/
Preorder her new book: https://amzn.to/4hixF49
00:00 Why the Mother-in-Law Dynamic Is So Common
04:44 The Abandonment Wound
07:04 The Scapegoating of Daughters-in-Law
12:01 Abusive Daughter-In-Laws?
18:54 The Husband's Critical Role in the Triangle
24:09 Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts
28:24 Psychological Conflict Between Women
32:25 Practical Boundaries and Mindset Shifts for the Holidays
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? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466
Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club
Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit
Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft
Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity
Learn more about ad choices. Visit podcast.choices.com/adchoices
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oct 16, 2025 • 46min
The Real Housewives Scene That Should Be Shown in Graduate School
Whitney analyzes scenes from Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and Love Is Blind to explore mother-daughter estrangement, purity culture shame, and how parents either repair or double down decades after causing harm. She breaks down Whitney Rose's advice to an at-risk mother, Bronwyn's devastating conversation with her mom about pregnancy shame, and two different paths to reconciliation in Love is Blind.
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.
00:00 Using reality tv to understand real family dynamics
03:57 Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
15:45 The devastating scene between Bronwyn and her mom
27:45 Bronwyn’s mom doubles down
36:28 A missed opportunity to heal decades of hurt
39:20 Love Is Blind
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? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466
Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club
Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit
Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft
Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity
Learn more about ad choices. Visit podcast.choices.com/adchoices
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oct 14, 2025 • 16min
Hallmarks of a Functional Family
Build a more functional family today. In this episode, Whitney breaks down the hallmarks of functional families, how these skills can be learned regardless of how you grew up, and practical steps to get started.
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.
00:00 Introduction: What Functional Families Actually Look Like
02:31 Admitting When There Are Problems
03:51 Open Communication and Repair
04:37 Being Known Without Performance
05:17 Reliability and Dependability
05:57 Zero Abuse or Neglect
07:21 Unconditional Belonging
09:14 Small Actions You Can Start Today
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? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466
Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club
Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit
Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft
Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity
Learn more about ad choices. Visit podcast.choices.com/adchoices
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oct 9, 2025 • 33min
Parentification and the Price of Being the Problem Solver
Discover three transformative practices to reduce anxiety, like meditation combined with red light therapy. Explore the challenges of being the golden child expected to fix family issues while grappling with shallow relationships. Unpack the complexities of children feeling trapped between conflicting parental dynamics, along with the emotional burden of being the family problem solver. Learn how to navigate relationships devoid of real connection and the importance of setting boundaries for personal well-being.

Oct 7, 2025 • 36min
How to Parent Differently Without Overcorrecting with Dr. Juli Fraga
Whitney Goodman interviews psychologist Dr. Julie Fraga about her book "Parents Have Feelings Too." They discuss how parents can process their own emotions, break cycles of guilt and perfectionism, use the Change Triangle to understand their feelings, and teach emotional intelligence to their children—all while navigating the challenge of parenting differently than they were raised.
00:00 The Shift from Fixing Kids to Supporting Parents
04:26 Managing Parental Guilt
09:11 Getting Ahead of Overstimulation as a Parent
15:37 Breaking Intergenerational Patterns Without Overcorrecting
20:24 The Change Triangle
25:10 Why Kids' Emotions Make Parents Uncomfortable
30:18 Finding Joy in Parenting
Dr. Juli's Website: https://www.drjulifraga.com/
Order her new book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/788442/parents-have-feelings-too-by-hilary-jacobs-hendel/
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? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466
Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club
Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit
Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft
Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity
Learn more about ad choices. Visit podcast.choices.com/adchoices
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oct 2, 2025 • 23min
Q&A: Becoming Like Your Parent
Whitney explores patterns around adult children who mimic their parents' harmful behaviors, the complexities of maintaining boundaries when a parent struggles with addiction, and how illness can be weaponized in estranged families. In the Q&A, she answers a caller's question about navigating grandparent illness during estrangement.
00:00 Introduction: Darker Family Patterns
02:59 Airport Observation: When Adult Children Treat Parents Like They Were Treated
08:11 Real Housewives SLC: How to Show Up for a Child Struggling with Addiction
10:55 Q&A: When Grandparent Illness Becomes a Manipulation Tactic
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? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466
Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club
Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit
Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft
Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity
Learn more about ad choices. Visit podcast.choices.com/adchoices
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sep 30, 2025 • 37min
Analyzing Prime Video's The Girlfriend | Mother-Son Enmeshment and Emotional Incest
Whitney analyzes the Amazon Prime show "The Girlfriend" to explore mother-son enmeshment and emotional incest. She analyzes how the show illustrates blurred boundaries, guilt and manipulation, marital dysfunction, and the devastating long-term impacts on sons' ability to form healthy romantic relationships, connecting the fictional dynamics to real research on these family patterns.
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.
00:00 Introduction to The Girlfriend and Mother-Son Enmeshment
04:00 Defining Emotional Incest and What It Looks Like
09:06 Power Assertion and Blocked Individuation
14:10 The Girlfriend as Both Rival and Mirror
17:25 How Marital Dysfunction Fuels Enmeshment
21:56 Why Enmeshed Sons Struggle with Adult Partnerships
25:12 Lies, Isolation, and the Ultimate Betrayal
Have a question for Whitney? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466
Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club
Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit
Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft
Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity
Learn more about ad choices. Visit podcast.choices.com/adchoices
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sep 25, 2025 • 22min
Break Up with the Rage Economy
Whitney reflects on how the "rage economy" of social media and news is destroying our mental health and capacity to connect with others. She explores how algorithms reward inflammatory content that keeps us trapped in cycles of anger and isolation. Later in the episode she highlights a positive example from Real Housewives of Orange County where a parent demonstrates accountability and course-correction in real 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? Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to whitney@callinghome.co or leave a voicemail to 866-225-5466
Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club
Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit
Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft
Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity
00:00 The Rage Economy That's Destroying Our Mental Health
04:34 How Algorithms Reward Inflammatory Content Over Nuance
08:58 Breaking Free from the Cycle of Rage and Reactivity
12:34 When Sports Team Politics Replace Critical Thinking
16:35 Real Housewives Example: How to Course-Correct as a Parent
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sep 23, 2025 • 1h 13min
Therapists Analyze the Viral Estranged Parents Video
Whitney Goodman teams up with therapist Kate Gray (@codependencykate) to analyze a viral YouTube video from an estranged parent with over 1.2 million views. They break down common patterns of defensiveness, emotional neglect, and deflection that prevent reconciliation, offering insights for both estranged adult children and estranged parents on how these dynamics play out and what healthier approaches might look like.
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? Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to whitney@callinghome.co or leave a voicemail to 866-225-5466
Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club
Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit
Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft
Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity
00:00 Introduction and Disclaimers About Analyzing Real People
05:24 The Politics Defense and Minimizing the Daughter’s Letter
13:53 Empty Gestures vs. Real Connection
26:45 The Birthday Martyrdom and Drama Triangle
34:06 Public Betrayal
42:43 Ghosting vs. Setting Boundaries
53:54 Spiritual Bypassing and Avoiding Real Accountability Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sep 18, 2025 • 26min
The Enabling Parent Dilemma
Whitney breaks down dysfunctional family dynamics in Real Housewives of Miami and The Summer I Turned Pretty, then answers a caller's question about healing from the pain of having an enabling parent who failed to protect them from an abusive narcissistic parent. Enabling parents are often harder to process than overtly abusive ones and Whitney details what finding acceptance actually looks like.
Have a question for Whitney? Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to whitney@callinghome.co or leave a voicemail to 866-225-5466
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.
Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club
Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit
Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft
Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute
for professional mental health advice.
00:00 Family Cycle Breakers Club Community Update
05:02 Real Housewives of Miami: When Parents Take Credit for Your Success
08:19 Family Estrangement After Late-Life Adoption
13:18 The Summer I Turned Pretty: Should Parents Boycott Major Life Events
16:22 Q&A: How to Heal From an Enabling Parent Who Never Protected You Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices