When Family Hurts: Why Pulling Back Isn’t Selfish—It’s Part of Healing

Episode 182 - When Family Hurts: Why Pulling Back Isn't Selfish - It's Part of Healing

Episode Summary:
Have you ever stepped back from a family relationship because it just hurt too much to stay close? Maybe a child rejected your values, your faith, or even blamed you for their pain—and you’re left feeling broken, confused, and ashamed for needing space.

This episode is your reminder:
 You are not broken.
You are not selfish.
And you are allowed to take care of yourself.

In this heart-to-heart conversation, I’m talking about why it hurts so much when family relationships feel strained, especially for women who’ve been taught to self-sacrifice in the name of love. I’ll walk you through the survival patterns we develop—like control, silence, and emotional distance—and show you how to begin healing from the inside out.

You’ll learn:

• Why your pain makes sense (and doesn’t make you weak)
• How to recognize and unlearn reactive patterns
• What healthy emotional space looks like—and why it’s necessary
• How your healing becomes a gift to future generations
• Why pulling back can be a loving choice, not a selfish one

If you're feeling stuck, lost, or unsure how to move forward with a family member—especially an adult child—this episode is for you.

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July 30 and 31, 2025

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Favorite Quote from the Episode:
"Sometimes, the most loving thing you can do is step back and let the wound breathe. That’s not selfish—it’s wisdom."

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs.
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Connect with us:

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tinagosneycoaching

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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

Tina Gosney: 0:03

In just the past few months, I've talked with women who had one of their adult children tell them, I want a life completely opposite of yours, or my childhood traumatized me. And a third one said you're the source of every problem that I have. And then I talked to another woman whose children have all rejected her faith that she brought them up in, and she said to me, you know, when your children reject your faith, it feels like they're rejecting you. Hey, friend. I am so glad that you're here. I'm Tina Gosney, family life educator, conflict coach. Today I want to have a bit of a bit of a heart to heart. We're going to talk about the hurt that we experience in our family relationships, because we're all human. We're not going to escape this life without being hurt by another person, and sometimes we're going to be the one who is hurting another person. There is nowhere that this happens more than our family relationships. So if you're listening to this podcast, chances are good that you are a woman who a mother who has done everything that she can to be a good mother, a good daughter, a good member of your family or your faith or your community, and you care really deeply about the people that you love. You've tried to do things the right way, and you've taken great efforts to do things the right way, and yet you're hurting. You might be feeling confused, heartbroken, or even rejected by someone in your family, especially by one of your adult children, and if that's where you are right now, I want you to know this, that you are not alone and there is nothing wrong with you. Let's talk about why this hurts so much when you've been taught that love means you have to sacrifice, and that being a good mom means doing everything right, that if you raise your child the right way, they'll grow up to believe what you believe and live and want to live the kind of life that you live. Then when your adult child pulls away or challenges those values. It doesn't just feel like a disagreement. It feels personal. It feels like a rejection, like you have failed, like this really deep, aching heartbreak that you can't even reach is so deep that pain is real, and it makes sense, but what it doesn't mean is that you're broken because you're not. Let's talk about what might be happening underneath the surface, and I'm just going to touch on these things. There's a lot more depth that I'm going to go into, or have the ability to go into in this podcast. But let's just talk about what might be happening underneath the surface, and I'll just give you a brief explanation of what each one of those looks like, especially this is for you, if you've been raised in a culture or a faith or a family system that really emphasized being good. So when you grow up in an environment where being good means keep the peace at all cost, it means stay connected. It means avoiding conflict. Whatever you do avoid conflict, you start to pick up certain survival strategies, and they might not feel like strategies, because they're just what you do, and they're what you've seen other people do, and so you inherited those. But these are survival strategies. They are patterns, and they've served a purpose. They've served a really useful purpose in your life. These are the three big ones that I see all the time. The first one is control. And this one shows up when we are really trying to manage how other people think, how they feel, how they behave, especially our spouse and our children. So we might say things like, why would you do that? Or don't you see that's going to affect your future. Are you? Are you sure you want to make that choice? Or you should have known better. You know, better than that. Why did you do that? These are ways that we start to try to to try to control. We think that we're helping. You know, what's underneath that? We're scared. We're trying to avoid pain of getting it wrong. We're trying to avoid the help them avoid the pain of getting it wrong. We're trying to avoid pain of being seen as a failure, or having them seen as a failure, or seeing our whole family as a failure. But control, trying to control other people and how they're behaving and thinking and managing their lives and the choices that they're making this. Makes us feel like we're doing something. It helps us feel like we're being useful. The second one is we silence ourselves. So this is when we minimize our needs. We avoid speaking up because we don't want to upset anybody. So we start just swallowing things and pushing them down and telling ourselves things like, well, it's not that big of a deal. I don't need to bring that up this time. I'm just going to go along with it. I don't want to make things worse. I'll just do it myself. You know, these patterns keep the peace and keep us connected to other people, but often it comes at the cost of us being connected to ourselves, of us really letting somebody else know who we are, letting them know us and see us and have the opportunity to really know the real us, because we're hiding it from them. The third reactive pattern that we do is distancing. So when we feel really hurt and we feel really rejected, we want to pull away. We might not text back right away or at all. Maybe we keep conversation surface level. This is another way that we just keep distance between ourselves and another person. We might just really avoid family altogether. It feels safer. It protects us from more hurt. Another thing we could do, we can just it's just so easy to do these days. We pull out our phone. We're in the middle of a family gathering, in the middle of whatever's going on. We pull out our phone. That phone becomes a barrier between us, everything else that's going on, and everybody else that's there. So I want you to try to find yourself in one of these patterns, or maybe you've been doing all of them, which would be normal. But here's the important part, these patterns are not bad, they're just protective. They have helped you to survive in the environment that you've been in. They've helped you get through difficult moments, but there comes a point where they keep us from building the kind of connection that feels deep and that feels loving and kind and feels inclusive of everyone, no matter what. The good news is you will learn these patterns. They're not just they don't just exist on their own. They're not just facts of things that we have to do, and when you learned them, it means you can unlearn them. You can replace them with new ways of responding that come from clarity and strength instead of fear. So one thing I want you to know is and many women need to hear this, especially the women that I work with, I really need to tell them this quite often, if you pull back from a relationship, because every time you interact within that relationship, it feels like salt is getting poured into an open wound, and so you're pulling back, that's okay. You're not being dramatic, you're not overreacting, you're responding to pain, and that makes sense. Our natural reactions as humans is to go away from pain, and this is what you're doing. Sometimes the most loving thing that you can do for yourself and for the relationship is to take a step back and give it some space. This is a wound you want to let that wound breathe and give it a chance to heal. So think about a physical injury, maybe a cut or a burn. If you keep poking at it or exposing it to the elements without protection, it's not going to heal. It has to be cleaned. It has to be protected. It has to be given time. And emotional wounds are no different. They need care and space, if you have taken a step back, if you've gone quiet, or if you felt like you needed some distance, that does not mean you are selfish. It means you're human, and it might be that first step towards healing. That might be the step that you need. It might not mean this is the relationship ending. It might just mean I need to take some time to heal, and then I'm ready to step back in. And this is really where self compassion matters. We don't want to judge ourselves. We don't want to judge the other person, and for sure, we don't want to shame either of us. We just want to offer some gentle curiosity to ourselves. So ask yourself, What am I believing about myself right now? And the reason I like this question is because so many women are not. Not allowing themselves to have needs. The we've been taught that the only way to be good is to be selfless. So if we're thinking that we're pulling back and being selfish, what if that's not true? What if that is keeping us stuck? Another question is, Where have I been trying to earn love instead of just receive it? And along those same lines, why are you not worthy to just receive love as you are, instead of having to give and give and give in order to earn it? Third question is, what parts of me have I hidden or silenced just to keep the peace, and what does that cost me? So you're allowed to pause, you're allowed to regroup, you're allowed to tend to your own well being before you re engage in hard conversations. And that is not selfish, it's just wise. It's the beginning of healing. So if we want to start healing and step back in, how do we do that? How do we stop reacting from fear and start responding from courage? I want to walk you through a few simple, powerful steps, and the first one is to get in touch with what is happening inside your body. So before you engage in a hard conversation, or you respond to anything in a painful moment, check in with your body. Is your heart beating pretty quickly? Does it feel heavy? Do you have a pit in your stomach? Are your shoulders tight? Is your jaw clenched? Are your thoughts racing anything like this, or anything that I didn't mention that feels difficult. Take a pause, take a really long, slow exhale, and feel your feet on the floor purposefully soften your face and your hands. This is a signal to your nervous system. I'm safe and I can handle this. Second step number two, name, what's happening inside of you? Give words to it. Give language to it. Say to yourself, I'm trying to control the situation right now. Or I can feel myself shutting down again, or I'm going silent. When you name it, you create a moment of choice. You give yourself a choice. You can interrupt that automatic response, and you can try something new. Third step, number three, respond from courage, not panic. So what does that look like if you're moving into control instead of trying to control, ask curious questions, instead of getting defensive or trying to pull your point of view onto somebody else, something like I'm not understanding right now. Can you help me understand what's going on for you? If your tendency is to go silent, try naming just one feeling or one need that you have. Because my guess is that if you are going silent, you're swallowing down a lot and not voicing needs to yourself or anyone else. So just try naming one, saying I'm feeling hurt, and I'm trying to figure out why, if your go to is pulling away and going distant, then set a gentle boundary. Say something like, Hey, I love you, and I need a little time to process this before we talk more. I'm going to check back in with you in a couple hours. Is that okay? Or if you don't feel like a couple hours is long enough say I'm going to check back in with you tomorrow. I promise I'll get back to you. I just need some time. That was step number three. Step number four. This is an important one that I think we all forget quite often, is expect to be uncomfortable. So trying new responses is going to feel weird at first, for sure. And this is not because the new response is wrong. It's only because it's new. This is like trying on someone else's clothes that that they just have a different style than you. They feel strange because they're different than your usual style. But that's a good thing, because we're trying to learn to wear a new wardrobe. We're trying to learn to disrupt old patterns and establish new ones, and that feels like putting on someone else's clothes. Your nervous system is used to those old patterns. Be patient with yourself as you shift the way you do things. And then the last step is give it time. Healing does not happen in one conversation or by listening to one podcast episode. It happens slowly and. Steadily over time. It is not measured in seconds, minutes, days or even weeks. It's measured in seasons and years. Give it time you had a lot of time to get into these patterns. We're going to give ourselves a lot of time to work our way out of them. So when you do this work, here is this, the things that start to change. You stop tying your worth to your child's choices, their decisions. Stop feeling like a personal reflection on you. You don't ride that emotional roller coaster every time they pull away or every time they say something hurtful, your conversations start to feel lighter, even when they're hard. You stop walking on eggshells. You're not trying to manage everyone's emotions in the room. You just show up your steady, calm, clear self. And something powerful happens when you show up that way. Because when you show up that way, people around you can feed off of your energy, and they can start to feel your steadiness. You're not forcing anyone else to change. You're inviting them into your presence and into your energy to grow with you and to be steady and calm, and over time, you can begin to shift entire family patterns. This way, you stop passing down these patterns of anxiety and guilt and reactivity, and you start passing down patterns of resilience and emotional strength and healthy connection. So friend, listen to me here. You have every right to feel hurt. You also have a right to step back, to regroup and to heal without carrying that label of being selfish. Thanks for being here with me today. I'll see you next time you.