Talk To Me: The Debra Fileta Podcast
Oct 20, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min · 14 segments
What do you do when your family of origin is bringing difficult, dysfunctional, or even toxic behaviors into your marriage and family? Today, I sat down for an important conversation with Dave and…
So that's the part where you find yourself a little divided of how do we approach this? Do we withdraw? Do we lean in? What do boundaries look like? How many boundaries? What type of access? And I'm sure that has also been a little bit more complicated as you've had children, right? Can I assume that's correct? Because now it's not just you, you're trying to figure out how to navigate and protect, but also the kids, what they're exposed to, what they see.
As I said, we live about eight hours away from all of our extended family, including this family member.
But as the kids have gotten older, and we used to stay in the house with this person They would see all kinds of things and the very unpredictable rises and falls in behavior and outbursts often directed at other family members.
And we've had to have a discussion with them at an age appropriate level about what's going on because they're asking questions and we're not going to just act like it's not actually happening.
We, we literally have before we, the visits and after the visits, we, you know, prep them for it.
This person's a work in progress, like all of us, but we don't have to act like what's going on is healthy.
love, we all love this person, but, um, that kind of language is not appropriate.
And, um, And this person does things that if any of their peers were doing it, we would say you're not allowed to hang out with that person anymore.
And so it's difficult to honor someone who just blatantly does a lot of dishonorable things and has a lot of blind spots.
So that's the part where you find yourself a little divided of how do we approach this? Do we withdraw? Do we lean in? What do boundaries look like? How many boundaries? What type of access? And I'm sure that has also been a little bit more complicated as you've had children, right? Can I assume that's correct? Because now it's not just you, you're trying to figure out how to navigate and protect, but also the kids, what they're exposed to, what they see.
As I said, we live about eight hours away from all of our extended family, including this family member.
But as the kids have gotten older, and we used to stay in the house with this person They would see all kinds of things and the very unpredictable rises and falls in behavior and outbursts often directed at other family members.
And we've had to have a discussion with them at an age appropriate level about what's going on because they're asking questions and we're not going to just act like it's not actually happening.
We, we literally have before we, the visits and after the visits, we, you know, prep them for it.
This person's a work in progress, like all of us, but we don't have to act like what's going on is healthy.
love, we all love this person, but, um, that kind of language is not appropriate.
And, um, And this person does things that if any of their peers were doing it, we would say you're not allowed to hang out with that person anymore.
And so it's difficult to honor someone who just blatantly does a lot of dishonorable things and has a lot of blind spots.
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