So sad and discouraged right now

[atmywitsendtoo]

My disturbed 6 month pregnant 27 year old daughter makes me miserable and there seems to be no way out of living in this misery.

My daughter is in therapy. Her doctor - with her permission -  met with my husband and I separately and told us he thinks she had BPD. He said he would work toward making a formal diagnosis that would involve my husband and myself giving him more background about her. Months went by and we never heard from him again and my daughter goes un-diagnosed (unaware that there is a pending diagnosis) and goes around abusing and mistreating me and saying awful things about me and when I say anything to her about her behavior she says my behavior is just as bad - this is no where near true - . She does not see that she is the maladjusted one and I am subsequently mistreated with no recourse. If I say she is verbally abusive she says I am verbally abusive. If I tell her she is ungrateful she says I am ungrateful.  If I tell her she is being rude she says I am rude, after all where did she learn this behavior. I on the other hand resentfully seem to act as her personal assistant day after day doing her favor after favor while if I ask her to do one thing for me all her resentment for me comes out and rushes at me.

It is so painful for me because I experienced this as a child. I had a bipolar father and he was (could be at times) horrible and irrational and abusive. As a  child I could not escape it and I blamed myself. I thought I must be doing something wrong to cause my father to act this way and this thinking subsequently caused low self-esteem. The good thing was that as I grew up I was able to take back my power from my father. I got out and I no longer had to live with his craziness effecting me in so many ways. And now here I find myself again being abused by someone who is disturbed and I just allow it to happen. I cannot kick my pregnant daughter out who does not have a penny to her name or  degree or anything to help her get her life together, but I cannot stand living with her either. Here is an example of how having her here effects my everyday life. If we are going somewhere, and she always wants to go NOW, if I try to put on a little makeup before we go out she berated me and tells me to stop being so vain because she does not want to wait and she wants to go NOW even though it is usually me that is doing her a favor taking her somewhere because she does not have a car. She first started harassing me for putting on makeup when she was very young and I would tell her to cool her jets and calm down and just wait until I was ready to go, but she has done this to me so often without fail that she has trained me not to put on makeup when I take her somewhere so as to avoid conflict.

This is what happened when I was a child. My father's irrational behavior would effect my everyday choices in big and small ways and then I was finally free of having to anticipate irrational reactions and adjust my behavior to them, but now here I am again making choices based on how my daughter is likely to react. Being in this position again pulls me back into my painful past and makes me feel like a helpless miserable child all over again.

The biggest conflict we are having right now is that my daughter wants me to clean up my house to her specifications before the baby comes. I have a storage room and she wants it completely cleaned out before the baby comes so she can use it as a play room for the baby. I am working on getting the house in order slowly but surely, but if I am not working on it as much as she thinks I should be working on it I incur her wrath. She resents me if I am knitting, or working, or watching TV, or doing anything besides working on the house. Tonight I told her that I was going to clean up everything else first and I planned to clean out the storage room last. She said "We'll see about that"! What on earth does she mean! Who does she think she is! She acts like she is the parent and I am the child! It is not her house and we are putting her up rent free and feeding and and supporting her and she thinks she can dictate to me exactly when and how and what to do with my own house. There are moments when I wish soo badly that I could kick her our but I cannot. I do not see any good resolution to this. All I see is her continuing to hurt me day after day endlessly. I just cannot take this any more.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[incadove]

Oh wow - this needs a longer reply than I will have time right now - I'm frustrated with my daughter and just wanted to vent so I could work - but oh wow.

First, stop cleaning up after her or doing ANY favors for her. 

Offer to discuss rules with her, and when she says some obnoxious thing, walk away, and let her know in writing what some reasonable, generous rules are, with staged consequences.  Try to have humor and be kind when you do this, because you ARE in control.  This IS your house and you can kick her out, but of course you don't want to which is why you are setting up staged consequences.

Find things she needs from you, that she actually can't get without you (Wifi?  wifi is great because you can turn it on or off or change the password and all the screaming and shouting won't get you to change it back).  Then in a kind, calm way (remember, YOU are in control, not her, and you want to be kind because that is how you want to be) start enforcing the consequences.

Start with baby steps, and warnings, and make sure you have a plan for stages.  She IS going to screw up - ok, I'll stop using caps now, sorry - and have a plan for exactly what you are going to do when she does.  The details will be up to you, but whenever she acts in a way that breaks your boundaries, have a fair and simple consequence.  For example, if she is rude to you when you ask her to do a chore that you have assigned (with her input if she is willing to discuss, without her input if she is not), you will give her a warning, wait 3 hours, and then at that time turn off the wifi; or you will stop buying something she wants, or not give her a ride, or whatever other favors she has been asking, until she completes the chore.   Later you may want to give extra work if she is rude.

You cannot immediately change how she thinks, but you can insist on changing her behavior.  Then try to give a lot of positive attention for any tiny thing she does right, and be very kind and positive when she does act politely, but DON"T do extra stuff for her.  Just be friendly and talk to her when she is nice, but only do stuff for her or buy stuff for her when she earns it by some kind of work or behavior over time. 

Transforming the Difficult Child - the Nurtured Heart approach is a fairly good book for this, its not great, but it has some of these things; they have this big point system which I don't use, but the key thing of giving positive attention + consequences for behavior I think is really effective.

Remember, you are taking better care of her by setting up a system in which you want her there, because her behavior improves.  So you are helping her more by enforcing consequences.  If she wants the storage room cleaned out, offer to help her do it together, but don't do it for her!

Good luck, the thing that helped me is to have the main relationship be with myself - if I am proud of my behavior, then I can be happy. 

[atmywitsendtoo]

Hi Incadove!

Thank you for your thoughtful reply! It seems I am locked in an productive, maybe codependent? relationship with her? I am not sure how to characterize it but it is not getting either of us anywhere. We sometimes go to therapy together and we cannot agree even on the history o what has happened between up. She says that I always blamed her or a kitchen fire I started and I never ever blamed her for that. She says that I forced her to put a joint account we had in my name only, but in reality we both decided that it would be best to make that change so she would have a better chance of getting financial assistant to go to college if she did not have a relatively large balance in a bank account. As soon as we made this change we had a will drawn up to ensure that the funds that had been in the joint account would be hers if anything happened to us. We have a very old house that needs a lot of work. She lives in a little apartment above the garage. I paid quite a bit top have it painted and fixed up for her and the baby to live there but all she can do is complain about the quality of the work done or that I paid too much to have it done. I am knitting all sorts of things for the baby and she say that she really appreciated me making these things for the baby, but that me spending my time knitting is making her very angry because I should be spending that time cleaning out the storage room. This came up because I asked her to do a small favor for me. On July 5th we have out next counseling appointment together and on that same day just after the counseling session will be over and very close to where the counseling will take place there is going to be a practice your Spanish while knitting class ad a nearby yarn shop. I simply asked her if she would not mind attending this class with me and it is then that she tells me that even though she appreciated all the things I am knitting for the baby she is very angry that I am putting moire time and energy into knitting than I am putting into cleaning out that room. She cannot even just do me this one favor without exacting a cost by making me work for it by cleaning the room to her satisfaction first. She takes power away from me like this. She wrecked her car twice in the space of one year and when I do not want to give her rides I pay for her to take Ubers because taking the bus is beneath her. I know I should not do this, but it is usually therapy she is going to and I don't want her to miss that which could happen if I refuse to drive her or pay for an Uber, She is spoiled rotten and it is my fault. I have always been a very giving person. I have always enjoyed giving more than receiving, but in the case of my daughter my giving has created a monster.

I do not know what I could take away from her. She does not use a computer or wifi. She has and pays for her own cell phone that she uses on the internet. Other than that is it just the basics. Food and shelter.

I do feel good about myself and am generally happy. Small things make me very happy like finding that combination Spanish and Knitting class thrilled me. Then I ask my daughter to go with me because we will be together at that time anyway, and she rains on my parade. I do know there is something very wrong however if I have developed the habit of not putting on makeup when going out just to avoid conflict with her.

Thank you again for your reply and I will think seriously about what you wrote.

[incadove]

Hi Atmywitsend

I agree with you that its important for her to go to therapy, and to support that.  If there is nothing specific you can use as a consequence, just decide for yourself how much and how you want to interact with her given her behaviors.

Do you have other friends and family you can spend time with?  Sometimes getting out and seeing other people is a huge help to get out of a difficult struggle or mental state.  Making her the center of your life at this age and with these behaviours might not be the best thing for either you or her.

If you can limit your interactions with her when she is behaving unreasonably, and just decide for yourself what to do - if you want to put on make up, by all means put on make up!  If she gets upset, that problem belongs to her, not to you.

Now I say this but I often walk on eggshells around my possibly-BPD-trait daughter, and am careful how I talk if I disagree with her!
But, we did have a lot of conflicts around chores and things and I have to say she is extremely considerate now about doing her part and always cleans up after herself and offers to help.  I don't know if it had to do with the conflicts we had or she just decided to be a kind and thoughtful person, but I know that we used to have a huge number of conflicts and now we don't (fingers crossed! knock on wood).  There are still hyper sensitive feelings, and I still have a lot of emotional issues regarding our relationship, but overall I can be proud of her and who she decided to be.  So I think, that whatever the emotions are underneath, the behaviour is a choice, and anyone no matter what their emotions can decide to try to understand how they are affecting others and try to be considerate.  And this is what I think you should expect from her.

[atmywitsendtoo]

Thank you for your insights Incadove.

It is like I am her handmaiden or personal assistant and she thinks she is the queen of everything. She somehow turns our relationship into that.

My family is far away and I am estranged from them due to her. They snubbed her and our family so I do not talk to my sisters anymore. One sister married a a Duke graduate who became a doctor. The other married a Harvard graduate who became an author. I married a lowly engineer who graduated from a no name university.

My sisters observed my daughters inappropriate behaviors and were less than sympathetic. My daughter went to live not too far from my sisters in New England for 4 years and they never invited her to visit them. They never wanted to have anything to do with her. She says they judged her to be a loser and washed their hands of her and their rejection of her was a rejection of our whole family.

It can be isolating to have a child like this who was and is routinely excluded from social events because she is indeed perceived to be as troubled as she is, and it is very hard to socialize with family or others when they speak of their children's successes and I have no similar stories.

She always says that I think she is a big loser. Though I never put her down and called her anything like a loser, I do not know what I could have praised her for either. She was in jail twice, once for shop lifting an once for drunk driving. She never did well in school. She tried and dropped out of college three times. She alienates people out of her life right and left. She takes up with the worst loser boyfriends who she soon alienates and then despises. She never did anything for me for mother's day. She would do nothing but complain rather than appreciate the gifts I have given her. She has always been suspicious and secretive with me. There were constant calls from school and camp about her inappropriate behavior. She was kicked out of extracurricular activities at school for being annoying and disliked. She randomly hit other children at school and took a marker ruined a boy's shirt. While I constantly fought for her rights to participate in activities at school and fought for them not to kick her out of camp, I did not heap praise on her. I do not know what there was to praise her for, and I think I have been pretty easy on her considering all the trouble she has brought into our home.

I recently started an Indivisible group to resist you-know-who so that was a nice way to get to know like-minded neighbors, but she started attending those meetings. I have my job and an online business and hobbies to focus my energies on, but she makes it difficult for me to consistently enjoy those things as she distracts me from them and sucks away at my time and my money.

She lived 3,000 miles away from us for four years and they were four very peaceful years. Then she cam back home and everything went to hell.

I discussed it with my husband tonight and everyone is right. I just have to stop doing for her. When she got so pushy about me cleaning out the storage room yesterday my husband says I should have told her that I have changed my mind and I have decided to continue to use that room as a storage room because we need a storage room. He said we should spend the weekend putting MORE stuff in there, maybe organize a little area to keep my knitting supplies. He made me laugh and he is 100% right. The good thing is that I have a husband who, while he certainly tires of all this constant drama, really understands what is going on because he has gone through it all with me.

Thank you for your kind replies. I write on here when I get overwhelmed. It seems to be a good form of therapy for me. It sounds like you have come out the other side of it with your daughter and that gives me hope.

Wishing you the best,

Atmywitsendtoo

[wendydarling]

Hi atmywitsendtoo

It is certainly therapeutic writing it all down when we are overwhelmed and feel stuck, it allows us to stand back, see more clearly at what's happening and make changes as indacove says.

It is like I am her handmaiden or personal assistant and she thinks she is the queen of everything. She somehow turns our relationship into that.

I discussed it with my husband tonight and everyone is right. I just have to stop doing for her.

You have insight the dynamics with your DD need to change - her power over you, with the arrival of the baby seems to me an ideal time, to step out of the role, allow her to get on with her responsibility, learning how to be a mother.  Is the apartment self contained?

Improving the relationship and that's what we all want, requires us to change our approach, how we communicate, have you tried, had any progress with the tools and lessons to the right?  They do work, though take time to learn as they may feel counter intuitive.

Writing a simple plan with goals can also help us move forwards. What might they be?

Hope you are having a better day today, we are here for you. 

WDx