EMDR is a therapy that was developed to help with trauma. There are two kinds of people who benefit from EMDR: 1) those that have a one time trauma incident and healthy childhood 2) those who have had repeated trauma throughout their lives usually beginning in childhood. The first group usually heals rapidly with EMDR with only a few sessions. The second group may benefit greatly from EMDR or may be too overwhelmed and need a different kind of trauma therapy. I loved EMDR even though it was very painful and challenging for me. My therapist quit doing EMDR because of how overwhelmed so many of her clients were. EMDR made me be present in the moment and has helped me heal more than anything I have tried, despite how difficult it was for me and the therapist. I would do EMDR again because of how much it helped me. There are many different trauma therapies out there, so I would learn about the different ones, and decide which ones you might like to try.

Everything you are doing for your daughter is helpful. I also wanted to emphasize that taking care of your finances is helpful to her. Hopefully it will be a long time from now but there is a time when parents retire, income stops, and they may have care needs.

Elder care in the US is not covered by Medicare and Social Security is not sufficient support for all of an elderly person's needs. Caring for elderly parents is a challenge even in normal situations but for most adult children- they want to be of assistance in some capacity. For aging parents who care about their children- they also don't wish to cause their children emotional or financial distress. Ideally, it's a cooperative situation.

The situation with my mother is that she didn't care, just like she didn't care that her spending cause my father stress and just like your wife isn't willing to cooperate with you, or a financial adviser, she won't cooperate with your D either.

If you aren't able to put the brakes on your wife's spending, neither can your D, neither can anyone. Nobody could stop my mother's spending. The only boundary you can have is on your own money.

Taking care of your finances is taking care of your D, because she won't want to see either of you be in need or go without.

It is such a weird juxtaposition of thought process going on in their mind. On the one hand, I truly believe she could put talk and probably outwit most politicians she is so confident and self assured, yet with me she was clearly so emotionally insecure. Can lie through her teeth like a politician as well.

yup, they get loud, scream and talk for hours. Mine would literally go on for an hour or so about all the bad things I do. I couldn't remember it all and I'd address what I remembered. I would miss a thing or two and that was me purposely deflecting because I wasn't sorry I hurt her. Then I finally started cutting her off during talking if she was going of on 10 new issues and she'd scream at me for cutting her off. One sided conversations really. You cannot explain anything or it's seen as an excuse or justification. and yeah 'you always think you're right!'....I don't but some situations are so blatantly obvious to look at.

Yes painful. Problem was my wife is so bolshy, loud and sure of herself that she is right that it’s difficult to get a word in edge ways without her talking over you, or shouting, or something to put you off balance.

It would even be an argument for example, on many occasions she would berate me for misplacing the car keys. I would say to her, you’ve got them, because I know I had given them to her. That would be an argument that lasted far longer than it ought to have done with her repeatedly denying that I’d given her the keys, until she actually looked in her handbag and would pull them out and say oh yeh I have got them. But that wouldn’t be the end of it, that would be followed up with “well you’re always right aren’t you” in a condescending manner, or something along those lines.

yeah, entertaining any argument over an exaggerated or misinterpreted action shows them that you are in fact guilty of that. I told mine towards the end 'I am willing to have an open and honest conversation about this if we can agree on what actually happened'. Nope. Thant meant she wasn't heard, I was denying her reality and gaslighting her. I would legit go point by point on what happened and what as said and ask her 'yes or no'...she'd agree with every point I made, and still say I did xyz. And yes, you can apologize and they will say you are never sorry or apologize and you have no accountability. Every issue is truly your fault in their minds.

Not wishing to hijack your conversation with Zachira, but we’re in the same country. Look for a trauma specialists. They will understand BPD and NPD as there’s a growing consensus these are formed from trauma. Also your struggle sounds trauma based. I found “person centred” therapy more helpful than CBT, as this take the view we can’t change the behaviour of others, only how we react.

Don’t beat yourself up about trying to help your family, if you Google “5 ways to well-being” that’s one of the 5 ways to keep mentally sound. Just help folk that are also able to help themselves i.e. they need to be self aware, capable of taking constructive criticism. Like yourself. 

I'm not on here a lot, but Zachira's advice is sound. Also Wendy's often around.

wow! 100%. Although seemed to me that it if that admitting being wrong had the word sorry attached to it, they would forget that part and tell you that you are never sorry or apologise.

I could in fact 'get by' without her income if I cut out a couple of other non essentials but I just couldn't afford her car payment or any of her expenses. I could in theory pay all the bills but would then have very very little to put away for savings or paying down additional debt. The only other option would be seriously looking at moving. But wife wouldn't agree to this and since we're both on the mortgage and note, it's probably a step I would  have to take after divorcing. I mean if it got to the point where she pulled back on even the small contributions she's making now, that's what would happen.
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I definitely want better for my daughter. I don't want her to have my traits or my wifes! We have a good open relationship and my encouragement has gotten her into therapy for the trauma she's lived through. My hope and prayer is her getting this therapy early on will help her deal in ways I never did until now in my late 40s... She's shared with me some of what she talks about with her therapist and they're talking about boundaries. My daughter also opened to me that based on what my she shared with the therapist, her therapist told her she suspects her mom may have something called borderline personality disorder. I've never shared that name/term with my daughter but makes sense that her therapist honed in on that after just a few sessions... makes me feel encouraged that they're on a good track.

Also - I am absolutely trying to be a better role model. Through discussion and modeling show her (at least moving forward) that setting healthy boundaries are necessary and okay and if mom reacts poorly then that doesn't change the need for boundaries, it's not our job to fix her or do what she wants to appease her. My daughter is one of my key motivations for doing things differently and better.



Yeah I did try that and we saw a financial counselor a few years back. But the result was the same sort of dysregulation that occurred during every couples therapist session. So I'm not inclined to go back to a financial advisor unless she gets individual therapy. At a bare minimum I wouldn't go back to a financial counselor without full transparency of her finances so we can review spending patterns and bring everything to the table. But again - her shame/abandonment/other BPD traits won't allow her to take feedback so no real point unless she gets help IMO.


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Although I'm in another country, I and many others here have had ex-spouses claim DV or child abuse and have for a short time been limited to supervised visits until the professionals could determine what was real and what was not.

A risk I see here is that the professionals could assume that the present limited parenting is "working" simply because the status quo of supervision has gone on so long.  We have a saying here, "Get the best temp order you can from the very start because temporary orders tend to morph by default into orders."

In my case, I filed for protection based on recorded Threat of DV.  In response, my newly separated then-spouse rushed to family court to file for her own protection... and included our preschooler.  Fortunately, the Children's Protective Services (CPS) investigator stood up in court and stated they had "no concerns" about me and son was removed from her protection allegations.

What was weird was that though my stbEx was charged with Threat of DV, when in family court she was granted temp custody and I was left with alternate weekends.

I think it is important to accept that the court typically sees the adult relationship as separate from the parenting relationship.  The point I'm trying to make is that whatever claims she makes about herself needing protection - which not are being negotiated away? - doesn't necessarily apply to his parenting.

It seems a deal is being worked out where she's stepping back a bit?  If so, then the lengthy supervised status needs to be undone.*  As I wrote above, the longer it continues, the harder it will be for officialdom to acknowledge it is no longer appropriate.

* This is similar to the advice that we should never admit guilt (such as in a plea deal).  Even if we are found guilty, at least we can still claim innocence.

What is being lost in this mess is the best interests of the child.  The core question: Is the child endangered or at risk of abuse or neglect by his father?  If not, then his supervision is inappropriate.

In the future, your husband should make every attempt to equalize the court's scrutiny.  What has happened thus far it is only one parent being accused as the "perp" while the other is considered the "victim".  Try to challenge the perp/victim scenario and - for the child's bests interests - scrutinize both parents equally.  In the USA we call such investigations Custody Evaluations which include (1) both parents taking tests and interviews and (2) seeing each parent separately with the child.