Encouraging Treatment

[UOMPaint]

My daughter was severely bullied her Sr year and leaned on a boy she began dating.  By June of 2016 she tried to commit suicide and about the same time the boy began stalking and emotionally (and I think physically) abusing her.  I am so lost.  She was in the hospital 2x last year.  1 x for 24 hours and the other 11 days.  She was in weekly counseling from Sep through Dec however has lost her job and I am scared.  Recently the boy has left her alone she has been happy.  However, within the last 24hours I believe she thinks he moved on.  I am pretty confident she has cut herself.  I am just so torn apart.  I cannot seem to get her back in therapy.  Any ideas on how to get them to want help is much appreciated. 

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

[livednlearned]

Hi UOMPaint,

I'm so sorry for your pain and glad you found the site. My son was bullied too and it can be horrific to watch as a parent  not to mention how our children feel experiencing it firsthand.

Was it during her hospital stays that she was diagnosed BPD?

What is your relationship like with your daughter, and how old is she?

LnL

[atmywitsendtoo]

Hi, I misread you subject line and I thought you would be writing about an encouraging therapy. Now I see you need help getting your daughter into therapy. I do not have any magic bullets. I can just tell you that my daughter is finally doing well in therapy and she is there because she wants to be there, but things had to get really bad before she truly understood that she needed help. I had been encouraging her to get therapy and try medication for years but she rebelled against me. If I said "here s a banana, eat it" she would not eat the banana. If I said " There is a banana right there. Don't eat it" she would eat  the banana. She was opposite girl and just did the opposite of what I suggested. So even though I had to watch her suffer from the consequences of her bad choices, I said nothing because she never took my advice and usually did the opposite.

Eventually, at age 27. she could no longer deny that she needed help. She got pregnant, was left by her boyfriend for treating him and his children very poorly beyond belief once to often, and then she promptly lost her job because her performance had gone downhill at work as stress caused her behavior to worsen. She was pregnant and alone and broke down and sobbed that she did it to herself. For once she stopped blaming everyone else and took responsibility for  the bad things that happened to her. She finally understood that she had to work on herself to get what she wanted out of life.

I helped her find a good psychologist who was qualified in Dialectic Behavior Therapy and luckily he seems to be very good at what he does because my daughter is doing noticeably better. I just hope this is not some kind of temporary fix, because she has gone through good spells in the past just to end up screwing up her life again.

So in my daughter's case she had to hit rock bottom to be inspired to want to seek help.

I am sorry you are going through this. I know how difficult it can be to watch your child suffer. I hope turns around for you soon.

[Lollypop]

Hi amatmywitsendtoo

Welcome to the forum. I'm very sorry to hear about your daughter and your troubles. It's incredibly difficult to cope with their behaviours and choices and we all share this same problem. This forum has been my life saviour as I explore a way forwards with my adult son (BPDs26).

It would be helpful if we knew a little more about your situation. Has your daughter been diagnosed with BPD?

She was in weekly counseling from Sep through Dec however has lost her job and I am scared.  Recently the boy has left her alone she has been happy.  However, within the last 24hours I believe she thinks he moved on.  I am pretty confident she has cut herself.  

It sounds like your daughter has had a lot going on recently. Was the loss of her job somehow connected to her not going to her weekly counselling any more? I wonder if she shared her experience with you and why the counselling stopped?

Some on the forum put treatment as a requirement to staying living at home. We all are different, our situations are unique and what is acceptable for one family may not be for another family.

My experience with my BPDs is that his relationship broke down with his counsellor (black/white thinking, abandonment), he also has bad experiences of professionals in general and so it's been a challenge to get him to a place where he's willing to seek treatment. I believe that they have to be ready to fully engage with treatment for it to be effective but my view may not be yours.

I am just so torn apart.  I cannot seem to get her back in therapy.  Any ideas on how to get them to want help is much appreciated.

It's perfectly understandable that you're feeling the way you do. It's just terrible watching our kids suffer and in pain and we want to fix their problems. I used to want to get everything in place so he'd get the help he needed, I pushed and he resisted. Until they really get uncomfortable they won't be willing to seek help. My BPDs struggles with life's challenges - when he's highly emotional he can't hear me. They need us not to react, they need us to be a calming influence.

I encourage you to read about BPD, please take a look at the Start Here on the top right hand of this page. The more I learned, the more I understood, the less I reacted. This allowed me to get myself into a place I could think more clearly.  Importantly, I've learned how to more effectively support  him through better communication skills and a huge amount of validation.  By having a better relationship he is able to better able to hear me because he feels safe and trusts me that I won't react.

My BPDs wants to be understood and shown love but in the right way.

Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes. My BPDs26 got diagnosed at 24, it's taken us 16 months for him to be able to understand and ask for professional help. This has been through gentle encouragement at the right time, gently done.

I encourage you to read as much as you can and keep posting. This will help you to arm yourself with a toolkit that will help you. I hope I've helped you.

There is hope and you're not alone.

Hugs to you

LP.