18 yrs old daughter homeless and addicted

[Biffy]

We adopted our daughter at the age of 8, 10 yrs ago. She was born to a heroin addict and spent 8 yrs in foster care. She was diagnosed with severe attachment disorder. She was impulsive, compulsively lied about everything, was loud and aggressive at times, as well as being unable to have real feelings about anything or form bonds with us, her siblings or friends. She seemed incapable of learning from consequences and could never accept responsibility for any of her actions even when caught red-handed. Empathy was impossible for her and she seemed to enjoy the misfortune of others. We went to many therapists and psychologists, none of which felt they could help her. As she aged she became more deceptive and aggressive and started being promiscuous and using drugs. When confronted she said she always hated us and everything was our fault because we were to restrictive. She felt we should let her experiment with drugs and sex in our home and that it was abnormal not to. She became extremely volitile and abusive to us and others at school so we made the decision to take her to a mental health centre for youth at the age of 17. She claims that we abandoned her and now all of her problems stem from us taking her there. Btw she was only there for 10 days before checking out so she could party freely. Over the last 2 years she has been evicted 7 times, fired from several jobs and left school. She works occasionally as a prostitute and brags about the money she makes. She finds people to use and claims to be madly in love with them and then the next day they are gone and she feels nothing. She doesn't want us to know anything about her life but will occasionally call us when something bad happens to scream and yell that it is all our fault. She has threatened to kill us multiple times and is hanging around with a really scary group of individuals. Our therapist feels she has antisocial personality disorder. She has torn our family apart and has stressed us to the max. She refuses treatment and believes she does not need help. Anyone in a similar situation? How did you handle it?

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

[PeaceMom]

Biffy,
Welcome to this site. I have an adopted daughter who is 19 who have almost all the BPD Symptoms. We believe she had Reactive Attachment Disorder that morphed into BPD. Ages 15-18 were nuts as she lived in the state of unrelenting crisis. This was made worse by our feeling and legal obligation to attempt to control her.

We backed off at age 18 and kinda let the chips fall where they may. She’s been in trouble for marijuana, speeding tickets, car wrecks, car towing,  lost 8 jobs, had miscarriages, been hospitalized for SI 4 times.

I’m sure her distress was made worse by us as we did not understand validation and resorted to attempting to verbally guilt/shame her into compliance as natural consequences rarely curved her behavior.

Once we let up on our expectations she seemed to begin to use her own very shaky morals to run her life. She’s still quite unwell and refuses more therapy bc she says they all try to “change her”, but she can’t “change” so she must learn to deal with her mess of a life herself. This is her logic. She has done a 3 month full time DBT program then quit.

I’m so sorry for your struggle. It sounds very serious and sad.

How do you get they the day? I’m very big on self care and mindfulness  as it’s the only thing that keeps me sane.

Sending you a huge hug from one adoptive mom to another.