How to support my daughter when she is struggling at college

[Mindful Mom]

My daughter is starting her Junior year in college and so far it's been a rough start. Transitions have always been difficult for her but this year seems especially hard. I want to support her but also feel that she turns to me too quickly and doesn't give herself enough time to try to sort things out. I am trying not to "solve" the issues and remind her that she is a very capable and resilient young women but this often fails and she resorts to seeing herself in a negative way.
I fear that if she keeps turning to me she won't build resilience and learn to trust in herself.
this is especially difficult because she attempted 4 years ago so when she gets very dysregulated
I worry that she might be at risk again. I ended up on this sight because I was hoping to find an in person parent support group in my area but couldn't  find one and landed here.

Anyone with a similar situation?

Thanks

Mindful Mom

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

[kells76]

Hey Mindful Mom, glad you found the group. While it's not in person, it's the next best thing, in my opinion -- you can "drop in" whenever you need or want to, and you'll be welcomed.

Is your D attending college close to home, or farther away? How did her first two years go? I.e. also rough at the start but then smoothed out, or...?

Does she turn to you via text, call, email, other? How frequently does she do so? Do you get the "barrage of texts", for example, or does her neediness show up differently?

Does she have an official BPD diagnosis, and if so, is she accepting of it/doing DBT/engaged with the college counseling center/etc? What's her level of self awareness about her issues, that is to say?

Lots of questions, so I'll leave it there for now. But rest assured you're in the right place to connect with people who "get it".

-kells76

[Mindful Mom]

Thanks for the reply Kells76,

My daughter has been diagnosed with BPD, Anxiety and PTSD. When she came home from the hospital 4 years ago our family was in DBT for 6 months and she still sees the same therapist who ran the group. We found DBT to be life changing and it shed some light on my own dysregulation and how it affected our family.  Since covid and her starting college her therapy has switched to remote sessions.

She has always struggled with transitions. I was the Mom sitting in the hallway for 2 months when she started preschool. The start of college was difficult in many ways due to covid but also easier. She was on campus but most classes were remote. She has a lot of social anxiety so the truncated start to college was helpful on many levels. She has an ESA at school which also helps.
Additionally she is only a hour and change away. She didn't look at any school that were over 2 hours away.
She texts and calls when she is having a difficult time. As I said in the original post I am glad she communicates when she is struggling and yet I worry that she is undermining her ability to handle things on her own. Although after reading that sentences I also want to recognize that she is a straight A student who has overcome so much to get to this place. she shines in many aspects go her life but can't recognize those accomplishments when she is in this state of anxiety and dysregulation.

She is fully self aware and has incredible emotional intelligence. But then something triggers her and its all emotional mind. I wish she could see herself as the rest of us do. It breaks my heart to see her struggle.

Grateful I found this space and appreciate your thoughtful response.

Mindful Mom

[Sancho]

Hi Mindful mum
I can understand your concern about her reliance on you and not developing her own resilience.

However I wonder if this is the moment to draw back from being the major support?

In my experience I was often listening to others opinions and trying to do the things that others suggested, all the while feeling unsure about whether it was the right thing to do in my circumstance with my dd.

I think lots of the mistakes I have made have been due to being unsure myself and trying to do what others think is the right thing.

I can hear the dilemma in your post. On the one hand you want the resilience to progress, on the other you know just how dysregulated and anxious your daughter can become - in particular for an A student.

I wonder if you just go with the flow for the moment, allowing dd to have your support and wait for the moment when you can put one very small boundary in place to help with the resilience.

Remember that bpd symptoms can often ameliorate in the 4th decade ie after age 30, and sometimes working for a long term plan can be more effective.

The other thing I thought of is that if you are quite relaxed about what is happening that might also help your daughter. I am sure you are quite calm dealing with all this, but underneath you are worried if you are doing the right thing and dd could pick up on this.

Back yourself to know your child and what role you need to play at this point in time. You have done a fantastic job so far, so you will know the best way forward.

[KBug]

I'm a college professor and I also advise students. We are seeing a huge uptick in mental health issues for our undergrads. I have several students each semester that come to me about mental health issues. There should be several resources on campus to support her. For example, student disability services can be a great resource that can help her to connect to support groups and mental health services on or near campus. They can also support her in getting appropriate accommodations from her professors.

It sounds like you are really trying to support her in becoming an more independent adult and I think that's a great goal. I wish that more families took your approach with their young adult children. Young adults need some support.  College can be a really scaffolded support for becoming adults.

You said, "Transitions have always been difficult for her but this year seems especially hard. I want to support her but also feel that she turns to me too quickly and doesn't give herself enough time to try to sort things out. I am trying not to "solve" the issues and remind her that she is a very capable and resilient young women but this often fails and she resorts to seeing herself in a negative way." I had several similar conversations with my step-daughter. [Full disclosure: For a while, I was her go-to person but now we are low-contact, first by her choice and now it's mutual because she told some really ugly lies about me and my husband. She was angry because I set some boundaries with her.]

One thing that I notice in hindsight about her is that the more I talked to her about becoming an adult who gets to make adult decisions and and have adult consequences, the more fearful she became. We talked about her having a network of support around her of people who love her and can help her think about what she wants to do and to help her solve problems, but that ultimately, she gets to make her own decisions and live with the consequences. I can help her think, but I can't and won't make her decisions for her. She ghosted me after this for a long time, literally moving out of our house and back in with her mom and then an ex-boyfriend without evening saying a word to us.

I think that one of her core issues is that she's terrified of the future and she saw what I said to her as abandonment or judgement. She's afraid to grow up and is working diligently to avoid having to support herself. Even though she is exceptionally bright, she doesn't think that she has what it takes to manage her own life. I'm not sure how I should have handled all this differently. A lot of my undergrads share this fear.  About 20-30% of my undergrad advisees come to me the spring of their senior year afraid to graduate and support themselves so her fears are not unusual but unlike more neurotypical students she becomes paralyzed by these fears.

I guess this is all to say that your instincts to help her be more independent are right on target for what she needs to become a more independent adult, but I would tread carefully (more carefully than I did) to reassure her that you are not abandoning her or judging her.

[Aralia]

Hello MindfulMom. I completely understand your situation and if you threw an eating disorder into the mix, my daughter would be in the same position except she did a year of DBT following her attempt and then another cycle when she was in an ED facility. At this point, I feel like she could recite the manual but that doesn't stop her from calling in hysterics when something happens to trigger her (because often the suggestions aren't particularly effective).   I have only embraced the bpd diagnosis in the past few months because the eating disorder muddied the waters quite a bit and before that it was anxiety and depression but there was always a twist and it seemed like more than that.  

Back to the predicament of how much to support them--I understand KBug's suggestion and recently a friend said the same to me when I mentioned my daughter called hyperventilating with a panic attack (something I hadn't experienced with her before and found frighening).  However, I think bpd is a special sort of animal and I don't think most people understand how incredibly dysregulated our bpders are.  If she couldn't reach me on the phone, would she get another cold wash cloth and calm down?  Maybe.  But she could also possibly engage in a bunch harmful behaviors, which I won't list here, or maybe worse.  They are impulsive, they are in incredible distress or pain and in that moment they are not rational.  And we know that many of the harmful behaviors they engage help them calm down.  So I would rather she called us and in my gut I feel that is the right decision for now.

During her DBT year, she was assigned a therapist she could call 24/7.  That was several years ago and now she has a psychiatrist who is definitely not available at all hours.  I am concerned that her reliance on us means the dr does not see the full picture of what is going on.  I did some research and found a program called Family Connections, which is training and support for family members of people with BPD.  I signed up and there is a wait list.  I desperately need other people to talk to about this and not friends, because they are well meaning but don't understand, and also not family because they also wouldn't understand and I feel like I am violating my daughter's privacy.

Supporting her has been immensely exhausting. However, I feel that she is making some progress. Last week, for the first time since I can remember, she called me on a good day just to say hi and asked "how are you?"

Also, I just want to add that in my daughter's case, she doesn't really want us to solve her problem.  In fact, she can be pretty stubborn and has her own opinions.  Most of the time she is upset and she is looking for us to help her calm down.  I used to try to engage in a lot of problem solving when she was upset like, look, it isn't so bad, just do such and such but that was a mixed bag and often made her more frustrated.  At some point I realized she just needs to get back to a steady state and then she can address it.

[BPDLife]

This is an incredibly insightful post.  My BPD daughter is the same and she's recently asked me if I can get power orf attorney so I can manage her medical and other affairs (she is over 18 and so I can no longer deal with the psychiatrists, therapists and psychologists).

I worry that if I step back the fear of abandonment will kick in and if she feels that I'm not there for her then there is nobody else.

I have been encouraging independence.  As a child I taught her how to cook, wash, iron - all of the normal things in life!  She pretty much picks and choses what she wants to do and then says she's too anxious etc to do anything else, like clean up after herself or tidy her room.

I always cooked 3 meals a day for her but when she found a boyfriend she started copying him and getting Uber food delivered.  So I started throwing out a huge amount of food and eventually stopped and just said that if she wanted me to cook for her I'm more than happy to but it will be from whatever is in the freezer as I can't menu plan while she's constantly ordering in.

I need to have a think about boundaries again.

[BPDLife]

This is an incredibly insightful post.  My BPD daughter is the same and she's recently asked me if I can get power of attorney so I can manage her medical and other affairs (she is over 18 and so I can no longer deal with the psychiatrists, therapists and psychologists).

I worry that if I step back the fear of abandonment will kick in and if she feels that I'm not there for her then there is nobody else.

I have been encouraging independence.  As a child I taught her how to cook, wash, iron - all of the normal things in life!  She pretty much picks and choses what she wants to do and then says she's too anxious etc to do anything else, like clean up after herself or tidy her room.

I always cooked 3 meals a day for her but when she found a boyfriend she started copying him and getting Uber food delivered.  So I started throwing out a huge amount of food and eventually stopped and just said that if she wanted me to cook for her I'm more than happy to but it will be from whatever is in the freezer as I can't menu plan while she's constantly ordering in.

I need to have a think about boundaries again.