Adolescent daughter spiraling out of control

[Sjms]

Where to begin, my 17 1/2 year old daughter has always had a different temperament growing up and always suffered from high anxiety.  However, something happened in middle school with a bunch of friends she was close with started to distance themselves from her.   This was a huge event in her life and we believe was the catalyst to her BPD.  She will even admit after this event she felt her view of innocence of the world was gone.  Anyway, slowly over the years her anxiety turned to panic attacks and then aggression.  With medication and therapy there have been ups and downs however the last 2 years she has been fairly stable with only a few minor downward trends. Oh, she has just been diagnosed maybe a year ago as having BPD/emotional dysregulation.  Things have been going good this summer she had a boyfriend who didn't fall for her emotional blackmail and she didn't pull any of this victim stuff with him.  We have been busy touring colleges as she's a rising senior who is an A honors student.  Until about 3 weeks ago all hell broke loose.  She was on some artish message board and decided to message a guy who she admired his work(which she knows she is not suppose to do).  They end up skyping a few times, btw he's 24 and lives in Germany.   The next thing we know she's telling us about this guy and that she loves him and broke up with her boyfriend!   My husband and I are not happy about this and we tell her to stop speaking to him and that she is not entering into a relationship with some guy she met online. We take her phone and unfortunately she becomes extremely aggressive.   We go to take her to ER and she calms down promises to not talk to him so we go home.  Two weeks go by and we find out she has been lying to us this entire time every time we asked about her speaking to him.  My husband goes on lock down mode takes everything blocks her off Internet.  Find out from her phone this guy is a ":)OM". She has lied to him saying all these things that we supposedly said and have done that is absolutely not true.  He's convinced her to move to Germany when she turns 18 and they can get married and never speak to us again.  Plus she sent him an inappropriate picture!   Now she has only had 2 boyfriends in high school she's never been a boy crazy girl and I'm pretty sure she hasn't done much with either of those boys.  Every chance she gets she's been trying to find some electronics and contact this Germany guy.  She's lying about everything.  All This over a guy she met 3 weeks ago.  Her emotions are out of control.  We go to her therapist and psychiatrist in two days.  We were to them when this first happened and swore to everyone it was over. My husband is ready to send her off somewhere.  I feel like she's a train wreck and we are going full speed towards wall.   Our house is like a jail, no Internet everything is locked up keys, knives all electronics.  She just seems determined to have her way at any cost with no remorse or care for the people who love her most.   She starts school in two weeks was suppose to get her license but my husband says that's not happening.  She doesn't seem motivated for college now and needs to apply to her #1 choice in less than 2 months.  Not sure what I'm hoping to accomplish by posting here maybe just to vent.  And this is a shortened version of events.  I just feel like our home has gone to pure hell in just a few weeks and there's no hope. Thanks for listening. 

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

[js friend]

Hi Sjms  and welcome.

When i first found this site when my dd was 15yo  and one of my very first posts was about an online romance that my dd was having with a boy in another country that I had only  just discovered.

Like your dd, she was absoultley besotted with this him. What started innocently as her  school  "foreign language penpal" as she first introduced him as  turned almost into almost an obsession.

The most shocking thing to me was that she had sent him explict pictures of herself.When confronted with the actual photos of course she denied it and claimed they were for her own use.

In her mind this "online romance" was real. She had made plans that she would move to his country when she became 18yo, go to college there,they would marry and have kids.Almost all of this "chat" came her and there was hardly any encouragement from this boy. When I discovered all this I stopped all her electronic access but  she used others and other ways to contact this boy.Unknown to any of us including her siblings she was borrowing money from school friends to buy phone cards to call him on her way to and from school,using the school library pcs  to IM him and using friends home addresses to have any letters from this boy  delivered there. Online she would even warn off any girl friends of this boy if she thought they were getting too close to him.

I know how upset your husband is  with discovering what is going on. I did the same things and I dont know if I would have done anything differently Other than validate dd feeling the need to have a b/f.but when they denial that there is even a bf im not sure what we can do then?

we have a need to protect our children from exploitation.They see themselves as streetwise but they are vulnerable and easy pickings out there. Hopefully your dds t can get her back on track.I bet you dd just feels that there is no need to complete her education  if she is about to leave soon to join her bf in Germany.My dd was the same around that time pretty gave up on everything because in her mind she was leaving anyway. Even me showing an interest while speaking calmly about this boy and also about the dangers of online predators did no good. She just denied everything... .even denied it in t... .there was no boy... .no relationship... .nothing!She was also using all her schools friends at the time to assist with the coverup, I think they all thought how exciting it was, but I think if she had the kind of friends that she has now they would have spoken to her and may have been able to get through to her. Maybe that is an option you could try.

Also in both our cases time and distance is an asset. Your dd like mine cannot just pick up and leave so easily. Another year for your dd  to wait is a long time so hopefully your dd will get bored or bf will get bored of waiting and he or she will move on. My dd had 3 years to wait to be with this online b/f no way could she do it, and in time it just fizzled out and dd moved onto boys closer to home.

In a way a I wish that I had believed that more at the time and not become so freaked out and consumed by it, but I think that seeing explicit pics of your child sent online like this does something to you as a parent and you want to protect them at all costs even if they are not prepared to protect themselves.

With were lucky I guess that the boy wasnt really interested in having a r/s with my dd and he wasnt encouraging her to do things she did. He wasnt asking her to send him explict stuff it was her doing.Im so glad we didnt have a webcam at the time and not one since for that reason so skyping would have been out of the question.

If it had got really serious I I would have tried some way of speaking to the boys parents or sending them a message somehow that my dd was under age and to be left alone.The police was another option although I dont know how seriously I would have been taken it but it was another option for me.

Hang in there Sjms and Post and vent as much as you like as you can bet someone out there is or has experienced the same thing and it helps you and others to see it written down.

offering you all   as I understand what a stressful time this is.

[js friend]

btw what ia a ":)OM"?

[Sjms]

Thank you soon much! I can't believe how similar our stories are.   Aparently a Dom is male version of a dominatrix.   If my daughter was a teen without BPD then we probably wouldn't have freaked out as much cause it would have fizzled out.  However, with the BPD obsessive nature she gets way attached and uses emotional blackmail.  I've messaged this guy and asked him nicely to leave her alone however, she has convinced him we are evil parents and he is encouraging her to sneak around and when she turns 18 in 7 months she can leave.   So he basically told me when she turned 18 we will never see her again.   I messaged him again after we found all the lies she said and told to him  99% of what she said is not true then I sent him an article that describes BPD and told him this article describes our life over the years with our daughter.   I think a light bulb went off and he said he'd back off but who knows.   My husband is really concerned about school for the exact reasons described by you.  I've already had to call out one of her friends who she enlisted to be her "middle man."  I just want our home to return to some sort of normalcy so she can enjoy her senior year.  Thanks for your support.

[Meadowslark]

Chiming in to say ":)OM" is probably the "dominant" in a BDSM relationship (where the other partner is a submissive, or a "sub".