Grown daughter continues to blame others

[Walkeveryday]

  . My 30 year old divorced daughter and mother of three lovely and healthy children can't ever seem to finish things or
take responsibility for her failures or her quitting college, her divorce and multiple jobs. She is beautiful, brilliant and on the surface very kind, but with family, especially me, her mother, she can be brutal and verbally abusive. Both her father and I are college educated and are successful in life and our marriage. We raised her with love and lots of patience and in the church. She has a very kind younger brother whom she has always adored but been jealous of since birth. He was very tolerant of her while growing up, but has grown weary of her antics. He has distanced himself from her due to the way she talks about his girlfriend.

She is not happy, and only just started making adult friends. She smiles very little, doesn't socialize easily and is very negative in general about people.
She is always under employed but still spends money recklessly. She berates her ex husband all the time especially to me. My husband understands her better than I do, as I was taking her actions personally. I am learning not to do so, but it has been very difficult.

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

[wendydarling]

Hi Walkeveryday 

Welcome to bpdfamily I'm glad you found us and sorry what brings you here, there are many parents in similar situations to yours, you are not alone. 

It's so hard to see our children struggle and suffer as you say your daughter is not happy, smiles very little, can be brutal and verbally abuse is not a happy lot. I'm glad you are learning to stand back, not to take it personally is hard, it's also a step forwards in taking care of ourselves, it helps us see more clearly what's going on and make positive changes.

Has your daughter been diagnosed BPD/traits or sought any help of any kind?

WDx

[Mama Tink]

Hi Walkeveryday,

I just found and joined this board today and your overall story is almost a mirror image of my story. We have a 21 year old daughter who was diagnosed at 13/14 with bipolar disorder. Since being hospitalized 3 times thru out high school (honors kid/super uber smart/too smart for her own good!) she chose to drop out and move in with her boyfriend 10 shy of graduation. She struggled for the next few years. Between job changes, being thrown out of apts and loosing roomates, she's back living here at home at age 21 with a 1 year old baby girl. We so adore our little grand baby but our DD is a mess. She blames the world and everyone in it for her failures, is very verbally abusive to the family, me (mom) in particular, and is overall just an "angry person".

My husband and I have just been reading the Stop Walking On Egg Shells book and can't believe how similar she is to everything they talked about. We, as parents, have such guilt and perceived responsibility for our kids. We so want to see then succeed and be happy. But sometimes that's just not the case. We are now looking for some help, understanding and soloce that we're not alone in this long journey. Making sure we don't loose ourselves.

We can support each other in this journey.