To feel in a uniquely awful position and want to give up

[wishitwasallabaddream]

I honestly feel I have reached the point of being unable to bear any more.

I have a really difficult relationship with my mother. She was emotionally abusive and neglectful throughout my childhood and often deliberately cruel to me as an adult. A few years ago I made the decision to go NC. I have never regretted it. Every so often I get a nasty email from her, it knocks me off balance but reminds me that I have made a good decision. More recently I have filtered her emails to my spam folder so don’t always see them though one caught me by surprise a few weeks ago when I was searching my email for something else and it came up.

Our daughter who is now 21 is also very difficult. I’m not exaggerating when I say the years of her being 13-18 were a living hell. She was emotionally and occasionally physically abusive. She would start fights pretty much every day. She did badly at school and since then has been in a cycle of getting jobs then being sacked. She did some work for dh’s friend at one point who admitted she was very lazy and did the bare minimum. She is currently at home having been sacked from her latest job. We give her no money but she has her last pay so is using that. Last night I tried to speak to her about getting a new job and she screamed at me that I have never supported her or been proud of her. I really feel this is unfair, I have always tried to encourage her and support her and rarely stand up to her to be honest as she creates such scenes.

She texted me last night to say I am deluded if I think I’m a good mother and listed all my faults. I have now blocked her. She regularly sends me messages like this.

I don’t think my mental health can take much more. To be in a situation where you have an abusive mother and an abusive daughter (they do not get on so at least are not encouraging each other though DD knows I’m NC with her grandmother and regularly uses it as ammunition)

I have tried so hard to be a good mum to her as I have such an awful mother and this is all devastating. I also just see a future where we are stuck with DD as she is making herself unemployable.

I just don’t want to get out of bed this morning.

Hmm, does getting a C at A level count as doing badly at school now? Your expectations sound quite high OP. And yes I know what it's like to have a bright but underachieving one. Sometimes you just have to accept they are a lazy arse and shrug it off.

I have an explosive, dramatic, chaotic one (has all the markers for ADHD in my opinion). DH and I have tried to enforce boundaries and we manage her with as much humour as we can (our little catch phrase when she rings us with yet another drama is "She's up.... she's down").

We have tried to get her to recognise that lots of her explosions are in response to stress and anxiety and she needs to learn to manage her stress, both by avoiding the situation and things like mindfullness and exercise. We have also helped her make the link between feeling the world is out to get her and smoking too much weed. She smokes far less now. And also helped her to realise that she mirrors the people she is with. She spent three months last summer with focussed, ambitious young people and came back a different person. Unfortunately she has an on off boyfriend who is an absolute hopeless case who tends to drag her down. She is gradually detatching though.

She is slowly getting better. I think that once she has found her niche she will be fine. She needs us to hang on in there though, she needs to know we have her back. And your daughter needs you too.

Spaghetti Regardless of the cause, it's the behaviour that has to be dealt with.

Yes but the cause is relevant to how you deal with it! And how you interpret actions. Eg. viewing something as a "tantrum" rather than an overwhelmed child having a meltdown.

I've had all sort of motives applies to be, been viewed as manipulative etc, when I'm anything but.

And obviously if a child has autism it's best to be aware of that in general.

I also had abusive mothering. I have read up a lot about narcissism. The children of narcissists often become narcissists themselves or over compensate and create narcissistic children. In the latter, narcissism therefore skips a generation and the grandparent/ grandchild can turn out extremely similar.

As others have said, the way to heal this is to really listen. You didn’t do anything intentionally wrong. You parented your dd how the little you inside needs parenting. By being loved and overindulged. Little you needs a mother. And you can be that mother. You just need to go and get some therapy. It is a really hard journey and one, which I’m still on. But it’s so well worth it. Please don’t take from this that you’re an awful person or terrible mother. You’re really not.

So I’d take some time and contact your dd. Genuinely apologise and work toward a better future together. You need to be brutally honest. It is going to be painful. You can fix things for you. And for your dd too. Good therapy will help.

ps. spaghetti I'm not trying to have a go, it's just the PD label is insidious. It's really easy to just intepret things in a biased way once a label has been applied, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Depending on the PD you are referring to, it's largely down to life expereinces, perhaps with a genetic component that isn't PD itself but underlying tendencies, or sensitivity to the environment so more affected by upbringing/experiences, so that's good.

Obviously bullying is never ok and I'm sorry to hear of your experiences. I just posted because even as an adult people seem to attribute dark motives/character flaws to people over quite subtle/misinterpreted things, where there is clearly more going on. (eg. I was viewed as being aloof and disliking my family as a teen, but I was actually hiding in my room just to wind down and process my day).

I know what you mean Money. FWIW I now see my sister's behaviour in totally different terms. Obviously as a teen I saw her as a total bitch. Now I realise that she has genuine, serious problems and that her behaviour is a symptom of factors that she can't control.

If she thinks you are such a terrble mother, unsupportive and whatever else I would say to her that it would be much better for everyone involved if she moved out. That you are totally fed up with her behaviour which is not good for young children to witness.
You will therefore give her one more chance to show that she can be a sensible adult living at home (and that involves getting another job and holding it down) or you can no longer support her at home.
There may be mental health issues, but why should that be an excuse for behaviour that drives her mother to feeling she can no longer cope.
It might be good to bear in mind the three cs of AL/ANON (supoort for families with an alcoholic member - alcoholism is a form of mental illness): didn’t cause it, can’t control it, cannot cure it.
When all is said and done, she is an adult who needs to deal with her issues herself, without blaming anyone else.

Thanks everyone - just posting quickly but have found this really helpful. Lots to think about and I do feel a bit less desperate.

Glad you're feeling slightly better, OP. You said you sometimes have to leave the room? With me, (dd has borderline personality disorder) when it's all too much I have to pretend I'm having a nap! Feels awful to admit that Stay strong

Change your email!!!

op I think you are a 'fixer' (like me). When someone is having a rant about something I immediately think of things they could do to 'fix' things. But honestly, getting advice on what to do isn't why people rant. Its to let it all out and hopefully illicit support.

You might not have sympathy for your DD getting sacked for lateness, but I suspect you could have sympathy for how it must feel to be actually sacked for lateness. I mean that feels horrible, and it would make me feel angry/humiliated/put upon etc. even if I thought underneath it all that it was justified.

When she rants to you, maybe try to find a way to be genuinely sympathetic to her feelings if not her actions. Ask her hows she is feeling rather than what she's intending to do to fix the problem. Once she's wound down a bit, then you could ask her what she's planning to do next...

If she is 21 she can surely work out what went wrong and what to do about it...you really don't need to explain that turning up late was what got her sacked. She knows that even if it isn't what she is saying!

Of course if I was in any sense practicing what I'm preaching I would not just have given you a load of advice on how to 'fix' your problem...but I'm like you!

Dutchoma, thanks for posting the 3 c's from AlAnon. Will be bearing that in mind myself. I need to just support, rather than keep trying to cure!

...She did badly at school...
...she only got a C in her A Level English...

She must be a real disappointment. Were you not proud of her GCSEs or ALevels?

Just to add that a C in A Level English is really not bad at all, and if that was the worst she did, she sounds like she did quite well and is quite bright.

FWIW, out of my siblings, the one who failed most of his A Levels is now far and away the most successful of us all and out-earns all the rest of us who went to Oxbridge. He also got a 1st at uni in his late 30s. Just a late developer!

Don't write off your dd's future - she is so young and the world is her oyster. My db spent a year on the dole at about this age. No-one would ever guess now!

Your dd can still fulfil her (and your) dreams. Believe in her.

I know a C at A Level isn't bad, but it's literally the only qualification she left with as well as a few GCSEs with low grades, she sat three A Levels and could have done really well in all of them but REFUSED to study. So in that context, it was a disappointment because she is bright enough that if she had just put in the effort she would have left school with some really good qualifications. She is definitely bright enough for university.

But she wouldn't acknowledge that it was down to her lack of effort and just blamed the teachers. She also blamed us for not paying for tutors for her in every subject though we did pay for her to go to Saturday school which she refused to go to after one session as she said it was boring. I didn't tell her I wasn't proud, but she and I both knew that she could have done better. When I think back to her first day at school and how enthusiastic she was, how much she loved learning and reading, it just makes me sad that she didn't fulfil her potential. I do know that she can go back and do more A Levels and she has talked about it and I have encouraged her if that's what she wants to do.

I am definitely a fixer, so it's hard to know what to do as all I want is for her to be happy. I honestly think that getting away from home is the way for her to do that but as I said before, am terrified of her feeling I'm chucking her out.

Did dd ever explain why she chose to sit 3 A levels, but then refused to study for them, OP?

She did study a bit. Like, in the week running up to the exams she would do an hour a night. We told her that was nowhere near enough but she wouldn't listen and shouted us down. She kept saying that we were old and didn't understand how exams worked now.

She was extremely shocked and upset when she got her results, I think she thought she'd done enough work. I was sympathetic and resisted saying I told you so, obviously, but she really did get the results she deserved.

It sounds like she may have gotten caught out by the fact that being smart and understanding the material isn't whats needed to pass A-level anymore. You also have to memorize the 'correct' answer for each question.

As a bunch of professional physicists we had a practice against an A-level exam and found we would all bomb badly because while we perfectly understood all the material and gave technically correct answers to all of the questions, we didn't always give the answers on the mark sheet and hence would have scored zero for many of them.

Then they come to uni and we have to train them all back out of that mentality and into understanding the material as a priority again

Glad you are feeling a bit better OP

I was sympathetic and resisted saying I told you so

Why didn't you? I'm leaning towards 'spoiled'.

...and that's not meant as a criticism of you, although it sounds it. I think you're just over-compensating because you don't want to be like your mother.

Op l am so shocked you have put up with this abuse for so long, l think you should have stood your ground a long time ago

Make her move out op. Trust me on this, it’s what she needs. She will never learn otherwise.

I agree with jeanne (reposted below). Also please bear in mind that young people's brains continue to develop until the age of 25 so that most Psychologists now view 18-25 as late adolescence.

jeanne16 Wed 09-May-18 07:59:32
You are repeating a pattern that you learned from your mother. If you aren’t careful, your daughter will go NC with you. Since you have introduced her to the idea by going NC with your own mother, this will just be repeating the pattern.

I would do everything in my power to make things up with your own mother and your daughter.

Why on earth would she want her mother back in her life to continue abusing her?

What was going on in her life from 13-18?

Adolescence can be horrible, even without other factors. Have you ever asked her about what school was like? There was probably a lot going on that you don't know about, that she has had to carry alone and ashamed.

It strikes me that you are probably uncomfortable "sitting" with someone who is having an emotional experience. You want to immediately ascertain "the problem" and deploy a solution, to shut the feeling down. This might be what DD means when she says it feels like you don't care about her. You are not willing to hold that emotional space for her. Probably you struggle to hold it for yourself, due to the abusive upbringing you had. DD senses this and interprets it as coldness, fakeness, uncaring. No doubt you experience DD reflecting those qualities back to you.

To be honest, school years are not measured in exam results. DD may feel you are saying that's all she's worth, some grades on a paper. And of course the grades weren't good enough, so she is not good enough. She has to carry that for the rest of her life. No wonder she takes out her rage and frustration on her job etc and self sabotages.

As pp said, try to get to know her as a person. She is hurting. So are you.