im a rubbish mum, how can I change this?

[BirthdayCakeforme]

My beautiful DD is 6 and it’s absolutely breaking my heart to see her struggle so much. She has no friends and is so shy and unhappy. She wakes up unhappy everyday and is subtly mean to everyone as a way of expressing her unhappiness. I’d give anything to fix things for her but I don’t know how, things seem so far out of my control.

Bit of background - I had a tough-ish childhood. Superficially we were wealthy, well cared for children, but my mum was severely depressed and very angry most of the time. Dad was away with work/ off having affairs. I was the eldest and took the brunt of the atmosphere at home. My mum routinely put me in charge of my siblings, with severe punishments when I inevitably got things wrong. I never learnt to make friends and to this day have no self esteem.

Fast forward to my adult life, I married young to a man who seems to replicate all my DF’s worst qualities without any of the good. He’s utterly disinterested in my poor gorgeous DD and treats her so dismissively.

My poor DD is cripplingly shy and it breaks my heart. She literally can’t speak up because she is so self concious.

I’m a piece of shit mum because I shout at her and make her feel worse about herself. I’m always exasperated with her. She is so needy and I feel like I just don’t have anything left to give her. I feel drained and exhausted. My poor little girl has no one in her life to just love her unconditionally and be with her. I’m so worried I’ll be passing on my anxiety, my controlling personality and my self hatred to my baby. I’ve been in therapy for year to feel better about myself but I just don’t. If anything, therapy is giving me the clarity to see just how shit my life really is.

BirthdayCakeforme you are not a shit mum because you care and are concerned about the wellbeing of your daughter. The therapy may unearth things from your own past which quite possibly is triggering you left, right and centre. I am not surprised that you are exhausted. Please keep getting support through therapy, friends and family. I know your tired but could you start with a movie night on a Saturday with your daughter. You could get popcorn etc and get a blanket to snuggle up to. If your not too shattered could you read your daughter a story every night. Perhaps snuggling up to have a story each night with you may help her to feel less needy and may change her mood in the morning. Please be gentle on yourself xx

Op you are not a bad mum at all .My DD was very anxious as a small child , no reason we could fathom , just very anxious at school , very clingy to me .She has plenty of friends but her anxiety was always high .What helped my DD was starting a martial arts class , ju jitsu .Two years on the difference is amazing .She is more confident, still occasionally gets anxious but nothing like before .Doing the class gave her self confidence , she will happily tackle anything now and she is doing well at it .Her sensai is fantastic and the school said themselves how much difference doing it has made .Not saying it will work for your DD op but might be worth trying it or something similiar .

Great advice on here. Taking up a joint hobby really helped for my DS, who struggles socially. We did something active together for a few months so when the opportunity to do a similar activity independently emerged, he felt confident enough. Did me good too!

There's lots of great advice on here and I can't really add anything helpful, but this jumped at me from your OP:

My poor little girl has no one in her life to just love her unconditionally and be with her.

You do love her conditionally and you are with her. The fact that you get frustrated with her sometimes doesn't change that. I bet she knows it too.