Name changed for this, but I’ve been on MN a long time. This is a post for advice about my adult DD, who’s 30. She’s also on here, knows I’m posting this, and will be reading the thread! Apologies in advance, this will be long. I appreciate it’s a big ask, but please read the whole OP before commenting, as it’s complicated. Thanks so much.
DD has always been someone who’s taken life hard. She had bouts of screaming colic as a baby, had epic toddler tantrums, and struggled emotionally with the birth of her sibling, who’s 4 years younger. Her childhood was pretty normal – she still has two close friends from primary school. She went to a girls only secondary school, where she did very well in academic terms, but was very unhappy for most of the time. The low point was at around 14/15, when she was being low-level bullied (by which I mean it was subtle, not that it didn’t have an impact, which it absolutely did) and was very socially isolated. At this time she had bad body dysmorphia – hated her appearance, despite being physically attractive – but this never tipped into actual self-harm or anorexia. However, she would spend hours most days having meltdowns after school where she would tell me how unhappy she was and how unfair and awful everything was. With hindsight, I wish I had done more in the way of finding active intervention to help her, rather than just listen and talk, but there wasn’t so much online advice then, and at the time I went from one day to another and kept thinking it would get better if I just put the time in to support her – which to some extent it did, once she was in sixth form and felt she had more autonomy over her life.
At university, her unhappiness gradually shifted from a focus on her appearance to a focus on not having a boyfriend. She had a fairly typical short teenage relationship in sixth form, but the university environment was brutal. This was a university with a laddish culture, and she became very distressed by the ‘rating’ of girls based on their appearance that apparently happened on most nights out. She lost her virginity at uni in what she told me several years later was a near-rape situation, in that she was too drunk to consent on a one night stand, and never managed to date someone regularly while she was there. However, she had a huge friendship group at university, most of whom she’s still in touch with now, so some aspects of it went well. She has great social skills and no problem connecting with people or making friends as an adult.
By the time she graduated, she was desperately unhappy about her lack of a successful relationship and would spend hours telling me she wanted to die, that her life would be meaningless if nobody ever wanted to be with her, etc. As with the dysmorphia at school, she never actually acted on these words, but spent huge amounts of time offloading on me in this way. She began online dating and had no trouble at all getting lots of dates, but I could see from messages that she showed me that she was usually matching with people with obvious red flags, who would give her lots of compliments up front, so she found it hard to convert dates into a relationship at first.
But eventually she did. Her first LTR lasted a couple of years, and was with a man with serious mental health issues of his own - an emotionally abusive alcoholic who cheated on her. Eventually she split up with him, after which he bombarded her with messages saying she’d never find another partner. This situation pushed her back into suicidal thoughts about never having a partner or child, hours talking to me about this, etc. At this point, I paid for her to see a therapist of her choice. She never really clicked with this person, and never engaged with CBT or whatever else was suggested, but was officially diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder at this point (she was previously diagnosed with dyslexia while at uni). Despite her horrendous mental health, she kept functioning – would literally go from spending a couple of hours telling me she wanted to die to putting on some makeup and going on another online date a few minutes later, because she was so driven to find a partner.
About 3 years ago, she met another man online, who is now her DH. He has also had his past demons, which is helpful IMO for their relationship, as he is a genuinely decent guy who is therefore as supportive of her issues as anyone could be. He and I get on very well and are allies in trying to support her. He is also very close to his family, which means he doesn’t resent how close she is to me. As you can tell from this post, she is very dependent on me. We message every day and talk most days, with a good proportion of this contact just being me supporting her with whatever is bothering her at the time. This is largely driven by her. I am also very close to my other adult child, who doesn’t have MH problems, but my communication with that one is totally different – it’s not every day and largely consists of jokey memes etc – I have always tried to parent each child according to their needs. So although I am definitely way more involved with DD than most people are with adult DDs, this is because she leans on me, not because I’m driving this enmeshment.
The reason for this long post is that she is currently having another crisis, because she and her DH have started TTC. They’ve only been trying for a few months, and she’s only 30, but because DD is so proactive and driven, she has already arranged for them to have some fertility testing, which has revealed various possible issues – nothing that’s a dealbreaker, but things that may mean it will take longer for them to conceive or might possibly need IVF, although they could perfectly well still conceive naturally any time. I don’t want to go into huge detail, because this isn’t a post about fertility advice. She is finding the uncertainty of this and the disappointment of not getting pregnant each month really hard to deal with. She varies between coping fairly well by doing huge amounts of online research, making big lifestyle changes to improve their chances, etc, and terrible mood crashes, usually triggered by some sort of external event.
This came to a new crisis point yesterday, because she found out that her sister in law is pregnant with her second child. DD has found this particularly painful, because she was already upset by the family’s focus on their first GC, which made her feel that she was less important to them than her SIL, so that she dreaded never being in the same position herself and was dreading this possibility. She now feels as if, because this has happened, all her other fears will also come true and she won’t get pregnant herself. Therefore, her anguish at hearing this news triggered more talk of suicide, how she has nothing to live for, she will definitely never be able to have a child because it would have worked for them by now if it was ever going to, bitter jealousy of the SIL, etc. She says she feels unhappy all the time, that she can’t stop thinking about infertility, that she can’t go on in this much pain, etc – but she’s messaging me this sort of thing literally in the gaps between getting on with her day at work. This is the sort of reaction that would be very understandable in someone who’d suffered a loss or been told they could never have a child, but it’s just way more extreme than the current facts justify. I’m not denying the distress she evidently feels, I’m saying that her reaction is not explained by the actual circumstances - most people in her current situation would not even have started wondering if they had a problem yet.
She has always had health anxiety as part of her GAD, so I suppose TTC was always going to be triggering for her. The uncertainty of it and the importance of it to her mean that it’s completely overwhelming for her, I think. And she works with children, including those with SEN, so she says that she’s well aware of the possible difficulties of being a parent and still feels that her life without a child would be pointless and empty - she fears what she would consider a meaningless future so much that she can’t cope with the current situation. She also feels under huge time pressure with TTC because it’s possible that their situation could be time-sensitive, although that’s not certain, so she categorically isn’t prepared to take a break from it to work on mental health, either.
I just don’t know what to say or do here to help her. She won’t engage with therapy again, she says NHS CBT would be a waste of time. It seems to me that medication might make a real difference, because overthinking and catastrophising are such huge issues for her, but she totally refuses to consider that because she thinks it would make her put on weight and says that would make her mental health even worse because being slim is something that does support her confidence, given how appearance-conscious she is anyway (she’s currently very healthy and has a low end of normal BMI). She has always refused to consider medication for this reason, but is now even more reluctant because of TTC. I have spent so much time dealing with her frequent meltdowns and intermittent talking of suicide - when she’s in a bad place she can bring the subject up several times a week. I genuinely don’t know what she wants me to do or say when she talks like this. If I actually thought she was about to act on her words, I would of course intervene somehow – but she’s never got near that stage, as far as I can tell.
It's exhausting to be on constant high stress support but with no plan for improving the situation by doing something different, and to not be able to control what happens because it’s not my life. Her mental health is ruining her life and having a huge impact on her DH and me – I’ve talked to him about this and we are very much on the same page in not knowing where to turn or what to do to help her. I realise that neurodiversity may be part of this, but how does that play out when dealing with a strong-willed adult? She’s so clever and driven, someone who really gets what they want through willpower and determination, with a really strong work ethic. She puts so much effort into everything, but she can’t deal with this situation and her expectations of the people who are trying to support her are beyond what we can cope with or fulfil.
I guess what I’m asking here is – does anyone on here have suggestions for what to do here, how to help her cope? What might help her, if she would engage with it? Something needs to change, we can’t go on like this, but I just don’t know where to turn, and it’s so sad to see someone with so much going for her but who is so unhappy still. Thanks so much for reading – please remember that she and I will both see what you write.