Mother Daughter relationships

[daughter2014]

Hello fellow mumsnetters!

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with mother/daughter relationship counselling? Do you know of any counsellors who offer sessions where both mother and daughter can sit in?

x

If counselling is to be considered I would attend sessions without her in attendance. You need to be able to talk freely.

Has your relationship with your mother always been hard going?.
I would be extremely wary about going into joint counselling at all with your mother particularly if she is and has always been difficult to deal with. This is because your mother may a) use these sessions against you, would refuse to apologise and at the same time taking no responsibility for her actions and b) may not attend any such session anyway because she feels she is and has done nothing wrong here.

BTW counsellors are like shoes; you need to find someone who fits in with your approach and preferably also has no bias about keeping families together in spite of the presence of mistreatment.

You may also want to head over to the Well we took you to Stately Homes thread too.

Yes, always pretty rocky. Non communicative, and quite prickly. But I think a relationship counselling session could really help us learn to communicate better.
Has anyone tried that before or had any success with it?
Thanks for your help x

Would she agree to attend?

I may be jumping the gun, but normally when a relationship is uncommunicative and prickly on an ongoing basis it's because one if the parties is a bit of an arse, simple as. I'm guessing it's not you because you want to fix the problem, so is it her?

"Yes, always pretty rocky. Non communicative, and quite prickly. But I think a relationship counselling session could really help us learn to communicate better"

No it will not, your mother even if she did deign to attend (which she likely would not) she would simply use such sessions as a further stick to beat you with.

If counselling is sought do this on your own and with the proviso re a counsellor that I previously wrote of. Not all counsellors are equally good by any means.

Also you may want to read "Toxic Parents" written by Susan Forward.

It is NOT your fault your mother is the way she is; her own birth family did that lot of damage to her. You were not put on this planet either to rescue and or save people from their own selves.

Never heard of mother daughter counselling but If you cant communicate with her then have you actually spoken to her about attending counselling?
Does she feel that there is an issue between you and more importantly has she agreed to this?

Usually when there are communication issues then one or both of you are not saying how you really feel. Yes you probably do need to clear the air and get to the bottom of it to have a better relationship but could saying how you really feel to one another be misconstrued as a personal attack which could make things worse.

Yeah, BakerStreet, I can't seem to find anyone who offers it in the uk...in America it seems pretty big...
I have spoken to her about it and we agree it would help. We've tried to resolve it by speaking but we end up fighting, so I think having someone there to mediate would be really beneficial. I'd love to hear from anyone who's tried it!

Yes but who started the fight and about what?. Did she actually instigate the argument?.

I still would advise caution because such things can so easily lead to the person, in this case you, being further emotionally hurt.