I totally dislike my daughter (long and ranty)

[ohthatsokthen]

DD now 21. Backstory she has been problematic since 13. Started with truancy, smoking etc. Then absconded from school and was found unconscious on the school field with an empty bottle of vodka. We then discovered she was bulimic and self harming. Many trips to the Drs later we were referred to PCAHMS for counselling. There are no known issues in our family, me and her dad still together, he has been a fantastic dad and we have both tried our best to support and encourage her. In her words "you are epic parents and I had a lovely childhood, I don't know why I do these things". Signed off from PCAHMS as deemed "helped". Over the next few years she went to college and got a part time job. She was then sent home from work as she was drunk, this continued and escalated until she was drinking all day and being abusive. I met with her work who offered to help - her words "all teenagers drink", took her to the drs "my mum is imagining it all, I am fine". To cut a long story short, the drinking escalated and she became threatening and violent and I snapped (probably not the best thing to do) and threw her out. We had a number of police visits due to threats and her trying to kick the door in. Police told me I was a victim of dv. She found a room, we paid the rent and deposit for 6 months. She got thrown out from that room because she kicked off and started smashing the place up. At this point I cut contact as she was making me ill with the stress. She moved in with her boyfriend, and his junkie father and moved onto drugs (speed, crack), got raped by her drug dealer. I can't even talk about that. She moved into a nice room, to get away and we paid the deposit. All this time still drinking but miraculously because of her manager she clung on to her job. She was then given notice on her room as the ll was getting married so she went off on a rare one and her threw her out that night. In desperation, the next day I found her a bedsit albeit in a halfway house type place, paid the deposit and the rent. She is still there. 5 months ago she quit drinking, we were so proud of her. I told her that she needed to get help as she obviously has issues (she says she wants to feel incredible all the time and can't bear the mundane day to day life). It transpires that although she isn't drinking the drug use has escalated, to the point she owes dealers. She came round last night and was vile, screaming and shouting at me. Told me all of this was her fault, she hated her life, we should take her back home and she would stop. I forced her to take the bedsit, if I hadn't she wouldn't be doing drugs. She hates her job, nobody has offered her a promotion and she's been there 3 years. I was very calm and told her, nobody had done this to her but herself and I wasn't going to discuss it anymore as she never listened (we asked her to attend Narcotics anonymous and the drs - she won't because they tell her things she doesn't want to hear). She was hateful, vicious and mean. I have got to the point where I totally dislike her and my husband says he despises her and can't be in her company. Sometimes I wish she was dead so that we didn't have to live like this and she wasn't suffering anymore. dh retires next year and we are going to sell up and move away (plan was to buy a house with annexe for dd if she got clean but that is never going to happen). All we wanted for her was to be happy, and either do uni/travel/or a job she liked. Whilst we are not perfect parents (who is) we have always encouraged and supported her and tried to do what we think is best. I am now at the point where I think - I've done everything I can, you are an adult and its up to you. I think this stems from growing up with both parents as alcoholics. I know she is a tortured soul but I can't help someone who refuses to take responsibility and help herself. Sorry for the essay, rant over - just wanted to get it off my chest!!! Thanks if you managed to read to the end

Crystal that is such a powerful and honest thread thanks for sharing. It was also stangely calm - no one expressed any guilt voicing their feelings - they had got to this place after years and years of hell. They are all talking about people who are older - I doubt they would have said that about the 21 year old younger person but it shows where this situation often gets to.

OP finding others who have walked/are walking in your shoes (on here, in RL or whatever) could be incredibly helpful to you.

Since I joined a group for my v difficult dd (12) thru CAMHS (vv reluctantly) - it has proven a great support. We were on a 6 month programme where we as parents met every week for 3 hrs with a CAMHS leader. It was incredibly intense and emotional - but it helped to see others just like you, through no fault of their own going thru hell as well.

Now we just meet up in the pub once a month informally.... and now I would never talk about the issue to others who have not been there -- they cannot or do not want to understand - and it saves me the exhaustion of repeating yes we have done star charts, yes we have put in boundaries, yes we do one to time etc .... no I dont know why she runs screaming round the village at midnight in her PJs trying to hurl herself under passing cars and why she wishes she was dead (She has no MH diagnosis atm

I have resigned myself that I am in this for the long haul with my 12 year old. I anticipate a difficult life for her and our approach now is just focus on trying to minimise the impact on our other 3 children who she bullies and is violent to relentlessly....to this end we now dont take her on holiday with us all as this sends her into a spiral of crazy shit. But we will take her away on her own.

Bless you deepest your situation is terrible, we were fortunate that there were no siblings to consider. Hopefully there will be more help for your dd as a child. We have to wait a year (I would move tomorrow) as DP retires next year. Some might call me selfish, but we have to focus on moving forward, I can't destroy myself if she doesn't want help. My heart goes out to you.

Crystal that is a sad thread and shows it from a different perspective, sometimes shit just happens.

Miscellaneous

If 'laid at the parents' door' means the parents are to blame, Crystal, that's not what I mean when I say that themes/illnesses can travel down the family line. Not unlike physically inherited illnesses. Nobody's fault.

Yes springy, I do understand, and I think you have raised some very interesting points. I'm not trying to minimise the effect that parents/grand parents etc have on children, of course it is enormously complex but in my situation, I had/have a very loving and supportive family, but I was quite a rebellious idiot as a teenager. Looking back through the perspective of 30 years later, I think that I had totally bought into the whole drama of being a teen - No one understands meeeeeee etc - not my parents fault at all.

I do also see that is not at all what the op and others are going through with incredibly troubled children - so I apologise. I just wanted to say that sometimes, children (me) can just be wilful pains in the arse.

Sorry, I sounded a bit sniffy there! didn't mean to, got distracted and posted without reading it through properly. Apologies, and thanks for lovely post, Crystal :)

Just wondering if your DD managed to keep the drs appt and the outcome?

If it wasn't what you want then you should consider the experts like Prof Byron- even if you only use 1 session for you and DH to offload and vent as you have here. Talking to a true professional- probably one of if not THE best in the UK - would be so helpful.

Not sure if you live near London but one trip and paying something like £150- £200 ( no evidence it's that but it's around the going rate for top consultants) would, for me, be worthwhile.

I think a figure of about 400 pounds an hour would be more in line with something like Tanya Byron. And even then I wouldn't be surprised if it was more.

It all kind of gets pricey when they have Prof as a title.

I don't know. A phone call to their office would provide that info.
It doesn't always work like that. Some highly qualified medics don't work 'just' for the money especially if they have an income from other sources like books and media.
I've seen top consultants, for other reasons, who are cheaper than local consultants because they've got beyond the point of making lots of money and want to help as many people as possible.
Just a thought!
I'm not pushing this option- but I thought it was one worth considering.

Ziggy, the figure I suggested is based on personal experience, and to be honest I think there is a lot of wishful thinking going on in your post.

There is also the cost of any medication that might be prescribed. A person would have to pay for that as well and there are no cheap psychiatric meds, granted an NHS Dr could then prescribe the meds but if they decided not to there's really not much a person could do about it except go and pay up.

To find out there is help for a loved one but you can't access it because you can't afford it? I think it would be a real killer. Whatever happens with the OP's daughter next with regard to professional help is going to take a very long time, its way beyond nipping into see a nice Dr every so often for a wee chat.

I'm finding the casual talk of private health care very frustrating so Im away to do something else.

I wish the Op and her family nothing but good things ahead.

And you also :) I can recall seeing David Bowie in Dundee Caird Hall on the Ziggy tour way back in the day :)

It was only a suggestion Granny :). The NHS is cash strapped. Prof TB is a leading expert- her doctorate is on drug addiction and young people, and she has spent her career working with families.
None of us know- unless you have 'inside info'! - where the OP lives or what her finances are. All I know is that when I needed help in the past for parenting or health problems, info on who might help best is something I'd have appreciated. I'm not going to get into a political argument over NHS v private - people can choose to spend their money on what they like if they have the income. :)

granted i don't know the OP's location or finances, but I do know that ONE hour isn't going to achieve anything much at all, no matter how expert or experienced the professional is. I think to give a very condensed history of the last 8 years is going to take a very minimal of two sessions alone, and that would be JUST to bring a new professional up to speed with no advice being given out.

I know people mean well on this thread, but really, there is a distinct lack of logic being replaced with an awful lot of wishful thinking. Which on one hand is nice, but I can imagine for the OP it must feel very frustrating to be presented reapetedly with "wishful thinking" type of advice.

And the OP has said time and time again that she doesn't need help for herself or her husband. She needs (wants) her daughter to want help. Can't people just accept that maybe the OP is right, maybe she (and her husband) doesn't (don't) need help?

And does anyone really think that one session with Tanya Byron is going to magically change anything? I don't think even Tanya Byron herself would profess that.

Ziggy, inside info on the OP? What a strange thing to say when its obvious, or I hoped it was, that I was talking in general.

The NHS - I haven't lived in the UK for a very long time so would never presume to know anything about it, but private mental health care in the UK is a very different matter. I have considerable experience of it as a mum and am very aware that its not something everyone has access to.

I think if a person is against the ropes the last thing they need is to feel they may have failed a loved one because they couldn't go private.

Ziggy,

the smilie should have been at the end of the first line.

I think if a person is against the ropes the last thing they need is to feel they may have failed a loved one because they couldn't go private.

I agree 100%. I wasn't saying that at all so am not sure how you made that connection.

There is no point getting into the nitty gritty or how much these things cost, what can be covered in 1 appt or several. (many consultants take a detailed history either from a GP or the patients themselves before a first appt) The post was made in good faith that if the OP didn't find the help she - OR HER DD - needed via the NHS then there are other avenues out there money permitting. I'll leave it there- it was a suggestion, not something to scrap over!

Ziggy, we are going round in circles here, you think Im attributing things to you and Im not, Im commenting in general.

And we're not scrapping. Honest :)

There is no point getting into the nitty gritty or how much these things cost, what can be covered in 1 appt or several. (many consultants take a detailed history either from a GP or the patients themselves before a first appt) The post was made in good faith that if the OP didn't find the help she - OR HER DD - needed via the NHS then there are other avenues out there money permitting. I'll leave it there- it was a suggestion, not something to scrap over!

Ziggy, have you actually read the whole thread, and read how often “see a good therapist” has been recommended to the OP? I am not exaggerating when I say this suggestion has been made in excess of 100 times in this thread, if not more than 200 times. And each time the OP has come back and calmly and politely explained that a) her daughter refuses to seek help/attend appointments etc, or b) she (the OP) has had counselling for herself and it hasn’t helped any and she doesn’t want to pursue that avenue anymore for herself. But still, the posts keep coming “see a good therapist, if not for your daughter then for yourself”.

On page 5 of this thread, on Sunday, the OP said, and this is a direct quote “And please no more comments about counselling! I saw a counsellor about 2 years ago and I didn't find it of any benefit. Quite frankly it was annoying.”

Now I don’t know about the OP, but I didn’t join this thread until page 9, and half my motivation to join in on the discussion was because I myself was frustrated at the people shoving counseling down the OP’s throat, despite her explanations that she didn’t want to go down that street. So many people on MN just refuse to see that therapy isn’t a magic bullet for everyone. I can only imagine this is even more frustrating for the OP. How often does someone have to explain that they don’t want counseling, that they have tried it and weren’t sold on the concept, before people will actually respect that decision?

And really, to even suggest 1 session with Tanya Byron is going to be of any real use to the OP is quite frankly naïve at best. If she has 300-400 quid to spare it would probably be put to far better use for her and her husband to use it for a week by the seaside away from it all.

I know your post was made in good faith, like the 199 others in the same vein were also made in good faith, but there comes a point when we have to listen to what a poster is actually saying, and respect their wishes that what some of us may find helpful, others amongst us will not. And the OP has categorically stated umpteen times that she does not want therapy and does not find it useful for her.

Assuming for a moment that the OP doesn't need/wouldn't benefit from counselling* and taking as true the OP's comment that her DD would refuse to attend counselling, then I can't see how sessions with Tanya Bryon at however many hundred pounds an hour is really going to help the OP.

As I've said before on this thread, these proposals aren't necessarily for the OP's benefit. Sometimes they're made to enable those making them to maintain the fiction that there's a silver bullet that would guarantee a solution to this kind of problem if they were unlucky enough to encounter it.

• astonishing I know but some people just don't

blubirdy
I wasn't going to add any more to this except you want to make assumptions and misinterpretations that aren't there.

Prof TB is not a therapist or a counsellor. She's a psychologist with a doctorate in addiction. She runs a clinic, not a counselling or therapy practice.

As far as we know from the thread, the OP has not seen anyone like this nor has her DD.

The last we heard from the OP was that she and her DD were going yesterday to their GP to see what could be done via dual agency support.
She hasn't come back so we don't know what is happening now but we do know that she had found the NHS and what it offered lacking over the years.

I find it a bit annoying that for whatever reason you appear to want to control what people post and pass judgement on its worth to the OP. Not sure why you feel the need as the info is for the OP, not yourself. The OP can choose to take it or leave it. I don't see how you are in a position to decide if a week at the seaside would be of more value. That's your own judgement, no one else's.

It's not naive to suggest 1 appt. You don't know and neither do I what that might do and neither do we know the OPs finances.

I wasn't going to reply on this any more but as I said I get a bit ratty when someone comes along wanting to create waves and seeming to know best when all that was suggested was the name of a professional who might be of some help some time now or in the future.

nautical same applies to your post:) This is not therapy it's medical/clinical psychology. Suggest you look at TB's website for info if you haven't already :)

Just because it's medical/clinical psychology this doesn't magically get a cooperative addicted troubled DD into the room.

Sorry, it seems I forgot to include a PA smiley.

ziggy, I don't care what her title is, what her degrees are, where her premises are... 1 hour with her is not going to change the OPs situation one iota. You can't seriously think it would? Come on, you can't. No professional I have ever encountered would even suggest a drastic improvement in one session. Generally, even with minor MH issues, it's more or less a given that an initial session (sessions) are spent just collecting details. It really is naive to suggest that one suggestion is some kind of magic bullet. And until the OPs daughter accepts she needs help and is willing to take any offered to her, then 30 sessions with Tanya Byron for Mr & Mrs OP aren't going to help, because it's their daughter who needs the help, not the OP.

And yes, by reading everything the OP has written, I do actually think (based on her own descriptions of herself as a person, her description of her husband and their relationship together, her description of her daughter and her issues, her manner of coping with things, her own polite request to posters to please stop recommending counseling, the fact that she is calm, collected, is displaying healthy coping mechanisms, is happy -apart from her daughter- is reflective, intelligent, articulate, seems to know her own mind, seems to understand healthy boundaries and healthy detachment) that she would probably get more good out of a week away with her husband to recharge their joint batteries than she would out of one single hour of counselling that would be spent just bringing the person up to speed.

And I am not wanting to "create waves" as you suggest. What I would like is for posters to start to give the OP some respect by accepting that maybe she is right when she says counseling won't help her. And if they can't accept that the OP is right, they could at least respect the fact that the OP has asked repeatedly not to recommend "seeing a professional to talk things over".

OP, my apolgies in advance if you hate the beach, lol. and also if I have completely missed the mark.

same applies to your post. This is not therapy it's medical/clinical psychology. Suggest you look at TB's website for info if you haven't already

semantics!

one session with God himself is not going help the OP as it's not the OP who has the issues, it's her daughter, who refuses help.

Did you get that bit earlier on? Her daughter is not cooperating? Refuses to cooperate. Refuses to stay off the drugs. Refuses to accept she even has a problem with drugs.

Sorry, it seems I forgot to include a PA smiley.

lol.

oops forgot to put that in quotes.