Estrangement from adult child

[DesperateParent]

I am trying to find some advice to help me with a really heartbreaking situation that has completely destroyed my family.

My darling DD1, who is at university, has decided to cut off all contact with me and her dad. This came pretty much out of the blue - one day we were exchanging jokey WhatsApp messages as normal, the next I got an odd message that I didn't really know how to respond to so I kept it light, then silence for a bit, then a nasty but vague email in weird formal language basically accusing us of abusing her throughout her childhood. She won't enter into any discussions, says she has seen a counsellor at university and doesn't consider us her parents any more.

We are totally devastated and have no idea what brought this on. Her email was vague, but nothing specific she says is true. We also find it hard to believe a counsellor would encourage her to cut herself off without knowing any background, but maybe that's what they do?

This all happened a year ago, soon after we took her back to university after the Christmas break, and I've been barely functioning since. When we left her at her accommodation, she was completely normal - laughing at me trying not to cry as I left her there, as usual. I contacted someone at the university whose name I remember being mentioned when she started who said he couldn't even confirm or deny to me that she was a student, but that he would always check on a student if a parent were concerned - hypothetically, of course. He was actually very nice while not being able to really tell me anything, but made it clear he would only be able to help if the student asked for help. We were hoping she would eventually recover from whatever she was going through and would get back in touch, but I got another nasty email the other day demanding that I stop sending her money. I presume she has managed to declare herself as independent as far as the student loans people are concerned and has told them she has no contact with us - would they just believe her without checking? We have been sending money monthly since she started.

She tells me in this email that if I reply she will block me - she 'requires' me to just stop the money as she demands. I don't know what to do - in a way she has given me an incentive to write back, as it makes no difference as either way I can't write again. She has already blocked me on WhatsApp and I don't know where she is living. Whatever she says or does, I don't want to stop supporting her as I'm pretty sure she hasn't thought ahead to the fact that she loses all financial support the minute she leaves university. Has anyone been in this situation? Is there any hope I will see my daughter again? Our whole family is in a complete mess because of this. DD1 will speak to her little sister and her cousin, but DD2 feels like she is walking on eggshells trying not to bring up important subjects, and I feel bad about her having to deal with this at the age of 16.

DD1 has a background of mental health issues (particularly in 6th form) and has always struggled to make friends and interact with other people. She is very unlikely to ask anyone for help and I don't know what prompted her to see the university counsellor. I seem to have spent 20 years trying to hold her together and fight off the bullies on her behalf - she seemed so well for the first year and a half at university, then this sudden change.

Sorry this is so rambling, I don't know where to turn.

I'm sorry you are going through this. I would do as she asks. She will come around but it may be a long time.

She might not. I am never going to contact my parents again.

That’s the first thing that came to my mind also. OP is there anything in her childhood that she could believe was any kind of abuse? I don’t mean did you abuse her, I mean were you strict compared to others or could she have perceived something as abusive if someone suggested it to her?

The thing is you're not giving any specific info. When you first received the 'odd' message from her you say you kept it light. What did she raise with you? Do you mean you just ignored what she said? In which case the email was probably sent as she realised you weren't going to take her comments on board. When she sent you the email fully explaining the issues, even if you don't agree with her point of view, did you tell her you love her? That if you have ever caused her hurt you are TRULY sorry? Did you ask what SHE wanted to happen next? I understand it's hurtful and upsetting but unless you respect her decisions and are willing to accept her point of view may well be very different to yours you're never going to repair your relationship. She doesn't want your money. She wants your unconditional love, understanding and respect. It's about you showing her that you are there for her.

Op we’ve been in this exact same situation as a family. It is so scary and painful. We had three years before she reestablished contact. Now we get daily jokes and positive messages and chit chat. We are very aware that it could change again at any time but just want to give you hope that things can change in the future x

If it was my child I would hire a private detective to ensure there is no cult or a new partner involved into this sudden change. If she is not in danger I would leave her to process everything and not contact her.

This must be upsetting for you and sounds very familiar - my brother (late 20s) sent my parents this kind of letter. He has never worked, had moved out of their house a week earlier, and accused them of this vague “being abusive” after they encouraged his decision to move in with his partner, bought him all the furniture, paid the rent deposit. The letter was very formal, and I found large chunks of it copied from a Reddit forum for trans women. The only specifics given were our parents failing him for not “encouraging him to select a high wage career”, for passing on a baldness gene (he has a very thick head of hair, as does my dad, and the specialist my mum previously took him to when he was fixated on this said he had no signs of balding), and child abuse in the form of removing him from their government health care card in his mid-20s as per the law and offering to help him sign up for his own health care card. He’s also threatened to “expose them” if they don’t pay him a lump sum.

There’s mental illness involved, as the few details given are easily disproven. I know 100% that these abuse claims are false, and he’s made up things about my young daughters, who he has never met. At this point my family are not in contact with him for our own safety. This has destroyed my parents, who are both bewildered to where this came from. After seeing how he’s hurt them, I never want to speak to him again.

What an awful situation - my heart goes out to you.
It's unlikely that you'll get to the bottom of why your daughter has cut contact. Personally - I think that the counsellor might be to blame.
That said, what can you do now?
First of all, take her exactly at her word. Don't send her money, don't contact her - she needs space to consider what her relationship to family is and will be. This includes materialistic things, the consequences of which she may not have thought through.
I would be very careful about what contact she has with her siblings though. You might think it keeps a door open, but she could also be influencing them to regard you as the enemy and persuading them that they too have been abused. Insist that you are present for any phone calls, and on speaker phone. I might sound paranoid, but people have been arrested, had the SS involved because of false allegations made by mentally unwell family members.
Your daughter sounds like she is in a MH episode, and/or is being influenced by others.
Write to the appropriate contact at the university and flag up your concerns, and say you think she might be in crisis. They do have some duty of care to her, though they may not tell you anything about what happens.
This is such a sad situation, I do hope that it's resolved and that your daughter returns to you. I can't imagine what you must be going through.

If she follows your advice about listening into the siblings conversations on speakerphone then the other sibling will come to their own conclusion that her mother is controlling and manipulative! Who listens into other peoples conversations like that? That is such bad advise. Almost as bad as hiring a private detective to follow the daughter as a pp said. These bits of advise will only push your daughter away further.

Weirdly, when I was away at uni, that's when all the memories of childhood abuse that I had blocked out came rushing back to me, & I remember calling my parents, asking them both to be on the phone and sobbing to them about how they could do those things to me. I remember my mum finding it too difficult to face and appeared to have blocked it out herself, saying "I can't remember". I'm no saying you were abusive OP, this is just my experience.

I'm sorry. I think there is something in being away from the situation. You can look back on it, it's like you've been under pressure the whole time without really realising it until that pressure was released.

It's simple psychology -- rats were trained to avoid an unpleasant stimuli, and once they figured out how to avoid it they did.

The same happened to me although I never confronted my parents about it. I was severely depressed and suicidal at university after realising how dysfunctional my childhood had been and how damaged I was by it.

Op I really hope that whatever is going on with your daughter you will hear from her soon. Respect her space and needs right now and let her see you're listening to her.

It’s very often the case that people don’t realise they’re in an abusive/neglectful home until they’ve left and the fact you state her MH got worse after seeing a counselling (who will have gently told her that it’s abuse/neglect) speaks volumes.

It’s what happened to me, and almost every other adult I know who is NC with their parents and did it shortly after leaving home.

Mine would say she wasn’t abusive or neglectful. Her coke addled brain forgets the come down rages, the verbal abuse and the neglect because her addiction came first.

This article sprang into my mind as well.

OP, she told you why. Presumably in a language you both speak fluently. So you did understand her in a literal sense. What did she say?

Don't send her money if she told you not to. You're not exactly receiving mixed messages here. She's been very clear.

Having had mental health issues doesn't mean she doesn't get to make this decision. She may have found her mental health benefits from space away from the environment and relationships in which she became unwell. Throwing your daughters 6th form mental health treatment back at her as a way to dismiss her feelings and ignore her adults decisions is shitty and might be part of the problem.

Not sure that’s helpful at all.
It appears to be extracts where parents have written about estrangements from their children, bewildered by them, and the commentator says that this is enough to show they are at fault.
But it doesn’t show that at all.

My DH is NC with his parents. For reasons that are very clear to everyone except them.

They, like you, speak at length of it coming 'out of the blue', that they 'don't understand' and there is no possible reason for this. We've never said anything that made sense to them. They've told everyone they know that we are mentally ill.

It's basically a playbook.

If you genuinely want your DC back- you need to open your mind, put aside your ego and really listen and think about what she said. That is her truth - what was it? Do you have any of it in writing?

Go to counselling alone and work on yourself. See if you can understand what the problem is, and moreover be humble and strong enough to accept ways in which you hurt her. See if you can get to a genuine apology and a place of respect towards her as an adult who makes her own choices.

That's really your only hope.

So this person says listen to her too, which is fair enough.

Although you can’t understand it, and want to help, your daughter , for whatever reason( more than likely some form of mental breakdown ) has reached the conclusion that you are to blame for everything ( who knows what , probably not you ) And that her life is going to be easier, without her parents in it.

We also have swearing, at times obnoxious, 20+ year olds, blaming us for half their childhood being horrific.

Which is a surprise to us now, as they were just typical teens at the time, and we drove them about, and their friends, as requested, collecting from after school clubs and parties.
Other times we are great, but one of these 20+ is now on anti depressants, and it seems it’s more to do with their own strive for beauty and perfection in their appearance, and not being happy with their work, which is causing it, than the terrible childhood that they have now imagined for themselves.
As parents you can’t win.

One day you hope they will start to adult themselves, but until then, know that your own life isn’t perfect, but you’re trying your best, and can’t do more.

I would suggest leaving them be. Save the money for your other children, or keep some aside in case your daughter does get in touch in a few years.

No matter what people on Mumsnet may tell you, you have probably brought your children up like the rest of us, working hard, trying to provide as best you can, but they in their infinite wisdom, don’t consider your best good enough.
You can’t get them to see this, because they don’t want to see it. It’s futile.

There is too much introspection, too much time spent on the internet with kids trying to perfect how they look, how people perceive them, at a time when they are formulating their own view of the world.
The world is a scary place and it seems to get warped, for some

Just try and reconcile yourselves to this, and heal yourselves, as it’s understandably a huge blow for your family.

I would do as she asks. Stop sending money but pay it into a separate account. Hopefully in time she will come back.

Your daughter has told you why. You said she gave specifics. To her, that is true, even if you don't agree or it's actually untrue. That's how she is thinking right now.

I would honour her requests (so she feels you will listen to her) and hopefully she comes back in time. I don't think it's wrong to let the university pastoral care know you are concerned this is a mental health episode but, once you've done that, you'll have to step back, however much it hurts. Sometimes we can't fix things for our adult children and they have to learn their own lessons. We also have no power over the choices they make and might have to painfully accept they have stepped back for their own reasons which make sense to them.

In your original post you say DD2 is treading on eggshells around important subjects. This should be a warning. Why is she like that? And why did DD1 develop MH symptoms at 6th form age? DD1 must have a valid reason to go no contact, you just don't know exactly what it is. Maybe the abuse comes from the father and you don't/won't see it, and DD1 thinks of you as complicit by not defending you. Something is amiss that you're not seeing. Perhaps take some counselling yourself to assist in analysing the home situation.

A friend of mine at uni did the smae to her parents. She was really struggling with her mental health and just general sense of meaning / purpose / identity as an adult and didn't reallyknow how to make it better. She saw a therapist and he was asking about her parents / childhood and anything that was a problem there. She said she kind of tried to think of any little thing maybe her parents had done that hadn't been supportive or that had upset her and he kind of seized on these and then convinced her that her parents were the issue and she had to go no contact to get better. She was desperate to feel better and trusted his 'expertise' and decided he was right and maybe her parents had been a lot worse than she had ever thought. She cut off all contact for 3 years and similar to you OP, they really had no idea why.

Three years later, she was out of uni, doing better, working, no longer seeing that therapist and she started to come out of the fog and when she thought about why she wasn't in contact, she didn't really know herself anymore. She was confused about whether or not they were the problem and if they had mistreated her or not. She eventually had a 'meeting' with them and from there they slowly started to rebuild a relationship. The therapist had convinced her they were manipulative and couldn't be trusted and it took quite a while for her to realize that they were actually the supportive and caring people she had known. I would say it was another 3 years or so before they were really comfortable around each other again. I only keep in sporadic touch with her now but it has been 20 years and they seem very close.

I don't know that your daughter is similar but I saw some parallels.

It is very unfair to insinuate that OP must have done something wrong. Mental health can be genetic. There are so many things outside the home that influence such as school environment, peers, other adults, club situations, churches, and whatever else. There are also things that might have gone on in a child's life that the parents still don't know about and might never know if not told.

I've heard some crazy things from teens. One who told everyone (their parents had no idea) that their parents were taking all their money. It was proven that this was false and the parents were actually giving the child regular money.

Another who developed mental health problems due to undiagnosed autism (diagnosed at 23). Life had been a struggle but they'd managed, held down a job, had friends, but largely hidden the huge strain it put on them to do all that. No wonder that led to mental health problems in spite of having very supportive parents.

Another whose friend died traumatically when he was 18. He was doing well before that then developed severe anxiety.

Mental health is complex and you can't assume the home, which is only a part influence in life if a major one, is going to be faulty. I've seen lots of parents make the kind of statement you have only to have to take it back when their own older kids develop mental health problems in spite of their certainty they wouldn't.

It is massively overstepping to contact her university saying she is having a mental health episode.

She's an adult. She's accessing support - ie - going to counselling and managing her mental health herself.

What evidence do you have OP that she is having a 'breakdown' or 'episode'?

I haven't seen anything that suggests that she is. Deciding to take space from you doesn't mean she is unwell. Doing so with the support of a counsellor suggests that actually she's done this is considered and careful way.

If you contact the university it would be a massive violation of your daughter's boundaries and her privacy. She may well feel you are slandering her and trying to damage her reputation or cause her grief at school.

Give her space.

Do this

I understand why some people are saying that it's 'unfair' that others are presuming OP must have done something wrong,

But - I think it's also unfair that a lot of people are jumping onto the MH stuff, and basically saying that if DD had MH issues, what she has accused OP of should be disregarded? Let's face it - MH problems can go hand in hand with an abusive upbringing 🤷‍♀️ Look at BPD/EUPD for example, they can very much be caused by abuse during childhood - "Maladaptive parenting including childhood maltreatment, abuse and neglect, exposure to domestic violence and parental conflict are found to be prevalent psychosocial risk factors for development of BPD in children and adolescents "

I don't think DD is just going to make this up and cut her parents off for absolutely no reason. (Unless she's always been manipulative??)
We have to remember that there are so many forms of abuse.

Also - if DD is seeking help, this is a good thing. Yes they may have encouraged her to cut off her parents/anybody she feels have mistreated her, but this could very well be in her best interest at least for now until she is at a point mentally where she can face it in more of a direct 'head on' way.