To feel as if I am trapped in an abusive relationship?

[washyourhairforgodssake]

With our 14 year old DD?

Sorry, that is not to belittle people in abusive relationships but I feel utterly broken by our DD. She is angry, no, furious, aggressive, loud, bullying and poisonous. I know these are strong words but it is the truth. We all creep around her and every day hinges on what kind of mood she is in. She shouts, is totally abusive, wakes up every day in a rage and if anyone so much as looks as her she starts yelling, slamming doors and hurling insults. Same when she gets home - she will come in the room from school and just sit there glowering about something that happened at school, of course I never respond in the 'right' way though I try to and she storms off to her room shouting. I feel intimidated by her. I try to stand up to her and tell her her behaviour is not acceptable, as does my DH, but it always ends in horrific scenes. She makes her brother's life a total misery and physically abuses him, he cannot even enter a room without her snarling poison at him.

She has no friends and never goes out. This makes her totally miserable and even angrier. She doesn't do particularly well at school despite our constant encouragement - it is very hard to help her with her work as she just tells us to get out or leave her alone. I would be surprised if she does well enough to leave home and go to University or college in two years which is the only thing that keeps us going. I honestly wish we could win the lottery so we could send her to boarding school, that sounds awful I know but she is destroying our family with her awfulness.

I have been to the GP twice but she was unable to help and said as she was functioning OK at school and socially she could not refer us and was only able to suggest Vit b6 for her moods, which hasn't helped.

I wonder if she has inherited mental health issues at times. Her father, not my DH, was an awful, abusive man who severely physically and emotionally abused me. She has never met him but it seems like life is playing a sick joke on me in that she has turned out to have a personality like his, but this time I can't walk away. I don't think it's just her being a teenager as she has always been difficult, it's just getting worse though and I am afraid, I feel like it's only a matter of time before she physically attacks me.

This is so awful but sometimes I wish she had never been born. She brings nothing but misery to our lives, honestly, nothing positive at all.

washyourhairforgodssake: I can totally relate in every single way, in fact you could be describing in exact detail my life with my DD. It is a truly horrible way to be living. In fact hell that affects the whole family. If you can pm me perhaps we can chat.

I'm new here but I am so pleased someone else has similar problems, not because I would wish them on my worst enemy but its nice to know, i'm not alone.

I suspect bullying, I was bullied as a teen and it is totally demoralising. I took it out on my parents, not aggressive but just general snappiness and sniping. I didn't want to talk about the bullying, because its an assault on your character isn't it? If I admitted it to my parents, its so horribly embarassing and maybe they would agree with the bullies. Also, once you admit to being bullied, whether its teachers or parents, they want names of perpetrators but in my case I could probably reel off a list as long as my arm. My mum knew I was being bullied, but in a way she made me feel worse by saying 'what are they calling you, what names are they using', I didn't want to tell her that one person called me ugly, one person called me lanky and another spotty. Or she'd say, 'what you need is a boyfriend' !

I was put on seroxat at 14 or 15, not that it helped a lot, I'm not sure. The GP sent me to a counsellor but unfortunately my mum attended and she spent the entire time talking about herself, god knows why the counsellor didn't say anything but I spent the whole hour just looking at the lamp on the table. I didn't go back and my mum convinced me that counselling would make me feel worse.

I think it'd be great if you could find a way of getting her some counselling sessions, to attend on her own, as hard as that might be. It might be good for her to have someone seperate from the family to offload to. Parents, even teachers, can be too close, she might need that emotional distance and counsellors are trained to listen, not judge, say the right things at the right times.

Firstly, look after yourself. If you need to leave s situation with her then calmly go into another room and close the door. If necessary, lock yourself in the bathroom!

Secondly, she sounds terribly unhappy. And not knowing any other way to deal with it, is lashing out at you. I don't have any advice on how to deal with that I'm afraid except that counselling of any kind will only work if she buys into it. My mum once suggested in an argument that I needed anger mamagememt and I still remember how awful it made me feel!