Broken and sad....how can I be more resilient?

[Fudgecakes]

My 14 yo dd proper hates me . In her opinion I'm annoying, boring, not fun, horrible...anything negative...that's me! After yet another character assassination of me yesterday which left me in tears, I need to get a grip and grow a backbone to get me through this as I know it could last a while. Can anyone recommend some coping strategies?

Trouble is, I'm a very sensitive soul. I was badly bullied as a child and to be experiencing the same feelings of rejection from my own dd is killing me. I also feel a failure as I keep thinking back to how excited I was when pregnant and would never dream that 14 yrs on I'm in this situation . I also torture myself by looking at pics of us all when she was little.

I just want to run away as I'm finding it really hard. It's so reminiscent of how I felt as a child...I'm so, so broken that she hates me so much. It feels so much deeper than normal teenage rejection 😪

Just checked onto the thread again and I am so grateful for the further posts....really interesting to read them and some excellent advice. I've been working on trying not to show how upsetting I'm finding all this and shutting it down and walking away. It's a start! Your posts have really helped. Thanks x

Be careful not to fall into the trap of "its normal". Therefore it goes unchecked.

It's something many teens can go through. But there is also a very large majority who don't. Not to the extremes you've mentioned.

I agree 100% with this. Saying it's normal minimises it. It's abuse. People you love should never abuse you. Stop her right now by mirroring her behaviour to her and making it quite clear what impression she makes on you when she does this. Teens need to learn empathy with adults, especially their parents. Mutual respect and love is perfectly achieveable but it rarely happens with a 'this is normal for teens, ignore it' attitude. (Personally I don;t believe in punishments because they don;t work, they act as fuel to teen resentment. I believe in making them face up fully to how they behave and the impact it has on others. Basically - an empathy bootcamp! )

I don’t think it’s just about being resilient though - what happens after she says these things? Are there consequences - if I’d spoken to my mum like that I would have got a massive bollocking and any pocket money, lifts etc would have been off the table for a long time...

14 was the worst for us, 15 not so bad- am hoping 16 will be better still.

It didn’t help me manage it better but this book did help me understand it....
Get Out of My Life: The bestselling guide to living with teenagers

Both my older DC have said at some point or another ‘I hate you’ my only reply was- how would you feel if I said that to you. Calmly, quietly, neither have said it again- though I’m fairly sure they have thought it.

Nothing about having a baby/ younger child quite prepares you for the difficulty of dealing with a teen with their own, thoughts, ideas, agenda and who is quite happy to be rude in a way most adults wouldn’t dream of.

To continue with my earlier post,

Humour and/or indifference often worked to defuse the situation but sometimes the red mist of anger came down with my ds, and then he would not be capable of hearing anything I said. I would respond "we'll talk about this later when you've calmed down" and walk away. More often than not when he'd calmed down, he would voluntarily come up to me and apologise. If not I would seek him out, but either way we would discuss what had happened calmly.

It took a while for me to learn this as to begin with I reacted emotionally and things would escalate, or I would issue consequences and continue upping them. But when that red mist of anger came down I could have ended up grounding him for life and it still wouldn't have made a difference. They are incapable of operating rationally when that red mist descends. "We'll talk about this when you are calm" and walking away really did work.

@Krisskrosskiss that is so helpful, thank you, my daughter is not to bad but does say hurtful things sometimes which I try not to get upset which is so hard sometimes, your explanation has helped to make me realise it really isn’t about me Punishment doesn’t work it just makes her back away from me even more. Thank you