Struggling with teen daughter and her anxiety

[Sara2000]

I need a safe space to offload. Yes , some of you will tell me what a shit parent I am. But you know what? I'm not, I'm just being honest about how I feel.

Dd aged 15 is under tier 3 CAMHs for anxiety, self harming and suicide ideation. We are paying for counselling and CBT which she says is going well. I am just finding it so hard to live with.

She is rude and hostile pretty much all the time. She spends 90% of her time in her room playing online games. She has a group of online friends and 2 real life school friends. Of course the pandemic hasn't helped, but she never wants to go anywhere. I am at a loss. Her life at the weekend consists of her laptop, coming down for some food and grunting at us, back up to her room.

She has just been diagnosed with a vitamin D deficiency and will be on high strength vitamin D for 2 months, having sat in her dark room for 6 months. .

She hates school and moans about it constantly, even had a short spell of school refusal in september. She does little or no school work despite doing GCSEs.

She wears hoodies and tracksuit bottoms and looks like a teenage boy. I give her money to buy clothes and they sit in her wardrobe. Her room is a tip.

I feel like her staff. I am here to cook, clean and serve but other than that, surplus to requirement. I pick her up from school and she sits staring at her phone like I'm a bloody uber driver. It's just take, take, take. I hate it. Every interaction we have is loaded and ends in an argument. Yes, I am aware that's probably not surprising.

Today I had to coax her out of the house. We were taking the dog for a walk and she started crying because I didn't know exactly where we were going. we bumped into some old friends and she just stood there ignoring my friends daughter who she has known since she was 4.

I am worn down by it. I know she has anxiety and I am sure a vitamin D deficiency doesnt help. But I have no idea how to deal with her, what to say and whether I should be forcing her out of her room. We tried to introduce a weekly film watching session but she refused.

I ask how her counselling is going and what they do and she takes great pleasure in not saying. I don't mean details as clearly that's not my business , but just generally what is done. Its £60 a week and I am shut out of it.

I am so fucked off with it all. I am done with walking on egg shells and biting my tongue. I dont think I have any tongue left to bloody bite. She is unbearable.

How do you get through this delightful stage? Give me a whinger baby or a tantrumming toddler baby day.

I need to hear from those of you with teens with mental health difficulties. Help!

@Bagfull. That's so weird the because they were adamant that they cant call it ASD I'd problems were not evident from early childhood. I suppose it doesnt matter at the moment but a diagnosis is required then we will look again.

I totally get what you mean by hugs. She is very hands off,which I find hard. She also sleeps alot, but very fractured sleep. School exhaust her.

I went through a really horrible patch with my DD between the ages of 12 -14, I use to cry myself to sleep at night worrying about her, her future and our relationship. She has ASD and severe school anxiety and a few years ago was taking it all out on me, it was awful.

I'm so thankful that things are now so much better (she's 15 now), she's happy at home, she's stopped self-harming and our relationship is great. School is still a huge issue (this morning I've been trying to call her support officer since 8.30 in between calls from her crying saying she shouldn't have come in today) but it's her last year and I'm hoping sixth form college can be a fresh start.

The thing that has helped change things around with DD has been her latest private counsellor. The first one we had when she was 12 was a disaster (so much so I put in a formal complaint, DD was given a new counsellor and the old one "took a break" and hasn't been back), things became 10 times worse but then when she started seeing the new one things slowly improved. It wasn't instant but just the really bad days became less and less and we started to get on more.

I just want to give everyone going through a tough time a hug, it sucks it really does, but things will get better. It won't be instant but hopefully like with my DD there will be the odd day that's not as bad as the others and before you know it there will be more good than bad days.

Azbinger - I don't want to be a harbinger of doom, truly I don't - but we have had similar good patches with dd, some of quite long duration (now 18) where progress felt good and I hoped it would be a continuing trajectory of upwards and upwards. All I am saying is stay vigilant. Forewarned is forearmed.

You could be right Limitisup and this might just be a good patch (things started to improve with DD about 16 months ago), as I said she's still struggling massively with school but her frustration is no longer directed at me 24/7. The odd time she gets really argumentative with me I shut it down, let her calm down, and approach and talk about it later on.

For example this morning with school she ended up screaming(and swearing) down the phone at me that I wasn't listening and not helping. I just remained silent until she stopped and then I calmly said there was no need to be so rude to me, I am helping her and if she wanted to discuss it any further we would tonight, I then hung up on her. 5 minutes later she text me to say she was sorry and didn't mean to be so horrible she was just really anxious and needed help and the staff were not helping her and she just lost it with me.

That's where I see the counselling coming through, working on her anger / verbally lashing out, she recognizes a lot more when she's about to flip and will walk away and when she doesn't and it happens she's quick to apologize. Whereas before that she would have argued to the death that she was justified in being so horrible to me because "you weren't listening or helping".

I will be staying vigilant though, especially over this next year with GCSE stress and then the massive change to sixth form and A-levels.

I think the being bonded to the room and wanting own space is fairly standard tbh. I see tjd room obsession as the sanctury or crysallis from which eventually an adult emerges.

Just wanted to say that this post resonates so much. Atm trying to put some support in place for return to school ... going between trying to be nice to school in the hope it gets something more and feeling angry at them for having missed so many opportunities to help in the past ... DD had suicide attempt 3 weeks ago so still raw. She told me straight away so part of me (big part) believes it is cry for help despite her saying otherwise.
The thing I find hardest is that no one tells you what to do ... and it feels like all the support your DD will get depends on you knowing what to ask for. Hope things will get better soon x

@Sara2000 how is your DD now?

Just wanted to say thank you so much for your post. It's honest and brave.

I have two DDs. Eldest was diagnosed with anxiety and ADHD when she was 19 years. Youngest DD (14) I suspect also has it and I am currently trying to get her help too.

It's so hard for them but also for us parents too. I really wish there were more help and education for the parents too when their child is diagnosed and even in the process of getting diagnosed.

I find it personally very difficult knowing the right things to say and not to say, to do and not to do, to know what things to let go, what things to encourage and discourage. There are times when I just want to run away myself. I feel like an awful Mum and a failure too. Not helped my teen DCs reminding me of that too!

I’m sorry OP it is a horrible situation to be in. One of the best things I ever did was to see a child psychologist - just me and the psychologist, no child present. She explained how my DS was thinking - why he was behaving the way he did, the situations that made it worse, she talked me through his thought processes and it really helped me understand what was behind his vile, selfish, aggressive behaviour. If you would prefer not to do family therapy, you could maybe just have a couple one to one sessions yourself. It didn’t fix the underlying issues but did reduce the number of arguments/meltdowns because I could see in advance where things were heading and avoid certain situations even arising. I also learnt to stop shouting (as much) because all that ever did was make everything worse. I found that really hard!

I also found this book helpful for understanding what was normal teenage behaviour (unrelated to the anxiety/ASD).
“Get Out Of My Life But First Take Me And Alex Into Town” by Tony Wolf.

If you can, get a private referral from your GP to an adolescent psychiatrist and they will very quickly be able to suggest some appropriate medication - it sound like you have got to breaking point.

All the best.