Really struggling to know what to do here. Dd and I have often rubbed each other up the wrong way - we can both be argumentative and stubborn and 'normal' disagreements over behaviour and house rules (politeness, no phones after 9pm, lying, that kind of thing) have escalated to shouting much more often than I would have liked. I bear the responsibility for this - I know it's my job as a parent to keep a lid on emotions and model good conflict management, but due to considerable mental health issues when she was younger I didn't manage it. On a few occasions - which I now HUGELY regret and did at the time too - I smacked her. I KNOW this is really, really unforgivable. I've done a lot of therapy to deal with my issues, which are all around my own childhood and I'm well aware are basically triggered by so much of my daughter's behaviour, whatever she is doing. I.e. it's not her fault in any way, it's how the interactions make me feel that's been the problem. But in recent years while we have still argued, I have not smacked her for a very long time and consider that something incredibly wrong and a very sad part of our past. I've apologised many times and tried to listen to her, empathise, demonstrate with kindness (rather than explanations) that "angry mummy" was not me but a symptom of difficulties nothing to do with her that I want to help us both get past.
The difficulty now is that, at almost 14, for the past couple of years she has of course wanted to argue the point over everything - why we should let her go out at night with no information about where and who with, why we are the worst parents in the world basically. I find it really difficult not to get sucked into it, and as we're both debaters by nature there have been arguments. But not shouting at a level that could be called "violent" or uncontrolled. It's not helped by the fact that my husband hates conflict to an extent that he shuts down as soon as someone expresses a difference of opinion, so my speaking contrasts with his silence. Dd has now decided that I am always shouting at her, and that I always did throughout her early years and childhood. And that I hit her in anger frequently. This is such a misrepresentation it makes me want to weep with frustration. We (me and her, and the whole family including her dad and younger brother) have been basically happy in a very average kind of way throughout her childhood, punctuated by these few occasions when I was unwell and unable to manage my emotions and behaviour, that understandably loom large in the memory. Of course she is upset, hurt and sad about those occasions - so am I. But she has now stopped speaking to me, refuses to look at me or stop if I accidentally get in her way. When she does speak to me it is to say what a terrible human being I am and how there is never any excuse for shouting and violence towards a child. She says there is no way to repair things, I had my chance to be a good mother and I failed. She claims to be terrified of me, despite how much better our relationship has been in recent years. It has just taken a nosedive over the last few months and she says this is why, but I don't know what triggered it.
I just don't know what to do. She has a history of lying to the extent that we don't know if she even believes what really happened over what she says happened (several occasions when we have been there and seen various incidents, she has made us doubt what we actually saw). This has usually been to take any guilt and responsibility off herself so that she is the innocent victim. We've seen a family therapist to try to help her with this feeling of victimhood as we don't know where it came from and it seems to be so much bigger than 'normal' jealousy over her younger sibling. Now I just don't know if she's right and I was abusive. Or whether that's a manipulation and twisting of a very sad and difficult dynamic between us that I am constantly trying to repair, and have been for years. I know I need to atone for my behaviour somehow, I just don't know how. At the same time, I'm still her parent and at almost 14, living under the roof of her parents who are just trying to do their best for her, surely she doesn't get to just cut me out of her life completely?
If anyone has any idea what to do, I really would appreciate some help. I'm expecting to be flamed for the shouting and smacking when she was younger. I can't say or do anything about that now, I just want to do whatever I can to heal our relationship somehow. While taking her as seriously as she needs - but I just don't know if she's exaggerating for effect or if it really is that bad. Please help :-(