Help? Need brutal honest advice.

[Chel14]

Daughter is 14.

just us for 10 years. Good life.

i was in abusive relationship, destroyed me, her, us. Changed our life.

long story short, I was in mental hospital, she had to stay with maternal grandmother, when we reconnected I wasn’t me. She didn’t receive the same love affection care effort as before.

•appreciate massively how fucking horrific this must have been for a 10 year old. Do not diminish this statement•

however

2 years, 1 relationship, mounds of professionals throwing help her way, school transfers, allowance of poor behaviour, to extreme levels later, I am unable to cope. She is literally ruining any remaining salvageable part of our relationship, ruining her entire life, ruining my relationship with my genuine love of my life, any chance she or I have at happiness. Can’t even ask how did ur day go without it ending in literal tears on my part because of the hatred, brutality and lack of respect or empathy for anyone she displays!
she treats everyone and everyone like less than, unworthy pieces of shit! Treats my partners children like shit, has recorded herself talking to teachers in school in a way I am still shocked about. Complete lack of any good quality right now. No joke. It’s THAT bad. Wish I could tell you it all.

caught her on FaceTime vaping once. Still denies it to this day. I saw it? Close enough to see the flavour? Still denies to my face.

we live alone. Things will go missing or be left out and she will try manipulate my mental health to make me believe it has nothing to do with her. It is scary. Makes up stories to other people that are nowhere near true. Scary.

i recovered so well. Went back to college, got a job. New relationship. New lease on life. Not me again, but better.

she is driving me into the ground. Hates me. Accepts to me it wasn’t my fault what happened in that relationship. Admits she has resentment towards me for various acceptable reasons ie lack of effort when seriously unwell, emotional outbursts etc. understandable. However says it isn’t our fault and doesn’t blame me?

she has adhd (on diagnosis pathway) and what I truly believe to be ODD, possible BPD (I have this)

I have exhausted every avenue tried every approach repeated everything for months day in day out 45 minute deep hearted chats before school she seems to take in. She returns that day from being suspended, to then after 2 hours - be suspended! So what was that mornings heart felt chat and agreement about?

I cannot do it anymore. I have no help.
dad useless. No1 to take her. Social are involved however they have not much advice to help in the immediate future other than wait 16 weeks for a measly parenting course and nowhere to even temporarily accommodate her as even a worst case.

someone please give me realistic advice.

I am not joking when I say I don’t know if I’ll survive this.
everyone who truly knows her agrees she is unbelievable. Deceitful. Has no empathy. Doesn’t care for consequences. Manipulates. Will use my mental health against me eg if I’m talking to her about something she’s done and she doesn’t want to admit it or is trying to twist how it happened she will say so calmly and seeming concerned ‘mum have you took your meds today? Are you ok I’m worried your going insane’

please hear the desperation of how severe this is. If needed I will give more examples. Just please need help.

im afraid for my life and afraid she’s ruined her own.

I am begging for help.

will purposely wait until I’m on the phone to him and burst into the room with an obnoxious loud comment knowing full well would piss us both off. Wish I could think of an example. So evil.

This is not evil this is a teenager.

Not wanting to hang out with you/have daily heart to heart chats - teenager.

She's experienced huge trauma but you've introduced a partner & his kids. She's probably terrified you'll marry him.

Step right back from him. Just see him when she's with friends of an evening, don't make him part of her life.

The memory & mh issues you have sound like a trauma that will be continuing to impact her daily. You need to recognise how huge this is for her and get her into therapy.

Op the language you use about your DD is sickening, calling her "evil", "nasty", while cooing about your new man.

To be brutally honest you sound like a lovelorn teenager who resents those around her who don't approve of her boyfriend.

You are desperate for people on this thread to validate you, tell you he sounds perfect, like he'd bring stability to you & your DD and she's ruining it.

No one will. Because adding a stepfather in is almost never a good outcome for the child. Especially not one with their own DC. Blended families are often quite frankly a nightmare for the DC. Well adjusted, confident, secure DC can cope. Traumatised DC with extensive issues & ND absolutely cannot.

Millions of women simply wait till their DC have grown up and flown the nest to consider bringing in a new partner.

I’m afraid you need to focus on her and not your relationship. It’s all happened very fast and she’s a traumatised kid.
She finally gets her mum ‘back’ except you aren’t back at all- you bring another new man into the equation and suddenly everything is about how this man will fit in.

Forget men for a bit. Your daughter really needs help from you right now.

Genuinely been awake for hours worrying about this girl. Don’t think I’ve ever had such a reaction to a post on here - my heart breaks for her.

I beg you to seek support for YOUR mental health and ability to parent. Please. This girl is in crisis and I would hate her ‘risky’ behaviours to escalate. Especially given the genetic link.

God I wish there was an emergency button on Mumsnet that contacted services.

This poor girl. She’s terrified. And if I’m terrified just from a few posts online, what on earth is she still dealing with day in day out…. (aside from the HORRIFIC ptsd I have no idea how she’ll ever deal with).

It sounds to me like you'd have more luck looking at Child to Parent Abuse.

The gaslighting is beyond just trauma and mental health difficulties - she's learned to focus her energy outwards to gain control, which is making your life a nightmare.

It's still something she's learned because of what has happened but whilst you're being attacked it's going to make all the parenting much harder. Not a fun position to be in but that's the key word I'd use to describe your relationship.

It's an abusive relationship with the daughter you're responsible for. It's tempting to blame you as a parent but it does sound like you've really tried a lot of things. Can she stay at Grandma's again if she wants?

It's about control and whilst you love her, she is not actually meant to be in total control in this relationship. Good luck.

This also

Social services are not going to trip over themselves to rehome a difficult traumatised 14 year old. The very most they might do is suggest she lives with other family members again. I know, because I've been a student. Unless OP starts directly harming her daughter...but even then. At 14 you are far less vulnerable than a young child.

I would be concerned you are being love-bombed by this "perfect man" and the talk of marriage and babies is alarming. You are vulnerable, mentally ill and have recently been inpatient in a mental health facility (the threshold of admissions is incredibly high). Furthermore, you are an abuse victim and the mother of a traumatised 10 year old. You are unfortunately a prime target for abusers who target vulnerable single mums, of course they are going to tell you exactly what you want to hear at the beginning.

I know someone who could have written this post almost word for word, except the DC was younger.

Turned out the new partner was abusing the DC. Badly.

You need to find a trusted adult, not yourself, to talk to her.

And this

If mental health is worse for the witness rather than the sufferer then OP is certainly getting a taste of her own medicine by your standards. Nobody asks to he abused or mentally unwell.
There feels like an element of punishing her mother in all this and if that's the case now the daughters realised there's no consequences to her why would she stop. She doesn't sound terrified she sounds like she's found power as shown by her abuse of her mother and those in authority. She's refused to engage with any form of help offered - that shouldn't be an option.
I agree the new boyfriend shouldn't have been introduced into her life so soon but I've seen women who didn't date for years for the sake of their kids who are now alone and lonely as they're adult dc move on with their lives and mum becomes an occasional phone call or visit when they have nothing better to do.
Sad for everyone involved and no real help available to anyone - unfortunately

Any child needs and deserves to feel safe and loved.
That should be your priority, ensuring she feels safe and loved above everything else.
No-one says it's easy, it's not but the reward knowing your child feels safe with you after all that she has gone through, should be the greatest love of your life.
And help her build other safe relationships.
You owe her that much.

I think its better if you can train yourself to stop saying 'she is ruining...' and instead say 'her past trauma is causing challenges I can no longer cope with.'
Because how you frame this to yourself and her is crucial to your hope of any future relationship. You have to put the full blame where it belongs (on your abuser and circumstances) rather than allow it to creep to your DD.
Then, you need to accept that the second statement is true, and seek help using 'I' language. You feel you can't do this, and you need help to either be able to, or for someone to take the task from you.
This is what you need to be saying to the authorities. Not 'she does this' but 'she does this and I don't feel able to change or cope with it'.

@Chel14 my suggestion is that you get a copy of The Body Keeps the Score and read it. It's really good about the causes of complex trauma, the way this comes out in teenage behaviour, and suggestions for treatments that can be effective.

Do you realise that you shouldn't expect your children to feel grateful to you for putting them first and doing your job as a parent?

Read 'hold on to your kids' by gabor mate. Also Read back your posts and notice the language that you use to describe a child, horrible, evil, manipulative, worst child etc. You seriously need to reframe this as all behaviour is communication. She is a CHILD IN PAIN. When she is presenting with challenging behaviour think about that she is trying to tell you. She is terrified, angry, hurt, traumatized. You need to majorly regression back to the relationship you had previously, smother her in unconditional love, get her therapy, firm but kind boundaries, build her self regulation strategies, lots of outlets for her feelings like art and music, journaling, therapy. I read somewhere that trauma can freeze a child developmentally when the trauma happened, so you are dealing with a 10 year olds emotional regulation level not a 14 year old. How would you support a 10 year old? Lota of cuddles, lota of I love yous, lots of touch and play. You can turn this around but she needs to be the only one in your life at the moment until she feels confident that her primary attachment is secure again.

Also to add you need to work on your own emotional regulation so you can remain a calm steady presence when she is dysregulated. I would also recommend researching IFS internal family systems as this can be very healing for trauma.

This is absolute madness.

Your child has experienced a trauma that will last a lifetime and you keep banging on about the love of your life and how her behaviour is ruining everything.

Grow up, be a parent and support this child who through no fault of her own is struggling and is probably terrified of what will happen next.

But you haven't really "owned it", OP. You are paying lip service. You're saying all the things you know you should say about how traumatised she is from your abusive past relationship, about how she comes first for you, about how she isn't as important as this new bloke etc. but your actions do not support any of this. Your actions have not been those of a parent putting their child first. And when people challenge this, the claws come out and you get a bit vicious.

Your child was completely traumatised by your last abusive partner which resulted in her losing her mother.

When her mother returned, she was emotionally detached and unengaged. She was not loved as she should have been. MASSIVELY traumatic for a child. Like, lifelong-trauma-requiring-extensive-professional-support traumatic.

Shortly after her mother starts to feel well again, she enters into another romantic relationship and introduces new bloke's children. EXTREMELY obvious that this would be damaging for her, given the result of her mother's last relationship.

Daughter reacts predictably by lashing out because she is extremely traumatised, insecure and unhappy. Mother labels her "evil" and types reams of sentimental nonsense on Mumsnet about how her daughter comes first (really? Zero evidence of this) and why oh why is life so unfair and I can't have my prince charming?

I'm genuinely sorry you were abused and I hope you have healed from that. But you are letting your child down in a way that's going to cause her lifelong pain. She needs to be your only focus and not feel in competition for you, or at risk of losing you. The fact that you even started this new relationship after everything she'd already been through may have already done the damage, but you owe it to her to try anyway and actually focus all your love and attention onto her. You have to work so, so hard to earn her trust and confidence back. It will take years so buckle up.

He might be a wonderful guy, but the only previous experience she has of you in a relationship was traumatic and completely messed your lives up. She understandably doesn’t trust your judgement when it comes to men. Im presuming the one who hurt you was a lovely guy at the start as well. She doesn’t see the ins and outs of adult relationships, she just knows the one and only relationship you’ve been in got you committed and her sent away. So as sad as it maybe and as great as this new bloke may be, what she needs is no man in your life right now so that happening again isn’t a real risk/fear for her.

Dear God this is one of the worse threads I've ever read.
OP you've got a teenage daughter and I'm sorry but I don't believe she's your priority.

You sound very young and I wonder why you want the advice of strangers when you clearly are not going to listen.

This new man has children already yet you were planning more, why? Parent those you have. A 15 year age gap between your DD and another sibling is madness. In families without SEMH this would be tough (I know, my mother had bipolar disorder) and my DD was very difficult between 14-18 but you're being naive at best how this would work out.
Your daughter has been through hell and needs a fully functioning mother. Get help. You need to shut down the bad behaviour but being a 'poor me' adult will not help. See your GP and book the NHS counselling online.

If hes your soulmate he can wait until she is 18. It doesnt have to be right now as its not the right time. If he meets someone else he wasnt the one

You mentioned you have BPD and you wonder if your DD does to. Can I clarify, do you mean borderline personality disorder or bipolar disorder?

Either diagnosis is very difficult for family members to live with, and the sufferer often can't see the full extent of their own difficulties. Both are treatable.

Borderline personality disorder responds to psychoanalytic psychotherapy (this might not be available in your area on the NHS - you might need to see a private therapist). Bipolar disorder responds to medication.

Are you currently being treated?

In addition I would strongly recommend family therapy for you and your daughter. You can access this through CAMHs

Please don't equate "doing nice things together" with "rewarding her for bad behaviour". Give her consequences for her behaviour in other ways if you have to, but carry on doing fun stuff with her. Just her and you. So that you can rebuild the bond and trust between you.

Hang on, she is thinking about having a baby with the new bloke? I totally missed that. If that's true, how feckless. The poor daughter doesn't stand a chance does she.