Went to my new psychologist yesterday. I like her. She's not cheap but she seems to actually be on board "with" me which is, I assume, the general idea. I haven't experienced that before. She feels that from what I describe, maybe I've been stuck in a very entrenched lifelong pattern of accepting abuse and 'laughing it off" and perhaps the same pattern is playing out in my relationship with my dear child, whom I love dearly but feel kind of suffocated by lately. This all makes good sense. That daughter has observed ways to manipulate me and learned from them and now she is fine-tuning them and i am reacting, reacting, reacting. Seems logical and workable, no?

After my appointment I met Her Satanic Majesty in town after school and ended up, as usual, buying her stuff. Including hair colour; she's obsessed with her hair and her total dissatisfaction with it's colour and I put my very best mind to choosing the best colour product that would do the job and not ruin her long hair. She rejected it and chose another colour. OK, it will wash out eventually so, whatever, right? Trial and error? It's fun? I think? I sure wasn't allowed to colour my hair when I was her age so I don't really know. But I'm reasonably skilled at colour so, why not help her and have some fun with it?

Anyway I told her, if you want it done tonight, you'll have to do it because i don't have the energy but if you wait until tomorrow I will do it. So she did it last night anyway and of course i ended up helping...excessively. And contrary to my instructions there is red dye on my bed, my favourite table-cloth, the walls, etc. Oh well.

So this morning i wake up to a text message..."My hair is brown and purple and I hate it". (It really isn't).

I go in to see her and she screams at me and as I leave the room she throws something at the door. Hard. Wtf? I feel a bit pannicky. But, you know, ???

Then more text messages. "If you had actually helped me, maybe it wouldn't look so shit"

and then

"Maybe if you were good at F^%&ing ANYTHING it would have turned out OK".

What the absolute crap. That's over the line and makes me feel a bit sick. 

I'm sitting here, reeling and thinking, this is pretty abusive behaviour and she's crying and crying and I'm thinking, do i go and comfort her because i know what its like to be 13 and hate your hair or do i respond to the fact that this kind of abuse is utterly unacceptable and I should not under any circumstances tolerate it?

And the i get a series of 'I'm sorry I over-reacted" messages and then she brings out a sketch she drew of "me" at some stage (its not very flattering) (I'm not even sure it's me but it has sunken eyes and it looks pretty decrepit plus it has very short hair? I think it's possibly Carol from the walking dead) (seriously) (I actually think it is a picture of Carol-From-The-Walking-Dead and she's decided to try to pass it off as a pic of me) and leaves it next to me.

Now she's crying and messaging me repeatedly and I just feel depleted and angry and what am I supposed to do with this?

I don't want to comfort her when she's just been so damn nasty. Geeze, my mother never helped me colour my hair and I used to dye hers all the time....I was an expert at dying middle-aged lady roots. My kid has never, ever once helped me with my hair although I've asked. She just doesn't want to, bless her little cotton hoof-covers.

I feel abused and manipulated and tired and just, basically, wtf.

Is this level of abuse normal?

Oh wait, I forgot the best part. Every year, I agree to her going to her fathers on Christmas eve and spending Christmas morning with his family because they have small children and its more fun for her, I figure. I get up alone and travel for 4 hours solo every Christmas day to meet her for lunch at my grandmothers and bring her home so we can watch the Doctor Who christmas special and see a movie on boxing day (ie star wars) and get pizza etc; those are our beautiful nerdy Christmas traditions. I kind of thought they were sacred.

A few days ago she begged me to take her to this 4 hour Doctor Who special at the cinema and as it started she announced that this year she doesn't want to come and meet me at lunch time on Christmas Day, she wants to stay at her dads for the whole Christmas because they 'might buy her something at the boxing day sales". So I got to think about that for 4 hours of animated 1960's slow-bus-moving cinema. Then afterwards she got angry because the shops were shut and she wanted hair dye. Sigh. What?

Never mind that my grandmother and my mother are the people who pay for all of the things that I cant afford for her while her father pays for nothing and they wil throw a wobbly about it (at me) and never mind that I will be, now, alone all day on christmas. I mention these things to her and she swears at me and says "it's my decision, why should I have to worry about your issues?"

I don't know who this kid is. I don't want or intend to take this kind of abusive crap but it's hard to hear her cry and she seems pretty hysterical. (My hair is horrible, my face is horrible etc). I feel compassion and white hot rage all at once. It's very familiar, i guess.

I was never this level of monstrous because i didn't have a parent who gave a crap. Is it normal? Or, at least, is it something that happens to other people? Because to me it's just disgusting and I ust want to be away from it.

And not withstanding i asked her yesterday if she could allow me some space to get some work done today and as usual she's responded with a total shit show.

I just...I have no words.

(((MS.M. ))I am so sorry that you are experiencing this terrible teen behavior and am so happy that you have connected with a therapist who appreciates you.
 Please list your assets when these tirades begin and validate the truth that You are indeed an intelligent, compassionate, talented woman and a loving, understanding mom who will not be spoken to this way.
I know we have talked about alateen in the past== What do you think is it available and would it help?
Positive thoughts and prayers on the way.
PS You did make me smile, as usual,  with the comment about the drawing representing a character from the Walking Dead". Your humor is so refreshing and you are great at that. :)

Thanks ladies.
Betty, al-ateen is an option i should probably give some credence too, and stop putting into the "maybe one day" basket. After all, there is an al-anon meeting that takes place next door to an al-ateen meeting in my area every week and it really wouldn't be hard to go and check them out together. As in, actually DO it.
I'm trying not to put too much credence in "what will be". She was my sweet, agreeable buddy for 12 years and lately she is a 50/50 mix of sweet renegade angel and "So, Your Child is A Sith Lord. What Now?"

She's very apologetic now and wants me to know that she doesn't know why she was so angry and mean when she woke up and she knows her comments were really wrong and she 'doesn't know what to do to fix it".
I've told her that I love her however she really crossed the line and I require the space I initially asked for today and will talk about it with her another time. She's also very happy with her hair now and doesn't want me to strip the color out...well of course she is happy with it. It looks freaking fantastic. This isn't my first hair rodeo, ffs.

The details don't matter really though. The reason I posted about this here is, it's the same "I am the center of your universe whether you like it or not" behavior my qualifiers have exhibited throughout my life and she has learned from the best and frankly, it's exhausting. I no longer live with any of my qualifiers and I would have liked to think maybe, it was time to relax but apparently, that's just not going to happen. I need bigger boundaries than ever, and maybe a guard tower and an electric fence. And an assault rifle.

Psychologist lady explained teenage boundaries really well today, that they expand exponentially but the child is eternally butted up against them, making sure that they are there. That makes very good sense. It's also exhausting and so counter-intuitive to me. Laissez-faire is my preferred style, in all of my affairs.
Apparently I need to be more controlling. It's funny, no?

Blah.

You sound as if you have this    Maybe simple bounaries would work well and remembering that what is said has nothing to do with you 

I think abuse is what happens when young people grow up and continue the same behaviour.  What strikes me is that she was distressed about her hair (that sounds like a natural teenage reaction, especially if a dye job turned out in a way she didn't expect), and a) she blames it on you (she's feeling angry and wants to blame someone), and b) she didn't know how to soothe herself, at least in the short run.  The b) is fairly normal, the a) is not unusual, but obviously is maladaptive, unfair, and damaging.

I would guess that she's a 13-year-old who's maybe a little behind on her maturity, and who is struggling to figure out how to handle distress.  And obviously her dad's family has not shown her any kind of model on how to do it.

I have had to teach myself how to endure similar distress myself, because no one in my family had a clue.  I have to tell myself, "It doesn't feel like it, but this will end.  After a while the emotions will clear away and I'll be able to see some solutions.  I only can't see them now because I am so flooded by emotion.  I have to trust in the process."  And to myself, "Don't make it worse, don't make it worse, don't make it worse."  Because my reactivity at the time makes it worse unless I get a grip on myself.  I guess it boils down to "Don't React."

So my guess is that she's in a similar position, and once she's calmed down, would benefit from some mutual brainstorming about how to handle floods of distress.  And not resort to blame and making things worse.

You've got some good reflection going on - she has an excellent model to learn from.

Mattie, at the risk of seeming reactionary, of course I helped her with her hair and soothed her through the process once we worked through the initial mutually psychotic reaction. How long do you think i could listen to her cry for? The threshold is sub 3 minutes.  Honestly I feel like, when I talk about my offspring, you share about your childhood which is, by the way, pretty similar to mine, and i end up feeling like, you think i just leave her out in the cold unloved and unheard. (I am being honest about my triggers and I really hope this won't alienate you). (Also, I'm sorry. It was like that for me too. I get it).
It triggers something in me because yeah, honestly, I would and could never leave her alone and wondering. That was my childhood. It will never be hers. But the initial reaction/response to bad behaviour....that's something i am learning to do a lot more coldly and precisely because she manipulates the crap out of me. She freaking dances all over me.
I want you to know that I know what it's like to be left alone with all of those emotions and worries too, and I just won't ever and could never leave my child alone with them for more than, maybe 5 minutes of "getting it".
 I love this kid more than air. She's never alone and she never will be. But I need to learn to be harsher and not dance when she decide to shoot at my feet because it gets ridiculous. She has so much power over me and it's just so unbalanced.
Maybe I'm wrong but I get the impression that you think I am just leaving her alone to deal with a whole set of adult emotions all by herself.
I'm not. She's my freaking world and I'm acutely aware of what she's going through at all times (as far as I understand it) because, she just acts so damn much like me. 

((((Miss M)))) I use to counsel those critters and I had lessons before I did which I sat and listened deeply to while learning the rules and regs of Al-Anon and Alateen and the parents.  One of my Fathers told me a story of putting on  a 13th birthday party for his princess daughter who had to excuse herself for several minutes to go to the bathroom and when she was done and came back to the party the biggest bitch entered the room.  I use to imagine openly that my groups were alcoholics in training because they were all alky kids.  I had one girl during family group threaten my life so I excused myself and went into the office quietly and called the local police and then lo and behold I let them into the meeting while it was going on and one parent (hers) broke down crying and the rest of the group went into paralysis while I calmly asker her to leave the group and join the police in a vacant room with her mother outside witnessing the event. They took her of course and she never returned to group and later called me to thank me for my caring.  Thank You God. "Don't react...respond"    My former sponsor taught me that one  lol.  

Mel, my apologies.  I did not mean to imply that you were neglectful, and I wouldn't ever think that.  I'm sorry if my comments were misguided, and if I have offended.

I love this thread, thank you to everyone.

I have a daughter attracted to saving the world. It's in her blood, God bless her. While it appears to be an extreme of the "me" I'm trying not to be anymore.... I can do nothing but support her in her very dangerous endeavor in the U.S. army. We don't agree about a lot but I try to practice "Live and let live." Daily, I visualize her surrounded by divine protective light as she pops into my head, absolutely trusting that God's got her, forever and ever.

That said, no matter how much I love her, I will not give my daughter freedom to talk abusively to me. Sadly, she saw me allowing her father control and verbally abuse me her entire childhood.... this is what I modeled for her.   

No more.

One of the goals in my recovery is to amend the false beliefs I once held, one of them was the (unconscious) belief that I deserve to be treated abusively and I deserve scraps from my relationships.

Today, I'm modeling something different for my daughter... (who is an adult and out of the house.)  Today I am modeling that women should NEVER EVER tolerate abuse... not from any one.

It may not register with her for years... if it ever does. The outcome is out of my hands. But my recovery work called for me to develop the courage to change the things I can.....

She's not happy with me because last time we spoke I would not be her puppet and allow her to control and abuse me. I had to keep saying, that is not for you and I to talk about.... that is between me and your dad... nope, not going to talk about that.... over and over and over. She was livid. But I calmly held my boundary and still said I love you.

Recovery taught me something very important... we are all equals. You and I, we both matter.   But it had to BEGIN WITH ME developing the belief because my self esteem was in the gutter when I showed up in Al-anon.  When I allow one person to run roughshod over me but don't allow"the neighbor" to.... this kind of love is selective and a clue that something is amiss.  You are getting it, the fog is clearing for you too.

The other thing I want to throw out there...... hormones. If she is a teenager, hers are wild now. Reminds me when I started recovery, I was in perimenopause and I would often say to my sponsor, "I can't tell if it's my thinking problem or my hormones."

God, we laughed a lot about our hormones, lol

Hang in there, my friend, you are doing very very courageous work.

-- Edited by 2HP on Thursday 17th of November 2016 04:30:56 PM

My daughter is 18.  I told her.  This is the money I have for you.  When it's gone it's gone.  This is your spending money.  If you want more, you will have to get a job.  She had summer job, bu quit that when she went to college.  I also told her, I want to see grades C and above.  If I see bad grades or hear bad reports, I will not help pay these college bills.  She still pushes the limits sometimes.  I also insist she calls grandma, and once in a while she calls me.  I understand she has her own friends and would rather spend time with them.

I think it helps if you are REALLY CLEAR maybe even write it down.  They are all snotty at this age to some degree or another just my opinion.  That has nothing to do with alcohol.  Kids are self centered at that age. It's developmental.

I personally don't care what they do with their hair.  I don't like some of the clothes they wear.  I told her so, but when I don't see her, I don't know what she does. I think some of the clothes look trashy. She doesn't wear in front of me, but I don't know when she's not here.