First, WHY are therapists so hard to get in touch with. The two we've used have a number with voice mail and they say they'll call you back for appts., etc... but I've only gotten one call back in the last week and I wasn't at home at the time
Reason I'm trying to get in touch with the therapists is for our DD1, which many of you have helped me with already. She called me the other day crying, saying she thinks she is "self-destructive" and that she's decided she wants to go to counseling (which we've been trying to get her to do for years now---she's 19). I was calm and supportive and asked her to explain "self-destructive" and she was like "I don't know........" and then I asked if she was cutting and she said that she had for a while a few years ago but hadn't since then
The time she pinpointed as the "cutting" period was when she was 16 and living at home. She said she cut on her upper thigh so no one would see the marks. Then I calmly asked if she was having an eating disorder (which I've asked her about before and she staunchly and angrily denies, but she's gotten pretty thin---she's 5'5" and maybe 110 lbs, which is really thin for her) and she said "not anymore but I was bulimic for a while in high school"
I apologized to her for not knowing and suspecting and she said that was o.k., that she had tried very hard to keep it all from me. I agreed to set up an appt. with a counselor, which I've been trying hard as heck to do. I asked her if she was suicidal and she said "not anymore but I was in high school" but that at least I had known about some as she and I had discussed it a little back then. She said she's not going to class and isn't doing her school work and it's like she's sabotaging herself.
I say she is manipulating because DH (dear hubby) and I believe that she's decided on therapy now because she's blowing her grades again this semester and figures that by playing the "therapy" card that we'll continue to pay for tuition and give her money. We signed a contract on the apt. she's in that lasts until the end of May, so we'll have to honor that, but we've told her if she brings home F's this semester then we're not paying for any more college for awhile until she can get herself together. That she'll have to work full time to help pay most her bills but that we won't completely cut her off financially. She's already on probation with the loan program in that if she hasn't successfullly completely 60 hours by May, then she'll no longer be eligible for the student loan program and if she's failing (like she's hinted at and we think she is) then she won't be able to borrow money from there anymore for tuition. Last year she went to college on complete scholarships and managed to completely lose those which is why she's borrowing money for tuition this year, and we're paying part of her tuition because the loan program says DH makes too much money for her to be eligible to borrow the full amount. Hence, if her grades in Dec. are crap, DH isn't gonna pay half the tuition for Spring semester and without his tuition help, then she won't have enough money to go to school on. So we think she's manipulating in order to convince us she's gonna do better so we'll pay for another semester of school and she can continue to work part time and we'll still be footing most her bills. DD1 has a long history of lying and manipulating (I'm sure we really on know the tip of the iceberg on this) and every time we think she may be making progress in stopping this behavior, it resurfaces.
As for why she's doing so badly in college (and she's very bright and is taking mostly 101 classes) it all comes back to
whatever her main problem is. She has this intense need to be with her friends--this started around age 15. For the last 4 years if she couldn't hang with her friends nearly all the time, she would go absolutely nutso---totally screaming ballistic. Her theatrics like this are the closest thing I've ever seen to Linda Blair in the exorcist, really. We fought her tooth and nail trying to keep her in line, refusing to let her go to unchaperoned parties, insisting she be home at a decent time (11 pm until her senior year and then we upped it to 12 am, but whenever she could, she'd end up spending the night somewhere so who knows what time she was in, we insisted on her doing chores around the house, such as helping with laundry). I don't know how I don't have a head full of gray hair. ANd yes, we let her hang out with her friends but not ALL the time like she wanted. Anyway, bottom line, we know she has low self-esteem and therefore it's like she thinks she's nothing unless she's with them, we suspect there's drug usage going on too although she swears she isn't doing pot anymore or any other drugs, (we had her urine tested once) ---she's irritiable, angry, irrational. Yesterday is a PERFECT example. We met her at the mall where she works. She had just gotten off work and she was irritiable as a hornet. She was constantly on her phone, was ill with her sister for no reason, was very irritable with me and I was buying her clothes (
what kind of fool bites the hand that feeds it??????) and told me that if another" ++++++" got in her way she was going to go off on them---she was her usual self. I could tell something was going on with her friends as whatever was being text messaged really had her upset and I calmly told her that if she needed to leave that was fine, I understood (actually, after an hour with her I'd had all I could take and so had her sister!!) Then she blurted out that her friends were going out of town to a party and she didn't want to go but no one was going to stay at the apt and she didn't want to be there alone and she just didn't know what to do ----you'd have thought by her anxiety level that she was under nuclear attack. Anyway I mentioned that she could come home, spend the night, get some studying done and she immediately had 3 (LAME) reasons why that wouldn't work, same lame reasons she's used before. Reason
1) she'd have to pay for gas money to come home (no, we almost always give her gas money when she comes home and besides, going to the party and paying for food for that wouldn't be any cheaper than gas money to come home) ,
2) She doesn't have a bedroom at our new house ( some of you may remember she got hateful with me months ago about curtains for her bedroom here and she smarted off at me and said "I DON'T LIVE THERE ANYMORE" so, we transformed her bedroom, which she had never used as it's a new house we just moved into, into an office BUT her brother doesn't use his bedroom (he's young and sleeps in the room with us due to health reasons) and she has complete use of his room if she wants to spend the night here, it's a nice large bedroom, and all the privacy she could want in there)
3), She can't study at home (This has been an ongoing excuse since college last year, that when she comes home she can't concentrated because we make too much noise---WHATEVER, we go to bed at 9 and she's up until all hours of the night) I long ago gave up trying to reason her out of her excuses because as the saying goes "You can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't use reason to get to in the first place" Reasoning, discussing or arguing with her gets you NO WHERE!! It's like lighting a fuse. I guess I sound like a wimp, but I'm not, I've just honestly never known like my daughter. She constructs her "reasons" and arguments, not by reasoning or facts, but by what serves her purpose and no matter how carefully one might try to discuss things with her, she goes crying, screaming nuts. Anyway, after giving her reasons for why she "coudln't" come home and whining about her predicament she then asked would I be mad if she left us at the mall and went to the party (it was a college football party in another town, about an hour away) because her friends were about to leave. I most definitely assured her that it was fine for her to go, that we were almost done at the mall and about ready to head home and inside of myself I was hoping she'd go ahead and leave. Both DD2 and I were about to loose our cool due to her. So she left for the party and it's almost 2pm the next day and I haven't heard from her, ,,,hope she's o.k. I've had to come to the realization that one day she may not be o.k. In her haste and lack of reasoning skills she might make a bad decision, but we've done everything to help her, guide her, love her (we do love her) and yet she doesn't get any better. My friends told me that after a year or so of college DD1 would begin to calm down but I knew and still know that her problems are more than the normal teenage angst.
We catch her in inconsistencies in her stories, but no longer bring them to her attention as she immediately gets really angry and immediately has a "reason" why it isn't an inconsistency, in other words she has another lie ready at a seconds notice. I have to say it again, I've never known anyone like my DD1 and I don't live in a bubble. Here's one inconsistency, she never knows what her work schedule is gonna be a week ahead of time (according to her) but yet the other day when discussing Thanksgiving I said something about her work schedule and she told me what it's gonna be and when I asked how she knew already she irritably said, "THey post it a month at a time!!"
On my birthday, she didn't call me at all and when I called her at 8pm (and I was really pissed off and let it show this time) her immediate response was this: "Oh, I'm so sorry, Jessica and I were just discussing what I should do. I couldn't remember if your birthday was yesterday or today, you got me confused since you mentioned going out to eat on both nights, and I didn't want to call the grandparents or daddy and ask them what day was your birthday because that would make me look like a bad daughter and like I said, we were just discussing what I was gonna do,,,,,oh, and I would have called my sister when I got off work tonight and asked her but I didn't want to wake her up" To which I responded, "You were afraid of waking your sister up at 6pm?? Today is Sunday, you got off work at 6" and then she's like "Oh, yeah,,,,well, um,,,, I was so confused about what day was your birthday and I just didn't know what to do " to which I then said, "So you thought you'd just let BOTH days go by and totally ignore by birthday" and of course she argued with that and kept saying she was sorry and she just couldn't remember which day was my b'day and that she just didn't know what to do........... But the night before my birthday I had talked to her and mentioned about the next day being my b'day but I swear, half the time she pays no attention to what I'm saying. I think her whole story of "I was confused and didn't know what to do" was the best BS she could make up when she realized she had totally forgotten my b'day.
DH and I are thinking another drug test is in order. Her behaviour is so not normal. I think we're gonna take some hair from her and tell her what we're doing and then see what's going on. Hair tests are supposed to be the most reliable.
Oh, and I didn't mention her appearance yesterday. She's gotten to where she showers in the afternoons before hanging out with hre friends in the evenings/nights. So in the mornings she looks like death warmed over. She's working at the nicest department store in the mall, making good money and when I saw her yesterday I was appalled and embarrassed. Her brown gauchos did not match her brown jacket and the gold espadrilles definitely didn't match. Her hair was pulled back in a stringey pony tail and half of it was falling down---her hair didn't look healthy or clean. The only make-up she had on was mascara and eyeliner, no base and her skin looked like crap, her lips needed moisterizer badly, they were all dry looking.......... I'm not a prima donna, I don't exagerate looks, but when you dress to go to work you should look at least clean and half way made up, not like you just woke up. I have't mentioned this to her yet and really I know it won't do any good. She'll just get mad and defensive, but you know if I were her manager I wouldn't keep her in my employ looking the way she looked yesterday. Years ago she used to never leave the house if her make-up and clothes weren't just right, so I don't know if this is another indication of drug usage, depression or just slackness.
O.K., help please??????????????
THANKS!
Adrift
