Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
my daughter's dilemma
sKePTiKal:
Hops - don't have much time ATM... BUT:
I think as long as you can keep the feelings about the BP -- and the current financial crisis -- SEPARATE... it's better for yourself, and may be a better way to communicate with your D about these things, too. If she can do that.
Obviously, there's a vicious interdependent cycle between the two for your D. Obviously, when that falls completely apart -- she doesn't want to really admit it to mom... but there's nowhere else (in her mind) to go... but mom. Deb's right - her comments are to the "mom in her head". If you want to break the repetitive cycle of that: surprise her and say something she's not expecting.
It might just shift things ENOUGH to start moving toward clarity of communications; and that's gonna be the basis for a plan.
Be back to say more, in a bit. Hang in there, "Mom"!! I know you've gotta be tired to the bone.
Hopalong:
Hi TT,
I can't stage an intervention. There is no practical way, and I couldn't compel her to come. She's competent even though unwell...But thank you for the thought.
My T suggested I write her some direct things about the relationship...how I felt when she slammed me and then comes back asking for more help as though nothing happened.
I did. Told her I want to be talked to respectfully, and that though her bipolar is real and I know she's under stress, it doesn't excuse treating me that way. He also suggested I set limits if she wants to come back up here (she mentioned it). So I told her if she does, I want her to agree to making an appointment to be evalauted for BP treatment here, or come visit after she's started that process where she is.
And, I'm making bread, will make her a "care box" and likely, slip in a small grocery card. I also sent her links to two resources of support for food down there -- one, the church (they would help her without question) and two, a schedule of free meals given the homeless where she is.
Boat, I really hear you. There's no magical motivator in going to a soup kitchen. In fact, it could increase her despair. I just don't see how handing her more money has moved her forward. There is no plan. She takes no steps. So if I don't keep supporting her too easily, perhaps she'll enter the deep brave struggle you're in, to find her own way to build a life. (I don't want to manipulate her either, but I want to keep being honest about how it feels.)
Meanwhile, I'm praying. My T did said he felt she needed a "wakeup call" about our relationship. I decided to be brave and stick to speaking truthfully about how I feel. (I had been playing along with her conversation, acting as though she hadn't just "spewed" on me a few days before. What I'm understanding from him is, that's not healthy. If she hurts me, I need to acknowledge it, and there needs to be a change. I told her I want an adult relationship with respectful communication.)
Her response may be withdrawal, fury, or perhaps...it'll be better.
I know she is on the edge. Some day I may share with her the image: I keep trying to hold her up in a rough ocean, while she slugs me repeatedly in the head and screams in my ear, "Save me!"
I love her, I am accountable for a lot of the forces that sent her off the rails, and I am not responsible for the choices she makes forever.
I miss her every day. Literally yearn for her. But it's the "her" that's currently buried by her illness. One day, I hope to be knowing this fascinating, warrior woman I know she can become. (She's just got to stop the war with me, because I lose. I am not a warrior. I am a wabbit.)
love and thanks for reading,
Hops
Hopalong:
I read something on the NAMI bp website that helped, aimed at parents/families:
The Three Cs:
I didn't cause it.
I can't control it.
I can't cure it.
(It's true. I made a lot of stupid mistakes but I did not cause her BP.)
Hops
BonesMS:
--- Quote from: Hopalong on November 30, 2011, 05:47:53 PM ---I read something on the NAMI bp website that helped, aimed at parents/families:
The Three Cs:
I didn't cause it.
I can't control it.
I can't cure it.
(It's true. I made a lot of stupid mistakes but I did not cause her BP.)
Hops
--- End quote ---
Very true. Al-Anon also reminds members of this as well.
Izzy_*now*:
hi Hops,
I feel for you, and for your daughter, and have absolutely no idea what I would do.................considering that nothing I did helped my daughter.
Now we are comparing apples and oranges here, but when she married a man in terrible debt, and he (an N which I didn't know about until many years later) kept her isolated, pregnant and in poverty. After he kicked me out of their lives, owing me $55K, I was so hurt and angry that I have never really ( I mean REALLY, but I have set it aside and it kills me that I can/could do that) recovered, but have just gone on with my own ife. Then she wised up and left him and "became a lesbian"-- which comes first, the chicken or the egg?---which when I return to her early years, I see what was there, but I didn't see it then. She was so pretty and had many boys hanging around. (both she and her partner now look like 250# sumo wrestlers and my mind just cannot take it in... I really cannot connect the two people who are one, my daughter.)
But before the lesbian confession, and a sobbing, heartfelt apology for having shut me out, she still shut me out and that, to me, is not an apology! The apology had to be followed up with action!
Now, it is 28 years since she met him and everything blew apart. Then he began asking me for money, which I loaned only for her, and it is 20 years since, when he owed me $55K that he kicked me out of "his family" and "off his property" that I really had some kind of meltdown that I would not acknowledge, but got over it. (So I got over it in a negative way, and after she left him she never came to me for anything.)
I have become a hardened soul over my family and hers---I am very careful now and have one friend who I totally trust and that is my therapist, Karla. She has empathy for me, being she has been through the pain, rehabilitation and Nism on both her side and her husband's side, to become the wonderful person she is today.
After 2¾ years we have become the best of friends and I know from her and from other people that I am not a bad person. The area whereby I have problems is ONLY with my family and that is deeply rooted, and requires a long story, plus 72 years of therapy and I am already 72, with all this crap with which to deal. I don't need tha hassle.
However, if she were to suddenly come to me about something, I would not "feel able to help her" after all she and her family did to isolate me. You see, when my sisters, my brother, their children (her first cousins) find Anita so chaming and all that crap I can tell that the blame is landing on my shoulders. She is a part of that family that was once "mine", but no longer, in spite of all the dysfunction that apparently hit me the most and now I have withdrawn from all of them, for the most part.
In the long run, as I now continue with my life, such as it is, I see more and more of my mother in me...........my mother who never showed me any love, or caring and support when I was little--totally oppposite to how I was raising my daughter, with support, compliments, just being there for everything, and anything about my Mother leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I just became the person I wanted to be, without that family before and after me. When my daughter was 30, she had 3 children, left her N husband, and worked to pay for University. She NEVER came to me for help. (It was all him before.) She now lives her own life and I am just not a part of it.
I can be nosy and scan her Facebook page, but by her profile image I can (or think I can) tell what her mood is. For some months now it is a 'cartoon' distressed woman. Her eldest son and her daughter are her 'friends' but not the youngest who wrote to me and said that she kicked him out of the house, after some fierce argument (over 2 years ago)................and we all know that a 19 year old boy is just that....a boy, and he doesn't respond now to my messages, now.
So many people have so much more going for them than I ever did, and I really have no sympathy for out and out whiners. I see the 2 sides of me now!............and stick with the better side, but must learn empathy for others.
After waiting 9 months for my appointment with a phsyatrist, I was informed that I was not booked 9 months ago.....only told that he had 2 hours. I managed to get through the 9 months and the week before, a new Ass't to my lawyer advised me that I had not been booked. Karla was furious and I was non-reactive, as though..."that is the story of my life".
Re empathy, I find I can only do that if the person is deserving, otherwise I'm thinking about the hell I have gone through, emotionly and physically and know that if I feel to much dependency coming on, I will do the suicide trick.... if I could only think of a way to be sure and not suffer. I'm 72 and was struck down at 30. My daughter was 5 then and is now 47. I have no sense of reality in my life....it is like I have always thought since I was little... I am on the outside looking in.
Enough about me, as I can tell it now, but does your daughter ever 'fess up to the misery she goes through?
Somehow I feel as though I hijacked your thread but had no intention of doing so. It's the mother/daughter thing and dysfunction, but we are different, yet I wondered if you could glean anything from me, and my offspring.
Much Love and Happiness........................................
Skits
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