How do you know?

[HeartofPilgrimage]

How do you know if your perceptions of an emotional situation are reasonable? Outside the family and outside highly emotionally charged situations, I do OK. inside the family when I'm very upset, not so much.

[Gabben]

Heartofpilgrimage,

I dunno, I have actually just been spending my time, in the last few days, wondering, in part, the very same thing.

I'll follow this thread, it will be interesting to see the input.

Lise

[Twoapenny]

HoP,

Don't laugh, but I had to go to therapy and ask to be taught what constituted a normal response 

I know it sounds ridiculous but I never knew whether my reaction to something was appropriate or not and worried endlessly.  Over most of my life I generally took my cue from other people and reacted the same way that they did.  I never disagreed; if I wasn't sure what other people were thinking/doing/saying I'd go "I dunno really" and just act dumb.  Equally I'd take the 'embracing all options' approach as I got older, seeing things from every possible angle but still not having my own take on it.

I went to my therapist last year and told her I wanted to know what was normal and what wasn't, and when/if it was okay to be angry/upset etc and whether it was okay for the other person to be angry/upset at something I'd done.  I think most therapist usually avoid that kind of thing and work on a principle of you doing what you feel and it being right for you, but my T agreed to give me her opinion on certain situations.  I trusted her to be honest and I have known her for a long time so I knew she wouldn't just agree with me to keep me happy.  Over several months I went in with all kinds of things, some current, some from the past, described what had happened and my perception of it and the emotions involved and she then told me what most people would consider normal.  It was really funny but I had huge hangups over tiny things (a friend saying she'd call Tuesday but not ringing till Wednesday) but no problem with massive things (like my mum watching her boyfriend assault me).  She basically taught me what most people would find acceptable in a variety of situations and from that I started to get more confident about my feelings and how I saw things.  But I had to be taught it, I don't think I could have done it on my own.

Maybe you could post about something specific when it comes along and ask others on the board what they think about it?  That might give you more confidence in your own feelings on something?  I used to worry I was over-reacting because of things that had happened in my past but my T thought I was pretty spot on with most stuff.

[Sealynx]

HOP,
When it comes to things inside the family, I usually look for motives rather what they do or don't do. If the motive is really sick or self serving, I defend myself as best I can and stay out the fray if I can. I don't think there is a reasonable reaction to some of the things they do other than shock.
S

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Well, here is the situation I'm dealing with ... I have told y'all elsewhere that my daughter doesn't GET social situations, especially when strong emotions are involved. I have also told y'all that about 2 months ago my oldest son's wife walked off and took the baby with her.

You don't need the details of HOW my daughter came to her conclusions (besides, I KNOW the details and I'm still confused) ... but she basically skimmed a couple of text messages on my phone and came to the conclusion that it is my fault that her brother's marriage fell apart and his wife won't come back to him. SHe has had an "attitude" about this situation ever since it happened ... will sigh really big and roll her eyes when we talk about our pain,  walk off, once she even announced in the car that "we are NOT talking about Bro and SIL's situation right now" (that was while we were still hoping DIL would calm down and work on the marriage). The rest of us were talking about it because we were in incredible pain and suffering about it. Even her younger brother was hurting and wanted to talk to relieve his distress.

I have not spoken to DIL at all since she moved out (I don't mean I'm giving her the silent tx, I just mean I have had no reason or opportunity to talk to her). But somehow my own daughter concluded that it is my fault DIL won't come back to her husband.

As it turned out, she said she came to her conclusion based on the text messages she had read on my phone (I have to save them b/c they might be relevant in the upcoming custody battle). SO I read her the messages verbatim. Her response was, "I didn't say [what she said two minutes before]." I was livid. I kept at her until she admitted she had said [what she said]. Yes I yelled at her.  She finally admitted that she had mis-read the texts and she did do a rapid about-face in her attitude.

But ... she has been walking around with a crummy attitude for two months. My youngest son revealed that she had been IMing the estranged DIL and her wacko mother behind my back (if he was an adult I would suspect him of trying to stir up problems, but he's not even a teenager yet, so that was mainly I think to empathize with me in the moment). My daughter skimmed through a texted conversation, misread it, and didn't even think "hmm, what I think I read doesn't sound like the Mom I know." No, she naturally assumed the worst in me.

This is not the first time she has automatically assumed I am a liar, dishonest, mean, petty, a troublemaker, etc. If I am having problems with anyone outside the family, she has a knee-jerk response to be on the other side from me. It's not just me, if her dad or brothers say something is black she will say it is white. This summer while we were on vacation, every chance she got she would say things to "prove" that when she is 18 she won't have to follow my rules. If we passed a casino, she'd say, "Oh, I can't wait til I'm 18, that's the first thing I'm going to do." She would go into elaborate detail about the tattoo she's going to get when she turns 18 (because I told her when she's 18, if she gets a tattoo it's her business but while she's a minor she is not getting one.)

A major point I need to make is that she is EXCESSIVE about all this. I have three other kids, I know that it is pretty standard for teens to pull away by insisting on being different from their parents and/or siblings. But it's like almost 100% of the time with her. And she flaunts it, tries to rub our noses in it. My husband and sons' favorite team was playing a hugely important game on TV a few days ago, and my husband noted that although my daughter could care less about football, she came downstairs and made a big deal about cheering for the other team.

I am extremely hurt and I am tired of pouring love into a bucket with a hole in the bottom. My husband gives lip service to understanding how hurt I am but then gives me the "you're overreacting" speech. He gets just as upset at her as I do, but if he's not involved in the argument of the day, then he blames me for arguing with her and acts like it's a squabble between two girls instead of between the mother and the daughter.

I don't know if he has a point or not. I do know that after all these years of struggling with her emotional issues, I am bone-deep exhausted. I have never been so hurt at anyone as I have been at the estranged DIL --- for hurting my son and then doing everything she can to keep him away from his daughter. As I told my daughter: I feel like the DIL and her mother have been chasing me around with a steak knife, trying to plunge it into my heart, and when I bat their hands away my own daughter says "you're a terrible person, you hit her hand." OK, yes that's a bit melodramatic but metaphorically speaking that's the way I feel.

So, that's what I'm confused about. I have been and am hurt at a level that I won't quickly recover from, and then my own daughter does this. And then my husband says I'm overly emotional and making the situation worse.

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Reading through my last post, I realize how hard it is for anybody to just read that post and get a handle on my situation. "Reading" a situation requires so much more than a one-sided description ... but I'm grateful to be able to vent here anyway.

[Hopalong]

Hi Pilgrim,
I'm sorry I didn't respond sooner...I can relate to your outpouring.

I'm going through something with my D that reminds me of it a little.

In a general way, she's fighting like mad to create boundaries. Because she's young(ish) and belatedly grappling with a lot of pent-up pain and anger (multiple divorces and her father's early death), the WAY she's trying to create boundaries is often hurtful for me.

I've been realizing a lot of things about how my own Ntraits made things harder for her. Or even if I don't label them Ntraits, it's a sense of how my emotional sensitivity meant that she was often so concerned about my visible pain that she didn't tend to her own. (Hindsight.)

So now that's she's finally fighting to create her own sense of self, she's quite ruthless about my feelings.

Sometimes I worry about her character, but at other times, I respect what she's doing in a general way. (I remember how Cinderella I became in caring for my mother. She does too. So, although I'm not my mother....she reflexively overdoes her "not being codependent" to the point that I can feel very hurt, and think she doesn't care about me at all.)

Lately, with things a little calmer, I'm not taking it so personally. I just think she's in a huge battle for her own psychic space. I'm not taking her space from her...but she is porous, she leaks, she fixates on me, she imagines me absorbing her. As though by existing for her at times, I'm Kryptonite.

So even when she fights me or is dismissive, I'm feeling less reactive, less hurt. I'm trying to listen for the subtext. I think she's just trying to survive. The dance she does with me is really her own. So I've been stepping out of it more, a bit more detached. It helps. It's lowered the temperature.

I wonder if when your D said, I hope we're not going to keep talking about brother and SIL...could she be telling you, it is too painful for me. I need a relief from it. I need you to manage your emotions about this without me.

Dunno if it fits, but fwiw...

love,
Hops

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Thanks so much, Hops. Yes, it makes sense what you say, although to tell you the truth I understand my daughter very little (at least that's my perception). So it's hard for me to know why she does what she does. I do know that she doesn't understand why other people need to talk about painful situations, it doesn't apparently bring her any relief to talk about things that bother her. She calls us "gossipping" when we talk about a painful situation.

It's easy to blame those first 14 months she spent in an orphanage, but I also think it's significant that after she came into our family, none of us knew what to do with her and so really us getting frustrated and irritated and aggravated, etc. with her aberrant behaviors have a lot to do with her trust of us (not just me). It's like she didn't get that what she did (deliberately disobeying for example) had an effect on other people. So she just perceived us (and especially me) as mean and punitive. I had to "overpunish" --- by that I mean impose a much more severe punishment than I would for a child that "got it" more easily --- or consequences for her behavior didn't have an effect, she would immediately go back and repeat the offending behavior if it suited her. She was marking up all of her books with crayons nearly until she went to kindergarten --- my sons went through a phase when they were under 2 years old, but taking the crayons away usually gave them the message "Mom means business when she says no."

I think she still has very little idea about why she irritates me or anybody else in the family. I don't know if somebody different than me could have gotten it across to her better. Who knows. I do feel really bad that when she was young, I was still struggling with trying to please my mother, which as we all know is like trying to drain the ocean with a teaspoon. I know that my daughter provided a rich source of stuff for my mother to use to criticize and shame me. Normal parenting didn't work with my daughter, so both she and my mother made me feel like I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't. When my daughter was a preschooler, I spent most of my time depressed, stressed, anxious, and extremely sensitive to slights and criticisms.

On the other hand, parenting my daughter shed a lot of light on the fact that my mother didn't know what the heck she thought about anything.

So, I do feel a lot of guilt for being emotionally volatile and not being the steady and calm influence I wish I had been. On the other hand, I'm not the only one who finds my daughter hard to deal with.

The main thing you said that popped out at me is "The dance she does with me is really her own." If she hasn't figured out that, despite my faults, I am basically an honest person with integrity that loves her ... I can't own that part. I'll own the part that says I can steamroller people when I get mad, I can dominate the argument, I can say sarcastic and cutting things that wound. Not proud of that, but I will admit it.

To put this in perspective, the whole situation I described before ... well it happened right after we got back from a church women's retreat. She had a great time (she doesn't get along with other kids from the youth group and prefers our women's group --- they accept her better than other teens) ... and I didn't have to take her, she was the only teen there. And next week I am taking her with me across the country when I attend a seminar ... which also, I don't have to do. I am trying to give her some opportunities to do fun things with me. It's just sadly ironic that in the midst of these two things I have made special efforts to give to her, I find out she is completely willing to believe the worst about me on very little evidence (no evidence really but she thought she had a little).

Thanks for talking with me ... I will reread what you wrote about your daughter too. We moms have to hold each other up, we aren't allowed to quit mothering, are we!

[Hopalong]

trying to please my mother, which as we all know is like trying to drain the ocean with a teaspoon

ohhh, I remember.

And our daughters probably feel the same way about us.

I guess the task is to look for every opportunity there is to be delighted by them.

And feel it, truly, and then tell them so.

(All the rough edges will still come around again...but in between, we can find the delight. Even the smallest ones.)

As horrible as my D has been lately, I have offered warm praise for a few things for things I thought might not matter, until I saw the look on her face.

love,
Hops

[Sealynx]

Heart,
What I see here is a person whose main motivation is getting attention and she is apparently someone who doesn't care where it comes from. I like to reverse situations when analyzing someone's behavior and ask what would they have liked to happen "instead" and why. So when everyone in the car was talking about Son and his wife, what was she not getting that she wanted? Attention to what she thought was important?

When no one wanted to accept that you were to blame and give her attention for this rant, what does she do? Go over to the other side where a turncoat is going to be wildly popular. And why didn't she reread the text message when it appeared to say something that you wouldn't say??? Perhaps because it was more valuable as an attention getting device "misread"?

When you pass a Casino and no one is paying attention to her at the moment, what is the fastest way to get it? Say something she knows will cause a row and turn attention to her.

When the kids at camp won't make her the center of attention, she joins the ladies group where she is going to be treated differentially because of her age.

As far as your role in all of this, I'm a firm believer that genetics plays a large part in how emotional and empathic we are. I believe you can teach a person values and morals and all about the rights of others, but you can't make them "feel" them. If you can't feel them in relation to situations, what good are they?

I am so sorry you are having to deal with this.
S

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Sealynx, You are exactly right ... that is kind of what I was referring to when I originally said I'm exhausted trying to pour love into a bucket with a hole in the bottom. No matter how much attention she gets, it is never enough. Why oh why can't I consistently ignore it when she is attention-seeking? Probably because I was carefully carefully trained as a child to read my mother's mood and emotions and walk on eggshells, which leaves you unable to ignore anything for fear it might be a bomb that will blow up. I ignore my daughter's attention-seeking behaviors (trying to instead give her attention for the APPROPRIATE things she does) for awhile, but she can keep up the bad behaviors lots longer than I can ignore it, and she obviously knows it. Oh well, I just need to build up my "ignoring" muscles I guess ... it's bad practice to reward somebody for acting badly, isn't it?