Daughter still has contact with my main abuser; complicated

Hi,

We've been avoiding the to us most difficult subject of the last few weeks. Now I'm asking for advice:( My daughter came back home after a broken relationship and it's hard. When our crisis began, we mostly felt (and feel) very guilty for being a bad mother when she grew up. We were tired a lot, the house was a mess, and we were still being psychologically abused by our mother, it was hard. My sister and my daughter are her 'golden children' and she's always talked bad about me with them (with my exes, with everybody in my life she could get her hands on. We let that happen for way too long). What makes this complicated, is that my daughter has a lot of reasons to be disappointed in me and I didn't want to do the same gossiping thing or put family drama's on her plate, so I never defended myself against the blaming and shaming she also got sucked into. Just a few months ago I did tell her without much detail about the did and that my mother and her friends (who aren't around anymore) caused it, but that's pretty late.

When she came back, we were very motivated to be patient and understanding, to seperate this from her bond with my mother and sister and to take this chance to bond more together.

She's been critisizing just about everything I say and do, how (bad) I look, she jokes about my sister being the only good person in the family, doesn't believe I have DID or an abusive past and she lies a lot and then tells me my memory is bad (we don't have amnesia anymore). We've been adjusting (too much) and trying to keep the peace by understanding but setting boundaries (no more lashing out about me faking the DID, for example. We don't talk about it anymore after explaining how this affected all those years in the past, and we try hard to not dissociate (she also finds the whole thing scary because of movies about this she saw, we also understand that:() so it's understandable that she doesn't believe it), but I'm on the edge of breaking down. She's been tested and seen by several T's, she has adhd and a low iq (like my sister, which is probably why my mother 'picked them' or something), no pd or ptsd. She does find my mother a weirdo and is not really impressed by her tactics, which always was a relief as far as her own bond with her, but still.

She's my daughter, I love her, and I should be able to understand where this is coming from and step up as a mother (and not a victim here, that won't help her as well) and most of the time I can, but it's hard. We are depressed and sad about this and we relive a lot at night because of the resemblence in the things she says (with the things my mother and sister always said. I see how my feelings about this are out of proportions becáuse of that, but it's getting harder to seperate these things because it happens every day). How to do this without rejecting her and her feelings? She needs a mother, not an emotional wreck. If I had a T, I would've asked there, but I don't have a T and this is way too much for talks with friends.

i don't have kids so i don't know how much i can help but i get this with my siblings so i understand it, at least in some way. i'm the eldest of my siblings and i feel like i have to take care of them. my parents handed a lot of responsibilities to me that involved caring for my siblings, and i didn't resist my role as scapegoat because i hoped it would protect them from being hurt like i was (i was wrong, which still hurts). my siblings never took my side and believed a lot of what my parents told them about me. even now, years later, they don't treat me as they do each other. they don't believe my trauma, or they may acknowledge it but not respect how it affects me today. i've tried explaining my mental health to them, but they don't understand.

i know it's different because i am not responsible for my siblings, even though i feel like i have to be, while you're responsible for your daughter because you're her parent. i think the important thing is to find a way to vent the emotion out without it involving your daughter maybe? that way you could remove at least some portion of the feelings that are coming up from the past and be in the now as much as possible while talking to her. having a T would help with that, but if not have you ever tried helplines before? i know not everyone feels comfortable using them, they've helped me deal with things like this before but i know it's not always comfortable or even feasible to speak to strangers about stuff like this.

i think talking to your daughter about this is important, when you feel ready to. she needs to understand that what she says is hard on you, but that you understand where she's coming from. it's difficult and i wish i could help you more. i'm sure there are people here who have children who maybe know how to handle this stuff better.

i hope things get better soon, sorry i can't be much help.

hi - i can relate to alot of this.

as a mother with DID and the daughter of a mother with DID.

how old is your daughter and what's the physical proximity of the parties in question?

please don't beat yourself up anymore. that guilt will weigh you down. just ask if you did your absolute best. because that's all anyone can do.

Sad situation. You want to love her yet set boundaries on how she can treat you. A part of me says the seeds you plant now could take years to bloom. There were times when I did not appreciate kindness and concern until I was older. See if you can determine what her "love language" is so your expressions of caring are more meaningful to her. According to theory different people favor different ways of caring: quality time, kind words, acts of service, touching/affection or gifts. It's often used in context of romantic relationships, but it can apply to any close relationship.
This is the most appropriate piece I could find for reference, although it's intended for younger kids you could adapt it for your child's age. https://bfm.familyfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Five-Love-Languages.pdf

And you have to set boundaries too. You have to defend yourself from cruel words. Something like, "I love you, and was not a good mother but I am trying to be better now. I will do what I can to help you, but you cannot keep criticizing and saying mean jokes." Then there has to be a consequence if she keeps doing it.

You said you never defended yourself because you don't want to add drama. But I think you need to defend yourself. Your moral-logical orientation is not suited to the games. You know it isn't healthy and not what you want for your child. But your mother and sister do not have the same logical-moral orientation and they are influencing her. You have to defend yourself from defamation or you might seem to be agreeing to it. Defend yourself and plant seeds. I hope you and your daughter can heal your relationship.

raptureblues wrote:i don't have kids so i don't know how much i can help but i get this with my siblings so i understand it, at least in some way. i'm the eldest of my siblings and i feel like i have to take care of them. my parents handed a lot of responsibilities to me that involved caring for my siblings, and i didn't resist my role as scapegoat because i hoped it would protect them from being hurt like i was (i was wrong, which still hurts). my siblings never took my side and believed a lot of what my parents told them about me. even now, years later, they don't treat me as they do each other. they don't believe my trauma, or they may acknowledge it but not respect how it affects me today. i've tried explaining my mental health to them, but they don't understand.

i know it's different because i am not responsible for my siblings, even though i feel like i have to be, while you're responsible for your daughter because you're her parent. i think the important thing is to find a way to vent the emotion out without it involving your daughter maybe? that way you could remove at least some portion of the feelings that are coming up from the past and be in the now as much as possible while talking to her. having a T would help with that, but if not have you ever tried helplines before? i know not everyone feels comfortable using them, they've helped me deal with things like this before but i know it's not always comfortable or even feasible to speak to strangers about stuff like this.

i think talking to your daughter about this is important, when you feel ready to. she needs to understand that what she says is hard on you, but that you understand where she's coming from. it's difficult and i wish i could help you more. i'm sure there are people here who have children who maybe know how to handle this stuff better.

i hope things get better soon, sorry i can't be much help.

Thank you very much, raptureblues. Your situation must feel the same on a lot of levels. Writing this question down already calmed things down a lot. I think also because younger parts needed to know that I'm taking care of this (or, at least I'm trying to) and yes, because of the 'vent'. For some reason that alone helped me in seeing how the here and now differs a whole lot from the past and that this situation isn't thát bad.

I don't want her to feel guilty by expressing what actually hurts. Making people feel guilty is sort of the biggest thing in the family. And since I'm doubting everything that comes out of my mouth anyway, ánd know that I'm being oversensitive on a whole damn lot of different levels (compared to 'normal people') this is difficult, but I will find a way to set more healthy boundaries without affecting her feeling comfortable enough to express it all, indeed. Thank you!

BeccaBee wrote:hi - i can relate to alot of this.

as a mother with DID and the daughter of a mother with DID.

how old is your daughter and what's the physical proximity of the parties in question?

please don't beat yourself up anymore. that guilt will weigh you down. just ask if you did your absolute best. because that's all anyone can do.

Thank you very much, BeccaBee, I really appreciate this. She's nineteen and the parties in question live a few miles away in our hometown where a lot of her friends also live. She doesn't see them often, but since the did came out and especially since she moved back in, they've been contacting her a lot. On her social media accounts, they respond to literally every single thing she posts, it's all kind of trashy and maybe competitive, I think (we've already made some progress; that doesn't affect us as bad anymore).

Yeah, the guilt is quite the load. I don't know if i'll ever get over that, but I will focus hard on our future together and possibilities instead of the past. The fact that she wánts to be here and have a good time together (which we certainly also have) is great. I did my absolute best, and so did R and B, who used to host a lot. It wasn't good enough, if only we knew about all of this before. I think most (involved) parts have never loved anyone except her. That's scary and reassuring at the same time. It's the reason we're still here and have a chance.

Your kid will be a grown up before you know it:) And you already have the awareness which is very strong and great for the both of you. Thanks again.

myce wrote:Sad situation. You want to love her yet set boundaries on how she can treat you. A part of me says the seeds you plant now could take years to bloom. There were times when I did not appreciate kindness and concern until I was older. See if you can determine what her "love language" is so your expressions of caring are more meaningful to her. According to theory different people favor different ways of caring: quality time, kind words, acts of service, touching/affection or gifts. It's often used in context of romantic relationships, but it can apply to any close relationship.
This is the most appropriate piece I could find for reference, although it's intended for younger kids you could adapt it for your child's age. https://bfm.familyfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Five-Love-Languages.pdf

And you have to set boundaries too. You have to defend yourself from cruel words. Something like, "I love you, and was not a good mother but I am trying to be better now. I will do what I can to help you, but you cannot keep criticizing and saying mean jokes." Then there has to be a consequence if she keeps doing it.

You said you never defended yourself because you don't want to add drama. But I think you need to defend yourself. Your moral-logical orientation is not suited to the games. You know it isn't healthy and not what you want for your child. But your mother and sister do not have the same logical-moral orientation and they are influencing her. You have to defend yourself from defamation or you might seem to be agreeing to it. Defend yourself and plant seeds. I hope you and your daughter can heal your relationship.

Thank you, myce:) What you say resonates a lot. The 'planting the seeds' is what we tried with not doing the same thing and trying to reassure ourselves that when the time is right for her, we'll explain it all and we always want to give her the room to come to her own conclusions by herself, without manipulating her. Even before knowing about this all, we talked about that part with friends. When it still felt like 'just seperating myself from tought behavior during childhood and the influence family still has' like éverybody goes through in life, I think. And we did that in the clumsiest (and maybe spineless) way by just not defending ourselves and our morals at all, when it comes to my mother and sister and their 'stuff'. On other parts of life, we do. We sometimes try to use resembling examples to not cause loyalty conflicts bút however teach her the, in our opinion, right thing. It's strange, people always saw me as a strong person with courage. Well, that clearly wasn't/isn't the case in this case. I 'stepped up' in less important situations (to compensate, perhaps) and let my daughter down with that.

Thank you very much for pointing out how it matters to find her love language and thank you for that link. We're definitly checking that out. With reading and learning, we've been focussing too much on did itself and with finding her language, we've been focussing too much on understanding how she understands intellectually (the low iq was a surprise because on an emotional level and in communication, she's wise and quite solid (in most relationships, she doesn't have problems, this situation has hardly anything to do with her traits. Yes, she's influenced, bigtime). So it's the other way around, with us, I suddenly think).

Thank you all very much for talking with me about this. Your thoughts helped me a lot and this reflecting also helps a bunch as we speak.

ps, a few hours after posting this about the situation, I wrote an honest e-mail to my possible T to be. We spoke on the phone before and she was very clear (which I appreciated A LOT) about not being sure yet if her private practice is 'enough'. I don't want to leave out the bad parts to not scare her away and then all of the sudden scare her away while already having built a treatment-relationship.

She responded in a very nice and calm way about taking the time to get to know each other and see if it will work for both, and she ended the mail with 'look forward to seeing you monday!'. Yikes! I thought it was next month! So monday I'm seeing my possible T to be who I think approaches this carefully and realisticly which is a big reassurance (the first 'did-T' just dived in, made/saw a mess and then shut the door). Don't know if I'm bringing this up soon, I've learned from bringing too much up too soon (this get's sabotaged from the inside and I don't know if there's programming involved as well on this part), but it's good news anyway:)

I think these posts were by me (Ex) and Er.

19 year olds are clueless assholes. what she is going through is her own $#%^ and doesn't have nearly as much to do with you as you may think. reeling from a break up she's just tethering anywhere she can.

honestly I would rewind and just have clear boundaries like you would with a toddler. if she $#%^ talks you to your face just end the interaction and walk away. super calm. she will learn to be nice if she wants time with mom. having an activity to engage in can help reduce the $#%^ talking. so whatever you guys are into, do that together. so the focus is on crafting, hiking, flea market scavenging - whatever.

honestly this is her $#%^ and the only thing that fixes it is time. she will find better relationships than what she has now. she is grabbing on any lifeline she can find. even if it's twisted and toxic. she will make new friends. now isn't a time where you can make it about you. she is still a teen. mid twenties before you can have the mature communication you are hoping looking for. at 19, you can't be friends. you still have to Mom the hell out of that $#%^.

Was there something triggering? Because what you're saying, doesn't seem to be about the situation here or even how I might have unintentionally described it. She for example has healthy relationships, like mentioned before, and what we're talking about here is approaching this in the for her best way, on her level. That's the whole subject...

Bejer wrote:She's nineteen and the parties in question live a few miles away in our hometown where a lot of her friends also live. She doesn't see them often, but since the did came out and especially since she moved back in, they've been contacting her a lot. On her social media accounts, they respond to literally every single thing she posts, it's all kind of trashy and maybe competitive, I think (we've already made some progress; that doesn't affect us as bad anymore).

Maybe this part was part of a confusion? Her grandmother, aunt and friends live in the town where she has lived all her life and where I moved out little over a year ago. Those friendships aren't toxic, from that now bolded 'them' on is about my mother and sister.

Bejer wrote:Hi,

My daughter came back home after a broken relationship and it's hard.

She's been critisizing just about everything I say and do, how (bad) I look, she jokes about my sister being the only good person in the family, doesn't believe I have DID or an abusive past and she lies a lot and then tells me my memory is bad (we don't have amnesia anymore). We've been adjusting (too much) and trying to keep the peace by understanding but setting boundaries....

She's my daughter, I love her, and I should be able to understand where this is coming from and step up as a mother.....

I'm saying that she is 19 and dealing with her own stuff. understanding your DID and trauma history may be a bit too much for her right now. if it doesn't fit the situation then it can be dismissed.