I am an abusive daughter & need help.

I think the title says it all.

I'm an abusive daughter. I have spit on my mother, hit my mother (the hitting and spitting stopped a few years ago), insult her on a regular basis, and generally mistreat her. I do not believe that she deserves any respect except that which is inherent to her humanity, and sometimes not even that.

Needless to say, my mother and I have a horrible relationship most of the time, however we have really good times where we get along perfectly. Those rare outbursts of peace are very enjoyable, we have a similar sense of humor and we're alike in some ways so our conversation is usually quite fluid. My mother has made sure she provides me with all the necessary emotional support for me to be a perfectly normal adult, except for when I was a child. I will explain in detail later.

Before you judge me for being what I am, please, let me tell you my story and explain where this is all coming from. I want to change for the better, this is why I am seeking help in this forum.(Please note that this is NOT a way to justify myself, this is simply an explanation. I know I have a problem and I know I NEED help, I WANT to chang. In order to get help, I think it's convenient that you know the full story).

I don't remember how old I was when I started hitting my mother, I was probably around 14 or 15. Prior to this age, my mother had abused me physically. She constantly hit me for being a brat, made me lock myself in my room for the smallest things and other things. I remember one time when she threatened me to break a broomstick on my back and instead of hitting me with it, she broke it on the floor.

She hit me with anything she could get her hands on: hangers, cables, belts, pans, pots, bottles, you name it. When I was 6 or 7, I didn't want her to hit me anymore so I trashed all of her belts. This, of course, made her even angrier and she came up with the brilliant idea to beat me with a hanger. I remember having bruises and marks for weeks at a time from those. Whenever I threatened her to call the police or child services, she would call me a horrible daughter and beat me more, and manipulated me into staying quiet.

There's one particular time I remember very clearly. I have always had skin issues, it gets easily irritated and it itches to the point where I don't want to do anything but scratch it. I truly do not remember what I did to anger her that time, but I kept begging for her to let me go, to let me scratch my arm, to stop hitting me, and she kept me on the floor and smacked me with her open palm and punching me while I cried. That was probably my breaking point. I was tired of being pushed around, tired of feeling weak and helpless.

Then, we had another fight. That's when I decided to hit her. It wasn't a conscious choice, it just happened and I felt extremely liberated. I felt it was my revenge for her hitting me when I was a child. I wasn't small and I wasn't exactly helpless at the time, so when she tried to hit me, I held her hand back - something I would've never done before - and hit her instead. Then, she hit me, and the abuse came from both sides.

This went on for a few years. There was a point in my life where the abuse wasn't mutual, it only came from me. She had stopped hitting me and went into a sort of "submission", kind of like what I did when I was a child. She no longer fought back. The day I turned 18 she threatened to call the police on me if I beat her again. We hadn't had an incident of abuse for a very long time, but our relationship wasn't entirely peaceful. We had our fights, which I think is normal between mothers and daughters, but they weren't very big.

Now, I'm 19, in my second year of University, and struggling to find some sort of respect for my mother. I think one of the reasons we started with the beatings is because I felt (or feel) that it was my way of taking revenge on her hitting me. I have never once stopped to consider how she must have felt when I hit her, just like she never once considered how I felt when she hit me. However, the abuse is mostly verbal now.

I (sometimes) do nice things for people. I have a little money stashed away and I wanted to give my family big presents for Christmas since it's my first year earning a stable salary. However, my mom tried to steal some money from me and I realized that they didn't truly deserve it. If she would steal money from me (money destined to buy her and the rest of my family presents) why did she deserve it? That's the reason she lost all of my respect.

I insult her on a regular basis. I call her stupid, idiot, dumb, etc. She's not dumb, she's more than aware of that, she's not stupid or an idiot, but sometimes she behaves as such.

I...I don't know what to do. I want to change, I want to do something about it, I want to stop being abusive because I know this is tiring for her and for me, not to mention it hurts both of us terribly. But, despite everything, I still feel like she deserves every insult and every hit for beating me when I was a kid and making horrible choices - in my opinion - while bringing me up. We are currently struggling financially (that's the reason I had to get a job in the first place while the original plan was just to keep me in school) because of her choices when I was a kid. She dropped her University for me and generally gave her life away for me. I am terrified of having children and being pregnant because I DO NOT want to end up like her. I don't want to have a daughter like me.

I don't know what to do. I'm an abusive daughter and I want to change somehow. I have asked her if she wants to go to therapy but she "doesn't believe in psychology" and "Doesn't have the money for it". I went to therapy by myself for a while (and it helped, somewhat) but I was unable to talk to my therapist about these things. I don't know where to start, it's embarrassing to acknowledge the fact that my relationship with my mother is horrible and that there has been plenty of abuse from my part.

Whenever I try to talk to her, she gets extremely defensive and we end up having a fight. She's extremely closed up about her things, she's never talked to me about anything. I'm always the one who was to beg for forgiveness, even when the verbal abuse goes both ways. She's not open to talking about anything.

Please, I need help. I want help, I want to stop doing this. I have a problem and can't get out of it by myself.

I don't remember how old I was when I started hitting my mother, I was probably around 14 or 15. Prior to this age, my mother had abused me physically. She constantly hit me for being a brat, made me lock myself in my room for the smallest things and other things. I remember one time when she threatened me to break a broomstick on my back and instead of hitting me with it, she broke it on the floor.

She hit me with anything she could get her hands on: hangers, cables, belts, pans, pots, bottles, you name it. When I was 6 or 7, I didn't want her to hit me anymore so I trashed all of her belts. This, of course, made her even angrier and she came up with the brilliant idea to beat me with a hanger. I remember having bruises and marks for weeks at a time from those. Whenever I threatened her to call the police or child services, she would call me a horrible daughter and beat me more, and manipulated me into staying quiet.

There's one particular time I remember very clearly. I have always had skin issues, it gets easily irritated and it itches to the point where I don't want to do anything but scratch it. I truly do not remember what I did to anger her that time, but I kept begging for her to let me go, to let me scratch my arm, to stop hitting me, and she kept me on the floor and smacked me with her open palm and punching me while I cried. That was probably my breaking point. I was tired of being pushed around, tired of feeling weak and helpless.

Hun, a child learns values from their parents and their assumptions about what love entails come from their direct experiences. For reasons of her own, possibly in connection with her own childhood experiences, your mother abused you. None of this was your fault. On some level, it is highly possible that you internalised these experiences, on some level taking the blame and internalising your experiences, possibly somehow believing yourself to be unworthy and unlovable and deserving of "punishment". As I said before, none of this was your fault. You were a small child, dependent upon your mother, and she as the adult had a responsibility to love and protect you, treating you with respect and kindness. In addition to internalising these experiences, it is highly likely that you knew on some level that none of this was deserved and fair, and possibly stored up a lifetime's worth of anger and a sense of injustice towards your mother. At a time when you started to become an adult, when a child often rebels against their parents anyway, you turned your anger back towards your mother, and the abusive cycle began again.

You know that none of this is normal or right, and you have shown a great deal of insight and maturity to want to change the status quo.

don't know what to do. I'm an abusive daughter and I want to change somehow. I have asked her if she wants to go to therapy but she "doesn't believe in psychology" and "Doesn't have the money for it". I went to therapy by myself for a while (and it helped, somewhat) but I was unable to talk to my therapist about these things. I don't know where to start, it's embarrassing to acknowledge the fact that my relationship with my mother is horrible and that there has been plenty of abuse from my part.

Whenever I try to talk to her, she gets extremely defensive and we end up having a fight. She's extremely closed up about her things, she's never talked to me about anything. I'm always the one who was to beg for forgiveness, even when the verbal abuse goes both ways. She's not open to talking about anything.

Please, I need help. I want help, I want to stop doing this. I have a problem and can't get out of it by myself.

Sadly, you can't change your mother or force her to have any insight into the situation. It is likely that her problems stem from her childhood experiences, and she would need to seek help for herself, of her own accord. You, on the other hand, can change yourself, your attitudes, and your ways of reacting. You can't do this alone, and you'll need help. You have tried therapy once before. I strongly recommend that you return, this time keeping nothing back from the therapist, telling him or her everything. The therapist holds no power to change you, but her or she CAN help you to empower yourself to make the changes that you need. Perhaps the first part of a therapeutic change will come when you can acknowledge to yourself that you did not deserve what your mother did to you as a child.

Please let us know how you get on. I wish you well

Can you get to a therapist and start working on your stuff..

12 step groups relating to your problems...


Keep writing and writing blogs and comments and posts...

Keep exploring..

Make recovery your life's work...

Keep going..

masquerade wrote:For reasons of her own, possibly in connection with her own childhood experiences, your mother abused you.

Parents are always right... and your mom was a good student.

But as a teacher... meh... not so good...

Nepotism101 wrote:she would call me a horrible daughter

You're a good student too...

I'm an abusive daughter.

masquerade wrote:None of this was your fault.

What she said.