Closure with verbally abusive daughter

My daughter is now 16. She gets annoyed easily with her parents and her sister who is 5 years younger. She is verbally abusive in the last three years to me and her mom and sister. She has called f_ing b_ch, f_ing f_hole, f_ing bast_d and more many times to dad, mom and sister. It has got progressively worse. Few days back she did call me f_ing bast_d, and i could not take it. I did hit her on her back once. She called me again, i hit her again in that ugly outburst. I felt terrible after this incident. I was traumatized that i hit her. I could not sleep that night and in the middle of that night at 1am, i sent her an sms apologizing for hitting her and that i feel terrible about it and few days later i apologized in person. Her psychiatrist told me that my daughter has to apologize to me and not the other way around as her extreme verbal abuse was the trigger.

My daughter says she has become like this because what we did to her when she was about 8 years old. There are three occasions she recalls that my wife had hit her. I wish that we had not hit her and we cant take it back now. At that time my daughter did not think much of it, but in the last three years she has felt very bad about it and feels very hurt. She associates those memories to almost all of her current misbehavior and verbal abuse, saying you made me become what i am today.

To make matters worse, i ended up getting into that situation few days back which i feel terrible about. Its a scar i have to live with for the rest of my life. What is the best way to resolve this issue. We have apologized to what happened but she continues to use that as an excuse for her current behavior. She is not taking any responsibility for her verbal abuse, nor does she apologize. The psychotherapist could not make much progress with our daughter, though the psychiatrist has helped with the medicine to reduce her high irritability and anger.

hmnn..
I dislike disagreeing with a psychiatrist but i think an apology on your side of things is very important here..
It's incredibly difficult to restrain yourself sometimes when someone is being that aggressive and verbally abusive but ultimately, if you hit someone, that reaction is yours and needs apologising for.

I also think your daughter should apologise for her part in all of this.. it's very clear that treating you that way is unacceptable and that is her responsibility to apologise for.

Does your daughter have a diagnosis of anything at all? It's just that i'm currently assuming that she's an NT.. if she has a developmental disorder of some variety, my response will change quite a bit because people with special needs need very different handling to those without them.
Any specific mental health diagnosis?

I think though that it might be really helpful to all of you to have some family systems counselling.. so that everyone can talk in a safe environment and gain the perspective of a therapist that is there for all of you. How would you feel about this and would your daughter want to try? If you can persuade her to go then it may well be the first step towards building a new kind of relationship between all of you.

Thank you so much for your response. I agree - I should apologize for my action, which i did.

My daughter did not have any major developmental problems, but she was a bit delayed in speaking full sentences, which she did when 3.5-4 years old.

At 12, she had significant behavioral problems with family members at which time we saw a psychiatrist. She was diagnosed with adolescent onset mood disorder for which she was treated with fludac. It did get a bit better but not fully. At 15, she stopped taking the medicine. Around this time she experienced sex, alcohol and drugs. Thankfully within few months she stopped all three as she realized it was bad and harmful to her well being. She has been getting low grades for many years, but this year has gone worse - E grades - all due to complete lack of application.

Six months ago, she was at a low point emotionally when she agreed to seek help but had to be a different doctor. We saw a second psychiatrist who diagnosed her with mixed affective disorder and currently taking medicine for the same. We also sought a family counseling six months ago. Recently, in one of the sessions, the counselor confronted my daughter as a verbal abuser and take responsibility for her actions, which did not go well with my daughter. She completely shut down in that session and refused to talk any further and refused to go back to see her later.

My daughter does not like boundaries. She breaks even previously agreed upon boundaries and fails to come through her commitments. It is very hard to enforce consequences as she gets very angry and irritated and abusive both verbally and sometimes physically. She has even run away from the house two times in the night - but returned few hours later. She refuses to take responsibility for her actions and pins the blame on others for her actions.

Besides being verbally abusive to the family, she has mentioned many times we are the worst parents. She attributes her current behavior to two reasons, one - when she was hit by her mom on three occasions when she was eight years old, and two - that her mom favors the younger sister. I will go back for family counseling to sort this out, just that i have to persuade my daughter to agree to it, and possibly find a new counselor if she does not want to go back to the previous counselor.