After 4 years when my adult daughter wasn’t communicating with me, we reconnected last year and things have been going pretty well for a year. I have had mental health issues for years and done my best to get help and deal with them. I’ve had a little success in the last few years but I’m not used to being secure in myself and don’t have a lot of skills.

My daughter called today and seemed to want some kind of closeness or something that I didn’t feel that I was providing or knew how to provide. Also, there was one time when she was talking about something about her son and I felt scared for him because of her attitude toward him. So I said something about a different kind of attitude in what was probably a know-it-all way and she responded “Oh, I must have triggered something” and I agreed once she pointed that out. But I hadn’t been aware of the triggering, just the fear – I guess fear could be a good signal to me that something is probably being triggered. But I’d never gotten that feedback before.

I still think my daughter’s attitude was a dysfunctional one that she undoubtedly learned growing up, but now I’m better and don’t want another generation to suffer from the dysfunctional stuff. Well, I guess that’s not up to me, even if my daughter got the dysfunctional attitude from me. And who knows? Maybe the boy isn’t being hurt by it like I was.

But this conversation with her also illustrates why I’m guarded and scared of being spontaneous with her, which then means that I’m emotionally unavailable, which is part of the pattern from the past.

We ended the conversation talking about plans to get together in January to do some fun things with the kids, so I guess maybe it just was a bump as we have discussed and agreed would happen.

Any thoughts or suggestions? I’m not good at reading social cues and I’m kind of stiff but I try.