New and looking for advice/ support

Hi!

I posted in the introduction forum but thought this might be a better spot? I have an 18 year old daughter who has been diagnosed with a major depressive disorder, social anxiety, panic disorder and likely a personality disorder. Life has been challenging, frustrating, heartbreaking and terrifying. She is fixated on blaming me for all her mental disease and pretty much anything in life that doesn’t go her way. At one point when she was 16 she blamed for the stress and anxiety of her entire generation.

Her senior year things got really bad. She ended up not going to school for 2 months and we feared she wouldn’t be able to graduate. She managed to pull out of the severe depression and not only graduated but left for college. Things seemed much better. She was making great progress in therapy. Meds seemed appropriate. And then everything fell apart after she started college. She habitually has lied since she was 5 years old. It’s not a new issue. But being away from home she started lying again telling everyone about a made up life where she was a victim of abuse. She is lying to her new therapist who unfortunately is young and inexperienced and is just feeding into it. She’s spiraling out of control again but we are powerless to do anything about it. We have no idea how to interact with her during the limited times she will even acknowledge we exist. Her sisters are devastated and confused. It’s a big ugly mess and none of our friends or family understand. I’m hoping someone here has dealt with similar things and can offer some advice. 😊

Owllvr
Your daughter sounds similar in some ways to my son. He has had only one serious depressive episode and he functions very highly.

When he was six he told the teacher that I left him alone at night and that he was afraid and could not sleep. He had been late to school a few times and this was his excuse.

This caused me a bit if trouble but my babysitter explained that she watched my children while I worked a few nights a week. I felt bad for him as I saw it as a response to my having left his father and gone to work. I had been home with them up to that point in time. I wish now that I had been firmer and less understanding.

I discovered that he has told his daughters that he was in foster care. They will no longer speak to me. He has told others the same story.

He was never in foster care. I was hospitalized for severe depression when he was 12 years old.
He stayed with good friends who he had known since he was 2 years old while I was in the hospital.

I don't have answers for you but I understand how painful this is for you. Please feel free to pm me if you want to.

Do you mean she lies and makes up stories that she was abused at home?

Yes. She says that she grew up in a dysfunctional home where I was emotionally abusive to her. I manipulated her for my personal gain, forced her to participate in activities she didn’t want to do just for my own pride and am unable to show any empathy or concern for her well being. She sites examples of my “abuse” all of which center around times she got in trouble for lying and doing things she shouldn’t. Like when we caught her sending explicit photos of herself to a boy and trying to arrange a meeting with him. She had been staying up late but would say she was reading. Turns out she was sneaking her iPad into her bed and communicating with him on an app she wasn’t allowed to have. We took away her iPad and internet privileges. She was 12 at the time. She now says I took those things away simply because I wanted to control her and make sure she couldn’t communicate with anyone. I wanted to isolate her to hide my abuse of her. She’s very manipulative with her lying and unable to accept any responsibility for her actions. Everything is always my fault. When she was caught sneaking out of the house to go sleep with her boyfriend she just blamed me for spying on her and being controlling. When she struggled with a class in school and her grade dropped she blamed me because she said I made her too stressed about the class so she couldn’t focus. The reality was she was skipping class to see her boyfriend and missed two exams. Literally everything is my fault.

Owllvr
Your consequences sound appropriate to me. Sometimes we do the best we can and our children make the wrong choices. This message is to me too.
The culture blames mothers for everything. I suppose they see mothers as all powerful on some level. I do not blame my mother as she had her limited view of things. At some point in time we take responsibility for our choices. So must our children.

How are you responding to her behavior? I was not assertive enough for a long time. I have made it clear now that I am owed an apology and amends. No less is acceptable. I am willing to discuss reasonable differences opinion. I will not discuss rewritten history.

I spoke to those who were around then and confirmed for my own sake that I was not abusive or unloving. That helped me to stay in reality and not succumb to gaslighting.