<p>I thought I read a few pages back that at one point she felt her daughter’s life was in danger – when she brought her home I believe - and that she is actually doing much better than she was. Yes, Terwitt, there are a lot of conflicting plans, but a lot of it is from posters, not all of it is from M3. As for setting a date, etc. remember the M-3 has said the husband is not on the same page. It’s very difficult to throw a kid out or take radical action if the other parent is not on board with the plan, particularly if one parent is enabling the child. She needs her husband on board and it seems he has been getting closer. I do think they need to see a therapist together and get a plan they can both live with. Salvador Minuchin, founder of structural family therapy, once said that if a child (and he meant a young child) is terrorizing the family, it can be assumed that there is an accomplice. A child who controls a family is standing on someone’s shoulders. Obviously, this is a grown child but I think the principle holds true. The best laid plans will not work if someone is an accomplice. I think M3 is ready to stop enabling, but it is essential that her husband join her in that. Otherwise, she will need a different plan altogether.</p>
<p>Yes, M-3, your inability to take action is actually the reason I suggested that you might have some PTSD. You continue to react in the same way based on your fear of what will “happen” if you try something else.</p>
<p>This stuckness, as others have indicated, can just be a sign of co-dependence, but it can also be a manifestation of the PTSD, imho. You keep reacting as if your daughter is still a child and you are afraid of the “same thing” occuring in her life again. It keeps you from being able to act on the new information you have recieved.</p>
<p>It may well be that you actually CAN’T do anything differently. People sometimes think there is only the fight or flight response. But there is a third alternative: “Freeze”</p>
<p>You seem to have the “Freeze” response to stressors of this variety. Given the slivers of things you have shared about your own family of origin, I am extrapolating to a hypothesis that your daughter is simply not the first person you have encountered in your life who treats you this way, who you have to “save.” I would delve into who you were’t “able” to save in order to figure out who it is you are afraid you are about to lose.</p>
<p>For sure, you are in the process of losing yourself in all of this. I’m so sorry. I would really recommend you go for treatment for co-dependency issues at some place like Sierra Tucson if you were my client. You need some serious intervention outside this situation. Also, it would leave your husband with the opportunity to “deal” with this on his own, since he seems to be in the way of your plans. Maybe, if he were bearing the brunt of all of this, he would be able to “understand.”</p>
<p>Again, good luck to all of you.</p>
<p>I think the point that poetgrl imade in her post is an important consideration in all this.</p>
<p>I feel for M3. It can be very very hard to break out of a pattern like this. I was in an abusive marriage for seven years, and it took a major depressive episode and a year of therapy to finally screw up the courage to leave. Mind you, this was a blazingly obvious choice to everyone I knew, they couldn’t undrstand why I ever stayed with him.</p>
<p>But I was raised in a family where I was basically conditioned to consider abnormal, abusive behavior as normal and expected. And it takes a great deal of effort to fight a lifetime of conditioning.</p>
<p>M3 would most benefit from personal counseling, and she absolutely must get her H to stand with her in some kind of plan to deal with this mess.</p>
<p>The Language of Letting Go Journal: A Meditation Book and Journal for Daily Reflection by Melony Beattie
The above is a book that my friend found helped her. The book is in the form where you do our own writing.
Your D’s behavior will most likely not change unless your reaction changes. The behavior is working for her. She gets what she wants. Someone has to get off the hamster wheel or it will just keep spinning.</p>
<p>I have been thinking about Momma3 all night. I am truly worried about her. When she talks about her head pounding and feeling her blood pressure rise I wonder just how much more her body can take. </p>
<p>I don’t think most of us know what we would do in her situation. I am sure that despite Momma’s determination to make changes, she is terrified that her actions will trigger some horrific reaction and she might lose her daughter forever. While it is true that her daughter probably won’t change until the safety net is removed, this is indeed a high risk decision. She is a volatile young woman and no one knows for sure if the changes will be for better or worse. Or how bad things might get before they improve.</p>
<p>So, Momma3, I am just holding you on my heart. You need to do what you can handle. You can listen to our suggestions but she is your daughter and only you & your family will have to live with your decisions. </p>
<p>Here’s hoping you can get some rest and that you take care of your own health.</p>
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<p>But we do know that things will get worse if there are no changes at all. It’s a given.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior</p>
<p>Well said, worknprogress2. I totally agree. And while it may be a given that things will get worse if nothing is done, that doesn’t mean they can’t get much worse in other scenarios. The stakes are high.</p>
<p>M-3’s D certainly behaved horribly when she got home but it seems to me this was to be expected - she long ago learned the best form of defense is attack and apart from that it really sounded like a scared 2 year old tantrum. At the moment she’s not able to access much in the way of internal resources or problem solving skills and all she can think to do is demand her parents take care of the problem.<br>
I think it’s easy for us to describe someone else’s kid as an adult (even though they technically are -I know about my own kids areas of immaturity and so make certain allowances) and get a bit hard core about consequences but I think defusing some of the emotional turmoil would strike me as a better approach. Allowing the natural consequences to occur gives her an opportunity to learn and grow and gets you out of the middle M-3. I really agree with Soozie’s emphasis on helping her get her own place as a big part of the plan. I’m sure also there’s much that hasn’t been shared and reiterate the need for you to find some tangible support for yourself
I can’t seem to get a read on where your H stands on this M-3 - is the intense conflict between you and D or is some of her anger directed towards her dad too?<br>
There are a lot of people thinking about you.</p>
<p>worknprogress - each one of us would handle it differently because none of us would have the exact same set of circumstances and context. But I’d like to think that most of us, when faced with a challenging adult child, would at least take some action. We may not all agree on the action, but do something!</p>
<p>This daughter is dangerous, not just to herself, but to her. Momma-three is living in a prison in her own house. I see the physical risk right now to the mother, does she feel safe living there with her daughter? And a husband that allows a daughter to hit her mother? I sure wouldn’t.</p>
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I am not so sure I agree with this, workinprogress2. Todays accident was a perfect example.</p>
<p>Was also thinking about poetgrls post. I agree completely that dealing with the enabling, the codependence is important, and Sierra Tucson is a great facility for that. But if you are thinking this is PTSD, poetgrl, what to you think the initial trauma was? Are you thinking possibly the OP was a victim of abuse in her younger years? That could explain some familiarity/tolerance of continued abuse.</p>
<p>I wonder what is going on now. Momma-three hasn’t posted since early afternoon.</p>
<p>Hopefully she is preoccupied with sorting things out in her house instead of posting on CC. Or perhaps she left the home for the night and did not take a computer with her.</p>
<p>Every now an then there is a part of me that wonders if maybe she’s off at the publishers with the next chapter of a book!</p>
<p>I am certainly not advocating doing “nothing” but everyone in that household is on edge and I think we need to be careful about what we advise. I am not there. I haven’t assessed daughter. I can hear the growing desperation in Momma’s posts. This is not a therapeutic setting. We have gone way beyond giving some helpful tips to mom about a daughter who is being a little ornery. </p>
<p>I have worked with families who have been this torn apart. And amazingly, sometimes it does just work itself out. But I also have known families who have finally taken steps and lost a child. I am picturing one young man right now. ADD, some pot use, accomplished older brother. He became increasingly defiant, lots of scenes, parents finally told him they were going to send him to military school. They had info, looked very serious. Who knows if they would have followed through. Son said okay and the next day when they came home from work he had shot himself. </p>
<p>We are in over our heads here. Even those of us who have had training and have been in the field for a long time.</p>
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a little ornery? Thats like saying the Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground.</p>
<p>I think many more of us are worried that if m-3 DOESN’T do something soon there could be a bigger crisis than what happened today. As teriwtt said- we can hope that maybe that is where she is tonight. If so, bravo.</p>
<p>I don’t feel we are “in over our heads”. We are making suggestions based on the information presented to us. Surely, SURELY there is more to this story (no references to the late Leslie Nielson, please 
) thatn we are being told, but no one is suggesting in any way shape or form that this is anything more than helpful advice/suggestions to a parrent coming her asking for feedback. This isnt Dr laura (thank god-- she is a quack) and it isnt Dear Abby. Its just the parents section of a college website.</p>
<p>I know many, many families who have taken steps (including mine) and the steps were essential for the protection of the child, the family members and the community. In the vast majority of the cases there was no suicide and only a temporary “loss” of the relationship. The kids were angry and tried all the usual measures to “punish” the parents for the steps taken, but, eventually, most of the young people admitted that the steps were appropriate. These were younger kids than M3’s daughter, but the point is that you can’t be held hostage by your child in this way.</p>
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<p>Or anyone, for that matter, and still call it healthy for anyone involved.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter what we say, here. M-3 will not do anything until she is “ready” anyway, and it seems as if the husband is even less ready, which gives the whole thing that fantastic “addict” feel. To me.</p>
<p>Jym: Depending on someone’s central nervous system, believing your child almost lost their life and bringing them home to “save” them can be more than enough to lead to mild PTSD, as you know. One does not have to have been the victim to be truamatized, if you have the “right” central nervous system. That is point one.</p>
<p>However, I wouldn’t have brought it up except that M-3 has mentioned having a recovering addict for a brother. He might be in recovery now, but we have no idea what it was like, or what the family history is, or how long she lived with him, or blah, blah, blah.</p>
<p>The reason I mention sierra tucson is that I think they are better than anyone at treating family “systems,” and here, the system itself has jumped the tracks. As you know. I’m not sure, at this point, that they don’t all need treatment. </p>
<p>However, as I said in an earlier post, I could be wrong. I’m only going off of what is written here.</p>
<p>JYM - that was my point. This is a serious situation.</p>
<p>Once again, I am not advocating that the family does nothing. I just believe they need to be helped by someone with a comprehensive view of the situation and someone who has the ability to provide appropriate treatment if necessary.</p>
<p>I understand where your perspective is coming from ,poetgrl. Sounds like that you are seeing , perhaps from a family systems perspective, that the severe illness of one child can lead to PTSD-like reactions in the face of the “illness” of another child. But as teriwtt chronologized (is that a word?) earlier, this stuff with the daughter has been going on for quite a long time. If its PTSD- its sure has been ongoing for a long time, and every dengerous behavior the dau is demonstrating is triggering soem sort of PTSD reaction? I am just having a little trouble seeing it that way. It NO doubt the parents are abused, frightened and bullied, but the tail has been wagging this dog for a long time. I hope m3 is finally ready to act, before we all develop PTSD reading about the chaos and ongoing crises in this poor family.</p>
<p>And workinprogress
My point is- we can offer advice, and she is welcome to take it… or not. Hopefully she is getting professional help on a face-to-face basis. THe scary part is that the danger has been escalating in this family. Case in point todays accident. Making a change will be harder and harder, and the reactions from the family members involved may be greater and greater.</p>