Wish i was dead

[Leah123]

I've gone through another weekend in hell. Hell is where my daughter is full of troubles I can't seem to help with no matter how hard I try or want to or love her.

Friday she exploded at my husband, her father, calling him every horrible name ever, a scathing rant. She hit herself on the arms so hard that night because she had a musical to perform and was upset about their awful fight that she did that to distract herself and focus on the show. Couple bruises from it now. I could hardly get her to go home with me then, I literally took her by the arm and led her to the car at one point, trying to manage a seemingly unmanageable situation. Offered to let her spend night at gramma grampas but anyhow, she ended up coming home. Today, a horrible, she had a horrible panic attack over homework and she says again how much she hates herself.

I love her and nothing I do is right, I couldn't make a difference, well, maybe i did and it would be worse if not but I feel.... useless, failure, can't stand anything anymore. I'd just had a truly horrible week at work and I work 6 days a week and finances are.... messy and.... I don't know what to do anymore.

I'm going to have to take her to psychiatrist I guess. The worst thing I can think of aside from things getting worse with her. Such a failure. I tried therapy for her for 6 months, a really good therapist, but she was resistent. I've tried for years before that. nearly 5 years of therapy myself to work on home, and my husband started too a while back. We love her.

I.... thought I... I thought...... I'd manage a good family, I really tried. I am so heartbroken. I don't want her so unhappy and acting vicious and having troubles, and........ I........ I don't want her on medications. She's only 12. And it's like what if she's sentenced to them for life, what have I dont, what have I made.... I thought.... I could try better, do better.

People try to make it sound simple, medicine is medicine, just like insulin, my therapist said. It's not like insulin and it's harder to understand, or maybe it's not harder, but it's hard to understand why my kid.... why it's gone so bad for years and years.... I remember how hard it's always been and how I've always had to pull myself together and keep trying and......

I just started her on high dose omegas a while back but I don't know that I can even wait a few more weeks to see if they help, I have to just give up and see a psychiatrist.

I don't want my little girl on something not well understood, with side effects and unknown future implications and that she may be on forever, and that there may be something wrong with her that she can't grow out of and it's just too hard. The symptoms, the acting out... I wanted to wait it out and help her as best we could, but even this weekedn is horrible and the last two were also bad, we can't take it, I can't take it, I can't keep pulling together.

I'm so..... i don't have words for the feelings here, been crying for an hour or more probably and thinking all the most awful things and wnating at best to run away from everything and be gone and....

how can i go to work, how can i do anything. i'm supposed to be working right now and am so behind.

I feel guilty and guilty feels like selfish and ... i am going to do what seems best.... but it's killing me, this whole process and endless failure. I can't figure out what I hate. Myself, life, the situation..... it's all ugly.

 

[EveHarrington]

Maybe she endured trauma you don’t know about. Maybe she doesn’t even know about it... It would help explain the over the top behavior and self harm.

 

[Leah123]

She didn't. She's always been sensitive and had trouble sleeping, and she's gifted, and she's always acted more intense than the norm and been argumentative and harsh in her words and prone to upsets and physical, and as for trauma, well, just me and dad, I overreacted and screamed at her a few times when she was a little girl, and he can be kind of critical, so those things aren't good, but I'd have figured that....us trying to hard to help her and all the good things we taught and showed her and loving her so much and getting her involved in good things for years that she likes, from sports to girl scouts to drama, that..... all our support and caring and good intentions and the work, therapy and.... just that.... all the love and efforts from that love would... be fruitful.... that..... it would be okay. I wasn't perfect, but I mean, I was, I was a good mom I thought..... I was compassionate and mostly fair and loving and giving and.... a little too anxious and a little too easygoing, but I tried to be balanced and give her all the important things, and sacrificed fo rher even though I know I wasn't perfect, but.... it wasn't enough.

 

[intothelight]

@Leah123 When your child is struggling, there is always that sense of mom guilt, shame, fear about the future, helplessness, etc. Not saying that you are experiencing all of this, but these are a lot of the emotions I struggled with in dealing with my own children's mental health issues. I am on the upside of it now as they have had therapy, one is on medication and they are all young adults living on their own at this point, but it was a rough road to get there. Hold on to the hope of a better future as that will get you through the rough days,

Get a diagnosis for your daughter then explore all of the options available. If possible get her involved in making choices because the more she takes ownership of treatment, the more effective treatment will be. Also take care of yourself and remember that you and your husband are role models for her. Fair or not, how you handle yourself has a huge impact on your daughter.

Get as much support as you can and take it one day at a time. Even when a child is suffering from emotional/psychiatric or physical difficulties, there is so much good in each and everyday, so focus on the good. I even had a list of each day and what went "right" so I wouldn't get broken down when the crises hit.

It hard enough to deal with our own mental health issues, and when children have issues too it adds a whole other layer of stress.
So do make yourself a priority and if that is too hard to do for yourself, do it for her.

 

[Leah123]

I guess I mean that the day to day love and care would help heal harm that my screw ups caused, that... overall we just love her so much and I apologize for my mistakes when they happen and try to make amends and teach her what matters in life and... give her everything I had.... all the normal mom stuff, a playgroup and social network and love of learning and all the wisdom I had, you know.... been trying so hard.

 

[EveHarrington]

No offense, and not trying to make you freak out as a mom, but you don’t know for sure if she was never traumatized.

Many of us here have parents who never knew about our trauma despite being traumatized as a kid, even as a baby.

But hey, if you rather not explore this route and internalize the blame as a bad mommy, that’s your right. I just don’t think it serves you any good to outright deny this possibility. I mean I know you haven’t been with your daughter 24/7 since birth.

I mean I was that sensitive as f*ck kid myself who was also traumatized and voila, pure chaos of a childhood.

 

[Leah123]

@Leah123 When your child is struggling, there is always that sense of mom guil...

Thank you for saying that. I've been ressurecting hope every week for.... probably at least 7 years now. I remember her screaming at me how much she hated me that day, and I lost it and slapped her. I've slapped her twice in her life, the other time she was littler and bit me so hard I was in utter shock. So.... it was already, we were already well into rough times when she was just a little girl.

I've been pulling myself together all the time since then. Get back onthe f*cking horse every day and do it right, do my best.

yes, you're right there are good moments and clearly they're out the window for me right now, I'm just upset.... there are lots of good parts, but... too many hard parts. too many.

I probably suck as a role model. I..... am upset that she's so upset, it's hard to see her hurting so and what I do ... she's always rejecting, and my help.... I feel like I'm always failing to b ehelpful.

she sees my upset now, she feels my ambivilence about psychiatric meds.... but we've talked some about it. Diagnosis would be IED with depression and anxiety atm. That based on my input and the therapists' sense. her too, she considers herself to have anxiety and temper issues. My brother had IED when he was younger, but undiagnosed, but fits the criteria to a T, and my mom has serious mental illness, sigh. There's no escape, huh, no matter what we do? That's a horrible thing to feel, and useless, I just feel like... i worked SO hard to escape my family and not just with distance, I did therapy, I did support groups, reading, work on myself.... and i couldn't prevent this no matter how much I wanted to or what I tried. :(

 

[Leah123]

No offense, and not trying to make you freak out as a mom, but you don’t know for sure if she w...

I think there's just more options than eithe runknown trauma or horrible mom. I think, probably it's a combination family and biology (family history of mental health issues in her uncle and gramma for example, and I had some PTSD so impact there) and her temperament, it just hurts to.... I just feel so very at a loss at how hard a time she's having. There were bad fights when she was young, me and dad trying to get her to sleep well as she got a bit older and it came so very very hard for us, (when she was born, for a very long time she'd never sleep more than about 25 mins at a time) so we' vehad horrible fights if you want to talk trauma, but.... I would have hoped that.... our love and care and commitment.... I just didn't see yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm too...it's hard to know how things play out, to question if all the work wasn't enough, wasn't good enough, it's just...

 

[Leah123]

We didn't just fight about the sleep trouble, I mean, we had some fights, but we worked really hard on helping her develop a godo sleep routing, was a lot of hard work and consultations, and tried the doctors a couple times.... just a lot.

 

[ninja]

I'm sorry your daughter is having such a hard time and you are feeling at a loss. Sometimes unconditional love and support from parents won't prevent difficulties. You girl is her own little animating human, with an increasing sense of individuality and willfulness at the wonderful and confusing age of twelve. Maybe she could benefit from speaking to someone outside of the family? Sometimes we need a safe place with a fresh set of ears, because parents cannot be everything. Did she get a say in choosing the therapist? Maybe it's even an art mentor? Does she like to paint? Does she like horses? Writing? Music? Maybe now she would be ready to speak to someone?

I see that you are doing the best you can, by listening to her and remaining open to different possibilities of ways to help her. Maybe she is feeling an unusual amount of stress right now for reasons. . maybe the musical or school and/or something else. It's so hard to know; my inclination is to wonder what happened between her and her father that she started screaming. It seems she needed to express something to him, and now at the very least she needs some time to recuperate, to do grounding things.

Take care of you too. Sending support.

 

[Leah123]

She has mentors and the six months therapy didn't work. Her difficulties have been throughout her life, not due to her age. So that's the thing, it's been like this for years and years and we've worked for improvements, and.... just.... still having ongoing horrible, painful episodes. What happened was that her dad tried to wake her up so she could be on time to her musical. That's the IED, her responses are disproportionate, sigh. She reacts to things, not to nothing, but her reactions are just superfueled. She does have interests and we encourage them all. Drama is her current favorite so she's been in the musical and clubs and has a summer full of camps coming up. We've supported all her other interests too, and continue to.

 

[joeylittle]

I’d get her back into therapy, with someone who specializes in her age group.