I think my child has a personality disorder and it’s getting worse

post reply Forum Index » Adult Children

1 2 3 4 5 6 ► Go

Go to page...

12/19/2023 07:30

Subject: I think my child has a personality disorder and it’s getting worse

quote

Anonymous

I am struggling with how to interact with my DD, who turns 21 in a couple of months.

She has been in and out of therapy for years. She was briefly in a partial hospitalization program in HS for suicide ideation but actually refused to participate in individual therapy there or take the drugs that were prescribed. The only thing she seemed to enjoy about it was group — and she wanted to play therapist herself and counsel other kids because she really enjoys telling other people what to do.

Every conversation with her in recent years feels loaded. It’s like she’s always talking down to you, always needs to assert herself as the smartest person in the room, no matter what the topic. She isn’t well-liked by friends who know her on more than any superficial level, because she has no real close friends. Instead, she seems to have a lot of drama and conflict with people around her, often because she has this impulse to tell people off, especially when she feels aggrieved, which is often.

She just had a disappointment at college, probably related to her interpersonal skills, and has been really withdrawn. I can tell she is depressed and I am concerned about it. But it’s difficult to talk to her because she just thinks she’s perfect and everyone around her is an idiot, including me. Her mother was similar, which is one reason we finally divorced, and while she chose to live with me in MS and HS, the Deja vu of walking on eggshells while she is home is discombobulating.

Before she was 18, I have had therapists tell me she has anxiety and depression; I believe that, but, again, she refused to take the medication for it. Another wondered about bipolar 2 (which I believe her mother suffers from, although her mother took an SSRI for some period of time at least.) Another literally told me they didn’t know what was wrong with her but said something was definitely wrong, and then fired her (a therapist firing a patient makes me think of Borderline, although DD has experienced no abandonment in her life). In the few instances where I attended therapy sessions with her before she was 18, it appeared me to that she approached therapy the same way she approached school — be the teacher’s pet, try to get the therapist to “like” her and validate all of her feelings and grievances, real or imagined. I know now we should have found someone who did DBT but I didn’t realize that then.

She does have a therapist now at college — I get the bills. But I don’t know the therapist and HIPPA means the therapist won’t talk to me. I keep looking for a time to raise this gently with my DD — that she seems to complain a lot and be very short and condescending in the way she speaks to me and her sister (and her mother, from what I have heard). I tried that in June and got the silent treatment for five months…

Kind of at my wits end here. She doesn’t have to live this way. I would like to tell her to see a psychiatrist and discuss whether some medicines could help her live less painfully.