Advice? Daughter pushing people away

[Anonymous]

I’d look into DBT therapy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi Mom, there is a good reason I don't want to see you or talk you you and you aren't going to change so no point expecting you to.

Are you mad your parents are trying to address your personality issues as well?

[Anonymous]

She may need a coach and not a therapist.

[Anonymous]

this is my DD. neuro-psych testing (5 x! - and now an adult working). She has Asperger/ASD and other comorbidities. She does, indeed, push emotional relationships away. IMHO, she just can't process being intimate, or close, to someone, so she does push them awauy

[Anonymous]

Op here. Thank you for all the advice and insight. You have given me a lot to think about. To answer some questions…She does realize that she has issues but I don’t think she realizes the extent. It makes her very sad that she doesn’t have many friends. She has been diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety. She dies not take meds for anxiety and I think that would really help her. She wears every emotion on her dace and always has. So if she is annoyed, mad, or upset, everyone around her can tell. It is very uncomfortable. Ironic that someone mentioned her needing a coach because I was just thinking the same thing - that she needs someone go around with her to help her work on her responses, tone, and facial expressions. She does have a boyfriend and she actually seems to treat him very well. She accepts his quirks and flaws and loves him for it. I am so glad she is like that with him, but I just wish she would give the rest of us the same grace. At least I know she’s capable of it.

[Anonymous]

Just let her be. Let her go have a job, pay rent, and live her life however she wants. This is not your problem at this point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here. Thank you for all the advice and insight. You have given me a lot to think about. To answer some questions…She does realize that she has issues but I don’t think she realizes the extent. It makes her very sad that she doesn’t have many friends. She has been diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety. She dies not take meds for anxiety and I think that would really help her. She wears every emotion on her dace and always has. So if she is annoyed, mad, or upset, everyone around her can tell. It is very uncomfortable. Ironic that someone mentioned her needing a coach because I was just thinking the same thing - that she needs someone go around with her to help her work on her responses, tone, and facial expressions. She does have a boyfriend and she actually seems to treat him very well. She accepts his quirks and flaws and loves him for it. I am so glad she is like that with him, but I just wish she would give the rest of us the same grace. At least I know she’s capable of it.

Then your response, OP, should be to point out the discrepancy between how she treats the boyfriend and how she treats the rest of your family, be firm that the latter is unacceptable and then exclude her from family gatherings if she can't be sociable and kind. To do otherwise is just enabling and again, it's insulting and offensive to those of your children who are able to maintain a meaningful relationship with you and your spouse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
My daughter is 23, and she has some pretty serious personality issues that cause her to lose almost every relationship she has ever had. She is extremely passive aggressive. She is flat out rude if she doesn’t get her way. I have tried so hard to help her with this her entire life. I know that she is a full-fledged adult and time for her to deal with it. But I can’t just stand by and watch her lose everyone. I wish I had just the right words to help her or knew how to make her realize what is pushing people away. Honestly, it is affecting our family dynamic as well. Her siblings are tired of it. She does go to therapy, but I think it is more complaining about everyone else instead of working on herself.

I am open to any advice.


What's missing here is whether your daughter cares about her inability to maintain any healthy relationships. *You* seem anguished, but is she?

If the answer is yes, then I'd suggest that you record some of your exchanges with her and then, the next time she brings up the topic of loneliness, play back the audio/video and ask her what she notices about her own interactions. Be honest about the passive aggression and rudeness. Emphasize that while chemistry and common interests bring people together in platonic and romantic relationships alike, the bedrock of all enduring healthy relationships is whether or not people treat each other with kindness and respect and that if she is unwilling and/or unable to do so, then she needs to accept that she's not capable of healthy, close relationships with others and leave other people alone.

In the meantime, I think that twenty plus years of putting up with your daughter's behavior is more than enough and that she won't feel compelled to change unless she experiences the consequences of how she relates to others. Focus your attention on her siblings and spending time with them, and if she complains about being excluded, be honest about the fact that her behavior ruins what should otherwise be a fun time and that the rest of the family would be happy to include her if she can treat everyone with courtesy and kindness but if not, then she won't. You should also read all the countless threads on this board written by healthy, functional siblings whose dysfunctional parents have favored the dysfunctional sibling throughout their whole lives with the result that the dysfunctional dynamic has never changed. Don't be those dysfunctional parents.

I have come to realize in middle age that the reason that functional families stay functional is that they follow the advice above and severely limit interactions with difficult family members. Am going through this right now with a young adult child with similar "does not play well with others, including parents" attitude and no real self-reflection on what they might need to do to change behaviors that drive people away. Have just decided to interact with that child on a limited basis and instead focus on relationships with the other two children who do not act that way. I too have seen what happens when parents spend their time on trying to "make nice" with the difficult child and ignore the functional ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She may need a coach and not a therapist.

There are 0 regulations to be a coach, anyone can call themselves one and there are no regulations for training programs. Better to see a licensed professional.

Does she tell you she has no friends or do you assume this? Does she tell you she is miserable or is that what you just think? Does she have a job?

She may have a whole life she does not feel safe telling you about for a million reasons. Maybe she is gay or has a boyfriend from a culture you don't accept or different values or political beliefs. Maybe she just doesn't feel emotionally sharing any details of her life so she is grey rocking you and will only talk about safe things like the weather.

She is an adult. I think the best thing is for you to get therapy to figure out how to accept whatever boundaries she has put up. What you call her "pushing away" from you and/or her siblings, may be her setting boundaries. I don't think having a bunch of people here throw labels on a stranger will help you and we don't know her side. Best to seek professional help in processing it all and figuring out how to maintain a relationship at a comfortable distance for both of you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter is 23, and she has some pretty serious personality issues that cause her to lose almost every relationship she has ever had. She is extremely passive aggressive. She is flat out rude if she doesn’t get her way. I have tried so hard to help her with this her entire life. I know that she is a full-fledged adult and time for her to deal with it. But I can’t just stand by and watch her lose everyone. I wish I had just the right words to help her or knew how to make her realize what is pushing people away. Honestly, it is affecting our family dynamic as well. Her siblings are tired of it. She does go to therapy, but I think it is more complaining about everyone else instead of working on herself.

I am open to any advice.

Why not? Isn’t that a consequence for rude behavior? Maybe she hasn’t had to ever feel any consequences.

Get some therapy yourself to figure out how you can disengage.

This.She is an adult. You cannot control what goes on in her therapy. You sound very co-dependent and like you think you must rescue her. If she has the serious personality issues she claims, she will need to learn how to deal with consequences of her actions and you do hard by shielding her from that. If you are pathologizing her to feel better about the fact she has distanced herself from you, then therapy can help you process your feelings in a healthier way. If her siblings are tired of it all they can set boundaries. I have to admit though, it sounds like she is the identified patient/scapegoat in a dysfunctional system. Your trying a little too hard to convince us you and everyone else in the family think she is trouble. If she is so much trouble let her distance and find her way. You want her "fixed" to fit some ideal she is not going to fit.

[Anonymous]

It is so tiresome to continually read “he/she is an adult.” Okay, technically true, but parents wouldn’t be posting here if they were fully-functioning adults. It sounds like the daughter still lives with her family and is hyper-critical and fancies herself an eternal victim. I would get therapy for yourself for recommendations on how to respond and deal with the guilt and anxiety of having a difficult daughter.

[Anonymous]

People with ADHD tend to mature more slowly, so she may still get there - I also would see if you could help find a therapist that specializes in ADHD perhaps. CBT may also be a better fit than traditional talk therapy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter is 23, and she has some pretty serious personality issues that cause her to lose almost every relationship she has ever had. She is extremely passive aggressive. She is flat out rude if she doesn’t get her way. I have tried so hard to help her with this her entire life. I know that she is a full-fledged adult and time for her to deal with it. But I can’t just stand by and watch her lose everyone. I wish I had just the right words to help her or knew how to make her realize what is pushing people away. Honestly, it is affecting our family dynamic as well. Her siblings are tired of it. She does go to therapy, but I think it is more complaining about everyone else instead of working on herself.

I am open to any advice.

What's missing here is whether your daughter cares about her inability to maintain any healthy relationships. *You* seem anguished, but is she?

If the answer is yes, then I'd suggest that you record some of your exchanges with her and then, the next time she brings up the topic of loneliness, play back the audio/video and ask her what she notices about her own interactions. Be honest about the passive aggression and rudeness. Emphasize that while chemistry and common interests bring people together in platonic and romantic relationships alike, the bedrock of all enduring healthy relationships is whether or not people treat each other with kindness and respect and that if she is unwilling and/or unable to do so, then she needs to accept that she's not capable of healthy, close relationships with others and leave other people alone.

In the meantime, I think that twenty plus years of putting up with your daughter's behavior is more than enough and that she won't feel compelled to change unless she experiences the consequences of how she relates to others. Focus your attention on her siblings and spending time with them, and if she complains about being excluded, be honest about the fact that her behavior ruins what should otherwise be a fun time and that the rest of the family would be happy to include her if she can treat everyone with courtesy and kindness but if not, then she won't. You should also read all the countless threads on this board written by healthy, functional siblings whose dysfunctional parents have favored the dysfunctional sibling throughout their whole lives with the result that the dysfunctional dynamic has never changed. Don't be those dysfunctional parents.

This PP is spot on in the last paragraph. I am one of these “functional” siblings with a dysfunctional sibling. Much of his life, he’s treated his family including me like cr@p. It may be due to mental illness or severe anxiety; I don’t know. But my parents are so worried about him not having any friends or semblance of a social life that they’ve tried to wheedle me into inviting him over to stay (he lives 5 hours away), call and text him to “check up” on him, and the like. I finally told my mom to stop asking me to intervene. I have him at arms length for a reason; I’ve set boundaries with him a long time ago and am much happier for it. My parents would’ve done well to stop shielding him from the consequences of his behavior; if he has no social life, so be it… that’s on him to repair those relationships that have been broken. Sadly it’s affected my relationship with my parents too, who have spent so much of their time and energy dealing with my sibling that they have none left for me and my kids.

[Anonymous]

To the person annoyed about mentioning she is an adult, it is an important point. OP is treating an adult like a difficult pre-teen. You do not secretly record a grown up and play it back to show her she is problematic. That is disturbing.

She has a good relationship with her boyfriend. She wishes she had more friends, but probably should not have confided in mom because mom is not a support.

I assume she has a job? If so, let her be. Get help for YOU. You have to have boundaries that work for all and stop trying to control her and make her into the daughter you want her to be. You cannot change her, but you absolutely need to change how you process this and interact with her. Otherwise, I suspect you could end up pushing this toward estrangement, especially with this whole mentality of how everyone is on your side and she's the bad one who doesn't fall into line.