Adult Daughter Stealing from Me, Therapy Not Helping

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you need to be able to acknowledge that your daughter’s childhood experience was. It the same as your sons. If your daughter has adhd and BPD then I am sure she was also challenging as a child and teen. How you interacted with her and the relationship you had would have been very different from a well behaved son. What kind of help did you get her throughout her life? ADHD and BPD don’t just suddenly appear. I am curious as to what help you got her when she was young?

If OP is anything like me, she spent most of her child’s life trying to get help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted this on another thread, but it devolved into nasty attacks and insults. I hope this board will be a bit more kind.

DD is 23 and living with a college friend in another part of the country. She is neurotypical, other than a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder that were given two years ago. She took a 1 year leave of absence after her freshman year of college due to “mental health issues” (I suspect her annoying, entitled personality made her lonely and have no friends at school).

During this 1 year leave of absence, she attended a DBT group. This arguably did more harm than good. I think the therapy fed into her selfish personality, and she began ranting to us about how we “weren’t meeting her emotional needs” because we did a few things in her childhood that made her angry, even though we were paying for her ENTIRE college tuition + room and board. Apparently the DBT therapist told DD that we have a “dysfunctional family.” Of course, this therapist wouldn’t tell us why

DD graduated from college back in May with an English degree. That was the WORST mistake of my life. DD can’t get a real job (of course she can’t, she was an English major…), so she worked as a barista in the city where she lives but got fired last month for not making drinks fast enough (she has slow processing speed and inattentive ADHD so I’m not surprised by this). She’s applied to ~150 jobs but has been rejected from all of them despite several interviews.

She’s currently in therapy right now, but therapy has made her WAY worse. DD is resentful of me and DH for not “validating her feelings enough” as a child and a teenager. This isn’t really true — we were caring, attentive parents, and DS (who is two years older than DD) doesn’t feel this way towards us — he is kind, caring, and appreciative of us as parents. He is also totally self-sufficient (works in tech in SF), and has never asked for a single penny from us since the day he graduated college.

Over the weekend, we found out that DD had withdrew $12k from our bank accounts over the course of the past week (which we didn’t know about until Saturday). When we called her to demand that she give the money back to us, she yelled at us over the phone that “YOU NEVER RESPECTED MY BOUNDARIES AS A CHILD OR AS AN ADULT. WHY SHOULD I RESPECT YOURS?” and then refused to give us the $12k back.

We NEVER gave her permission to use our credit card. We weren’t even aware that she knew the CC number until now, but apparently she wrote down my CC number when she was back home from winter break last year without me noticing. She withdrew all of this money in cash from a bank because she was able to guess our PIN number (my mistake — it’s the same as our garage PIN).

She told us that she plans on using $10k to buy a car and the other $1k for a writing conference she was accepted to. She plans to use the last $1k to buy plane tickets to her roommate’s mom’s house over winter break… because she yelled at us over the phone that she “doesn’t want to come home for winter break because she never feels respected at home” (another example of her ridiculous personality).

We are currently in the process of disputing this charge with the bank, but our bank requires us to make a police report to dispute CC charges. We filed a police report last week. We also reiterated to DD back in May (right after she graduated with a useless English degree) and over the phone last week that I did NOT want to help her buy a car or pay rent because I do NOT plan on subsidizing any adult child of mine.

Please help. We are in desperate search of guidance. Therapy hasn't helped (the DBT group made her entitlement worse), and merely made her focus on the injustices she perceives she faced as a child and a young adult from us. She is unemployed and stealing from us to pay her rent -- and her therapist has never seemed to challenge her on this.

OP, I understand. I have a similar situation with my 22 yo daughter, although she has never stolen from me. But I recognize a lot of the things you are talking about — the borderline, the mental health treatments making things worse, the victim attitude including the bit about “you didn’t validate my feelings enough.” And the bullshit from the therapists who, honestly, helped facilitated a lot of this. They suck. The mental health hospital and residence programs and group therapy did not help. Frankly it was like my kid was drawn to these other kids who had genuine trauma in their lives — abuse, deaths of siblings or parents, etc. And so she started fantasy narratives that her own very privileged life was similar, complete with fabulism. She would tell people we didn’t feed her (one school counselor asked if she should call CPS and my kid did a 180). She would tell people her mother hit her (she never did). And then, yes, it became this constant complaint that she wasn’t validated enough.

It sucks. You were not a bad parent. I am not a bad parent — my other daughter is not this way and she was treated exactly the same as her sister (they are two years apart). You and I spent thousands of dollars and sleepless nights trying to get help. This behavior goes with the personality disorder. It’s very hard but try not to take it personally. I do understand the subtext of disdain with which you talk about her in your post — I love my daughter but can only tolerate her in small doses now because of her behavior. It sucks.

My own therapist advises trying to set boundaries. I don’t know what to about the theft — I pray I would never take to do that (although I have nothing to take anymore). The obvious thing is to walk off money so she can’t do it in the future. I wouldn’t involve law enforcement as that will just make her life awful. Family therapy might help but I don’t know how that works logically now and i think therapists by and large are awful and do more harm than good.

So, I am sorry. Protect yourself financially and emotionally. Try to grey rock and set boundaries.

Good luck.

OP here. Yes, finally! Someone who gets it. It sucks not having a relationship with your own kids because they're insufferable to be around. But that's how my daughter turned out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You seem worried about your bank's fraud process in response to your DD's theft. In my experience, your anxiety is unfounded. You need to take a deep breath and keep working with your bank.

I don't know about BPD. But people with inattentive ADHD are not neurotypical.

I suggest you take a DBT-C course for parents. You have a lot to learn about DBT.

I suggest you withhold judgment about your DD's therapist until you learn more about DBT.

Don't beat yourself up about your past decisions about your DD's college major. It will cause you to take your regret out on other people.

You have a lot to learn about validation. Your post here and your posts in your other thread (https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1304814.page) tell me you don't have the first clue about it. It's fine. You can learn. If you are open to learning. If you do a DBT-C course, this will be included.

OP here. I do NOT appreciate your condescending, judgmental tone. If only you knew how much time and money we wasted on family DBT... it only resulted in our DD falsely accusing us of abuse. All because we weren't "validating" her insane delusions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted this on another thread, but it devolved into nasty attacks and insults. I hope this board will be a bit more kind.

DD is 23 and living with a college friend in another part of the country. She is neurotypical, other than a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder that were given two years ago. She took a 1 year leave of absence after her freshman year of college due to “mental health issues” (I suspect her annoying, entitled personality made her lonely and have no friends at school).

During this 1 year leave of absence, she attended a DBT group. This arguably did more harm than good. I think the therapy fed into her selfish personality, and she began ranting to us about how we “weren’t meeting her emotional needs” because we did a few things in her childhood that made her angry, even though we were paying for her ENTIRE college tuition + room and board. Apparently the DBT therapist told DD that we have a “dysfunctional family.” Of course, this therapist wouldn’t tell us why

DD graduated from college back in May with an English degree. That was the WORST mistake of my life. DD can’t get a real job (of course she can’t, she was an English major…), so she worked as a barista in the city where she lives but got fired last month for not making drinks fast enough (she has slow processing speed and inattentive ADHD so I’m not surprised by this). She’s applied to ~150 jobs but has been rejected from all of them despite several interviews.

She’s currently in therapy right now, but therapy has made her WAY worse. DD is resentful of me and DH for not “validating her feelings enough” as a child and a teenager. This isn’t really true — we were caring, attentive parents, and DS (who is two years older than DD) doesn’t feel this way towards us — he is kind, caring, and appreciative of us as parents. He is also totally self-sufficient (works in tech in SF), and has never asked for a single penny from us since the day he graduated college.

Over the weekend, we found out that DD had withdrew $12k from our bank accounts over the course of the past week (which we didn’t know about until Saturday). When we called her to demand that she give the money back to us, she yelled at us over the phone that “YOU NEVER RESPECTED MY BOUNDARIES AS A CHILD OR AS AN ADULT. WHY SHOULD I RESPECT YOURS?” and then refused to give us the $12k back.

We NEVER gave her permission to use our credit card. We weren’t even aware that she knew the CC number until now, but apparently she wrote down my CC number when she was back home from winter break last year without me noticing. She withdrew all of this money in cash from a bank because she was able to guess our PIN number (my mistake — it’s the same as our garage PIN).

She told us that she plans on using $10k to buy a car and the other $1k for a writing conference she was accepted to. She plans to use the last $1k to buy plane tickets to her roommate’s mom’s house over winter break… because she yelled at us over the phone that she “doesn’t want to come home for winter break because she never feels respected at home” (another example of her ridiculous personality).

We are currently in the process of disputing this charge with the bank, but our bank requires us to make a police report to dispute CC charges. We filed a police report last week. We also reiterated to DD back in May (right after she graduated with a useless English degree) and over the phone last week that I did NOT want to help her buy a car or pay rent because I do NOT plan on subsidizing any adult child of mine.

Please help. We are in desperate search of guidance. Therapy hasn't helped (the DBT group made her entitlement worse), and merely made her focus on the injustices she perceives she faced as a child and a young adult from us. She is unemployed and stealing from us to pay her rent -- and her therapist has never seemed to challenge her on this.

OP, I understand. I have a similar situation with my 22 yo daughter, although she has never stolen from me. But I recognize a lot of the things you are talking about — the borderline, the mental health treatments making things worse, the victim attitude including the bit about “you didn’t validate my feelings enough.” And the bullshit from the therapists who, honestly, helped facilitated a lot of this. They suck. The mental health hospital and residence programs and group therapy did not help. Frankly it was like my kid was drawn to these other kids who had genuine trauma in their lives — abuse, deaths of siblings or parents, etc. And so she started fantasy narratives that her own very privileged life was similar, complete with fabulism. She would tell people we didn’t feed her (one school counselor asked if she should call CPS and my kid did a 180). She would tell people her mother hit her (she never did). And then, yes, it became this constant complaint that she wasn’t validated enough.

It sucks. You were not a bad parent. I am not a bad parent — my other daughter is not this way and she was treated exactly the same as her sister (they are two years apart). You and I spent thousands of dollars and sleepless nights trying to get help. This behavior goes with the personality disorder. It’s very hard but try not to take it personally. I do understand the subtext of disdain with which you talk about her in your post — I love my daughter but can only tolerate her in small doses now because of her behavior. It sucks.

My own therapist advises trying to set boundaries. I don’t know what to about the theft — I pray I would never take to do that (although I have nothing to take anymore). The obvious thing is to walk off money so she can’t do it in the future. I wouldn’t involve law enforcement as that will just make her life awful. Family therapy might help but I don’t know how that works logically now and i think therapists by and large are awful and do more harm than good.

So, I am sorry. Protect yourself financially and emotionally. Try to grey rock and set boundaries.

Good luck.

OP here. Yes, finally! Someone who gets it. It sucks not having a relationship with your own kids because they're insufferable to be around. But that's how my daughter turned out

OP again here. Yes, that's exactly what happened to DD. She started accusing us of "abuse" because we made her college funding contingent on attending church every week, losing 20 lbs (she had gained an unhealthy amount of weight her freshman year and was quite overweight), and calling us ~15 minutes two times a week.

We told her that she could fund her own college tuition if she didn't like our rules. But of course, since she's an entitled and selfish person, she refused.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted this on another thread, but it devolved into nasty attacks and insults. I hope this board will be a bit more kind.

DD is 23 and living with a college friend in another part of the country. She is neurotypical, other than a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder that were given two years ago. She took a 1 year leave of absence after her freshman year of college due to “mental health issues” (I suspect her annoying, entitled personality made her lonely and have no friends at school).

During this 1 year leave of absence, she attended a DBT group. This arguably did more harm than good. I think the therapy fed into her selfish personality, and she began ranting to us about how we “weren’t meeting her emotional needs” because we did a few things in her childhood that made her angry, even though we were paying for her ENTIRE college tuition + room and board. Apparently the DBT therapist told DD that we have a “dysfunctional family.” Of course, this therapist wouldn’t tell us why

DD graduated from college back in May with an English degree. That was the WORST mistake of my life. DD can’t get a real job (of course she can’t, she was an English major…), so she worked as a barista in the city where she lives but got fired last month for not making drinks fast enough (she has slow processing speed and inattentive ADHD so I’m not surprised by this). She’s applied to ~150 jobs but has been rejected from all of them despite several interviews.

She’s currently in therapy right now, but therapy has made her WAY worse. DD is resentful of me and DH for not “validating her feelings enough” as a child and a teenager. This isn’t really true — we were caring, attentive parents, and DS (who is two years older than DD) doesn’t feel this way towards us — he is kind, caring, and appreciative of us as parents. He is also totally self-sufficient (works in tech in SF), and has never asked for a single penny from us since the day he graduated college.

Over the weekend, we found out that DD had withdrew $12k from our bank accounts over the course of the past week (which we didn’t know about until Saturday). When we called her to demand that she give the money back to us, she yelled at us over the phone that “YOU NEVER RESPECTED MY BOUNDARIES AS A CHILD OR AS AN ADULT. WHY SHOULD I RESPECT YOURS?” and then refused to give us the $12k back.

We NEVER gave her permission to use our credit card. We weren’t even aware that she knew the CC number until now, but apparently she wrote down my CC number when she was back home from winter break last year without me noticing. She withdrew all of this money in cash from a bank because she was able to guess our PIN number (my mistake — it’s the same as our garage PIN).

She told us that she plans on using $10k to buy a car and the other $1k for a writing conference she was accepted to. She plans to use the last $1k to buy plane tickets to her roommate’s mom’s house over winter break… because she yelled at us over the phone that she “doesn’t want to come home for winter break because she never feels respected at home” (another example of her ridiculous personality).

We are currently in the process of disputing this charge with the bank, but our bank requires us to make a police report to dispute CC charges. We filed a police report last week. We also reiterated to DD back in May (right after she graduated with a useless English degree) and over the phone last week that I did NOT want to help her buy a car or pay rent because I do NOT plan on subsidizing any adult child of mine.

Please help. We are in desperate search of guidance. Therapy hasn't helped (the DBT group made her entitlement worse), and merely made her focus on the injustices she perceives she faced as a child and a young adult from us. She is unemployed and stealing from us to pay her rent -- and her therapist has never seemed to challenge her on this.

OP, I understand. I have a similar situation with my 22 yo daughter, although she has never stolen from me. But I recognize a lot of the things you are talking about — the borderline, the mental health treatments making things worse, the victim attitude including the bit about “you didn’t validate my feelings enough.” And the bullshit from the therapists who, honestly, helped facilitated a lot of this. They suck. The mental health hospital and residence programs and group therapy did not help. Frankly it was like my kid was drawn to these other kids who had genuine trauma in their lives — abuse, deaths of siblings or parents, etc. And so she started fantasy narratives that her own very privileged life was similar, complete with fabulism. She would tell people we didn’t feed her (one school counselor asked if she should call CPS and my kid did a 180). She would tell people her mother hit her (she never did). And then, yes, it became this constant complaint that she wasn’t validated enough.

It sucks. You were not a bad parent. I am not a bad parent — my other daughter is not this way and she was treated exactly the same as her sister (they are two years apart). You and I spent thousands of dollars and sleepless nights trying to get help. This behavior goes with the personality disorder. It’s very hard but try not to take it personally. I do understand the subtext of disdain with which you talk about her in your post — I love my daughter but can only tolerate her in small doses now because of her behavior. It sucks.

My own therapist advises trying to set boundaries. I don’t know what to about the theft — I pray I would never take to do that (although I have nothing to take anymore). The obvious thing is to walk off money so she can’t do it in the future. I wouldn’t involve law enforcement as that will just make her life awful. Family therapy might help but I don’t know how that works logically now and i think therapists by and large are awful and do more harm than good.

So, I am sorry. Protect yourself financially and emotionally. Try to grey rock and set boundaries.

Good luck.

I highly doubt you treated two kids with completely different needs and issues and personalities exactly the same way. That never holds up to scrutiny. Parents are human and it isn’t possible to treat two completely different individuals the same way, nor would it be appropriate. I think this is where many parents have blinders. Raising challenging kids can be hard but when parents are u willing to accept that and seek out help or support because they insist they are a good parent and are treating all the kids the same, the struggling child loses out. They often need a different approach and they need parents who acknowledge that and seek out help to figure out what is best. The digging your heels in and insisting you were exactly the parent she needed - which is exactly the same parent her siblings needed and that her own experience of her own life is wrong because you did everything right shows a problem.

OP here. I don't appreciate your judgmental, condescending tone. It seems like YOU could benefit from a DBT group.

DD's "own experience of her own life is wrong because [I] did everything right" is NOT a problem. The things that she would claim to us were insane. They were not abusive at all. Her "internal experience" of her life is that DH and I were controlling, abusive monsters. That's simply not true, and validating these delusions (as the DBT family therapist did and as DD's own personal therapist did) simply made the problem way worse. Her entitlement and victim mentality is INSANE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I understand. I have a similar situation with my 22 yo daughter, although she has never stolen from me. But I recognize a lot of the things you are talking about — the borderline, the mental health treatments making things worse, the victim attitude including the bit about “you didn’t validate my feelings enough.” And the bullshit from the therapists who, honestly, helped facilitated a lot of this.

Good therapists don't feed into a victim attitude. They also don't teach clients to demand validation (or anything else) from others, or to make excuses for their own behavior. If your therapist is doing any of this, all you can do is move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted this on another thread, but it devolved into nasty attacks and insults. I hope this board will be a bit more kind.

DD is 23 and living with a college friend in another part of the country. She is neurotypical, other than a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder that were given two years ago. She took a 1 year leave of absence after her freshman year of college due to “mental health issues” (I suspect her annoying, entitled personality made her lonely and have no friends at school).

During this 1 year leave of absence, she attended a DBT group. This arguably did more harm than good. I think the therapy fed into her selfish personality, and she began ranting to us about how we “weren’t meeting her emotional needs” because we did a few things in her childhood that made her angry, even though we were paying for her ENTIRE college tuition + room and board. Apparently the DBT therapist told DD that we have a “dysfunctional family.” Of course, this therapist wouldn’t tell us why

DD graduated from college back in May with an English degree. That was the WORST mistake of my life. DD can’t get a real job (of course she can’t, she was an English major…), so she worked as a barista in the city where she lives but got fired last month for not making drinks fast enough (she has slow processing speed and inattentive ADHD so I’m not surprised by this). She’s applied to ~150 jobs but has been rejected from all of them despite several interviews.

She’s currently in therapy right now, but therapy has made her WAY worse. DD is resentful of me and DH for not “validating her feelings enough” as a child and a teenager. This isn’t really true — we were caring, attentive parents, and DS (who is two years older than DD) doesn’t feel this way towards us — he is kind, caring, and appreciative of us as parents. He is also totally self-sufficient (works in tech in SF), and has never asked for a single penny from us since the day he graduated college.

Over the weekend, we found out that DD had withdrew $12k from our bank accounts over the course of the past week (which we didn’t know about until Saturday). When we called her to demand that she give the money back to us, she yelled at us over the phone that “YOU NEVER RESPECTED MY BOUNDARIES AS A CHILD OR AS AN ADULT. WHY SHOULD I RESPECT YOURS?” and then refused to give us the $12k back.

We NEVER gave her permission to use our credit card. We weren’t even aware that she knew the CC number until now, but apparently she wrote down my CC number when she was back home from winter break last year without me noticing. She withdrew all of this money in cash from a bank because she was able to guess our PIN number (my mistake — it’s the same as our garage PIN).

She told us that she plans on using $10k to buy a car and the other $1k for a writing conference she was accepted to. She plans to use the last $1k to buy plane tickets to her roommate’s mom’s house over winter break… because she yelled at us over the phone that she “doesn’t want to come home for winter break because she never feels respected at home” (another example of her ridiculous personality).

We are currently in the process of disputing this charge with the bank, but our bank requires us to make a police report to dispute CC charges. We filed a police report last week. We also reiterated to DD back in May (right after she graduated with a useless English degree) and over the phone last week that I did NOT want to help her buy a car or pay rent because I do NOT plan on subsidizing any adult child of mine.

Please help. We are in desperate search of guidance. Therapy hasn't helped (the DBT group made her entitlement worse), and merely made her focus on the injustices she perceives she faced as a child and a young adult from us. She is unemployed and stealing from us to pay her rent -- and her therapist has never seemed to challenge her on this.

OP, I understand. I have a similar situation with my 22 yo daughter, although she has never stolen from me. But I recognize a lot of the things you are talking about — the borderline, the mental health treatments making things worse, the victim attitude including the bit about “you didn’t validate my feelings enough.” And the bullshit from the therapists who, honestly, helped facilitated a lot of this. They suck. The mental health hospital and residence programs and group therapy did not help. Frankly it was like my kid was drawn to these other kids who had genuine trauma in their lives — abuse, deaths of siblings or parents, etc. And so she started fantasy narratives that her own very privileged life was similar, complete with fabulism. She would tell people we didn’t feed her (one school counselor asked if she should call CPS and my kid did a 180). She would tell people her mother hit her (she never did). And then, yes, it became this constant complaint that she wasn’t validated enough.

It sucks. You were not a bad parent. I am not a bad parent — my other daughter is not this way and she was treated exactly the same as her sister (they are two years apart). You and I spent thousands of dollars and sleepless nights trying to get help. This behavior goes with the personality disorder. It’s very hard but try not to take it personally. I do understand the subtext of disdain with which you talk about her in your post — I love my daughter but can only tolerate her in small doses now because of her behavior. It sucks.

My own therapist advises trying to set boundaries. I don’t know what to about the theft — I pray I would never take to do that (although I have nothing to take anymore). The obvious thing is to walk off money so she can’t do it in the future. I wouldn’t involve law enforcement as that will just make her life awful. Family therapy might help but I don’t know how that works logically now and i think therapists by and large are awful and do more harm than good.

So, I am sorry. Protect yourself financially and emotionally. Try to grey rock and set boundaries.

Good luck.

I highly doubt you treated two kids with completely different needs and issues and personalities exactly the same way. That never holds up to scrutiny. Parents are human and it isn’t possible to treat two completely different individuals the same way, nor would it be appropriate. I think this is where many parents have blinders. Raising challenging kids can be hard but when parents are u willing to accept that and seek out help or support because they insist they are a good parent and are treating all the kids the same, the struggling child loses out. They often need a different approach and they need parents who acknowledge that and seek out help to figure out what is best. The digging your heels in and insisting you were exactly the parent she needed - which is exactly the same parent her siblings needed and that her own experience of her own life is wrong because you did everything right shows a problem.

OP here. I don't appreciate your judgmental, condescending tone. It seems like YOU could benefit from a DBT group.

DD's "own experience of her own life is wrong because [I] did everything right" is NOT a problem. The things that she would claim to us were insane. They were not abusive at all. Her "internal experience" of her life is that DH and I were controlling, abusive monsters. That's simply not true, and validating these delusions (as the DBT family therapist did and as DD's own personal therapist did) simply made the problem way worse. Her entitlement and victim mentality is INSANE.

In your original post you claim her experience is invalid because your DS doesn’t feel that way about you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you need to be able to acknowledge that your daughter’s childhood experience was. It the same as your sons. If your daughter has adhd and BPD then I am sure she was also challenging as a child and teen. How you interacted with her and the relationship you had would have been very different from a well behaved son. What kind of help did you get her throughout her life? ADHD and BPD don’t just suddenly appear. I am curious as to what help you got her when she was young?

OP here. Another reason why I think "acknowledging that DD's childhood experience" was abusive (in her eyes, not in the eyes of any sane person!) is that it's counterproductive. Healthy, functional adults NEED to get over their childhood trauma (whether it's real or simply imagined like my DD) and GET ON with their lives to be productive. We didn't want to acknowledge DD's perception of DH and I as abusive parents, because, among other reasons, it would feed into her victim mentality and keep encouraging her to blame every problem in her life on us. Not take responsibility over her own life like a healthy adult!

[Anonymous]

With the additional information about your controlling nature combined with her mental health concerns, I can see why the relationship is doomed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted this on another thread, but it devolved into nasty attacks and insults. I hope this board will be a bit more kind.

DD is 23 and living with a college friend in another part of the country. She is neurotypical, other than a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder that were given two years ago. She took a 1 year leave of absence after her freshman year of college due to “mental health issues” (I suspect her annoying, entitled personality made her lonely and have no friends at school).

During this 1 year leave of absence, she attended a DBT group. This arguably did more harm than good. I think the therapy fed into her selfish personality, and she began ranting to us about how we “weren’t meeting her emotional needs” because we did a few things in her childhood that made her angry, even though we were paying for her ENTIRE college tuition + room and board. Apparently the DBT therapist told DD that we have a “dysfunctional family.” Of course, this therapist wouldn’t tell us why

DD graduated from college back in May with an English degree. That was the WORST mistake of my life. DD can’t get a real job (of course she can’t, she was an English major…), so she worked as a barista in the city where she lives but got fired last month for not making drinks fast enough (she has slow processing speed and inattentive ADHD so I’m not surprised by this). She’s applied to ~150 jobs but has been rejected from all of them despite several interviews.

She’s currently in therapy right now, but therapy has made her WAY worse. DD is resentful of me and DH for not “validating her feelings enough” as a child and a teenager. This isn’t really true — we were caring, attentive parents, and DS (who is two years older than DD) doesn’t feel this way towards us — he is kind, caring, and appreciative of us as parents. He is also totally self-sufficient (works in tech in SF), and has never asked for a single penny from us since the day he graduated college.

Over the weekend, we found out that DD had withdrew $12k from our bank accounts over the course of the past week (which we didn’t know about until Saturday). When we called her to demand that she give the money back to us, she yelled at us over the phone that “YOU NEVER RESPECTED MY BOUNDARIES AS A CHILD OR AS AN ADULT. WHY SHOULD I RESPECT YOURS?” and then refused to give us the $12k back.

We NEVER gave her permission to use our credit card. We weren’t even aware that she knew the CC number until now, but apparently she wrote down my CC number when she was back home from winter break last year without me noticing. She withdrew all of this money in cash from a bank because she was able to guess our PIN number (my mistake — it’s the same as our garage PIN).

She told us that she plans on using $10k to buy a car and the other $1k for a writing conference she was accepted to. She plans to use the last $1k to buy plane tickets to her roommate’s mom’s house over winter break… because she yelled at us over the phone that she “doesn’t want to come home for winter break because she never feels respected at home” (another example of her ridiculous personality).

We are currently in the process of disputing this charge with the bank, but our bank requires us to make a police report to dispute CC charges. We filed a police report last week. We also reiterated to DD back in May (right after she graduated with a useless English degree) and over the phone last week that I did NOT want to help her buy a car or pay rent because I do NOT plan on subsidizing any adult child of mine.

Please help. We are in desperate search of guidance. Therapy hasn't helped (the DBT group made her entitlement worse), and merely made her focus on the injustices she perceives she faced as a child and a young adult from us. She is unemployed and stealing from us to pay her rent -- and her therapist has never seemed to challenge her on this.

OP, I understand. I have a similar situation with my 22 yo daughter, although she has never stolen from me. But I recognize a lot of the things you are talking about — the borderline, the mental health treatments making things worse, the victim attitude including the bit about “you didn’t validate my feelings enough.” And the bullshit from the therapists who, honestly, helped facilitated a lot of this. They suck. The mental health hospital and residence programs and group therapy did not help. Frankly it was like my kid was drawn to these other kids who had genuine trauma in their lives — abuse, deaths of siblings or parents, etc. And so she started fantasy narratives that her own very privileged life was similar, complete with fabulism. She would tell people we didn’t feed her (one school counselor asked if she should call CPS and my kid did a 180). She would tell people her mother hit her (she never did). And then, yes, it became this constant complaint that she wasn’t validated enough.

It sucks. You were not a bad parent. I am not a bad parent — my other daughter is not this way and she was treated exactly the same as her sister (they are two years apart). You and I spent thousands of dollars and sleepless nights trying to get help. This behavior goes with the personality disorder. It’s very hard but try not to take it personally. I do understand the subtext of disdain with which you talk about her in your post — I love my daughter but can only tolerate her in small doses now because of her behavior. It sucks.

My own therapist advises trying to set boundaries. I don’t know what to about the theft — I pray I would never take to do that (although I have nothing to take anymore). The obvious thing is to walk off money so she can’t do it in the future. I wouldn’t involve law enforcement as that will just make her life awful. Family therapy might help but I don’t know how that works logically now and i think therapists by and large are awful and do more harm than good.

So, I am sorry. Protect yourself financially and emotionally. Try to grey rock and set boundaries.

Good luck.

I highly doubt you treated two kids with completely different needs and issues and personalities exactly the same way. That never holds up to scrutiny. Parents are human and it isn’t possible to treat two completely different individuals the same way, nor would it be appropriate. I think this is where many parents have blinders. Raising challenging kids can be hard but when parents are u willing to accept that and seek out help or support because they insist they are a good parent and are treating all the kids the same, the struggling child loses out. They often need a different approach and they need parents who acknowledge that and seek out help to figure out what is best. The digging your heels in and insisting you were exactly the parent she needed - which is exactly the same parent her siblings needed and that her own experience of her own life is wrong because you did everything right shows a problem.

OP here. I don't appreciate your judgmental, condescending tone. It seems like YOU could benefit from a DBT group.

DD's "own experience of her own life is wrong because [I] did everything right" is NOT a problem. The things that she would claim to us were insane. They were not abusive at all. Her "internal experience" of her life is that DH and I were controlling, abusive monsters. That's simply not true, and validating these delusions (as the DBT family therapist did and as DD's own personal therapist did) simply made the problem way worse. Her entitlement and victim mentality is INSANE.

In your original post you claim her experience is invalid because your DS doesn’t feel that way about you.

They're also just objectively untrue, for one. The things DD claimed that we did that were "abusive" are things that weren't abusive. Like at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted this on another thread, but it devolved into nasty attacks and insults. I hope this board will be a bit more kind.

DD is 23 and living with a college friend in another part of the country. She is neurotypical, other than a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder that were given two years ago. She took a 1 year leave of absence after her freshman year of college due to “mental health issues” (I suspect her annoying, entitled personality made her lonely and have no friends at school).

During this 1 year leave of absence, she attended a DBT group. This arguably did more harm than good. I think the therapy fed into her selfish personality, and she began ranting to us about how we “weren’t meeting her emotional needs” because we did a few things in her childhood that made her angry, even though we were paying for her ENTIRE college tuition + room and board. Apparently the DBT therapist told DD that we have a “dysfunctional family.” Of course, this therapist wouldn’t tell us why

DD graduated from college back in May with an English degree. That was the WORST mistake of my life. DD can’t get a real job (of course she can’t, she was an English major…), so she worked as a barista in the city where she lives but got fired last month for not making drinks fast enough (she has slow processing speed and inattentive ADHD so I’m not surprised by this). She’s applied to ~150 jobs but has been rejected from all of them despite several interviews.

She’s currently in therapy right now, but therapy has made her WAY worse. DD is resentful of me and DH for not “validating her feelings enough” as a child and a teenager. This isn’t really true — we were caring, attentive parents, and DS (who is two years older than DD) doesn’t feel this way towards us — he is kind, caring, and appreciative of us as parents. He is also totally self-sufficient (works in tech in SF), and has never asked for a single penny from us since the day he graduated college.

Over the weekend, we found out that DD had withdrew $12k from our bank accounts over the course of the past week (which we didn’t know about until Saturday). When we called her to demand that she give the money back to us, she yelled at us over the phone that “YOU NEVER RESPECTED MY BOUNDARIES AS A CHILD OR AS AN ADULT. WHY SHOULD I RESPECT YOURS?” and then refused to give us the $12k back.

We NEVER gave her permission to use our credit card. We weren’t even aware that she knew the CC number until now, but apparently she wrote down my CC number when she was back home from winter break last year without me noticing. She withdrew all of this money in cash from a bank because she was able to guess our PIN number (my mistake — it’s the same as our garage PIN).

She told us that she plans on using $10k to buy a car and the other $1k for a writing conference she was accepted to. She plans to use the last $1k to buy plane tickets to her roommate’s mom’s house over winter break… because she yelled at us over the phone that she “doesn’t want to come home for winter break because she never feels respected at home” (another example of her ridiculous personality).

We are currently in the process of disputing this charge with the bank, but our bank requires us to make a police report to dispute CC charges. We filed a police report last week. We also reiterated to DD back in May (right after she graduated with a useless English degree) and over the phone last week that I did NOT want to help her buy a car or pay rent because I do NOT plan on subsidizing any adult child of mine.

Please help. We are in desperate search of guidance. Therapy hasn't helped (the DBT group made her entitlement worse), and merely made her focus on the injustices she perceives she faced as a child and a young adult from us. She is unemployed and stealing from us to pay her rent -- and her therapist has never seemed to challenge her on this.

OP, I understand. I have a similar situation with my 22 yo daughter, although she has never stolen from me. But I recognize a lot of the things you are talking about — the borderline, the mental health treatments making things worse, the victim attitude including the bit about “you didn’t validate my feelings enough.” And the bullshit from the therapists who, honestly, helped facilitated a lot of this. They suck. The mental health hospital and residence programs and group therapy did not help. Frankly it was like my kid was drawn to these other kids who had genuine trauma in their lives — abuse, deaths of siblings or parents, etc. And so she started fantasy narratives that her own very privileged life was similar, complete with fabulism. She would tell people we didn’t feed her (one school counselor asked if she should call CPS and my kid did a 180). She would tell people her mother hit her (she never did). And then, yes, it became this constant complaint that she wasn’t validated enough.

It sucks. You were not a bad parent. I am not a bad parent — my other daughter is not this way and she was treated exactly the same as her sister (they are two years apart). You and I spent thousands of dollars and sleepless nights trying to get help. This behavior goes with the personality disorder. It’s very hard but try not to take it personally. I do understand the subtext of disdain with which you talk about her in your post — I love my daughter but can only tolerate her in small doses now because of her behavior. It sucks.

My own therapist advises trying to set boundaries. I don’t know what to about the theft — I pray I would never take to do that (although I have nothing to take anymore). The obvious thing is to walk off money so she can’t do it in the future. I wouldn’t involve law enforcement as that will just make her life awful. Family therapy might help but I don’t know how that works logically now and i think therapists by and large are awful and do more harm than good.

So, I am sorry. Protect yourself financially and emotionally. Try to grey rock and set boundaries.

Good luck.

I highly doubt you treated two kids with completely different needs and issues and personalities exactly the same way. That never holds up to scrutiny. Parents are human and it isn’t possible to treat two completely different individuals the same way, nor would it be appropriate. I think this is where many parents have blinders. Raising challenging kids can be hard but when parents are u willing to accept that and seek out help or support because they insist they are a good parent and are treating all the kids the same, the struggling child loses out. They often need a different approach and they need parents who acknowledge that and seek out help to figure out what is best. The digging your heels in and insisting you were exactly the parent she needed - which is exactly the same parent her siblings needed and that her own experience of her own life is wrong because you did everything right shows a problem.

I really don’t give two shits what your arrogant ass thinks. You know nothing. Please shut up and sit down — your thoughts on this are not valid and you have nothing of value to contribute. You know nothing about me, my family dynamics, or OP. Zip it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With the additional information about your controlling nature combined with her mental health concerns, I can see why the relationship is doomed.

We were not controlling parents. DD was free to choose a college she could've afforded on her own (she was a National Merit Finalist in high school, so she got a free ride to Univ. of Alabama) so she wouldn't have to do the things she didn't want to do. But DD instead CHOSE (voluntarily, on her own) to attend an expensive SLAC that drained our 529 (and then some!) for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You seem worried about your bank's fraud process in response to your DD's theft. In my experience, your anxiety is unfounded. You need to take a deep breath and keep working with your bank.

I don't know about BPD. But people with inattentive ADHD are not neurotypical.

I suggest you take a DBT-C course for parents. You have a lot to learn about DBT.

I suggest you withhold judgment about your DD's therapist until you learn more about DBT.

Don't beat yourself up about your past decisions about your DD's college major. It will cause you to take your regret out on other people.

You have a lot to learn about validation. Your post here and your posts in your other thread (https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1304814.page) tell me you don't have the first clue about it. It's fine. You can learn. If you are open to learning. If you do a DBT-C course, this will be included.

OP here. I do NOT appreciate your condescending, judgmental tone. If only you knew how much time and money we wasted on family DBT... it only resulted in our DD falsely accusing us of abuse. All because we weren't "validating" her insane delusions.

PP here. This. The kindest thing one can say is these mental health programs have a shaky track record and don’t work for everyone. The blunter take is a lot of them are completely worthless bordering on scams and so far more harm than good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You seem worried about your bank's fraud process in response to your DD's theft. In my experience, your anxiety is unfounded. You need to take a deep breath and keep working with your bank.

I don't know about BPD. But people with inattentive ADHD are not neurotypical.

I suggest you take a DBT-C course for parents. You have a lot to learn about DBT.

I suggest you withhold judgment about your DD's therapist until you learn more about DBT.

Don't beat yourself up about your past decisions about your DD's college major. It will cause you to take your regret out on other people.

You have a lot to learn about validation. Your post here and your posts in your other thread (https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1304814.page) tell me you don't have the first clue about it. It's fine. You can learn. If you are open to learning. If you do a DBT-C course, this will be included.

OP here. I do NOT appreciate your condescending, judgmental tone. If only you knew how much time and money we wasted on family DBT... it only resulted in our DD falsely accusing us of abuse. All because we weren't "validating" her insane delusions.

Sorry OP I didn't mean to sound condescending. I can tell you're frustrated and offended and in your shoes I would be too. But validation 101 is: you validate the person's emotions. Not their delusions, lies or bad behavior. So I'm standing by my advice, you have more to learn.

[Anonymous]

I work in social services and parents views of themselves are often very skewed. Lots of parents whose children are taken. Y COs continue to focus on how they were such living and caring parents and how they did everything for their kids. Parents also have blinders on.

Adult children perspectives can be skewed as well however as you see from both the parents on this thread patting themselves on the back for how amazing they were as parents, and how their adult child’s issues have zero to do with them, and how their child’s life was in fact incredible and none of their child’s views are valid…everyone protects themselves. Both use the fact that they had other children who report a happy childhood, therefore to them that proves that they are right and did everything right, and the adult child’s perspective on life is wrong. The adult child then reacts to this and doubles down as well and you just have a war of finger pointing that the other is the problem and no one gets anywhere. Neither can reflect on their own actions.

She stole. Yes, a police report is the right way to go. There should be legal consequences for theft. But both of you are so angry at the other and pointing fingers and defending yourselves that this is just going to keep repeating. Separation and distance would be good for both of you.