Reply to how can a teen be made to confront faulty thinking if its never addressed- vent

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "how can a teen be made to confront faulty thinking if its never addressed- vent"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I've posted here before about my depressed teen who has made a terrific turn around on medication after a year and a half of non working therapy.  There really isnt a solution here except her finally getting serious about really working with a therapist and me FINDING such a therapist.

THe problem is her therapist left the practice abruptly and no one was available to replace.  She got worse and eventually needed the meds, which thankfully worked very well, and it seemed like she made a lot of progress. Almost like she "caught up" with the therapy, but the therapy never challenged her ever. It was just nice talking about feelings, validating things, some of it was with me, some of it wasn't, as directed by the therapy etc.

THe issue NOW is there are pockets of undealt with feelings that have not progressed and these are like landmines that get detonated on (mostly) me.

One bad habit of hers is to blame me for how something I say makes her feel. BUT its not things I say that anyone would find problematic, its very normal things. Example: she says she wants to take on some tasks to help around the house. Great! Self directed willingness to help. But she wants me to tell her what to do, so I ask her  to pick from a list. She picks emptying the dishwasher in the morning. Fine.

But then she does it once or twice and not again. I don't say anything because right now she is rebuilding and I take a wait and see. She brings up some time later that she wants to help, and I remind her she had decided to empty the dishwasher, and simply reminding her creates a big meltdown that what I said made her feel bad about herself. Something simple like that can lead to her messaging me and saying I am "bad for (her) mental health".

I don't feel like going into more examples, but the concerning pattern appears to be: "I feel bad about myself as a result of something YOU said so YOU direspected my boundaries. (She will use that term)

The irony is that our dynamic is very good 95% of the time. But when she loses it, she blames me too often. The offense is usually just something normal. She talks about "having triggers" but has zero insight on the fact that other people cant know all of her triggers.

How on earth can I send her into therapy to address her blaming problem (which has improved but when it explodes its pretty bad for everyone) which is based on faulty assumptions and patterns of thinking developed during a protracted bout of depression and anxiety?

Im concerned that despite being super mature at almost 15, she has pockets of very immature thinking that do not get challenged. No therapist is going to know about them unless they are aware of them, and SHE is not going to tell  them.

Yes I have the book untangled and under pressure. Great books. I just don't have the therapist she needs and right now a lot of people are booked to the gills.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics