DARVO from adult daughter

[Tanya]

Over the past few years, my daughter's mental health has been a steadily declining. She had some therapy, but never a diagnosis and refused to participate in almost any healthcare at all since she turned 18. It turned into a situation where she was treating me as her carer, even for things she could do herself.

She stopped leaving the house and spent much of her time in her bedroom. She refused to come out with us and completely disengaged from all social activities, which I'd spent a huge effort in the first place encouraged her to participate in.

I think I was very encouraging but my encouragement was always sneered at or dismissed with "I can't". This included "I can't walk", "I can't go outside", "I can't cook for myself", "I can't cope with people", but she refused all offers of/attempts at external support. She sneered at the professionals who came out to offer support after they had left. She refused to see them without me being present and refused to talk to them, presenting as extremely nervous, anxious and shy.

I realised I was enabling her by trying to get her support when she didn't want it, yet still doing things for her because she refused to do them herself.

The more healthy boundaries I set, for example, "please could you bring your dirty dishes downstairs and wash them because there are no plates, cups or cutlery left down here", the worse she treated me. She refused to engage in any of the mental health support I found for her. She behaved like a meek, shy person in front of a support worker I found her, refusing to engage with any of the suggestions the support worker suggested or offered. She tried to use me as her therapist to work through her "stuff", becoming verbally and physically abusive at times when I wouldn't engage or told her I can't always agree with her perspective, or walk on eggshells around her "boundaries", which consisted of her telling me what words or topics I was forbidden from using, even when talking to other members of the family, telling me I am not allowed to talk to others, or even her, when she's in the kitchen. Asking me to help her cook, and always running off in a tantrum leaving me to complete the task, without fail. I wasn't allowed to sing, dance or play my music, because it was "overwhelming" for her, resulting in her having a tantrum, shouting, screaming, head banging on the wall, swearing, throwing things, kicking me, throwing things at me, slamming doors until they break. Throwing heavy objects. All of which behaviour, she blamed on me for "violating her boundaries". She had tantrums if I suggested she might benefit from an assessment for autism.

A bit of background:

Until she was seven, I was married to her dNPD/diagnosed psychopath biological father. Social services were involved and I eventually left and have been NC with him ever since. He was violent, extremely abusive, lazy and very controlling. He had a fake personality that he put on in front of others. He beat me and put the children in front of cartoons to drown out the noise of him abusing me.

My daughter had a counsellor at school who she got on with. She had a private counsellor aged 16-18.

She always pushed my boundaries and exhibited some quite odd behaviours, especially quite aggressive panic and physically trying to get things like the tv remote when it was time to turn the tv off, for example, or tantrums when I said it's time to turn the internet off, but in general, she does have the ability to be generous, caring and reasonable. It wasn't really until she turned 18 and decided that she didn't want to grow up that things became gradually unlivable.

Instead of working on her own issues, she tried to make everyone change their behaviour to suit her.

Earlier this year, my daughter became so violent that the police had to be called. She used threats to kill me.

She wasn't allowed home because it's not safe for her to be here. She's now physically attacked every member of the household. She hasn't been physically attacked by any of us. Everyone has been generally decent, polite, reasonable and as understanding of her difficulties as is humanly possible when someone is repeatedly having violent meltdowns and shouting abuse. I've always been the main target of her rages.


After she was arrested, twice, for common assault and threats to kill, she showed zero remorse.

She has been threatening suicide and self harming for several years. I have sat suicide watch on her on numerous occasions, but she refused to engage with any mental health support at all.

Since she decided to go and stay with her friend who still lives at home with his mum, she has told them a very dishonest story about how abusive I have been to her. Her friend and his mum have completely bought her story and have told me my daughter would be dead if it wasn't for their help and compassion and care.

I tried to stay in touch with my daughter by text after she randomly stopped talking to her stepdad, who I thought she got along well with.

We had some light-hearted conversation by text until she started ghosting me.

So I sent a nice but firm message to her asking what was going on, why her friends seemed to think I lied to the police about her.

It was at this point that I received a shocking email from her completely denying her violence and threats, calling me a liar, blaming me for her outrageous behaviour, telling me that I am a narcissist who deliberately violates her boundaries all the time. She accused me of having described her as having the exact mental illnesses that her friend's mum asked me if she might have.

I know the kind, reasonable, supportive, fun, happy person behind the monster. I really, really miss my daughter. I know she's struggling a lot with trauma from her early childhood, but without her wanting to engage in trauma therapy, I'm concerned she's possibly uBPD. I wrote a kinder introduction in the welcome mat section. This goes into more detail.

I feel quite numb, but am absolutely devastated and worried about her.

I know she's not just a psychotic mess, but without professional help, what's the alternative? Cycling through rage/resentment/blame/self hatred/etc?

I think this post is probably as confusing as I feel.

[Tanya]

I've just been reading Top 100 Traits and Behaviours and then I read through my post (above). I realise I've used "never/always"! I'd like to amend it to

My daughter mostly refused help from professionals. It's very difficult to explain because there were times she seemed to be engaging and times when I was screamed at and verbally abused just for suggesting she try therapy.

I was told by a visiting health professional once after she witnessed regressive behaviour from my daughter that it would be counterproductive to force my daughter into therapy or assessments if she was so aggressively resisting it.

I always wonder if I was wrong to be so patient and "child led" back then. I wonder if I'd forced my daughter kicking and screaming and clinging onto doorposts to participate in assessments, whether anything would be any different now.

I doubt it. The times I made her do something she didn't want to do have been brought up in conversation as examples of me being abusive. But what does any parent do in situations like this, when their child does everything they can to avoid doing anything even slightly uncomfortable, even when it's good for them?

My daughter told me after the health professional left that she was trying to drive her away so she didn't come back.

It's this point where I regret not saying I'm going to go for it with assessments and meetings to figure out what help my daughter needed.

Instead I spoke to the school who provided a counsellor, but maybe if my daughter had at least had some kind of diagnosis back then-

Then what?

It would probably have ended up the same way.

What I really want is to be able to open up a channel of communication with my daughter so that I know she's safe on a regular basis. Just checking in.

She made it very clear that unless I give in to her demands that she's going NC with me.

Letting go is very hard.

At least I have time and headspace to work on me, get some therapy and learn healthy coping mechanisms.

I have to admit I've been an enabler and been very overwhelmed trying to help my daughter when she didn't want help. It's not that I believed I could fix her, it's that I believed she wanted to fix herself even after it became clearer and clearer that she had no intention of learning healthy communication or healthy boundaries or healthy coping mechanisms if it meant she'd lose her comfortable free home here, with me doing stuff for her and even being her personal secretary because otherwise she wouldn't communicate with the support workers she had, before she completely disengaged.

I wonder if I'd have put all that energy into working on me instead of trying to help her, if she'd have ended up being arrested and removed from the family home even earlier, because the more support I sought for myself, the more professionals pointed out that my daughter's behaviour is abusive and suggested I get help for myself, the better my boundaries became and the more my daughter raged against them.

For example, I asked her to stop coming into my room, sitting down on my bed and starting difficult conversations with me late at night. She continued to do so.

For example, I asked her that when I told her I'm not able to discuss a topic with her, that she respect that and walk away or talk calmly about something else. She continued to do so.

The day she used violence and threats to kill on me, she had been following me around the house desperately trying to engage me in a conversation I told her I don't understand and can't have with her, for three days. Over and over again, she tried to engage me in the same conversation that I'd repeatedly said no to.

This was seen as me never listening and not caring.

On the contrary, I had listened previously, which is why I knew that this topic always leads to her having a meltdown, becoming verbally abusive, door slamming, throwing things. So I made a compromise and said that when I get my appointment for therapy, that I will be happy to have some sessions with my daughter too. I had already asked the therapist about this.

My daughter said she doesn't want to talk about it in therapy.

After she got home after being arrested the first time, she snarkily said "joint therapy?"

She subsequently told me via email that she doesn't want therapy at all, joint or otherwise.

I don't know if my ruminating about this here is even going to help me.

I accept that there's nothing I can do to help my daughter at this point. She declined all my offers to pay for therapy for her with any therapist. I told her pick one and I'll pay the bill. She declined.

So I'm going to have to set myself some personal goals of finding a private therapist because I'm still on the waiting list for the specialist therapy for DV survivors I applied for a long time ago.

It's really tough admitting to myself that my daughter behaved in very similar ways to her biological father in the way she treated me.

She even used the exact same phrases he did a few times.

I don't want to be a victim.

It feels absolutely horrible imagining I was the victim of an assault and threats to kill by my own daughter. I don't feel like a victim and I don't want my daughter to feel like an abuser, but the truth of the matter is that she's gaslighting me that nothing happened, that she was only reacting to my abuse, therefore the attack (that she says didn't happen) was my fault.

Which is classic domestic abuse perpetrator tactics.

I wish life were simple.

[Rebel13]

Hi Tanya,

I mostly just want to express my sorrow that you have to struggle with this, and my support for you doing what you can and need to, to care for yourself. It sounds like you are doing that in terms of finding a therapist. If you are interested, in addition to DV therapy, you might also look for therapists who are educated in dealing with the effects of trauma. I imagine that your relationships with your daughter and her father were both quite traumatic for you. I've been in trauma-informed therapy for the past year and it has made a tremendous difference in my life, after struggling for over 50 years with the effects of growing up with a mother who I believe to be narcissistic, and a father who was violent and rageful.

Wishing you peace.

[Tanya]

Hi Rebel13,
Thank you so much for your reply. It's good to hear that trauma informed therapy has made such a positive improvement in your life. That's reassuring. I did have CBT in the past which helped me a lot, but it's definitely time to try therapy again. I have been recommended to try EMDR.
I've struggled all my life with the effects of trauma too. My mother has undiagnosed mental health issues which match the descriptions of vulnerable NPD that I've read about. She was violent and rageful. My dad tried to appease her to avoid conflict, so it's been very difficult for me to learn to stand up for myself.

I used to beg my mother to come to therapy with me to try to heal our relationship and she declined, telling me that I was the problem, not her. Now I feel like I'm in a replica of the situation with my daughter, desperate to get her to go to therapy to help us both with the trauma from my marriage and the abuse from her biological father.

All I have control over is getting help for me. I just hope my daughter figures this out for herself too.

I don't want her to go through life getting hurt because she never learnt healthy communication or coping mechanisms.

I tried so hard to break the cycle of dysfunctional families and I failed miserably, but I'm not giving up on my own happiness.

[Rebel13]

Tanya, I can only imagine your feelings of guilt and despair at struggling with the effects of a disordered parent and spouse, and then having your daughter refuse your help and start down a similar path. I'm so sorry and I think it's so strong of you to turn the focus to yourself. As we know through hard and bitter experience, the only person we can change is ourselves.

I also worked with CBT in therapy and on my own many times over the years. What I've found out since starting to learn about all the research on trauma over the past 20-30 years -- which wasn't around when I was a young person first trying to sort this stuff out -- is that, while cognitive and emotion-based strategies can be very helpful, they are missing the physiological piece, particularly for those of us whose neurological systems developed in the context of an abusive family system. That has been the missing piece for me! Learning how to manage my physiological state -- the fight/flight/freeze system or stress response -- gives me the space I couldn't make for myself before, to then manage my thoughts and feelings. I really hope you find something that works for you. I have heard people say EMDR helps them a lot. I only looked into it to the extent of a few Youtube videos, but if it helps you I say go for it!

[Tanya]

I've just been reading this:

https://outofthefog.website/top-100-trait-blog/2015/11/4/dissociation

My daughter has been saying over the past three years that she dissociates.
Her friend's mum suggested to me that she might have DID. It would definitely explain my daughter saying that the violence and abuse didn't happen. It doesn't explain why my daughter's friend's mum told me I lied about the violence.

I feel really mean for letting go of this.
I need to accept I tried my best to get help for my daughter and it didn't work.
I need to accept it's better that she's not living here any more.

I'm just very concerned that if her new helper doesn't believe my daughter actually has violent tantrums and then says they didn't happen and blames the person she attacked...that my daughter is going to take even longer getting the actual help she needs.

It's so hard to stop worrying about her.

I couldn't sleep last night with worrying.

[Tanya]

Thanks Rebel13,

I only saw your reply after I wrote my next post.
Yes, coping with the neurological stuff is important. I'm slowly reading The Body Keeps the Score. It's a difficult read. But it's very hopeful that research is being done and solutions being found to help reverse (I hope!) the effects on the actual development of our "wiring" as we grow up in a traumatic situation.

Maybe reversing bad wiring isn't possible, but I read that it's possible to build new neural pathways.

[square]

Hello Tanya,

That all sounds very heartbreaking. I'm sorry.

I don't have direct experience, just drawing on indirect experiences (as a parent of a mildly autistic young adult, as a friend as a teen to someone with BPD and other illness, general observations of families impacted by ASPD and other PD).

You are correct, peeling her off a post to force her into anything would not have resulted in a better outcome.

It sounds to me like she may be dealing with a sort of perfect storm of traits and experiences. Sensory issues can be managed but that requires other pieces, such as a sense of responsibility for identifying and communicating needs, a degree of emotional regulation, enough cognitive empathy to realize other people have rights, etc.

She had traumatic experiences from her father (even just witnessing abuse is highly traumatic for a child) and she may have inherited PD traits from her father that may include ASPD, which could account for the empathy deficits, violence, threats, etc., as well as BPD traits as you've mentioned.

My thoughts as an Internet stranger looking at what you wrote:

She is an adult now, and it is time to accept that she makes her own decisions about whether to seek any type of help. I personally think you should entirely drop these suggestions. She responds very negatively and I think there is no chance she will ever say "what an interesting idea, Mom, I'll look into that." Suggestions from you are a trigger for her, and I'm guessing they feel extremely invalidating.

There is no help to be had that she does not choose and participate in. So that's that.

If she ever seeks any type of help, it will not have anything to do with you. If you have anything to do with it, she will reject it.

She is out of your home and that is good. Do not chase her down. She does not owe you texts or other contact. If she texts or calls, great. If she takes a break, fine, just leave it alone. If she doesn't reply, just let it be. You'll hear from her if she wants to talk. Nagging her to talk is counterproductive.

Lies to other people about you are difficult. Here's how to think of it:

Either

She'll fall apart on these people eventually and expose her own lies in so doing

Or

She doesn't fall apart on them. Which would be good. Maybe she can pull herself together away from her home of origin and the baggage that comes with it. Better that she can do this if she can.

It's time to change your relationship with her. Accept that she is who she is. Continue to protect yourself and your family from abuse, 100%, but stop trying to control or change her.

She is not allowrd to abuse you or your family, and she will need to leave, or conversation ended, or police called if she does.

She is allowed to choose to ignore you, not call, not text, not go to therapy, and not agree with you even if she's twisting reality.

[Rebel13]

So, so true, square, and so, so hard to accept and enact!! This reminds me of some really hard but, I think, true things that Jerry Wise said in the video posted by feenix in the Other Media Resources section.

[Tanya]

Thank you, square, I very much appreciate your honesty, hard as it is to come to terms with.


I've been in denial that my daughter could possibly have inherited traits from her biological father and it really hurts to acknowledge that it's even possible.

It's was a very confusing few years before she left. I guess me begging her to engage with mental health services was an ultimatum in a way: either engage with help for your trauma and therefore with your behaviour towards yourself, towards me and towards the other family members here, or find somewhere else to live. I wanted her to do this the best way for her. Instead, it worked out adding more trauma for her. Calling the police was not something I expected to have to do, but mental health services refused to come out without them because of the violence and threats to kill. I'd warned her in the past though. The previous time she physically assaulted me, I told her after her week of silence that if she ever attacked me again, I'd call them.


I remember being told the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

I wish I could stop ruminating.

I really miss my daughter. I just don't miss her nasty side or her abusive behaviour.

[square]

It's possible she inherited traits, but also possible she didn't. Certainly something is going on.

My daughter has sensory issues and maybe mild autism. When she was young, she would sometimes flip out and yell at me and her father to stop talking. We were baffled and found this behavior rude and shocking. We could not even imagine ordering our parents to stop talking. We were just appalled.

When she was a young teen, she was able to conceptualize what was happening and explain it to me. I came to understand that her attempts to shush us were not about being rude or controlling. When she was overwhelmed in a sensory way, she couldn't cope. Her attempts to communicate her needs failed and all she could do was freak out. And we as parents did invalidate her needs by telling her she was being ridiculous, and we often refused to stop talking as a matter of principle - people talk, and we weren't going to tiptoe around just because our child demanded it.

I could definitely see how a child who was unable to cope might have freakouts. They need to stop the overstimulation, requests get invalidated and maybe even belittled. So they start screaming or throwing things or hitting or whatever, and it sort of works because now mom and dad aren't talking in that tone or pitch anymore, even if they are now in fact yelling and punishing.

I don't know if any of that describes any events in your house, but I'm sure it happens in many houses. We were lucky because my daughter was able to eventually articulate the issue and I was willing to listen and read about it. I took it seriously and accommodated her needs. Because she finally felt understood and validated, she felt safe enough to express her needs in constructive ways, and didn't overplay her demands. She does still get overstimulated but just announces she needs quiet time in her room. Sometimes she will leave the house if I'm on the phone and my voice annoys her. And she might rarely ask me to change something if she's really losing it.

I am totally speculating here and I could be way off, but I wonder if your daughter may have experienced a chaotic and traumatic home. This is already very significant, but sensory issues add a new dimension. If she was unable to get her needs met (both sensory but also general), she may have resorted to extreme tactics, some of which may have been modelled to her. And those behaviors may have become used in different situations, including perhaps just not getting her way sometimes.

She may have also felt like something was wrong with her, she may feel toxic shame, and this can fracture a person's sense of self and lead to extreme behaviors.

This could also possibly explain her experience of your encouragement to get help - it may feel not like "I see you're in pain and want to help" but like "there's something wrong with you and somebody needs to fix it because you're causing us problems." If that is the case, even a hint of "you need help," especially from her family of origin, will be triggering, probably forever.

Anyway, that's all just speculation, but maybe something might be useful, I don't know.

[Tanya]

Thank you square.
Yes, we went through talking about sensory overload issues. I bought her noise cancelling headphones that she requested and went through so many steps to try to make things work. It just got worse.

She was very triggered if anyone suggested she might be autistic. Her explanation made perfect sense. If she was neurodivergent due to the extreme stress caused by the domestic violence and abuse at home until she was 7, then she felt labelling her behaviour "autistic" was invalidating. There's a fine line between some of the symptoms of autism and those of dissociative disorders resulting from trauma (she reported dissociating, but the therapist she disengaged from didn't agree that her description was dissociation, rather derealization and depersonalisation if I remember correctly).

The saddest thing is that at times she's very self aware. She acknowledged in the past that she has a tendency to write people off for the slightest sign that they might upset her. She acknowledged that she's terrified of abandonment (of course she is: her biological father and her grandmother walked out of her life). So she cuts people off so she doesn't experience the pain if she takes the risk of them cutting her off.
I have a feeling that's why she's lying to her new helpers. I get it- but they still accepted her and wanted to help her after I explained to them that she physically attacked me and threatened to kill me, because I explained it in terms of her struggling with her mental health and that I triggered her. Which she didn't deny until later (after she moved in with them).

So she's cut me off because she's found new people who validate her that it's not her fault she was arrested, but mine.

I get it if it's too painful for her to have a relationship with me right now.

Maybe it always will be.

It just sucks that she had the self awareness previously to confide in me that she's terrified of becoming a DV perpetrator if she has a romantic relationship, because she has problems controlling her anger if someone triggers her. She decided she never wants children because of this. She repeatedly said she's stuck like this and there's nothing anyone can do to change it because her "wiring is f***ed".

That degree of hopelessness plus self harm plus suicide threats terrifies me.

And I do feel an amount of guilt for calling the police, but honestly? It was just as unhealthy for her here as it was for everyone else. Everything was about her and her needs although they weren't being met, because it was impossible to meet them. The goalposts kept changing. There could be a couple of good weeks followed by a couple of bad months of daily meltdowns.


Something she started saying to me was too much. Something along the lines of:

You gave birth to me, so it's your responsibility to care for me and deal with the consequences of having a child when you shouldn't have been allowed to.

 

[square]

Some of that is similar to my husband - not the sensory stuff, but the experience of childhood trauma due to DV (father to mother), a fracturing of self so he has different "states" (rational, self aware, adult vs. destructive, trauma-driven, paranoid "frightened child" state). I don't suspect DID/multiple personality but it feels like he's two or three different people.

They revert back to a trauma state when threatened, and their prefrontal cortex is no longer accessible. Instead, they are driven by the survival state of the limbic system. They can sometimes regret their behavior later, or sometimes not really remember it because different parts of the brain aredriving at different times.

My husband has a very poor relationship with his mother. I have directly observed her invalidate his memories and experiences of childhood. She feels she was the only victim of the abuse by his father, and refuses to acknowledge how incredibly frightened he was. He could have moved past his childhood experiences to some degree perhaps, but when he tries to emotionally process his experiences, they are overshadowed by her messages "that never happened" or other imvalidating messages. He then feels angry and unsure and is stuck on trying to assure himself they did happen (which they did, his sister confirms his memories) but can't move on to just dealing with the events themselves.

The chaos of the home affected him in many ways, including difficulties in school. He absorbed a message that something was wrong with him even though this wasn't an explicit message from his parents. But something indeed was wrong and he could not articulate it. He is very intelligent but the effects of home chaos interfered with academics and he was put in a learning disabled class. He internalized feeling stupid and it's a trigger. Your daughter may feel that labelling her autistic says that there is something broken about her and therefore things are her fault. Even if you feel like it actually absolves her of blame because of course autism wouldn't be her fault. I don't think my husband could change how he sees being labelled learning disabled, but I think his mother validating that he experienced trauma that was not his fault and that the trauma deeply affected him, would go a little way toward healing something in him - if she managed to avoid any even minor invalidations along the way. But he is nearly 50 now and after all these years would likely not trust her anymore. It could have helped more years ago.

I completely hear that kick in the guts with the statement from your daughter. If I unpack it as if my husband said it, taking it from a hurt and traumatized child, this is how I could see it:

Mom, I didn't feel safe as a child. You and Dad made the house feel unsafe, and even if you were 100% the victim of Dad's abuse, as a child I only knew that I depended entirely on my parents for survival and I could not pick apart whose "fault" it was like an adult can. Just like a small child can feel abandoned by a parent who dies, as if the parent chose to die, I felt abandoned by my mother when she was engaged, no matter how unwillingly, in violence in the home. Mom, even if it was not your fault, I was totally helpless and dependent on you and you did not (regardless if you "could" not) provide a safe home for me. It had a major effect on me and I am sick of hearing that I'm autistic when that's not the problem!!! I'm talking about something else, even if it looks like autism is the problem, it's only how some of the symptoms of this other thing manifest. I could be autistic and still well adjusted and I'm not, because of this other thing. The small child in me needs to hear you be a parent to me and day that something happened that should not have happened, to take responsibility for it, to not add any "but you..." because I was just a child even if I'm an adult now.


I know I'm writing some difficult things and I don't know nuances of your family, just reflecting experiences I've observed myself. Maybe it applies, maybe not.

I 100% validate your boundaries to stop her abuse including calling police. None of what I wrote above is to say she is not responsible for anything now as an adult. But something may be sticking in her craw about needing to be validated for her childhood, and sorting out what was and wasn't your fault isn't as salient to a vulnerable child who depends entirely on you. It isn't rational to an adult but it's completely rational to a child.

[Tanya]

Hey Square, thank you so much for your thoughtful and insightful reply. Sorry I've been a while replying.
I was actually able to have pretty good/productive conversations about the DV stuff with my daughter in the past. I told her she's allowed to be angry with me for not leaving sooner (even though it wasn't possible to leave sooner!). That was something I understood because I was mad at me too. It took me a lot of therapy to be able to understand that I did the best I could in an impossible situation. That's why I don't understand why she's refusing to get therapy. I think she thinks I want her to have therapy for my sake. I want her to have therapy so she has a better chance at happiness and at not making the mess of her life that I made of mine, but as the poem goes -

"Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself."

Which is just very pessimistic and sad, really.

I'm low on knowing how to express myself today.