All teenagers go through drama. Some level of drama is normal, and some level most definitely isn’t. It’s impossible for us to know where on this scale your daughter falls without knowing a lot more than we do, and probably more than we should or can know.
Any solution to this issue will have to come from talking to your daughter, your daughter’s teachers, any medical or psychological professionals working with your daughter, and possibly your daughter’s friends (or ex-friends).
I apologise for being missing since posting, but as discussed I’m not that active of a doper and I’ve been focused on the family. To answer some questions(but clearly not all) a combination of a therapist and her pediatrician recommended medication. According to both it is a very low dosage and viewed more as a trial(started in Sept). And yes my daughter asked both of them straight up about being prescribed(Google is powerful). That was not driven by myself or my wife, but we were open to professional recomadations. We have tried multiple therapists over the years. She has always had a very adverse reaction to them(runs out, refuses to talk much). The most recent one was a young woman right out of school (and I believe working in a practice before she gained her license). The thought was someone more like her might be easier. My daughter claimed she hated it and refused to open up. My wife and I met with said therapist a few times alone. She echoed what someone above said, a person has to accept therapy for it to have an impact.
She has not been clinically diagnosed and that is something I am trying to rectify. We are scheduled to have an entry interview at another practice in Jan, but from what I’ve seen, professionals in this state are overtaxed and spread thin. Most won’t accept new patients and if they do it’s months of waiting.
And I can’t believe this is normal teenager drama. While she has always been dramatic, this can’t be normal. Last night I litterally had to hug her for 20 minutes while she cried histercally saying she wanted to die. And that all stemmed from her not wanted to atend a class this am where several people who were her friends seem not to be now and while she won’t say they are harassing her, they obviously are making her quite upset.
Once again, thanks to all. I am trying to do all I can, but I am always aware and respect the value of an educated and experienced quorem.
Thanks for the update. I’ve been wondering. You’re in one of the toughest and most confounding situations a parent can be in, and you have my sympathy.
You’re absolutely right: a teen with your daughter’s history sobbing hysterically for 20 minutes and saying she wants to die is isn’t just normal teen-age behavior. In fact, I think there’s a level of urgency here. I’m not a shrink. I base this on many years of teaching HS, including a fair number of kids with mental health disorders. That doesn’t make me an expert, but it doesn’t take an expert to recognize your daughter is at higher risk of self-harm.
If I were you, I’d call the pediatrician and tell him/her about last night’s episode. AIUI, those low initial doses of meds are usually prescribed for a period of a few weeks or so. If there’s been no change in 3 months, it’s past time to consider whether the dose needs to be increased or a different medication prescribed. PCP’s often have to pinch-hit, but diagnosis and treatment of anything other than simple depression or anxiety can be beyond their ken.
Which brings us back to psychiatrists. There’s a severe shortage nationwide, true. Ask her pediatrician if he or she can’t get a consult with a psychiatrist. Even psychiatrists who aren’t accepting new patients may be willing to consult with another MD re: medication recommendations or even to see DD on an emergency basis, if her pediatrician at any point characterizes it that way.
And one last suggestion: call your DD’s guidance counselor, ask for a referral to a therapist who specializes in adolescence and book an appointment for you and your wife to go. You need truly expert advice on how to handle your DD’s situation.
I’m sorry you’re going through this. I had a really hard time emotionally myself around that age, and I don’t know what the solution is. However, I don’t think it’s forcing her into therapy.
Does she have interests? Talents? Finding her tribe might help. It’s tempting to dismiss social factors and assume this is some pathology, but loneliness is really crippling, especially for someone at such a vulnerable age. It’s also immensely helpful to find something you care about more than you care about what other people think of you, or even your own pleasure. That scared, sad girl I was is still in there, but she has to compete with the lawyer, the diver, the activist, the creative bartender, and the writer, and those ladies seldom shut up long enough for sad girl to get a word in edgewise.
A few random thoughts…
Speaking Anthropologically (because that’s one of the things I do around here when I manage to pop in and spout off), there were and still are societies in which this sort of “Teen Drama” phase is not considered a normal part of growing up. Too many impediments to mere survival take higher priority. In that sense, this is something of a First World Problem. If you want to find a *pony in the shit pile *(a phrase my wife taught me) you might appreciate that you’re affluent enough that your daughter has the luxury to ride this roller-coaster.
[COLOR=Black]Speaking sociologically, I’d pretty much echo what **Nelliebly **has already said. My wife has shaped her career as a coordinator of services – sort-of the other side of the hand-off between educators like **Nelliebly **and other agencies when they see a kid who is having learning difficulties of some kind – and a lot of her days are spent in parent/teacher/coordinator/specialist meetings for figuring out how best to serve those students who are experiencing difficulties. Thank you, Nelliebly, for paying attention and caring!
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[COLOR=Sienna]Speaking personally…
My sister went through some of that and it was considered normal at the time. However, after hearing tales in retrospect from my sister’s former clique-mates from high school, there were odd things that now seem to stand out as “Oh! So that’s why…” because it turns out my sister has inherited our grandmother’s propensity for neurological problems and apparently this type of stuff is known to skip generations through the female line. So when my sister’s former friends gave me tales of her being uncharacteristically and dramatically offensive, of straining friendships past the breaking point, of pushing a viewpoint that somehow seemed slightly out-of-sync with reality, of just plain remembering incidents in a way that was inconsistent with everyone else’s recollection, the bits and pieces started to fall together like unscattered bits of a jigsaw puzzle.
Knowing what I know now makes my sister’s past seem to make so much sense. The problems started out small around the time she hit puberty, got dramatically worse shortly after she started college, and thoroughly screwed up her life about a decade later. Meanwhile, living through it without the right paradigm overlaid on the whole big picture was hell for me and a lot of people who knew my sister.
My grandmother seriously suffered for decades; my sister is now preoccupied with unrelated problems (though her psychological situation cannot be completely ignored by the staff where she’s living). Today, though, modern medicine has a host of diagnostic, analytical, and treatment tools that can help your daughter deal with the problems (internal and external) of modern life in the modern world – there IS hope – provided she can see some of the right specialists. Please keep trying.
Speaking introspectively…
I have had the luxury of looking back on my life and realizing that many of the social difficulties of my youth were related to the frustration of lacking an ability to properly express my feelings combined with the ‘lesson’ I was given that nobody valued my opinion anyway. The inability to communicate clearly and adequately is astoundingly frustrating, particularly when the emotions and thoughts occuring to you are new and unfamiliar. And the key to getting through that phase of my life was simply a couple teachers writing comments on my assigned essays to show they were paying attention to my thoughts. Over the years I somehow managed to build a broad vocabulary and excel in certain fields, to the point that I know that ‘lesson’ was just my brother being a big meany.
On the other hand, I realize words aren’t everybody’s forte. More accurately, I’ve known forever that drawing is not one of my skills and stringing together meaningful words is not easy for my sister. It may be that your daughter is having difficulty dealing with therapists because she finds it difficult to convey what she’s thinking or feeling in words during a limited session. But there are other ways to express oneself and perhaps your daughter can do so through sculpture or music or dance or other means. Or maybe simply removing the time constraint would give her the freedom to open up verbally – a private journal or secret diary could be a place she could lay down ideas or expressions or doodles or sketches in order to share only what she wanted to share and only with whom she cared to share it.
Okay, enough; I know I’m rambling…[/COLOR]
–G!
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There are so many contradictions
In all these messages we send
(We keep asking)
“How do I get out of here?”
“Where do I fit in?”
Though the world is torn and shaken
Even if your heart is breakin’
It’s waiting for you to awaken
And someday you will…
LEARN TO BE STILL
…–Don Henley (Eagles)
…Learn to be Still
…Hell Freezes Over
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StuckinNJ, you said that your daughter has been to a few different therapists, but what type of therapists has she seen?
My (admittedly quick, non-diagnostic) read of her situation is that she would benefit from learning new coping skills and distress tolerance. Something like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy could help, although she may hate it at first because it feels like work. Medications may help stabilize her brain chemistry to enable her to do the work, but they’re not a cure-all. CBT can be extremely helpful in teaching her how to shorten the 20 minutes of crying hysterically (or, eventually prevent it altogether) and to get herself to a place of greater emotional stability.
Groups can also be very helpful with teaching and practicing those skills, and they have some additional benefits: not having to wait for an individual therapist to have a free slot; socialization with peers (without the risks of “lumping her in” with kids whose illnesses are more severe, as in an inpatient unit; having a safe space to practice identifying and verbalizing her feelings; and even a laugh or two with peers along the way.
Best of luck to your whole family.
I wouldn’t decide on the right steps to take regarding what type of therapy your DD should get or what steps, like homeschooling, you should take until you get a diagnosis. At that time, you and her doctors can determine what steps you should take and treatment she should have.
I agree with this, and in fact with all of nelliebly’s advice. If you can talk to a counselor at school before Christmas break starts, you may be able to do a bit of a reset over break, too. And it may be more feasible for you to monitor a dosage ramp-up if she is home all the time and you are taking some vacation, too.
Good luck. Parenting teens can be a roller-coaster ride, and make you feel like you don’t know how to do anything. But you really are the expert on your daughter, and you really will muddle through this. We are all rooting for you and for her. (I will make a book recommendation, even though I think you are probably outside the realm of “normal” teen problems - I found Untangled to be a really good book about raising teen girls. I’m pretty sure it won’t solve all your problems with her, but it might give you some perspective.)
It appears that the author of Untangled has a newer book that I was not previously aware of, that might be an even closer fit for your situation: Under Pressure. I haven’t read it, but given how good the other book was, my guess is that this one would also be helpful.