Hoping to find mother-daughter relationship miracle worker
March 22, 2019 11:54 PM   Subscribe

Sadly, I find that we need the help of a family/parenting therapist at our house. In the briefest of terms the problem concerns a mom in the SF east bay area who is painfully missing a daughter who is away in her first year of college on the east coast. There was plenty of tension before college to be sure but it has now escalated to the point that the young scholar is refusing contact and is being very rude, even deliberately hurtful. Both have agreed to attempt counseling/therapy during her next trip home.

So, I am trying to locate the ‘right’ person here in the SF bay area to help or mediate that fraught experience. If you have any experience or specific recommendations that might lead us to someone well suited to provide such help I would be enormously grateful. Naturally, I am looking at other more general resources such as the Psychology Today therapists lstings.

I have a throwaway email at fj01bn@yahoo.com should you desire to contact me. Otherwise, comments or recommendations here would be appreciated.
posted by anonymous to Human Relations (16 answers total)
 
Is the mother in question in individual therapy? Her therapist would probably have the best suggestions since they would have the most perspective on the situation. If the mother in question is not in therapy i would suggest she start there. There’s not a lot of info about the situation in the post, but from what’s written here the situation sounds incredibly normal, but if the daughter is trying to form her own independent life and the mom is struggling to allow her the space she needs because she misses her, that sounds more like an issue the mom could work through in therapy on her own starting today. Then there would be an opportunity to bring the daughter in or a referral to a 3rd party when the next trip home occurs.
posted by pazazygeek at 4:48 AM on March 23, 2019 [38 favorites]


You're not going to get a lot of therapy done in a short trip home. So I agree with pazazygeek—mom should be in individual therapy. You might also suggest that you are willing to pay for individual therapy for daughter if she wants it. A therapist could help her learn how to set and keep boundaries in a constructive way. University counseling services often suck and have very limited availability. But pushing it on the daughter would be counterproductive.
posted by grouse at 5:49 AM on March 23, 2019 [3 favorites]


The daughter should be forging her own life and own path, with little contact with 'home.' That's usually how you know you've done your job. My mother tried to repeatedly force her way into my life when it was totally inappropriate, and the relationship never recovered (I'm over 40 now.) Consider that this time of her life isn't about you, and you could be actively impeding her social/personal/identity development. I assume that's not what you want for her. Therapy for you alone (or maybe something like Codependents Anonymous) could be the better answer.
posted by thegreatfleecircus at 6:19 AM on March 23, 2019 [27 favorites]


Agreeing that the best course of action here is to get mom individual therapy and then go from there. There’s not a lot of information here, but from the general tone, there’s a sense that normal (though not desirable or optimal) young adult behavior is being treated like a Serious Terrible Problem.

And, gently, it’s not the job of a child to make parents happy or provide desired emotional inputs or support to parents. It’s the job of parents to support children as they grow into well-functioning adults. The focus of the question is how this is upsetting for mom as the problem that needs solving, and in itself is worthy of some examination in therapy.
posted by jeoc at 6:26 AM on March 23, 2019 [27 favorites]


I suspect the daughter chose a college on the east coast to get away from the smothering, and now that she feels the freedom of a truly adult lifestyle is really loathe to let her mother into her life in any significant controlling way again.

Mom needs to let her daughter be the adult she is already, and set her own priorities on self-care and planning out her own life as an empty-nester.

So, yeah, therapy for mom.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:40 AM on March 23, 2019 [28 favorites]


As someone who did this and whose mother did that, and who now hasn't spoken to his mother in going on six years because of everything else she did: Therapy for mom. Maybe therapy for daughter too, if it's available and she's interested, though I wouldn't expect a reconciliation to be the inevitable result.
posted by Alterscape at 7:00 AM on March 23, 2019 [8 favorites]


I had a bad relationship with my folks in college. We were pretty hostile from the get-go. I do feel like some of it for me was just late teens early 20s detaching from nest stuff, plus other garbage I was working through that was really hard. Counseling together sounds intense and unpleasant. Low key doing something as a family sounds so much better. What is something everyone loves the daylights out of doing and always has? Movie night? Hiking? Pizza times? Just try something non-traumatizing and pleasant to do together, plus a lil individual counseling so daughter can see if there’s something she needs to get a handle on.
I’m in my 30s and live an entire ocean away and I miss my mom so much. Give it time.
posted by sacchan at 7:47 AM on March 23, 2019 [2 favorites]


Mom being in therapy is a way for her to build skills and emotional intelligence; even if she considers herself emotionally skilled, if she wants to eventually reconnect with her daughter, she may need super skills -- and who better to learn from than someone who has an advanced education in that area.
posted by amtho at 8:23 AM on March 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


I agree with all the other commentators- Therapy for mom.

You may also want to try a scheduled weekly call. My mom wanted to talk to me every day, and I transferred from a school 30 minutes away to one 12 hours away to get a little more physical distance. We worked out a weekly call, for at least 30 minutes, with text messages every few days. It took a lot of work. And now that I'm ten years out of college, I live 20 minutes away and we talk every day. It took a lot of therapy and boundary setting, but we managed it.
posted by Torosaurus at 8:38 AM on March 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


I would also say that individual counseling for each sounds like a good idea. There seems to be a need for an objective party to be able to provide perspective on the relationship to the mother or daughter, without the other party having a vested interest in driving the narrative a certain way. Both mother and daughter should be able to express themselves fully without having to worry about how it’s going to affect the relationship.

If there is a factor where the mother is trying to smother/cling to the daughter, then this would be an optimal time for the daughter to get an outside view on healthy boundaries and what she should be able to expect from others—which will be especially useful when she forms other friendships and romantic relationships. It’s a good time for her to learn this.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:52 AM on March 23, 2019 [2 favorites]


Comments so far are great. Gently, this question smacks of condependency. It is a lot of pressure to ask the child to manage the emotional well-being of the parent, to go to family therapy on what should be a nice visit home, on top of everything the kid is dealing with as a first-year college student.

I've written extensively here about my relationship with an emotionally and mentally unwell parent and you are welcome to read my comment history if you want to know more. My mother is codependent and emotionally abusive/manipuative. She also has a personality disorder for which she refuses treatment. This month marks three years of strict no-contact, because my mother barreed through every other boundary I set.

I am not saying that is the case with the mother in the question, but you can start with reconsidering whether the child is being "deliberately hurtful" or setting boundaries as a way to protect herself and her own emotional well-being. If the mother does not want this to escalate to the point of no-contact, the absolute FIRST STOP is to seek counseling for herself.

Also, do not make family counseling a requirement for the kid. As someone else above said, offer to pay for therapy for her IF and WHEN she wants it, but do not make it an ultimatum.
posted by Brittanie at 9:23 AM on March 23, 2019 [13 favorites]


"Plenty of tension before college to be sure" coupled with Mom "painfully missing" her child now that the child is starting her own life in a place that seems deliberately far away from the family indicates that Mom really should be in individual therapy before anything else is even considered. I wouldn't even attempt therapy together with the daughter until Mom has a significant amount of therapy under her belt already.

College is a time when this young woman should be more independent and should be distancing herself from parents. If the relationship was fraught even before she left for school, the distance she's trying to create is a good thing for her. Framing not meeting her mother's emotional needs as being rude isn't helpful for anyone. I would also hesitate to set up therapy if Mom thinks it'll just be a way to have daughter be told by an authority that she should be more attentive, nice, and compliant about meeting her mother's emotional demands. How Mom reacts to the suggestion that she start individual therapy to address this will tell you a lot.
posted by quince at 9:59 AM on March 23, 2019 [16 favorites]


Mod note: Folks I think OP is looking for therapist rec's: "I am trying to locate the ‘right’ person here in the SF bay area to help"; let's refocus on that.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:13 AM on March 23, 2019 [2 favorites]


Not in SF but he does Skype/online therapy and I can’t recommend him enough: Gary Direnfeld
posted by saucysault at 11:37 AM on March 23, 2019


I recently tried joint therapy with my Mother, and when it was just the two of us and the therapist we didn't make any progress. I'd say "She does X and I find it upsetting for Y reason and it makes me not want to be around her or talk with her", and then my Mother would claim not to do X. Then she'd say something about me which I disagreed with, and round and round we'd go. We had radically different views on reality and the therapist couldn't make heads or tails of things until we brought in another family member who could bear witness to how we each behaved.* If there's an element of that in your wife & daughter's relationship you may need to be involved in the sessions as well.

* Unfortunately this also led to my Mother quitting therapy because, although it was her idea to bring in the other family member, she didn't appreciate it when they repeatedly piped up "Actually yes, you DO do X thing that Secret Sparrow is describing."
posted by Secret Sparrow at 1:34 PM on March 23, 2019 [7 favorites]


The Berkeley Parents' Network is a good place to get East Bay family therapist recommendations.
posted by tangerine at 6:10 AM on April 10, 2019


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