My husband and I have found it necessary to block calls from our daughter. She can become vitriolic and hateful when she feels that she has been “wronged” and calls and texts us, and the rest of our family, with her rants about us.
We are in our 70s and 80s, respectively, and her actions are very hurtful and perplexing. It does no good to engage with her during these times, because she is convinced that she is righteous in her thinking.
We don’t know what to do, other than to cut off her ways of contacting us. (She lives two states away.) Although the extended family is aware of her rants, none of them jumps in to defend us. Should we ask the family why they don’t, and should we be hurt that they don’t?
From the Therapist: Your interactions with your daughter sound extremely unpleasant, and I’m sorry that your family is struggling to find a better way to communicate. You say that you don’t know what to do, other than to cut off her ability to contact you, but I’m left thinking about the question you focused on in your letter: Why won’t the rest of the family defend you?
Curiosity about this challenging situation can certainly help, but I suggest that it be directed elsewhere — not at why your family won’t jump in, but why your daughter is in so much pain. As upsetting and off-putting as her rants are, your daughter is trying to tell you something, not just with her words but also with her behavior. Generally, people escalate to the levels you describe only after they’ve tried and failed repeatedly to be heard. So, a more useful question might be: Why is your daughter feeling so unheard?
Your letter offers a clue. On the one hand, you say her actions are perplexing. On the other, you say there’s no point engaging with her because she’s “convinced that she is righteous in her thinking.”
Here’s how I imagine the conversations have gone between you for a long time: She shares something about her experience of having felt hurt by you. You see the situation differently, and minimize her concerns (such as putting quotes around “wronged”). She feels dismissed, and doubles down on her complaint. You double down, too, insisting that whatever she has experienced is overblown. She gets angrier; you get more frustrated. In the end, she feels invisible, you feel blamed and each of you feels mistreated.
Now, let’s imagine another way these conversations could go: Your daughter shares why she feels hurt by you, but because she trusts you to listen, she does this relatively calmly. You think, Huh, I didn’t experience it that way or I don’t remember it that way. But then you take a deep breath, pause, and like a detective eager to solve a mystery (“Why is my daughter in pain?”), you say “Tell me more.”
Tell me more is a magical invitation. It conveys receptivity, interest and openness. It implies that there’s room for differences, and a willingness to consider someone’s distinct personhood across those differences. It says: You matter to me. Here’s what it doesn’t do: force you to agree with what you hear; deny any feelings you have about what you hear; or require you to do anything with the information shared, other than receive it.
If you can get out of the mind-set of who’s right and who’s wrong and how things have happened or how they didn’t, and avoid interpreting her experience as a referendum on your parenting (the fact that you want your family to “defend” you indicates that, understandably, you feel accused), you might find yourself less perplexed and she might find herself less angry. Part of what will help you do this is to remember that while parents tend to focus on intention (We worked so hard to be loving parents), their children tend to focus on impact (This is how those intentions have landed).
You both feel hurt and want your pain recognized, but each of you is going about it counterproductively. In this way, you’re remarkably similar. She shares her complaints about you with the extended family as if to say: My parents are hurting me, and I can’t get through to them — but maybe you can. Meanwhile, you want your extended family to intervene in a similar way: Our daughter is hurting us, and we can’t get through to her — but maybe you can. (Your family might not intervene because they can see both sides even if neither of you can; or they worry that getting involved will make things more volatile, or don’t feel it’s their place to do so.)
Perhaps seeing this parallel will help you empathize with her, and steer you to taking a different approach. Given the current level of tension, you might start with a few sessions with a family therapist (you can do this remotely from your respective cities) to facilitate a different kind of dialogue and create some agreements about how you’ll communicate more productively with each other. The way in which you suggest this matters. Not, The only way we can deal with you is with a therapist. But instead: We want to hear you and understand you better, and we haven’t been able to do that on our own. Can we see a therapist together to help?
Of course, your daughter might decline. She might remain angry. She might continue to communicate in ways that feel hurtful to you. In that case, you can still set boundaries around how you engage with her. But boundaries work best when they’re paired with genuine curiosity rather than dismissal.
This might sound like: “We want to hear what you have to say, and we can do that better with some ground rules for our conversations: respectful language, requests rather than demands and remembering that we can care deeply about each other and still see things differently. If we get off course, let’s agree to end the conversation for the day and try again whenever you’re ready so we can hear you better.”
If your extended family chooses to set their own boundaries (“We love you and your parents, and prefer that you communicate with each other instead of sharing your disputes with us so we can enjoy our relationships with all of you”), that would be helpful, but that’s up to them and doesn’t affect how you handle this.
The point is to shift your focus from “defending” yourselves to learning what your daughter has been trying to tell you. By simultaneously setting limits and making space to understand why someone you love is hurting so much, you might get closer to discovering whether, despite the difficult history, there’s a way to hear each other differently — without you or her bringing the rest of the family into the conflict.
Want to Ask the Therapist? If you have a question, email [email protected]. By submitting a query, you agree to our reader submission terms. This column is not a substitute for professional medical advice.
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