And talking it out with a therapist.

i think that one thing that happened to the middle kid is that she started therapy at 14, very impressionable, and hungry for validation. of course. and therapists see it as their job to validate their patients. i have never seen one try to pry apart perceptions, and point out where there may be a distorted view of something.

at 18, the therapist felt her dx was borderline pd. now, one of the things borderlines do is make up stories to get people in trouble. pretty sure he knew that her stories about her mother the ogre were exaggerated. he also sort of warned the counselor at her school (a therapeutic school) that she would do this w other students. but to keep her trust, he never confronted her w that.
i truly believe that in the process he validated those exaggerations, to the point where she started to believe them.
she now swears that she was regularly beaten as a small child. this is just not the case. i swear it is not the case. i just flat out did not believe in hitting kids. i am not saying that nobody ever got smacked. in fact, the only real ass kicking i ever handed out was to her. it was somewhere about that time. it was a serious instance of not only out of control and frustrating behavior, but downright dangerous behavior.
but i cant even fight worth a shit. i landed a few slaps. that was it. not a mark. not a bruise. nothing.
but hit a little kid? no. just did not happen. yell, swear, say things i am not proud of, yes. but beatings? just.didnt.happen.
but she would swear to it in court w/o batting an eye.

this really blew up in the divorce. she had her dad thinking that i was beating on them when he wasnt around. we did manage to talk about this, and he said he really had a hard time believing that that was going on and he never heard about it at the time. her older brother would have blown the whistle, fersher. he had/has a hyper sense of justice and right and wrong.
but he wont bring it up w her because that would be the end of his relationship w her.
classic borderline stuff.

" I have never seen one try to pry apart perceptions, and point out where there may be a distorted view of something."
I started therapy as an adult when I realized that my choices & actions were causing more pain for me then benefit. Emily was able to help me see that my gaslighting myself was a failure. She did point out my BS to me, as painful as opening that emotional boil was, I'm sure that I would never have figured that out on my own.
I have no experience with adolescents in therapy, so I cannot speak about/to your daughters experience, and thereby your families experience. Have, you yourself, ever talked with a mental health professional? Sometimes saying
outloud what you are thinking & feeling is very helpful.
As always

found it completely worthless.

Everything through a shit lens. My depression has really kicked in hard, and everything anyone says or does is going through this shitty filter before it hits me. I told it doesn't matter right now if he is super perfect, I am receiving it distorted and negative.

I'm fortunate enough to have the insight to see it's not him or even me..it's the depression. But a part of it is also knowing and trusting him. Logically I *know* he is not trying to hurt my feelings or be an asshole, because after 20 yrs together my trust in him is strong. So even though right now stuff he does seems hurtful or careless or whatever, I know that it's because my depression is distorting everything. (And its little random stuff that under better health days I barely notice, but now seem different).

But that's because of our relationship we have built over years. If I was still working, going through this current bout of deep depression, I know (because looking back I see I did it before) I wouldn't be able to separate my broken interpretations from how my coworkers were really treating me and I would lash out. It pains me to see how poorly I treated people because I was reacting to perceived slights that didn't exist. I was so wrapped up in feeling like I was this shit person, that of course everyone else must know it too.

It's so awful...to not trust if what you are feeling is "real".

I think everyone who turns the lens inward and tries to understand themselves will get lost in confusion from time to time. You have to do it, though, if you want to grow and become aware. I meet people sometimes who appear to have a total lack of insight into their own workings. I used to be one of them. They're usually not very interesting people and don't have much depth of thought.

Try to take the emotion out of it and just look at the facts of the matter in a detached kind of way. How were you really treated? When you think back on your husband, does it appear that he really tried to understand most of the time? Was there empathy there? Did he try to express love even when you weren't at your best? My wife and I have been married almost 6 years now. We haven't had a fight in a long time, but when we did earlier in our marriage we both felt terrible about it and expressed that to each other and usually we didn't go to bed angry at each other. And if we did, the next day as soon as we were able to talk to each other we were hugging and apologizing and expressing our love for each other. My wife and I have both had mental health issues, but our love for one another cuts right through it. It can't be a one way kind of thing. If you loved your husband but he didn't love you back or continued to hurt you over the years despite things being good from time to time, then it was truly a broken relationship.

That's take on relationship stuff anyway. That will be 5 cents.

he had issues of his own. he could hold a grudge forever. and pretty much every fight we ever had he swore he was leaving. just to shut the conversation down. as a full time mom, this did a lot of damage. deepened the depression, fersher.
we would kiss and make up, but he wouldnt take any real ownership of what he was doing. he wanted to just be the great guy he was most of the time, and have the shit he pulled be put in some other box.

and tbh, for the kids, this was their life. parents threatening to break up every couple months. often on holidays or other special days because he hated having to be good on any one day.
but somehow he managed to always make it look like my fault. now they all are his best buds, and i am chopped liver. (in no small part because he spends money on them, and bails them out when they are in trouble.)

i'm glad you have ironed out things w your mom. i remember when it wasnt thus. sorta part of the anguish of it all is knowing what a burden it is on the heart to feel like you have separate from a parent.
it has taken me till the age of 60 to forgive my dad, and realize what he gave me. he is long gone, so i cant tell him. and he cant tell me what he thinks of the life i have made for myself. i know that if he were alive he would love to come and visit my farm. that he would be proud of me.

Yeah, I was very angry with my mom, and dad, and step dad at one time. But I just had to let that stuff go. It was important for me at the time to acknowledge to myself that life was hard for me sometimes when I was growing up, but I worked through that stuff and grew and came to see everyone involved, including myself, in a different way. I think that's the best outcome that can be hoped for, and I understand that it's not always a possibility for everyone. But letting go of that anger really helped me to heal.

Did I get really angry at her at times for her behavior and affect caused by her illness ? Yes, unfair as that might seem. But I did love her. When she was in the hospital I went every single day to see her. When she had Alzheimer's and was home-bound, I went every week, at least, to go see her and check on her.

My mother did the best she could within the constraints of her own mental illness. She did love me. I know that, and will always know that.

As far as your marriage goes, I think irisblue has the right idea.

All the best to you, Winston Churchill, and your urban farm

Me and my siblings used to wonder among ourselves why adults would act like grandma was sane when clearly at times she was not. The only reliable conversations you could have with my grandma were about dogs and horses she had known. Otherwise you'd risk a firestorm of crazy, even if you were just a kid. She could say the meanest things in the world about other people. Her redeeming grace was she didn't say mean things about kids, or dogs, or horses, no matter how awful they were.

Mental illness in our family was shoved far back into the closet. My grandma had to be removed from the home she owned because she was a danger to herself and others. No "assisted living" or nursing home was willing to keep her long. My grandma would bounce in and out of homes, always landing in the master bedroom of my parent's house, which they left open for her and her devil cat. My parents themselves slept in the peach painted girl's room. My youngest brother was still living in the turquoise painted "boy's room" of the three bedroom farm house.

I'm certain the police would have shot my grandma dead on several occasions if she hadn't been some little old white lady pensioner they knew from previous calls.

THE WORST DAY IN MY LIFE was an indirect consequence of my grandma's crazy, me running away into a greater crazy.

My mom is bipolar, just as one of my kids and and a couple of me and my wife's siblings are. (Hi mom!) My mom isn't t going to do anything about that, here in her eighth decade, not that I ever expected her to.

My mom was always functional at work, but my dad has always covered for her, both her high peaks and her low peaks, and he still does. She's his muse. They are both artists.

I like to think my kids learned something from me, from my bad example. They didn't quit high school, they didn't take nine years to graduate from college having been asked to leave twice, and they didn't experience any periods of self-imposed-and-inflicted dumpster diving homelessness.

My parents would have certainly rescued me from my madness, but I didn't want them to know.

It was that closet thing.