mother/daughter relationships.

Just saw your latest post, Dee. Sounds like you and dd know what you're doing. Good luck and let us know how it turns out!

Should have typed get it right but fingers and brain dont seem to work together at times

Why not just sit down with your daughter and discuss the issues, can't see for the life of me why you need to rush into counselling afterall you say you have a good relationship so much so that she is moving up near to you. I just feel as Radicalnan and others say that it could do more harm than good. I will also say that I have a dificult time with my daughter at times but talking it through with her I realise where we go wrong and make and we both make an effort to
Ut it right. Good luck.

Dee - what part of the North are we talking about? I had mother/daughter issues as my mother was narcissistic which has had a real impact on my life and outlook. I got a lot of help when I went to a Lancashire based counsellor and would thoroughly recommend her.

It sounds like you are both aware of positives & pitfalls. Get the best you can afford & look at the different kinds of counselling & therapy. After studying many types of therapy etc & having had excellent & a few rubbish preactitionera, I found Adlerian therapy excellent for family situations. His work is the basis to most modern self help therapies though they've often been stripped down too much of the underlying philosophy & his influence is rarely acknowledged. His work was decried by Freudians in this country so it's better known in e.g.Australia, USA, Ireland & Israel - & Guernsey & used a lot in schools. It is very practical & the co-relationship between client & therapist should be an equal one. Unlike Jung & Freud, Adler took social context into account. As ever, it's the quality of the therapist that's all important & worries about how you resolve issues that come up should be discussed beforehand. Deeper issues aren't neglected but only if relevant to a particular issue & not without ending with practical steps to resolve it or accept it's something you both live with. Mediation may be more appropriate for some than in-depth therapy. I like the idea above of mixing joint & individual sessions. Some experiences described above are just bad counselling & the people should be reported to their accreditation body.

Good luck, Dee. Ten years is a long time and you both certainly have not stagnated emotionally as individuals, but changed over time. Hopefully this will help with perspectives in counselling vs if you had still been in each other's pockets in the preceding years.

Counselling Directory is excellent. You seek therapists in your location and read about each. My dh is a psychotherapist who sometimes sees couples. Usually it's a couple of sessions together, then some individual sessions, another together again...

What is clear is there are no secrets, ie you can't Slag off the other person in private - issues raised can get discussed with the other...

R3alky works for those who are engaged, ie not one party unwillingly there

Maidmarion, I agree with you, but how can you and dd do joint counseling if you live in 2 different countries? Do you have any idea what those "deep seated issues" might be? Maybe you can run them by your personal counselor and they can help you figure out what to do to begin to heal this rift.

Orangelmom, it sounds like counseling brought some very painful issues to a head for you and dd. That would have happened anyhow, at some point - counseling just made it happen sooner. I hope someday dd will reach out to you again - she must miss you, at least a little - and perhaps then the 2 of you can try again.

Ramblingrose, you seem to have had 2 bad experiences with counseling. So sorry! I've never heard of a therapist holding it against a client that they had counseling in the past or blatantly telling them they were the "cause of all (their child's) problems!" That's bad counseling, if you ask me and very unprofessional! I'm sorry you had to face that!

But you seem to have gotten something out of it all - the value of acknowledging mistakes and apologizing for them. So there's been some good there. I would just add the value of making up one's mind not to repeat those mistakes.

Lots of good comments re caution. Thinking back to the situation I/we lived through, I'd say key questions to ask yourself about digging up the past (and that's what counselling does) are:

Can you really listen (without interrupting or listening while preparing a reply in your own mind)?
Can you apologise even if you think the accusation wasn't reasonable or you feel misunderstood?
Can you refrain from self justification? i.e. avoid saying 'oh but we didn't know' or 'we were only doing our best'?
Can you handle your own grief and deal with criticism?
Can you go on saying 'I love you' in myriad ways without expecting the same in return even though you might hope for it.

The hard lesson for us was seeing that once grown, your children really are adults with their own perspective and life path. You have to accept that totally and be humble in your loving.

This isn't about ground rules for sharing the house, my daughter is 38 and has very similar standards to me and we positively enjoy cooking together.
I didn't share what the underlying issues were because I don't think social media is the place to do that on behalf of another person.
We have both had personal counselling in the past which was positive though I agree things can get worse before they get better. I don't feel I'm being bounced into something unwillingly, she will be staying close by when she gets a place of her own and has moved back because she wants to be near to me and the rest of her family. I want our relationship to be the best it can be. We are both quite brave at tackling difficult circumstances and I hope we can move forward positively. Hopefully I'll be able to post good results in a few months time. I have used Google and come up with a list of suitable counsellors which we'll go through together.
Thank you to everyone for taking the time to answer I have never initiated a post before and some of the replies were very empathetic and sensitive.

I agree that past actions can't necessarily be undone, etc. But sometimes I think it helps if people own their wrong words/actions and apologize for them. Sometimes, as Ramblingrose says, this can be done in a private conversation. But sometimes, I think people need counseling to even see where the mistakes were.

Dee, if dd has aired her issues in the past and you have brushed them off, that may be why she wants to involve a counselor. If you can own your mistakes, if any, and promise not to repeat them, maybe she won't feel the need for joint counseling anymore.

Wild guess - Do you tend to tell her what to do/criticize her choices even though she's an adult? That might be what she's worried about. If that's it, let her know it won't happen again and then make sure it doesn't. That might make all the difference.

Try going to www.itsgoodtotalk.co.uk which is the british association for counselling and psychotherapy site. There is a search option for relationships. Many counsellors offer a free chat to see if it is what you are looking for. Good Luck.

I agree absolutely with radicalnan and wilygran. There is no guarantee that counselling will help to resolve longstanding issues that may be the result of past actions or things said that were painful and cannot be undone/unsaid.

I had counselling in the past for mother-daughter issues (I was the daughter). It only helped as an outlet for expressing my feelings and didn't really help me in any other way. The counsellor said just before the sessions stopped that it was my fault I hadn't made progress because I didn't want to change. Amazing!

When my son needed counselling we were advised to go as a family to a very expensive family counsellor who seized on the fact that I had had counselling in the past and said out loud that I was the cause of my son's issues! All at our expense.

Some mother-daughter issues can be helped (I won't say resolved) simply by acknowledging that things said or done in the past caused pain, by saying what these things were and why they caused pain and both sides saying sorry. Dee - only you will know if this is realistic.

I hope this helps.

Your local council must advertise a service otherwise you have to go through yours doctor which is the NHS which I did when my son died. There is a page on line in my area called street life people advertise on there

My dd & I did some family counselling when she was a teen. It didn't go well. Unfortunately my daughter felt because I couldn't agree with her on all matters meant I was being obstructive and difficult. Everyone has their own views and recollections of things.
I hope you can see things on the same level and prepare yourselves for the possibility of a rough ride before it gets better ?

If you are looking for a counsellor I think the relevant NHS Choices page is a good starting point for advice, and then the web page itsgoodtotalk.org.uk will help identify practioners available in your area. Not sure if I am allowed to post links on here but I think either of these should come up on Google. Hope this helps.

I'd echo what others have said. I'd think very carefully about why your daughter has suggested counselling, for what, on the surface, seems to be a temporary house share that could be resolved over coffee as others have suggested.
My daughter came out with some comments during a very stressful time, that I will never be able to forget and which destroyed any positive relationship I can have with my son-in-law. From her subsequent behaviour I know she deeply regrets saying what she did and on the surface we all have a good relationship now, but once something has actually been said, nothing can erase it and it colours everything subsequently.
There are some things in any relationship which are best left unsaid & brutal honesty, especially about events in the past which cannot be changed, can be difficult for everyone to live with afterwards. Some things cannot be healed (though it is an unfashionable thing to say these days) and simply have to be lived with in the best way you can.
I don't want to discourage you or anyone who might find counselling helpful, but it's important not to be too rosy eyed about it as a cure-all. You have to be prepared to find it painful. If your daughter needs to say things through a third party and feels she can't just chat through them comfortably with you, then they are going to involve things that are hard to say and hear. However with goodwill on both sides you can achieve much. Just be prepared and honest with yourselves first, good luck with it and be careful of your choice of counsellor!

Counselling is a very dangerous way forward in any situation, do be careful!!! It is promoted as the panacea for all ills now but as we see above it can male things worse. I have a friend who following counselling insisted her father had sexually abused her, destroyed the family, turned to drugs, lost her kids to care.........it was of course all nonsense as her dad had been incarcerated for the whole of her childhood when she claimed it had happened.

You could be risking the relationship you have now for something defined by someone else inaccurately.

I trained in counselling and was dismayed at the havoc I saw colleagues wreak in there people's lives........I decided to stay away from it.

Counselling did not work for myself and my DD and sadly now we are estranged, it made things worse.We only live a few minutes from one another, with no other family nearby. It is very isolating and had made things extremely difficult. I would not recommend unless you are both whole heartedly up for it. It now means I am not allowed to see my two Grandhildren either. I am truly heart broken and it has affected their Grandad too and the rest of my family who feel they can't visit. Sorry, just my experience. Hope it helps in some way

This is striking a chord with me. I have a similar dilemma except that my daughter lives in the USA and isn't 'speaking' to me at all at the moment. I do fear she has some real, deep seated issued and I have started to wonder if I ought to try and bring up the subject of 'joint counselling'. (I am already having counselling here.) I am at my wits' end - the situation is the worst it's ever been in the last twenty years since she married and moved to USA. I will be very interested to follow this thread. I personally think it's a good idea despite what it might 'dig up' - much better to air the problems and then deal with them, rather than let them fester (which is what's happening with me and my daughter.) Very good luck...

Rereading your post, Op, I see it's your dd who suggested counseling. In that case, I suggest that you agree to at least look into it even if, as judypark says, it may take you a long time to get an appointment. Or maybe just say "ok" but let her find the counselor, etc. (She might prefer that, anyhow).

But it you flat out refuse, it may just add one more hurt to any hurts that are already "underlying." Think about it.

I have to say, that recently my cousin's daughter had therapy / counselling and where they had rubbed along as Mother and Daughter before, things changed drastically afterwards with the DD hardly able to talk or smile at Mother.My cousin had thought that they had a fairly happy childhood and didn't know why DD felt she needed therapy sessions.So, yes, I feel a bit about it, unless you know of deep dark reasons for needing counselling, I would have an hour or more sitting together and talking and also a lot of listening.The other thing is that it is not all about your DD, your own feelings come into it as well.

I think it may do more harm than good. Depends what the issues are of course, as seen from both "sides". All sorts of hurtful things might come out, and it may actually make it harder to then live together, because one or both of you is feeling shocked and upset at the revelations. It may all be fine of course, you know your family history. Could you not first try the honest and loving coffee and chat just between the two of you?

I think I agree with sitting around the table with a coffee and just agreeing on what is acceptable and what is not when living together. Apart from counselling being expensive it can bring up memories that are best forgotten. I don't really need to know if I annoy my daughter deep down ( I probably do) as long as we get on and reject each other enough not to hurt each other's feelings then that's ok. If I knew all the things I did that annoyed her I think I would never get it out of my head. Sort it out together without anyone interfering.

I have had quite a lot of counselling
It can be very painful at first as u are digging up stuff you have kept buried for years. It is well worth it tho! Be honest with your counsellor. Good luck.