Replies to 'Troubled Teens'

My sixteen year old daughter has me worried too.  I haven't come to the point of inpatient care ... but I am concerned we are headed in that direction fast.  I've tried counseling and I am just not getting the answers -- is she ADD or bipolar?  Is she depressed?  Is the lack of her father in her life the source of all the anger or only part of it?  I know she learned some bad habits from her father (potty mouth), but I am more worried she is imitating his abusive, anger ridden outbursts.  The "double life" is what I call it.  My best friend cannot believe that my sweet daughter could be all this "gangsta", "hardcore" vampire idolizing, habitually lying, emo girl.  Mostly because we have seen and known the sweet, tenderhearted, innocent young girl.  Although mine has come to the point of being who she is because I don't want her to hide the truth.  The truth is where the answers lie.  (no pun intended)  But that truth is painful for me.  It is so hard to read and/or hear such ugly things coming from such a beautiful girl.  Part of her therapy is getting her to write out how she feels and it is literally gut-wrenching for me.  I have only read alittle because it is too difficult for me to read.  I accidentally found some things -- I had to go to my bedroom and hide under pillows to just cry as hard as I could.  It is beyond heartbreaking to read how she hurts inside and no matter what I try to do for her -- it doesn't matter -- she doesn't want it -- she just wants to be left alone.  She makes herself ugly with black makeup which indicates to me her self-image is not at all what it should be.  Her father is no help unfortunately -- he is just as messed up in his own life.  I have thought about taping my daughter and playing it back for her so she can hear how awful she speaks to me when all I have done is call her name.  She makes me so mad I could spit and so sad I could melt into a thousand tears, but I keep swallowing my emotions and trying to be the rock she can count on to get through this darkness.  However, she is making it impossible to help her with her flipflopping around like a flounder on the shore.  It's like she is using awful threats as a weapon to try to control me -- while I am worried she will attempt suicide -- although in a moment of clarity (I call it this when she has moments of reasonableness), she says she is too chicken to run away from home or kill herself.  It seems like that makes her depressed too... and yet in a fit of anger -- the threats fly like wild fire.  It is an endless cycle of a downward spiral that is caught in some kind of loop -- like and old vcr where we keep replaying the worst scene in a horror movie-- over and over.  At this point, if I stop the tape, will she breakdown and be lost forever?  If I fast forward, will she be missing out on part of her life?  There is no such thing as re-wind in real life -- if I could only figure out how to get HER to push play and create her own normalcy -- where she can be herself without destroying herself at the same time.