Instagram/ social media.

Ds just yesterday told me all of his friends have great lives. I asked how he knows. He said look at these instagrams. I said scroll back to summer and tell me 5 of your own posts. He said “Europe, baseball games, NYC, camp, and concerts. Oh. I guess I didn’t post the bad stuff or the regular stuff.” He’s an insightful and mostly secure kid and figured it out but he really got jaded about what he was thinking everyone else was doing.

I am like this to some extent. I am a striver above all else (blue collar background and wanted much more for myself), and always believed I was destined for the life that I wanted, one that gave me the social status that I craved. I was pretty and curious and bright, and got attention from people. That fed my drive to achieve and climb up the class ladder. Every time something bad happens to me, it's a shock and I am surprised at how childish I am. One thing that is helping is simply getting older and realizing that people admiring me doesn't matter the way I thought it did. That plus acceptance that life is messy and most importantly, finite.

I was never depressed though because I was too busy chasing after what I wanted. Maybe that's what your daughter needs help with? Setting goals she can channel her energy toward?

My spouse is basically this way and I think it’s anxiety. He has had a few happy periods in life when he was awarded some extremely extremely selective honors/positions. But even thought he has an extremely lucrative and impressive career he considers himself a total failure because it’s not the top of the profession. We have a decently nice house in the suburbs and he always says it looks like a dump. He loves a house that is staged for sale — everything in place and perfect as if no one lived there. His mother was kind of awful about nitpicking faults so, to the extent he tries to unpack it, he blames it on that.
It’s such a hard way to go through life. I do think therapy — either an anxiety specialist or maybe DBT — could really help.

I don’t know if you’re religious but I think a religious framework could also help. The old Catholic catechism was basically saying that the purpose of your life is to serve Gkd. If the purpose of your life is to serve God or others, then whether you measure up to some unknown metric of perfection is a lot less important. Unfortunately, I haven’t succeeded in raising religious kids.

Personality disorder?

Anonymous wrote:Could really use any insight on my older teen DD. I've posted about her before but feel like I have better insight into her issues now.

What sort of condition or disorder would come to mind in connection with someone who is convinced that life has to be perfect, full of loyal friends and effortless accomplishment and universal admiration, or is not worth living? And who absolutely cannot be budged from this idea by anyone - family, therapists, etc.?

It's almost like an intense phobia of ever having to compromise on wants or accept second-best on anything. It can come across as staggeringly entitled/spoiled, though as the parent I can also see how genuine the distress is, up to the point of an actual suicide attempt.

Yes, we have multiple professionals involved. They are somewhat helpful. I think my child is safe right now. But no one's been able to shed much light on what is actually going on with her, so I wondered if anyone had experience of anything similar.

This is my sister, and she is BPD. Everything has to be just right, just perfect, and she needs people to be fawning over her at all times, or its a full-on catastrophe, everyone hates her, etc. etc. Which, in her head, it is. Multiple suicide attempts. If someone isn't giving her that attention she wants at the moment she wants it, she quickly spirals out of control. Something goes slightly wrong at work or home? Unmitigated disaster, sure proof that not only is she a total failure in life but that we're all laughing at her watching her flounder.

It's ugly. Its exhausting. I hope that your daughter doesn't have BPD, because it's just absolutely brutal. But what you describe sounds so much like my sister, and if it is, I hope your daughter can start treatments now and hopefully gain some control over it.

Some of it is just magical thinking. She's a teen. Children have magical ideas about life and the future and that can carry over into the teens. In adolescence you slowly face reality and start to develop some resilience, but they can still struggle with magical thinking and even entitlement. The "must" part sounds like cognitive rigidity and she needs to learn to challenge some of her assumptions. CBT or DBT sound like a good call.

Anonymous wrote:Has she done DBT?

This was going to be my suggestion

No ability to tolerate frustration?

Though my son with ASD will persevere on stuff like “what’s the point of living when the world is so evil”, and in his case I don’t think it’s a true belief as much as a refrain to fall back on when he’s uncomfortable or unhappy or wants to change the subject away from himself and his shortcomings. He goes on about it, we argue about it, and he evades having to focus on whatever was going on before. So I guess I wonder to what extent it’s worth engaging with her on this versus to what extent it’s just a reliable distraction for her to use with you.

Anonymous wrote:FOMO. Instagram has her confused between reality and staged, curated moments

The lighting and filters of tik toc. The photogenic girls making videos that show perfection, even though it’s all for the views and not reality. Not sure if this has a name, but it’s probably this. Too much time on social media and not with real relationships and real responsibility offline. She needs a social media detox

FOMO. Instagram has her confused between reality and staged, curated moments

Narcissism.

Has she done DBT?

Generalized anxiety disorder yes

Anxiety

Could really use any insight on my older teen DD. I've posted about her before but feel like I have better insight into her issues now.

What sort of condition or disorder would come to mind in connection with someone who is convinced that life has to be perfect, full of loyal friends and effortless accomplishment and universal admiration, or is not worth living? And who absolutely cannot be budged from this idea by anyone - family, therapists, etc.?

It's almost like an intense phobia of ever having to compromise on wants or accept second-best on anything. It can come across as staggeringly entitled/spoiled, though as the parent I can also see how genuine the distress is, up to the point of an actual suicide attempt.

Yes, we have multiple professionals involved. They are somewhat helpful. I think my child is safe right now. But no one's been able to shed much light on what is actually going on with her, so I wondered if anyone had experience of anything similar.