She probably honestly thinks, if she is anything like me, that they are beneath her.
If (and I keep saying this) her situation is like mine, then there is no success that is really acceptable, deep down inside, unless it is above and beyond what a “mere mortal” would have done.
Even after having found a reason to try, anything less than a perfect score on something I felt I should be perfect on was aggravating. The closer I was to perfect, the farther away I was. I got a 96 on my seminal piece of scholarship, and I was really not happy I got docked four points. I still haven’t looked much at the paper. Why bother? The encouraging comments tell me what I already knew, which doesn’t help me, and any marks off will just remind me of how I didn’t do what I could have done.
Success, once you have tasted it without trying, is assumed. Greatness, once you can manage it without trying, becomes an increasingly watered-down sensation. You want to do more with less, and when you get to the point of actually having to try, let alone for something as mundane as a job or class, or just talking to someone, … on one level, that you should even bother getting dressed for the event is insulting.
This can very quickly develop a hell of an attitude in the right (wrong) person.
I went eight years in grade/middle school and four years in high school without ever really trying very hard. My parents taught me most of the material beforehand, so I didn’t have much to learn out of books, but I also never had to real academic challenge until I was 16. Science was very easy, languages were second nature (I took two to AP level, and I still think I would have taken a third there if I’d just cared), and I could have taught two of my math classes.
Then came Calculus. I didn’t see it in advance as I had with other subjects. I had to try. I had a reason to: I wanted my teacher to be proud of me.
But then I graduated, and I lost that reason. And going to a second-tier school and taking very, very boring classes didn’t help much in the reason department.
So when it came time to get a health form signed – one form, and a form I could have taken care of in a phone call, a bus ride, a weekend – I didn’t get it done until it was thoroughly late. So I got stuck with shit classes again, and I didn’t go to class for two months.
Lied through my teeth all semester to my parents. Failed every class, had to take summer school.
Whereupon I enrolled in all junior-level classes and pulled off a 3.6 (out of 4, not 100) or something. My mother was beside herself.
I had been challenged. And the challenge was not beneath me. It was fun. I cared about the topics. In short, I had a reason for a semester.
I’ve had that academic pattern once since. I was enrolled in classes that were either at least my equals or well beneath me. I didn’t do as much as I needed in the hard classes, and I did the bare minimum (or less) in the ones I felt I was taking just for the credits, not the information.
I passed one.
And then I got my reason. And I pulled my GPA up .8 of a point in a year. I took the hardest classes I could get my hands on, and I bulldozed through them.
I say this not to impress but to give you an idea of how important the reason is.
If your sister is anything like me, get her a permanent reason to do what she should and you’ll see inspiration you only hoped was there.
Again, if she’s anything like me (and I frankly hope she isn’t, as I know of no professional therapy that would have worked), small victories are assumed. To get back to the point where you want to succeed and want to work hard, you have to either find a new reason or hit rock bottom.
And it’s a lot lower than you think it is. I was homeless myself for a few months, going between my then-girlfriend and some sympathetic friends. That lack of personal space didn’t tell me that my approach was wrong; it dented, but by no means scarred, my view that the college I was attending should just give me a diploma for knowing everything already.
Meaning no disrespect, I’d be shocked as hell if she told you all or even most of what’s wrong. She might tell someone she has no deep investment in, but tell someone who actually matters to her? As if. That would be an admission that her grand plan (which is not a plan but an attitude about things) isn’t working.
And then she would have to go out and do something she not only won’t do but is afraid to do: try, with the possibility of now-meaningful failure.
See, once someone like me has admitted a problem, and it’s become an issue where you might fail with someone important knowing you tried, failure is so far from being an option that if you do fail, you shut yourself off from the world in ways that world didn’t know existed.
She should be able to handle everything. This is still her approach. Talking about her problems is an admission that she can’t do it all alone. Talking to someone she chooses, or who is otherwise not a therapist/counselor, doesn’t mean she can’t do it all alone, just that she’s impressing someone with how deep she’s in. It’s viewed as an accomplishment.
If you can find her a challenge that is within her means to solve, but that will require nontrivial work, and if you (or someone else) can keep her on that path, you have hope. But she’s got to think she can do it, and she’s got to think (though you can’t ever say) you don’t think she can do it. Only in those circumstances, from my experience, is the challenge accepted. The department chair at my last college didn’t think, as far as I can tell, that I’d actually be able to handle a senior-level course load after getting a C in second-semester English. Then I took those classes, chose deliberately difficult research projects (where’s the fun in writing about something easy?) and achieved my primary personal goal: teaching my professors something about their field that they maybe didn’t know.
It’s about finding work you feel is worth your attention. And even with my reason (wife), I still struggle with work I feel is frankly beneath me. So I do stuff on the side that I feel is worth my attention (or that is absolutely not worth it but fun).
wfudan, if you think it’d help, I’d be happy to answer any specific questions you have via e-mail (this side of my ain’t very pretty, and I ain’t hugely fond of letting people see it) and/or talk to your sister there. I can identify with thinking stuff is beneath you, and I also know what to say (“You’re right. It is. Can you think of someone or something more important than you to do it for?”) and what not to say (anything attempted as a trump card or an order).