My (23F) sister (17F) has recently started obsessively following chronically ill YouTubers and I’m worried for her mental health.

Finally made my first Reddit account after years of lurking. I’m kind of the black sheep of my family—I came out as a lesbian at 18 and was promptly given 2 months to move out. I did, then never looked back. It’s only within the last year that my mom has reached out to me to attempt to repair our relationship and I’ve been spending a lot of time with family since. I’ve also been disabled my entire life, probably due to some choices my mother made while pregnant. Basically: there’s some bad blood between us.

My little sister has always been the golden child. She does well academically, plays sports. She rules at soccer. I’m pretty proud of her drive to do things and in this whole situation, I’ve been most excited to get to know her again. But I do think as college approaches and she has to play witness to our family stuff getting worked out, she’s been getting stressed in ways she isn’t voicing.

My sister loves YouTubers. She’s pretty big on Internet “celebrities” and she likes Good Mythical Morning a lot. But she’s recently started following A LOT of chronic illness vloggers and recently, started imitating them. When she gets any kind of injury (bruise, scrape!) she will extensively document it on social media. She’s starting tagging her Instagram photos with #EDS (which she does not have, nor has she seen a doctor for complications similar to it) and joined a bunch of EDS support groups on Facebook. I’ve also noticed she follows some eating disorder accounts and, in a public group, made some kind of comment on a post about how she thought a nasal feeding tube would “help” but “[her] mom was against the idea.”

Again: as far as I know, she has not spoken to our mom about any of this. She has not been to a doctor for any issues that could be chronic illness.

My sister doesn’t have my mom added on Facebook and I doubt she’s monitoring her Instagram. These are all things I’ve just noticed because being disabled, I’m semi-familiar with them. I’m a little worried she’s become interested in this because I’m disabled. My mom HAS noticed she’s been moodier recently, but that seems to be it. I’m getting worried, especially about the eating disorder accounts she follows. I’m really worried my new relationship with her & my mom has been detrimental in some way, or maybe she’s had some kind of long-standing anxiety/depression issue that she’s tried to hide from everyone.

I’m also not sure how to mention it to my mom, who likes her a lot more than she likes me. I’m even less sure how taking it to my sister directly would go. Is this something I just need to keep an eye on and leave until it gets worse? Do people grow out of this kind of thing? Is she going to level out once there’s more adult things going on in her life and she has to be independent? I’m at a loss. Please help.

TL;DR: Recently started fixing my bad relationship with my mom only to discover my teenage sister is pretending to have a disability she doesn’t have online. She also might have an eating disorder. I don’t know how concerned I should be, who to tell or how I should be telling them.

Submitted April 30, 2019 at 03:26PM by fenharelle http://bit.ly/2DEwMBu