This is gonna be....long. I am just really frustrated and needed to get it out to people who will understand.

During Covid I've been helping watch my 3 nieces (their parents both have to be in-person at work). Today my oldest niece asked to talk to me and for a straight hour sobbed talking about how much she's struggling right now (school, body image - her mom has a complicated relationship with food, Covid in general, the days I'm not there she has to be the one making sure her two younger sisters get on their class Zooms in time/get homework done, the general difficult experience of being a teenager). And then she started telling me about her high levels of anxiety, the constant second-guessing of everything you do in social situations, the picking at the scalp, the need to make sure no one is ever angry at you, panic attacks, sensory issues, and more.

From what she told me her mother constantly trivializes it and tells her that "everyone deals with stress", acts like she's being overdramatic, gets mad at her when she comes to her asking for support, tells her it's because of (insert blame here), says things like "well just stop doing X then".

My sister called me on my way home and I told her that my niece was struggling and would likely ask to see a therapist(I kept it unspecific so I didn't betray my niece's confidence). My sister trivialized all of it and said that my niece blows things out of proportion and that you know small things are such a big deal to her, and then complained that my niece refuses to open up to her and her husband. **And I just wanted to scream.**

Like **how dare you** be offended that she won't talk to you when you constantly trivialize literally everything she’s telling you/try and explain it all away/tell her she's being dramatic/tell her to just stop being anxious. And I know she and her husband are both doing their best and trying to manage 3 kids, full-time jobs, their own mental health, etc. and I realize the truth is probably somewhere in the middle and some of my niece's experience is also likely influenced by the anxiety (and the warped perception anxiety can give us sometimes).

But I am just so angry. Like it is VERY obvious that this isn't a normal level of stress, and not just "hormones" or her being an insecure teenager. There's something big going on, and so much of it was exactly my experience in high school before I was diagnosed and before I was medicated and I just recognize how my sisters behavior is EXACTLY what my parents did - which sometimes I feel like fucked me up even more than the actual anxiety and depression.

I don't want to overstep, and I know that I don't understand what it's like to be a parent but I'm just watching this poor kid struggle just like I did and seeing my sister make the same mistakes and saying that they'll wait it out and see if she "really does need one" (it's not for financial reasons either). Just because she's able to kind of cope and isn't struggling in a way that seems realistic to them.

No one **really** paid attention to me until I hit rock bottom. I wish I had someone to advocate for me when I was a kid. If I had gotten a therapist and been medicated earlier so much of my life would have turned out different. I just don't know how to do that without also ruining my relationship with my sister.