TL;DR - My sister has severe anxiety of leaving the house/ driving, and my parents are enabling it and refuse to admit/ address any problems. It is destroying my relationship with my sister and my parents. 


My sister (26) seems to be suffering with a really bad anxiety disorder and depression. She has always had anxiety but since Lockdown began in the UK in March of this year, she has deteriorated severely. 

She still lives at home with our parents and she has only left the house a handful of times in the last 9 months, and she hasn’t even gone into a shop or any other public place in that time. Any time she does leave the house, she just sits in the car and refuses to get out. She is working from home now and hasn’t even gone to her office to collect an extra monitor/ keyboard, so she’s been working off a laptop since the pandemic began. She makes up excuses any time I suggest that she should go and pick them up as to why she can’t. She has definitely developed a fear of leaving the house (agoraphobia) and sits in the house 24/7 doing nothing except working. 

She never cleans, her room is a mess, she doesn’t look after herself (has put on weight, stopped wearing makeup, lounges in pyjamas all day, doesn’t wash her hair often), she has no hobbies or interests, all she does is sit and watch TV in bed when she isn’t working. She also has a habit of taking a notion of starting something (yoga, lifting weights, etc) but this lasts one or two days and she gives up. She can’t stick to anything. She has been single for two years after breaking up with her fiancé and hasn’t dated once in that time. Mum admitted to me that she thinks my sister broke up with her fiancé as she didn’t want to move out. 

She also seems to have developed a fear of driving her car. My mum had to drive her car home from our nanny’s house for her (my nanny lives two minutes away). She never drives her car now, it just sits in the driveway gathering spider webs. During the week, I sent her a text and asked if she wanted to go for a coffee on Friday (today). She ignored the text and when I went home last night (I live with my boyfriend so only see her once/twice a week), she pretended to have not seen it but agreed to go. I asked her to drive us and she got very panicky, refusing to drive and made up excuses like “I hate drive-thru’s” and offered several times to give me £50 just so I would drive. I refused and she said she wasn’t going. I don’t understand where this fear of driving has come from as she has never been in an accident and used to drive 40 miles each way to and from work before the pandemic. Her reaction last night was ridiculous and really highlighted the problem to me. 

My parents only seem to be making the situation worse, I have tried speaking to them several times about my sister and they deny any problems and get extremely defensive and any conversation about it just leads to an argument. They actually enable all of her behaviour- They drive her everywhere (including a 10 minute drive to the nearest town to get her hair cut), they buy her groceries for her, they do everything for her instead of trying to address the problem. My mum also does everything for her (cooking, washing up, ironing). They are only making it ten times worse and I can’t do anything if they maintain that attitude towards it. 

When I talk to my sister about her behaviour, I finish the conversation feeling pretty positive but that soon disappears when her behaviour continues as is with no improvements. 

I have a fear that she is never going to move out and will be a burden on my parents for the rest of their lives. My parents seem happy to have her there for now but that will wear off eventually, and when it does it will be ugly. It’s their own fault as they have enabled the behaviour and she will not improve at all for as long as they continue doing this. My sister is too scared to talk to anyone (either a doctor or a counsellor) and my mum is refusing to take her to see someone. 

My sister needs help NOW and my boyfriend and I seem to be the only ones that can see it. I am at breaking point, it is affecting my relationship with them all and we used to be such a close family and it is affecting my own mental health now as well. I dread going home to visit them now as it just triggers me seeing my sister wasting her life when she could be so much better. 

Please suggest anything that I can do, I feel like I’ve tried everything and am at the point now where I feel like I have no option but to wash my hands of it, but I know that will haunt me for the rest of my life if my sister’s toxic behaviour continues. I haven’t even covered everything here but hopefully that’s enough for you all to go on. Thanks so much in advance for any help/ advice/ support. 😊