Her self esteem is incredibly low. She thinks she's not very good at anything really, and has no idea what to do as a job. This has been going on for 3 years now. We have tried everything we can think of, like positive talking, encouraging her to try new things, reassuring her that she doesn't need to know what job she's going to do because she has plenty of time to figure it out, highlighting evidence to the contrary of what she's saying, talking to her school, counsellors... at one point she saw an educational psychologist who suggested the possibility of inattentive adhd which sounds very plausible. Knowing this was helpful for all of us to understand her difficulties with procrastination and organisation. We have put systems in place to help her, like work only spaces in her room, private tutoring, timetables... we try to do this collaboratively so that she's part of the solution and we're not imposing things on her.
The bit I find the hardest is that she pretty much wants to do nothing to help herself. She's worried about her violin exam but won't practise, ever; and I do mean never ever. We tell her that we're going to stop paying for lessons if she doesn't practise, she gets upset, so we continue because we want her to have something she enjoys, and even if she doesn't practise that's fine, but then she puts herself through the agony of performing in front of others/exams (we do not ask her to do this), does badly, feels crap about herself. It's almost like she self-sabotages, sets herself up for failure to reinforce what she thinks of herself.
Food. She hates her body so will hide it behind baggy clothes, but will also refuse to exercise or improve her diet. I do get this, I really do. I have had my fair share of emotional eating.
She doesn't enjoy any subjects. She says she's just going through the motions in Y10 and Y11 until she can get rid of most of her subjects. But she also hates some of the ones she'll be left with. She has known she has 5 exams this week for a while, but she only started revising yesterday.
Everything she does seems like an effort to reinforce that she's dumb. For what it's worth, she's anything but. Admittedly she is not academic and maths/science is a real challenge to her, but she's extremely intuitive and intelligent.
We have tried different approaches like being involved in her organisation (she resents this massively), leaving her to it so that she builds her own desire to do well (almost 4 years and this hasn't happened, things are going from bad to worse - she was consistently top sets in primary), paying for private counselling, encouraging her to join activities outside of school. We are constantly met with resistance and a complete unwillingness to accept help or help herself.
I don't know how to help her. I appreciate that her lack of self esteem is behind this, but it is really hard to stand and watch her do nothing about it. Any thoughts?