Daughter super jealous of another girl in class

[cheshirecat2913]

Hello.
My DD 14 has struggled with being jealous of other people for a long long time… most recently of a girl in her class. Said girl is good at everything, you know the sort. DD has said to me it’s very difficult because this girl is better than her at everything - she said and I quote ‘she gets better grades than me even when I try, even in my favourite subject; if she surpasses me in my best subject there’s no reason for me to be here, I’m useless, I bring nothing to the table.’ The girl is also good at sports (DD isn’t and hates physical stuff), the girl has a lot of friends and seems to be quite popular (DD doesn’t have any of this) and this girl also apparently has a good home life and self esteem (The girl has a family whereas DD only really has me and is an only child.) DD’s been jealous of this girl since last year and her self esteem is plummeting at astronomically high levels. It’s difficult to watch.
WWYD??
(unsure if this is right place, first time here :-)

Depends on the amount of effort you put in in this particular scenario - the golden girl in question is not a Nobel prize winner, not the winner of an International Mathematics/Chemistry/Biology Olympiad and neither has she won the Olympic games - otherwise the OP would have mentioned that. So, the golden girl in question is only good at school-level activities. Like thousands of English kids who 'do piano to grade 8' - so what? This is perfectly ordinary - that is what unemployed ladies used to do in the Victorian times before they discovered other avenues to pursue. So, if an immense amount of effort were to be invested, the OP's daughter could become better than this girl at the bog-standard school subjects. Time and effort - that is all. Now, this golden girl might achieve the same results in 1/10 of the time dedicated to the outcome, but this is a different matter. This is how Chinese pianists outperform European ones, bearing in mind that they have zero historical predilection and natural aptitude for European music. Basically, effort bordering on obsession.

Yes. Although I feel really sorry for her - the force of will to like & love herself in the face of her mother & her aunt putting her down all the time ....

I don't think that volunteering with the 'less fortunate' would make any difference because she already thinks she's better than them and doesn't need anything more to make her feel superior.

To other people, your DD might be 'that sort' but less likeable than the other girl because of this meanness/resentment/jealousy.

Maybe appealing to her self interest would be a way to address this - that people will see her attempting to defeat or destroy this child and she'll never be able to overcome being seen as a jealous loser in a competition the other person doesn't even know she's in. She's intelligent enough to understand that it's making her miserable, after all - she needs to realise that whilst feelings are OK although they aren't making her happy, acting on them is going to cause her far more trouble than concentrating upon finding things that will make her happy and trying to let them pass.

My first response to your question was based on the understanding that your DD felt jealous and inferior because another girl was doing better than her academically/ has more friends. In other words normal teenage stuff. As this thread as developed imo this is a more serious situation. It sounds like your DD is mentally unwell and needs professional help. What you are describing is personality disorder territory. At this point, if the school has concerns, resisting help shouldn't be an option.

OP- she can't be internalising this completely if the school has identified her as a threat to others. Come on. You need to get your head out of the sand on this. It's great she talks to you about it. But you need to act in her interests and that means specialised targeted support. Okay- so she thought the previous counsellor was a waste of time - shop around. My older DS (14) was in counselling for a while due to low self esteem- he did not get on with his counsellor either. It was a bit of a mismatch. But he / we found an alternative that has worked for him.

This..
She needs to keep going to therapy. There's a chance something may sink in eventually.

If she doesn't keep going, there is zero chance of anything sinking in.

I know which option i would carry on with.

She needs to learn that the problem is not this other girl existing and living her life , the problem is inside herself.

I'm going to share this with my DD. It's so very true. Trying things, enjoying things, that's what makes life worthwhile and makes people interesting. Not being the best.

Who does your DD admire?
I agree wanting to beat people is not a healthy attitude. Could you do something together that you both enjoy that neither of you are good at? You say she doesn't have many friends, but maybe she could try something out for school that's just for fun?

So why do the school consider her a concern for others?

This is an excuse. She needs to learn about failing as a way of learning to get better at a skill. You're actually learning wen it's difficult.

It would be worth her trying to unpick why she is so all or nothing. It's often a shield for very low self-esteem.

Ah well hopefully she doesn’t give up completely. Maybe an online writing forum or group could be anonymous enough for her to share but supportive enough to boost her confidence and drive to develop her craft.

I think I would have been like this at school if someone had beaten me academically. It was my primary source of self esteem and the only thing that made me feel decent about myself, for years. I also have that tendency to get fixated / obsessed with someone. In my case, years later I was finally diagnosed with autism. While obviously no one can say, online, what’s going on with your DD, I would definitely look into a full screening for neurodiversity. It might help her to understand herself better.

Aside from that, I’d focus on self compassion rather than anything punitive.

It’s worrying that some people are dismissing this by suggesting that maybe this other girl will ‘peak in secondary’ and be less successful in future than she is now. Not only is it a spiteful take, it fails to take into account that OP’s daughter will encounter people like this all her life. For example, if she’s struggling with these kinds of feelings in the relatively small pond of school, she’s in for a rude awakening when she gets to the much bigger pond of university. She’s going to encounter people who are better than her at all kinds of things all her life. OP is right to be concerned, and right to have realised that patting her daughter on the head and pointing out other people’s flaws in the hope that it will provide reassurance isn’t going to work. The solution to this has to come from within her daughter. Her thinking is the problem here, not the other girl’s success. She needs to learn to measure her success in terms of self-improvement rather than competition.

You sound quite dismissive of the feedback by the school. Perhaps you are just too close to the situation and cannot see it objectively...

a couple of principles your DD would benefit from understanding by discussing with her -

The concept of "comparison is the thief of joy"
Ask your DD to think about something she is really proud of, that she can do. Then ask her how does she feel if she's the only one with that unique skill. Lastly ask her to explore her feelings if someone else is also good at the same skill. By comparing herself to others it can take away all the pride and happiness she feels, so can she come to terms with the fact there will always be others who share a talent or skill, she is still adding value to the world with her talent and nobody can take that away from her. In the future, in the world of work, she can collaborate with the person, use their shared enthusiasm to good effect, they aren't in competition.

Resilience - the ability to recover from a disappointment and use it to good effect. Even if she feels disappointed that someone else gets the attention, can she use that to develop her skill or talent to the next level, to spur her on to greater skill. Skills are not fixed or set, they evolve and grow. As your DDs maturity increases, she will be able to find motivation in continually honing her skills so she doesn't see herself as not adding value, but contributing it in her own way, because she is unique,

I think you’re massively downplaying this and I think it’s very concerning behaviour. The want to defeat her is worrying.

If I was the other girls parents and I knew someone felt like this about my daughter I would be horrified and asking school what they are doing to keep them apart and my daughter safe.

School have called her a threat to others and your calling it silly? What have the doctors said? Have you pushed for a CAMHS referral? I would be pushing this further with the school. It’s a safeguarding concern.

She absolutely needs to keep going to counselling. Even if she doesn't engage, she needs to consistently understand that this will not go away until she works on it. And a space has been provided for her to do so each week/month.

She sounds incredibly like my sister when she was a child, the jealousy, the internal monologue, the never feeling good enough, feeling like she doesn't get what she deserves, someone else is getting more, being better and taking away from her experiences.

She grew up to be what looks exactly like a covert narcissist.

Obviously nobody can diagnose her but both I and our parents have been to counselling as adults (she refuses) and we've all come back to the same thing, covert/vulnerable narcissism.

She was raised in a lovely home by lovely, caring , hard working parents who did all they could for us though counselling/therapy as a child just wasn't accessible to us in the 90s, perhaps if she had had the chance to go, she wouldn't have carried that way of being into adulthood.

Perhaps not, who knows..
But my parents beat themselves up now that didn't do more about it back then.

She unfortunately has grown up to be a stressed out, overachiever who blames everyone and everything when she gets a less than perfect result, no matter what it is.

While she is married with children, is unable to really express joy or form close bonds with them, she's constantly jealous of others and trying to control her family into matching her insanely high bar as they a merely just an extention of her and her achievements. It's stressful and miserable for everyone..

We haven't spoken in 10 years.

How does she respond to criticism, when she has done something wrong?
Is she ever responsible for her mistakes or is it always because of someone/something else?

Can you try a different kind of therapy? Equine, dog, surfing, etc? Teens often struggle in a traditional therapy environment.

What was her early life like? Age 0-3? How would you describe her attachment profile?

Have you spoken to your GP? Been in touch with the School Nursing Team?

i probably wrote something that suggested “this other girl is peaking too soon” but I didn’t actually mean it in that way and I imagine the same for many others. What I meant is that the standards by which the ops daughter is assessing both herself and this girl are standards that don’t really mean much outside of that environment. So I think it could be actually helpful for OPs daughter to understand that school grades are not the measure of a persons worth (and indeed that perceived success and happiness aren’t necessarily bed fellows).

I say this as someone who had all A’s at school and was popular and fairly sporty. The real world was a huge shock to my perfectionist teenage self!

(I do agree with everything you say, just wanted to clarify on the spiteful implications of mine and probably a few others contributions).

Yes, it would be helpful to reflect on this. Her reaction to that one counsellor not working out for her, whatever the reason, was to dismiss the counsellor as not being very good at her job. If she goes into counselling being oppositional like that then it’s not going to work as well.

@stargirl1701 0-3 was quite normal, actually. We’ve spoken to the GP/medical teams and she’s VERY VERY needy. She always needs somebody to talk to and if they leave her she gets very upset and self harms, self pities etc which is frankly my bigger concern here.

She's using external yardsticks, like tests and friends etc as a way to measure her self-worth.

She needs to understand that self-worth doesn't come from measuring yourself against other people. You inherently have self-worth if you believe that we are all equal, which we are

Ask her, how does a disabled person compare herself to your DD?

Does she think the disabled girl, same age as your teen, in a wheelchair, who might be mentally disabled, is worth nothing?

That that person should 'give up' because she'll never have friends, she'll never have a job?

We all have a right to be on this planet, whether we achieve lots or very little at all.

Society will try and tell you you're a failure but it's not the case. We all have to try with what we've got from where we are, otherwise, what is the alternative? Fall into the abyss? The pool of self-pity?

Also, some people thrive in school but don't do well in the real world.

You really need to educate yourself with much better answers to her questions so as to help her validate herself and her experiences differently. Read some Brene Brown, understand perhaps more about neurodiversity - the voice in your head is a killer - look up Spectrumy on Facebook. Find role models who have done badly at school, like Steven Bartlett, who made nothing of himself at school due to ADHD but now has a huge YouTube channel - and maybe watch some of this content on adversity and how to overcome it. There's a ton of self-help material you can find to literally rewire your brain. Look up Lewis Howes.

We are all born with a different set of 'ingredients'. It's not her battle to try and attain something she wasn't born with, it's her battle to have the courage to live her life with what she's been given and make the best of what she's got.

Right now she sounds a bit victimy. It's a sort of unconsious self-sabotage that's common in people, especially young people. "I'll never succeed because of X".

If you give up, you've already failed. If you keep trying - you have a chance to win. so don't give up.

Blaming others it just an excuse not to try if you're truly honest with yourself.

Look up Jack Ma and see how many times he failed to get into Harvard. There are so many stories of resilience and eventual success. Find them. Ask ChatGPT if necessary. She needs to change her mindset. She can have a good future. School isn't everything, nor are fake friends...

Good luck.

just read your update. She's neurodiverse definitely. Have a look at ADHD Love on YouTube. Poor kid. She needs to understand she's wired differently and start to be kinder to herself.

@TrainGame She’s diagnosed ND, autism and ADHD (I don’t like to call it ‘high-functioning’ autism but it’s more so like that.)

This doesn’t surprise me sadly.

As PP asked, what happens if she does something wrong and gets called out on it? Does she make it impossible to criticise her? Would she deflect any blame? Would she have genuine remorse?

I wouldn’t listen to anyone on this thread saying she is a narcissist or has a personality disorder. She’s too young for those issues to be reliably assessed, and there are so many flags for neurodiversity that that should be checked out first. If she’s struggling with adjustment, masking, and maybe having all kinds of issues related to those things, then her maladaptive behaviours are really a sign of her underlying suffering. It’s not a flaw in her personality and it would harm her to have it placed in that framework. Many ND women are misdiagnosed with PDs.

edit: sorry, only just saw your update! Ignore me