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Originally Posted by fleury
Dunno if you're serious or not, but I found in my family the people who stayed at home all day and didn't work or socialize, tended to drift away mentally (to put it politely). Obviously I'm no doctor, but I would hope your family can get together and get her professional help, rather than pushing it off as someone else's problem. This stuff only gets worse over time.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
Falling for conspiracy theories is a natural human thing; if it wasn't then they wouldn't be as common and effective as they are.
If someone spends huge chunks of their time looking at videos and reading stuff by QAnon or other groups who create/promote/discuss/obsess over these theories, then it's going to influence how one thinks, period. No one is immune, we all want to fit in and the pressure to think how one's peers think is huge (hence the term peer pressure).
And the mind is almost designed to resist reasoned efforts to change the ideas, often evidence that something is wrong will have the opposite of the desired effect; they'll just dig in further.
Not saying there isn't something specific going on (i.e. mental illness or other life factors), just saying I don't think there necessarily has to be; people are vulnerable enough without having to bring in other factors.
As to what to do about it? I have no idea.. my sister dated a guy who was deep into some of this stuff. Thought the moon landings were fake, asked me about sealing his windows to protect against when the nuclear reactors had the problems in Japan, etc... We all just breathed a sigh of relief when she broke up with him.
EDIT: Yeah talking to a professional about what kind of strategy to take would be good. Ultimately you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped, but I think they might recommend some kind of strategy that would involve decreasing the influence of that stuff in their life.. Get them out of the house and socialize more.. get together as a family more, etc. No overt attempts to talk them out of their positions, just increasing their connection to the real world to decrease their connection to crazy town.
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It is a bit tough because they live about two hours away, we do invite them to a lot of gatherings as our family is quite close but they often do not attend because A) Her husbands anxiety, totally different story there, B) Their dog, C) work. D) thier son who at 20 yrs old they do not trust to leave at home alone overnight. Plus many other reasons.
Her story gets more complicated, as during the late 90's through the mid 2000's they were one those "had it all families". Quads, trailer, boat, diesel trucks etc... But like so many her husbands construction business collapsed and his relationship with his father was destroyed as part of this. We could see that this had drastically changed the brother in law (her husband) and my sister appeared to be the one who held everything together. He does again have a very good job, he landed on his feet very quickly actually, but does suffer from anxiety, depression? Alcoholism? Not sure how happy their marriage is actually or how close they are with any friends. It seems like this could be her escape, somethng to follow and believe in.