At the age of 31, my sister has an imaginary boyfriend called Albert. No member of the family has ever met him, but she insists that he exists and that they will get married soon! She lost her job as a teacher a year ago because of poor performance. How can we help her?
Your sister is probably suffering from a psychotic illness. From your question, she might have a condition called schizophrenia.
What you have described rather well is called a delusion, meaning that she holds a false belief despite evidence that what she believes is manifestly not true.
From your question, one could infer that her poor performance at work, which led to her job loss a year ago, might be the time this condition first made itself manifest.
In some cases of this type of illness, the onset is gradual and often goes unnoticed by the family and the employer, who interpret the signs of the condition as rudeness, laziness, or simply a lack of discipline.
Some years ago, we saw a woman about the age of your sister who had also lost a job at a law firm. She had been a top performer but started slackening.
Her mother brought her to us after she read an article in a magazine that she said seemed to resonate with what her daughter was going through.
Having completed her law degree, and secured a good job, the next natural thing was to bring home a man and introduce him to the family.
A year before she lost her job, she, the mother says, she changed. She stopped going to church. She claimed that the priest kept referring to her in his sermons. Asked to explain, she said he seemed to draw his sermons from what she was thinking. That her thoughts were somehow being broadcast.
Later, she would claim that not only the priest but all the congregants sitting in the front row of the church could read her mind. That was why they kept giggling.
The mother had checked all these ‘facts’ and was satisfied that none was true.
She lost her job after she followed one of the law firm partners to his home, claiming that he had secretly declared his love for her and that he had promised to leave his wife and marry her. The horrified partner called the police, who, after questioning her, charged her with trespass. From then on, her stay at the firm was untenable.
Like your sister, she continued to claim she had a love affair with her former colleague, but he was not ready to come home to meet her parents but would do so soon.
The family asked the lawyer about the alleged love affair, and he said that no such relationship had ever existed.
She lost her job, started depending on her parents, and because she had a good relationship with her mother, she agreed to see a doctor and take the prescribed medication.
A few months later, she was able to laugh at herself as one “who must have been out of her mind” to imagine that she claimed to have had a relationship with a man she hardly knew!
Her delusions had been treated with medication, and she was back at church and looking to get her old job back. It would appear that a similar approach might work for your sister.
