Parental Acceptance of Eating Disorders
One of the powerful and moving moments that occur in my work as a psychotherapist is when a woman, who never sought treatment for her own eating disorder, comes in for psychotherapy for the sake of her child.
She couldn’t rally her strength for her own well being. But when she is pregnant or has a young child she finds the courage and determination to do her own work in order to protect her child from developing an eating disorder.
Often, a child has already begun to develop symptoms, but often too, not always, but often when the mother works on her own healing she is in a better position to support healing in her child.
Love and courage bring the mother in. Love and courage create a powerful healing force.
Parental Denial of Eating Disorders
When adults are in denial about their own eating disorder, they can be in a position to deny the eating disorder symptoms in their child or children.
Parents can even be angry and punishing to a child with an eating disorder because the child’s behavior threatens the adults. The child’s symptoms have the potential to force adults to look more closely at themselves. These parents, who believe themselves to be loving and caring people, defend their denial and defend their distorted view of themselves and their child.
The tragic paradox of this situation is that their denial causes them to neglect and punish the child. This unempathic, non-supportive and punishing environment only increases the need for the child to maintain and develop more thoroughly, her own eating disorder.
Seeing the child with empathy and realism would force the adult to recognize her own symptoms. This is one of the terrible tragedies in a family with unrecognized and untreated eating disorders moving through the system.
What’s the answer? Pursuing health is always the answer, and courage is always required.
Boyfriend Wants to Help His Girlfriend Who Suffers from Anorexia
Young Man Seeks Help for His Anorexic Girlfriend
A young man wrote asking how to help the woman he loves. She is anorexic. They’ve been together for a little over a year. He says one good thing about the situation is that she is aware of her condition and has begun to talk with him about it.
He is combing the Internet and bookstores reading hundreds of stories and medical write-ups about eating disorders and anorexia in particular. He says he feels that the more information he has the better he can behave toward his girl.
I’m trying here to give you the message and the tone of his letter without giving you his exact words. Those words belong to him. But the message within his words applies to many young men (and not so young men) who are in a relationship with an anorexic woman.
The Personal Side
He says he and his girlfriend have begun to have wonderful conversations about her condition. He feels these conversations are a good sign because she is not getting upset as they talk. He wants to do the right thing, be supportive and help her get well.
He tells her that the two of them can get through this problem and that he will remain committed to her no matter what. He says that he never has loved anyone as much as he loves her.
He repeats throughout his letter in many ways that he feels good about her turning to him for help. He wants to make sure he is doing everything possible for the woman he loves to help her get well. I am the only person he has spoken to about his girlfriend. Her condition is private and he wants to honor that privacy as he helps her get well.
My heart is touched by his plea for help. I only hope I can help you see what I see in his bittersweet request.
At the end of this post is my answer to him. I stand by what I said. What I didn’t say is this:
Resistance to Help
Anorexia is a profound illness that affects the mind and spirit as well as the body. A person who is anorexic denies herself in many ways. She is often unreachable by any form of nourishment, emotional as well as nutritional.
A person who is in the throes of anorexia is like a starving person standing before a feast, pleading for food. Generous people offer her food, but the starving person pushes it away, throws it away, spills it, can’t hold the plate, can’t hold the fork, can’t deal with the temperature or consistency, can’t swallow properly, and on and on.
The people at the feast, who do not understand her illness, will meet each problem as it comes with a solution. They will hold the plate, change the temperature, provide more comfortable utensils, find ways to help her throat function with massage or medicine or hospitalization, and on and on.
Each attempted solution will have flaws that keep that starving person from taking any nourishment. She may cry, complain, suffer and plead for help. But she cannot accept help. Eventually she will be visibly angry and actively spurn attempts to help her or criticize the people trying to help her for being invasive, critical, bossy, controlling, selfish, and on and on.
This is only part of the picture of a person deep in the illness that is anorexia. I’ll talk about more in future posts. But this part of the picture is what concerns me regarding the young man’s request for help.
Risks in Trying to Save Someone from Her Anorexic Symptoms
He sounds to me as if he feels that all his love, energy and intellectual prowess, if rallied properly, will save his beloved.
He doesn’t know that he can be drained while his efforts somehow continually fail to reach her in a healing, nourishing way.
I hope you understand that I am describing the symptoms of an illness. This is not about the authentic woman living under the burden of the anorexia. That authentic woman is barricaded within herself by the illness. The ardent boyfriend is confronted with more symptoms than he knows.
I fear for both of them.
Possible Path to Healing
Still, there is a way out. Healing can happen if both people recognize that some of their feelings and behaviors are a direct consequence of the anorexia and must not be given power.
Specific Suggestions to The Young Man:
Dear Young Man,
1. Encourage your girlfriend to work regularly with a mental health professional who has expertise in treating eating disorders.
2. Go to Overeaters Anonymous meetings occasionally, and listen to people talk about their experience in suffering and recovering from eating disorders.
3. Let your girlfriend know you are doing this, and let her know you would go with her to an OA meeting or two to get her started if she were willing to go.
4. Go to Al-anon meetings yourself and learn the basics about being in relationship with someone who has a disorder similar to addiction.
5. Let your girlfriend know you are doing this because her being at risk from this illness causes you great concern. Let her know you want to know how to help yourself deal with your own suffering as well as help her.
6. Make sure you take care of yourself. You might consider getting supportive counseling for yourself. Getting too involved in her recovery can cause problems for you and your relationship.
You need all the support, knowledge, patience, self respect and self-confidence you can rally and develop to see this relationship through. It takes skill and attention to boundaries and self care to learn how to be in relationship with the person you love and not be in relationship with the disorder.
Good luck! You sound like you really care about her. She’s fortunate to have you by her side.
Recent Flurry of Blog Posts Regarding Family Dinner Research
Love is left out of the eating disorder prevention equation yet again.
Eating disorder prevention does not mean following a check list of correct behaviors at the dinner table. It means behaving reasonably and practically with a powerful undertone of love, respect, a glad willingness to listen, honesty confidence to passionately disagree and deep certainty that right or wrong everyone in the family loves and will stand by everyone else.
When that is brought to daily life in a family, including family dinners, eating disorders don’t have a chance to develop.
Researchers have a tough time factoring love in their studies. I can appreciate the difficulty. I also am dismayed by research results that do not consider the presence or absence of genuine love and respect.
Researchers say…”what happens at that table has an impact on teens as well. Juggling schedules to make time for eating together, creating healthy, nutritious dishes, and having positive interactions at the table are all components of healthy family meals.”
Yes, these are components. Please include love and respect, spacious time, generous listening, appreciations of differences, honesty and room for laughter and shared passions.
Now we’re talking about family meals that help prevent eating disorders.
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