To hate that DD blames me/talks badly about me in her sessions?

[triplescience]

Hi...

DD is 17 and is currently at an outpatient eating disorder program.

We have to have family therapy.

DD blames me. She was always obese - she had ankle problems and other weight related health issues. Her GP told her she needed to lose weight from about 13. I then did my best to follow what the doctor had said. I never called her fat or anything along those lines, just tried to follow the GP's advice. Yes I may have fucked up a couple of times. Allowing her sister to get more food than her, etc. but that's as far is it went.

Is she just looking to blame anyone? I hate that her team are probably judging me whenever we go for family therapy!

This is a stage that she has to work through. She is not yet mature enough/ready to take responsibility for her life and for her eating because that is a big and scary thing to do.
She will blame everything and everyone else first, and she will be right about some things. However if her team are good they will gradually work with her to change her mindset to see where she is responsible, and where other people are, and how to deal with that. The team KNOW that it is not all your fault, they really do, but you have to work through this bit first before you can move on.
My children 'hate' me sometimes, and they tell me I'm mean and unfair because they are little and don't understand the reasoning behind everything. I know they don't mean it and I don't take it to heart. She is doing a similar thing, and although it must hurt you try not to take it to heart and understand it as a hurt person sounding off about how unfair the world has been to them.
It will get better, keep on loving her, she will recognise that eventually x

I truly feel your pain, I have been in exactly the same position with my daughter.

I could post for pages giving advice, that's not what you need but I totally empathise with the feelings of pain, anger, frustration and fear that you are experiencing.

Please let me recommend this book

Skills-based Learning for Caring for a Loved One with an Eating Disorder: The New Maudsley Method Paperback – 7 Jun 2007
by Janet Treasure (Author)

Reading this was the best thing I did in helping my daughter recover, there are not many resources aimed at parents and helpers, this was amazing for me and helped me to put things into perspective. Especially the concept that it was not my eating disorder and despite anything that had happened ever, it was not my fault. It was also not my recovery, whether she recovered or not was also completely owned by her, obviously with my support.

Remember, children who have experienced the same things as your daughter go on to lead lives without eating disorders, her condition is totally about her, her coping mechanisms and perspectives, not anything you have done.

Once you come to term she with this you will find that you can support her so much more because you are not carrying blame and guilt and the book really helped me do that.

Good luck.

It is very clear that you and your daughters have a complicated relationship with food.

You won't take any blame for her being an overweight child, and yet she is blaming you for putting her on a diet later on.

I think the attitudes towards food in your home do not sound normal and healthy, everybody had a part to play in that.

Being open, seeing your mistakes and being honest are the only way to get the best out of the help being offered. You must feel vulnerable and as if you are being judged, however they have seen it all before, they won't be judging you only trying to help.

Heh, hi mom!
Well you aren't but you could have been 8 years ago. I actually took longer to get better because my mom used to go mad about anything I said in therapy so I stopped saying everything I needed to. I moved out and got better imn the end, I've had two kids nnd am finally what the doctors have said is a healthy weight for me and yet she still says how good I looked back when I was skinny. Only I didn't.
Please remember OP, you may not feel like it's your fault, and you may or may not be right, but therapy is about how your daughter is feeling and helping her to get better.
The therapists won't be judging you because their time is taken trying to help her.

She isn't adopted by any chance? That might explain a few aspects of this. Sorry if that is totally reaching!

She's a teenager, she's supposed to hate her parents. Some of the time, anyway. Getting that anger out there is good for her, too. Better than bottling it up.

Doesn't mean anything she says is rational or real.

If you got any teen in a family therapy setting, even a perfectly healthy one, they would blame their parents for everything. It's what teens do.

Yes, prob you could have been a better parent - but so could every parent in existence, and the ones who haven't had problems are frankly just lucky.

Her team will have seen it all before, and know that you were parenting with the hand you were dealt - which was prob influenced by your parents parenting and so on and so on. So they aren't judging, just assessing and guiding.

Family therapy is v tough but essentially it is about your daughter getting well and learning new skills, which she will find v painful. It's worth you telling her team you find it exhausting being continually blamed in the sessions and asking what support there is for you as you want to stick with it.

Triple, you said "I have explained it hmm her sister used to secretly buy food and give it to her (just so she wouldn't be moaned at for spending her school dinner money on food)."

I still don't fully understand this.

I would expect to give a child dinner money, and for that dinner money to be spent on food. I would expect the child to then eat that food. That would be the normal course of events.

Did your dd's big sister have issues around food too? Was she also obese? Did she feed the food to her little sister so she didn't have to eat it? Sorry to ask. I realise this isn't what you came here to talk about, but if you can learn to explain how this difficult situation came about, maybe it will help you to work through what went wrong.

OP, this must be such a hard situation. It must be hard to deal with your daughter's team when you feel like they haven't seen the years of struggles that your family has. However, outsiders to the situation should be able to help you guide your daughter.

I disagree with other OPs saying it is not about you and to get over it. Your daughter is, quite clearly by vocally blaming you, making you feel like it is about you because she is telling you it is your fault. You need to see over that.

If it helps at all, i don't think parents are necessarily to blame for overweight children. I say this from my fortunate, easy experience of having 'normal' weight children. It was genetic. I was like that too as a child. It was easy. They have small appetites. Obviously I gave them a balanced diet but essentially, I take zero credit for any of it.

I have friends who are very sensible people who are very concerned about nutrition who have overweight kids. It's genetic. The kids have big appetites and want 2nds and 3rds of their (healthy) food. It's A very difficult situation. I'm sure you did your best OP. Her therapists will not be that interested in you, just trying to help her.

Be strong, it can't be easy. All the best.

OP, I think I understand. I also nodded with MrsDVs post.

My mother was ... God, I loved her but she made it difficult! I always feel bloody rotten about her because she did try and she did love me but she didn't LIKE me; I wasn't what she wanted as a daughter.

I want to let her memory go (she died when I was a teenager) but with food, she was cruel. Gave my brother more and nicer food than me, called me utterly awful names and encouraged other kids to call me them too cried when we saw a fat woman as 'that's what you will end up like' - FFS!

I can see though how hard this must be for you and my mum found it hard when she saw me gaining weight as a teenager. I really sympathise

I know how scary this is, but as other posters have said, it's a stage she needs to work through, even healthy teenagers often have a lot of anger which they direct towards their parents, and she obviously harbours masses of resentment which has to go somewhere. The more generous you can be about this, the better it will help her to recover.

Don't flame the OP.

It's family therapy -it's about all of you actually.

I think that perhaps you should consider getting your own therapy to deal with your feelings. I only know from having a child with different MH issues than ED that it's very very difficult as a parent indeed. Guilt comes in like a monster and in the most unhelpful way. Some of the things that happened you will have been a part of because you're her mum, but some were inevitable- that monster of disease was conspiring against you all to make your DD ill. I've seen parents close to me make ED worse by not engaging with the help available, but they were also fighting something that was already there, but not in the most effective way iykwim.

You're engaging - for which you should be praised. You'll have to sit tight and allow your dd to come out the other side, but you can still say your views.

For those of you saying the MH professionals have 'seen it all before' and 'won't judge' - I'm really sorry but that's not my experience of MHS or CAMHS or similar. Sad but true there are inexperienced and ineffective people out there. I've been told I was 'perceiving' things in the wrong way when we were at our wits end with some behaviour problems and I've found that very hard to deal with personally indeed. In the end I started writing a diary and looking back I was totally not 'perceiving' things that 'actually' happened.

I think you need to look after yourself as well as her for all your sakes - get some individual counselling.

Also- don't forget GPS don't always give the best advice, they just dont

just so she wouldn't be moaned at for spending her school dinner money on food

I thought the same as LostSight. Surely the dinner money is supposed to be spent on food?

I think you should listen to her and not try and minimise how she's feeling. Obviously she has reasons to feel how she does and if you were just acting on a doctors advice then that's fine but maybe it's not as black and white as that, especially not to her? You've barely given us any details really, obviously if her ED is bad enough to need treatment for something has happened for her to feel that way. You do sound like you have some control issues around food tbh and think you would probably benefit from counselling yourself as others have suggested.

Are you in these sessions with her or is she telling you after? To be honest, it is about her and she needs to get everything that she is feeling out. I know it's tough hearing something is your fault when you think you were doing nothing wrong but something has made her feel that way and you can't or shouldn't try to argue with her to try to make her feel differently.

I'm speaking from experience here. Not ED but massive mental breakdown. Stayed in a clinic for a couple of weeks and had ongoing counseling. I definitely, rightly or wrongly blame my parents for quite a lot of my issues and although I don't talk to them about what I say, they know enough and spent.a long time trying to defend their actions and anted me to say that none of my issues were their fault. I couldn't do it. I feel how I feel but I do believe that they didn't understand the effect of what they were doing and saying and I've taken the approach that i want to get on with my life and have a good relationship with them. So the past is the past. I deal with my demons as and when they surface but there's no point in thinking about how they developed in the first place anymore.

Hopefully your daughter will come to the same conclusion but she has to be given time to process her feelings and what she thinks might have caused them and deal with that. I'm not going to lie, it might take a long while and she still might throw it in your face from time to time but the best thing you can do is to accept it without defending yourself even if it seems unfair.

That must be so hard to hear and sit through, OP - especially when you thought you were doing the right thing.

You wouldn't be human if you didn't feel bad. :-(

Just remember your daughter isn't trying to hurt you. She is telling her truth as she sees it. You have a different view, but that is not relevant in this situation.

Best of luck with it all.

I would assume that meant spending it on junk food rather than school dinners?

I think it is almost inevitable that she will blame you but I'm sure that the healthcare team have heard it all before and they won't blame you. It can be difficult if you have a child with a tendency to overeat, particularly once they are teenagers. I have one child like this whereas the other tends to be underweight (she always has been) and I feel I have to be so careful with what I say as I want to encourage weight loss without stimulating an eating disorder. Many posters on here won't get how difficult it is but I'm sure that the healthcare professionals looking after your DD will.

I do know where you're coming from, OP.

My dd2 had counselling earlier this year. And as I handed her over (didn't sit in the sessions) I had a horrible feeling that she would spend the session portraying herself as a poor neglected child who was always at the bottom of the heap.
I know that isn't the reality, but she can go into victim mode where she thinks everyone is against her and how badly she was treated. I used to do that too as a child, and even as I said it would know I was being unfair.

I had to resist the temptation to say to her on the way in the first time things like "don't you dare say ..."

I have no idea what was talked about, but I have noticed she goes into victim mode much less since. And actually what the counsellor thinks of me is much less important than her mental health.

The obesity is not separate from the anorexia, they are inextricably linked, and it's the case for a lot of people. For many it's because of the encouragement and joy expressed by others as they lose weight. For others it's the fear of being obese again. But to say 'its not about the obesity' isn't right.

And she has a right to say whatever she wants in those counselling sessions, as they're for her to throw out all the feelings that make her feel so bad inside so they can be examined. Perhaps she knows you did your best and accordingly feels guilty for feeling as though some of your actions contributed. That guilt/bad daughter thing feeds back into the anorexia.

Or perhaps she's young and just doesn't realise how hard it is to be a parent, and will empathise in time.

I think you just need to be humble and accepting for a time. Your daughter is very sick and if this is what she needs to get better, isn't it worth it to feel insulted so your daughter doesn't starve to death? And maybe there were some things you didn't know at the time, and didn't realise were unhelpful to her, and now you have the chance to say sorry and see her blossom.

I would assume that meant spending it on junk food rather than school dinners?

Ah yes, that would make sense. So the older dd spent her lunch money on crisps and chocolate bars but made her younger sister eat some of it too so that they would both be in trouble?

It does sound like the family had a lot of issues around food.

It's the thing with being a parent that it comes along with a huge dose of guilt, and having that articulated when your DD has something as horrible as anorexia must be hard. I expect that you've already spent a lot of time going through how you contributed to it, even though you had her best intentions at heart at the time.

You know in your heart that you didn't mean to cause her to become anorexic, but people do things with all the best intentions all the time, that later become part of the problem.

I've been obese all my life. I know that in part my unhealthy relationship with food is due to my mum, but I'm old enough now to know that she didn't mean to cause the problem and that its my problem to resolve, as blaming her and carrying on won't fix anything.

Your DD is in treatment and is at the stage where she needs somewhere to direct her anger and her fear and anything else, and that person is you. The best thing you can do is acknowledge the way she feels, apologise to her for doing the things she feels contributed to her disorder and work with her to find ways for you all to manage things better. If you fight her on this, everyone loses.

I would assume that meant spending it on junk food rather than school dinners?

Sorry op I'm still not quite understanding that?

If it is as a pp said above and because older dd was spending it on junk food then why would she be in less trouble if her little sister ate it too?

Family therapy is hard. And yes, it is mostly focused on your dd and her illness but open saying goes to not about you at all are missing something. It's family therapy. It is about the whole family, not just your dd. Our family therapists recognise the impact their often very painful sessions have on all involved and work to support the family members as well as the unwell person. They do not expect family members to sit humble and unquestioning and wholly accepting of the unwell person's perceptions. How on earth would that be of any use? What skills for recovery would that help them develop?
It is widely recognised that eating disorders are complex illnesses, often with a manipulative component, always with a significant element of distorted cognitions. No family therapist or mh professional worth their salt listens to an unwell person ascribing all their difficulties to their family and painting relatives as evil people entirely to blame for everything, and accept that as absolute truth. We accept this may be how the unwell person currently sees it and it helps us understand their perspective and hopefully how we can support their recovery, but honestly, we don't hear it, take it as gospel and judge the relatives accordingly.