To blame my parents for my eating disorder

[ifyouhaveto]

I have namechanged because I am going to be referring to me, here. I suffer from an eating disorder. I have done so for over twenty years and I am still trying to crack it. It started off as anorexia, although never got "serious" there was a point where I got very thin as a result of seriously restricting what I ate. At any rate, I've maintained a normal-ish weight, sometimes on the heavy side of normal and sometimes not, but the point is I suppose no one would look at me in the street and conclude I have an ED, whether anorexia or compulsive eating.

Actually every day is awful. I can't eat like a "normal" person at all: I binge eat and gain weight and after a bit restrict to near starvation, then after s bit can't stand that, cycle repeats itself.

I've already had to have a serious conversation with one of my children to try to explain why I do it and that they are gorgeous and beautiful and must NOT follow my example. But I do think mine was made not born if you like. In other words if I'd been brought up in another family I would have been all right.

Food was always an issue and to be fair my parents did the right things with me as a fussy eater and my dad grew his own vegetables and sometimes we would go on holiday with families with older children who would try to encourage me to eat things like melon and oranges and French bread which I just found hard to chew. But sometimes they would lose it a bit and I had to do the "clear your plate" thing (I remember stuffing food in my sock to flush down the toilet) and one time they forced a tomato into me and I was sick. I still don't eat tomatoes!

My mum was terrified of me getting fat and she used to get really angry/upset if I had a friend who was thinner than me. I think it kicked off when I started at secondary school, although I remember a few isolated incidents before that where she would either call me fat or allude to it. I looked a normal size on my year 7 school photograph but that year I won an award for playing the piano and appeared in the local paper with some other girls who were playing other instruments. The photographer positioned us standing in a diagonal row if that makes sense and I was at the front and looked bigger than the others. In my mind I looked huge but it was the angle of the photograph as we'd all been 'stretched' if you see what I mean and I also looked taller and generally more strapping than the other girls and I wasn't.

Both my parents acted like I'd come home with drugs, and my dad made me name all the other girls and then I had to repeat after him, "I am fatter than Katie. I am fatter than poppy."

I couldn't do anything growing up without my weight coming into it. If I did something good it didn't matter because I was fat. If I did something bad, I would be insulted for it alongside 'fat.' I remember dropping and smashing a plate once (not on purpose!) and my mum looked at me with contempt and said 'you stupid fat bitch' as if being fat made me drop a plate somehow? The weird thing was I wasn't fat, really. I was a little bit plump about when I was 13, I think. Looking back at old photos I had a bit of a protruding tummy and my face looks a bit heavy but nothing remarkable.

It's hard to know what to say! I was never allowed to snack. So whenever I was in the house alone I would binge eat on loads of cereal and toast. I grew when I was fourteen a bit after years of being smaller than everyone else and I definitely look a perfectly normal size on those pictures. My brother was 3 years older than me, and he'd started going to a gym and started taking me with him and I discovered I liked it.

My mum was so odd with me about my appearance and weight though. I think she was proud of my looks, although I'm honestly nothing special at all. Just an averagely prettyish sort of person. But them constantly going on about how fat I was, I don't know. I think it really fucked up my whole relationship with food in a way. We had a lot of long holidays and I couldn't get away from her especially in the car driving to France or Spain, she'd go on and on and on about my brothers faults and mine.

She died when I was 15 (she was an alcoholic although I didn't know it at the time)

I still don't really know what a 'normal' diet is, still binge eat, and then starve.

They sound absolutely horrible.

YANBU

OP, so sorry for what happened in your childhood. Regardless of how much money they spent on you, or if it was intentional, your parents were abusive and caused this issue.

Having had some issues with food myself I would start by educating yourself on what is healthy and what isn't. I don't mean the standard 3 meals a day, 5 portions of fruit and veg stuff but really get to understand food and what your body needs. Such as calories, macros etc. A good personal trainer or nutritionist will be able to help. At least then you will know what you are aiming for in terms of nutrition.

Personally I'm unsure as to weather the damage done in childhood can ever be cured or if you just get better at managing it and stop it taking over your life. I agree that counselling doesn't always work. I've had lots of different types over the years. However at some point you may want to deal with the painful memories around food, this is where therapy can help. You don't actually need to go and see someone to do this. There are lots of things you can do to help yourself, books, YouTube videos etc.

It's not easy as you are changing habits of a lifetime but it is possible.

I think there is two things here.

The first is what caused, and undoubtedly your appalling up bringing did.

What is keeping you ill is you. I'm sorry.

If a fairly awful child hood and I'm a firm believer in that at some point you stop blaming your parents and start to take personal responsibility. As adults we are who we chose to be. I'm not sure you wish to get better, and that may be part of the illness. The fact your kids know and you have had to talk to them about it is deeply concerning.

Go to your gp. Explain it, and seek help. Show your kids you are strong enough to fix it and won't just accept it, That's it's so not ok you will fix it whatever it takes.

OP

The way your parents acted towards you was utterly disgusting. I think any young person would struggle to maintain a 'normal' relationship with themselves growing up in that kind of environment. Point blank, it is emotional abuse, and in a way psychological abuse, as it is almost conditioning your mind to operate in this way too.

It sounds as if your parents - mum in particular - had some major issues of their own, which they could have projected onto you. Do you still speak to your dad? How is your relationship with your brother, and what was their attitude towards his weight and appearance?

As a PP has said, to try and tackle this would be attempting to change the habits of a lifetime. But it is doable. Your parents may have been the causes of your ED, even to this day, but you are the only person who can make the decision to overcome it. That decision has to come from you and you alone, and when you are ready, there are a multitude of support services out there. Support groups are a lifesaver (literally, in some cases), so I would advise you to look into that if you can and want to.

And finally - the way you handled the matter with your DC is truly commendable. You are doing the exact opposite of your parents and raising children with a healthy self-image, whilst acknowledging and discussing your ED with them.

Well done, OP. You are strong and if you decide to make the steps to overcome this, you will

I am so sorry you had such a dysfunctional childhood. Yes, your ED comes from your parents' attitude, which obviously affected both of you badly.

I hope you find a way to break that dysfunctional cycle, it seems you're certainly trying to. Being aware is a big step towards keeping your children out of it, at any rate.

I have no advice. I was lucky in that my oarents were real foodies with sophisticated tastes, and though my mum would sometimes mention my weight, I became uncomfortable about it because of my peers, not my family. That meant that actually, though I didn't like being fat, I didn't mind that much, and walking everywhere kept me trim and fit without my having to diet at all. (Then ms hit me and I can no longer walk much, I am now officially fat, and I still don't mind that much, but am a little concerned simply because of the health implications and the ability of people to lift me when that inevitably becomes necessary!)

I wish you all the best, and hope you get your attitude to food sorted so that you can leave the cycle of bingeing and starving behind.

I agree with others here who have posted about how beneficial good therapy can be. That is, if you get the right therapist and it is the right time for you. Otherwise, as you say, it can feel pointless.

I think regarding your eating issues, perhaps take a step back to understand how these are in a way symptomatic of a wider context, or part of a wider picture. It's a way of stepping away from the obsession to take a look at what painful feelings that obsession is helping you, in some ways, to avoid addressing.

What I mean is, a person with healthy self-esteem, who feels fully safe and loved, and does not have strong impulses to engage in self-destructive behaviour, would not have an eating disorder. In a way, it's that simple. So in some way to address the eating issues properly, and to heal, it will be important to name, give voice to and address some of these underlying issues, and build your own self-love and self-care. With eating disorders, the disordered eating can be a way of "regulating" emotions that we never learned to regulate as a child. When those emotions are difficult to even acknowledge (because they are so painful, or we were never offered a healthy environment where we could learn do that), the eating disorder continues to serve a purpose (helping to regulate emotions however dysfunctionally).

Eating disorders are by nature secretive and lonely, often involving feelings of shame. They can concretise a wider sense of these feelings - what I mean is, again, that these feelings need to be acknowledged and understood with kindness in order to loosen their grip. So over-coming your sense of resistance to sharing with someone, someone who can help support you to address your eating disorder with a sense of kindness and understanding (that sounds like it was lacking in your childhood), may be crucial.

You may find that in therapy you hardly talk about eating for a long time, but rather about your relationship with your parents.

I'm sorry to read that OP. My mother called me a bitch too, and its stayed with me forever. I've always been very slim but she is also obsessed with weight. She tried her best, I think, but she has/had a lot of problems. I was cynical about therapy too but I did have some sessions with a counsellor I found useful. The other thing that really helped me was discovering feminism at university, which helped me contextualize and understand a lot of her behaviours which stem from deeply internalized and unacknowledged misogyny.

OP of course its your mothers fault and of course she made you this way. Theres really no question about it. You are allowed to be super fucking angry.

You keep saying "cured" but I don't think these things ever get cured - you just manage them and you get better and better at it.

If therapy doesn't work for everyone, and isn't going to work for you, and there is no other treatment, then you are stuck with your eating disorder, aren't you? Except that's not true. All you can say is that so far what has been tried hasn't worked.

High intensity CBT might be useful. Have you been offered/tried that?

If anyone can actually link me to cases where counselling has "cured" someone great but I think a lot of it is snake oil for the vulnerable

I don't know about counselling directly. I know some people it has helped. I had psychotherapy when I was at my most vulnerable - it was on the NHS. I didn't have an ED but do have other MH problems, mainly depression. Therapy helped me enormously.

Do bear in mind three things. First counselling and psychotherapy are not the same things. Psychotherapy goes further and deeper than counselling.

You do have to want to change and be open to it. At the moment you are very much resistant to the idea that you can be helped and it will be that that's actually stopping you. You will also need the right therapist to achieve this. You may just not have found the right one yet.

Third, therapy is hard work. It is not a magic fix or cure. I'm not cured. I still have depression. However, I am much better and happier. I have a toolkit for dealing with my moods. I am much more aware of a potential downward slide and can arrest it. You probably won't find a cure - if you open your mind, you will probably find a treatment that will help you feel better and lessen your symptoms.

To kill yourself with alcohol is some achievement!
Thing is her behaviour would have been very erratic. If you didn't realise the reason was booze it must have been v confusing and a lot of what she spouted must have been pure crap.
Not good for anyone, living with an ally parent.

I had some private counselling when I was locked into some very unhealthy addictive behaviour. I felt out of control and unable to fix myself. My brain would be screaming "no don't" but there I was doing the thing. I felt insane. The counselling unpicked things and enabled me to insert pauses into my behaviour which ultimately led to me stopping entirely and after a decade I know full well I will never do that thing again. So in my experience counselling can help. It wasn't snake oil for me although of course everyone is different.

I really hope you can heal and find peace because you had a very tough time of things and clearly still struggle. People do heal. It can happen. It can happen for you. X you are reflecting on your behaviour and clearly continue to seek a solution. That's really positive.

Gloria

Lucky ... thanks. That's a good post.

I will read through properly in a bit. I do appreciate your replies. Don't think I'm being awkward but as I've said, counselling isn't for me.

Don't think I'm being awkward but as I've said, counselling isn't for me

So what do you want to do? Carry on struggling with things how they are? Change things to make them better?

Changes are going to be difficult and painful. The way I view therapy, there is someone there guiding you through a difficult and painful process that ultimately allows you to feel better and make changes. On your own it can feel as if you're the only one going through all of this and as if you're mad because anyone else would cope or as if actually all this is normal and it's normal to be miserable all the time. Therapists have more experience - they've seen hundreds of people like you.

Without therapy, what does that leave you? How do you envisage the rest of your life?

What I will do, is live with it :)

It does not actually impede my life as much as you might think.

I'm in psychotherapy because of my childhood.

An mother with NPD (diagnosed), a never-there Dad and an older brother who could not cope with how my mother was, or his own feelings, and abused me physically and sexually for year.

I've had issues with drugs, alcohol and eating disorder.

Psychotherapy HAS changed my life. But you have to let the barriers down before you can engage.

I was living the middle class dream too, btw, big house, money chucked around everywhere to provide a smokescreen for the complete lack of care or love.

It does not actually impede my life as much as you might think

But you've lived with it your whole life OP so you may not realise how much it impacts on you. A lot of things will seem normal to you that are quite alien to people who have a healthier attitude to food and their weight.

But you have to let the barriers down before you can engage

This. I was diagnosed with depression in my mid 30s. I'd had it for around 25 years at that point but everything that had happened to trigger or cause it was too fresh to me to be able to deal with it. Then I hit a crisis point and had to deal with it. I wish I'd had therapy earlier but also recognise that I wasn't able to earlier.

I wish you luck OP. Just please do bear in mind that just because counselling or therapy are not for you at the moment, doesn't mean it will always be that way. Calling them "snake oil" might be a defence mechanism at the moment. Things can change.

It impedes your kids' lives though.... whether you're up for admitting that or not.

I repeat, as virtually all posters have pointed out, counselling is not therapy. Counselling is nowhere near enough for you, hence why it hasn't, and never will, work. You need intensive therapy.

Finding it and financing it are nigh on impossible, though.

I went to my GP. She referred me to a CBT therapist, and then a while later referred me to a psychotherapist. I had to wait a few weeks to see them each time. It cost me nothing, and was relatively easy to do once I felt ready for it.

What do you want from this thread, OP?

So basically

If you won't accept you are wrong and we are right you should not have posted.

Counselling doesn't work for me, and I don't want it. I'm sorry if for that reason you feel I should not have posted but I'm afraid I am not going to do as you think I should because I don't agree with you.

It's also quite frustrating when a thread trails off and is on a second or third page and someone ups it just for a row

There was a book about binge eating recommended on here recently and it was an interesting read and was quite against seeking therapy for it ( not therapy in general but just as a way to stop binge eating) . There's a website you can look at. It's quite a different approach -

brainoverbinge.com/

I've been using the techniques a bit and it's been quite helpful for me.