Weighed 4 stone at 26 years old

[solosunflower]

From the age of 15, I've struggled with eating disorders. At 17 I was anorexic and went down 5 1/2 stone, I received outpatient treatment and regained enough weight to function 'normally' in society. I struggled with further studies, training, finding a job and by 26 I only weighed 4 stone. I lived with my mum at this point and was still working (unbelievably) as a teaching assistant. Eventually I ended up seeing a GP and I was sectioned. I spent 3 months in hospital being re-fed via a tube, there was plenty of talk that I could die. After that, I spent a year in a specialised inpatient unit. I feel in many ways this ruined my chances of a career and a decent relationship. Since I've become a parent myself, I don't understand how my mum could have watched me waste to a skeleton and not intervene. It plays on my mind a lot. I've tried to have a conversation with her about it, her response is that I begged her not to get me treatment.

Now she could be ill and I'm struggling to care.

@solosunflower
I very much doubt she didn't care. You got treatment eventually.
I'd love to think you revisited this page in 10 or so years from now and have learnt how difficult it must have been for your dm.
Please don't be negative about her. Your issues weren't her fault presumably.

Did your treatment involve an element of taking responsibility for your own health and monitoring your self talk?

Is there anything you feel your mother could have done to help you but didn't?
Is there anything you feel you could have done to help yourself but didn't?

How did you get through the previous bouts, and how equipped do you feel you are to tackle any future return of the ED?

My mother knew I had overdosed and didn’t call an ambulance, I ended up passed out covered in my own vomit on the bathroom floor for something like 12 hours. I wouldn’t be too quick to assume that Op is misreading her mother’s intentions.

OP I really think a therapist could help you unpick this, it may be that you have misperceived your mums intent here or you could be right. But it’s not something mumsnet can tell you.

kittybiscuits
OP you are NOT being unreasonable. So often in the treatment of eating disorders, the parents are a huge part of the problem. I've known parents tell ED children that their goal weight is too high and they will be fat. You have every right to wonder and question how your mother could have allowed that to happen to you. At 4st your life was almost certainly in danger. A parent should be begging anyone who will listen, for help in that situation. I'm sorry about the other comments. So heartless and ill-informed. AIBU is a cess pit.

I think there’s a chance you’re projecting perceptions here. And while aibu can be access pit this thread is filled with people trying to shop op that perhaps op, given that she was going through so much at the time, might not have seen how someone was dealing with one of life’s most horrifically difficult situations and definitely would not have known what was going on in the background

I'm sorry you feel this way and i hope your mum really does care. Not saying you don't...but do you recall it all properly? Only that my eldest went through the same (though a teenager so i could try and get her as much help as i could, which was so limited as where we lived had no support and terrible medical help) and i know her idea of what was happening and the reality was totally different to what was actually happening.
Maybe find a good therapist to talk things over with to help you with it. She also may have been in denial the second time. I can say as a parent it's the most traumatising time of my life going through it with our daughter. I could never not doing anything - but i had many many times i'd just fall apart and couldn't even focus on every day things.

With kindness OP, that is a truly despicable thing to say.

You have obviously not have had years of anorexic rage thrown at you.
The parents of anorexic children are as often as not suicidal and all of them have PTSD. You made your mother watch you try to starve yourself to death. And now you are blaming her!

I know anorexia is a disease without compassion, but not just for the victim. Your mother is human, and it is high time that you stop thinking about yourself and start thinking and reflecting about what it might have been like for her.

I understand that it won’t be easy to hear that the illness you have broke her- but that is obviously the truth. She had PTSD (the modern name for WW1 shell shock) and her mind shut down…. So you want to kick her around the place for that.

Just No! Get yourself back into therapy to discuss how to repair the relationship given what your illness put her through and how come years later it’s never occurred to you to really think about her feelings or experiences. If you have siblings you might do the same for them.

I’m sorry if this appears harsh, but your post is so unreasonably self indulgent that I am hoping “bringing you up short” will work as a tactic.

I don't really understand why no-one believes the OP.

I think you need counselling to understand what you have been through and your Mum s role in causing and living I with you.
She may not have cared. She may have cared but Mumsnet seem to be rushing to her defence with no evidence which isn't helpful to you.

This thread should be moved or a trigger warning given.

Unfortunately it’s impossible for anyone here to know whether your mother behaved unreasonably or not. Obviously it’s possible she didn’t care, however, it’s also possible that your perception is skewed and she was doing her best. I think you need to seek some specialist professional help to work through this. Good luck OP x

As a former eating disorder patient I only got below 6 stone but I know my parents were distraught.
I was an impatient then outpatient and moved to my parents for help.
Now I feel really guilty and I know it is an illness however having had DC I couldn't cope if they were fading away in front of me.
It is a very complex illness and I hope you can get counselling to help see how your DM was trapped in a way and show her some empathy.

Up until the age of 26 were you ever self sufficient? Is there a dad in the picture or is all blame being put on your mum?
While you lived with your mum was she paying most the bills etc? Because regardless of any shortcomings (and we all have them) it sounds like she supported you- not all parents would want an adult child at home for that long.

I'm sure it was as hard for her (or possibly even harder) going through this as it was for you

People with mental illness are, more often than not, self-absorbed and completely unaware of the impact they are having on the people around them ime

I don’t think it’s about not believing the OP but people with eating disorders are incredibly difficult to care for and by virtue of their illness have a very skewed perception of how they were treated by those around them. Obviously it’s possible the OPs mum didn’t care but most people with any experience of EDs will have witnessed family members desperate to help but who haven’t been able to. No one can tell what the truth is here.

i understand , your mum should have safeguarded you but failed. She certainly let you down when you needed her the most. Being a parent of an anorexic child can be overwhelmingly intense, disempowerment mixed with relentlessness and heartbreaking worry. CAHMS and ED pathways are a maze to navigate. The combination can bring a parent to their knees, particularly if the parent is enduring any other issues themselves, a difficult job or menopause or adhd or illness. If she was a lone parent, carrying everything alone can be harder.

i think you are 100% justified to feel let down, however learning to forgive will help ease things, particularly if she otherwise a loving supportive mum. She certainly made a mistake in how she supported you but probably thought she was doing the right thing at the time.

You sound really poorly, OP.

None of us know whether your parents were neglectful or whether they just seemed that way to you. Not all mums are good mums, and even the best mum struggles to cope with anorexia.

Whatever the truth of the past, right now you need help to process your feelings. Please do seek it.

it must have been a very difficult journey for you both but you’re still young and have so many years and adventures ahead

Help to process things seems sound advice

OP, I am so sorry for what you have been through. Your post has really resonated with me.

I had an ED from the age of 14 until I was in my early thirties. It was at a time when hospitalisation was much more common. I do not want to mention exact weight, but my weight dropped to just below the weight you mention whilst I was an inpatient on an acute psychiatric ward. I think I pulled through physically, simply because i was too weak to fight the interventions when they were applied. I was also sectioned several times

My mother was also criticised by her friends, including friends at church, for not taking a firmer hand with me. My brother was not criticised, nor was my father, only my mother. She ended up in hospital with hypermania and I think this was mainly the result of the stress of seeing me as I was and being unable to do anything at all to stop it. Believe me, she tried. Even when I left home (it was impossible for anyone to live with me without being affected by my behaviours) she was, on many occasions, my only support.

I did pull through, and went on to establish a career that I love, and I married and had two sons. I thought I had put my past behind me.

Then, my youngest son developed an ED. It was so similar to my old ED that I felt it absurd. For some time, I felt guilty because I could not 'stop' him, despite noticing some early signs. We have tried to get him help, but he does not meet the criteria for the ED services, so help comes through the mental health team

Yet, watching my son's life never take off due to this all consuming 'obsession' with food, weight, exercise, restriction, binging and purging, has been traumatic for me, but it has made me understand the absolute impotence of my mother's position. I have tired everything, absolutely everything, and still the ED remains. Just as she tried everything with me. There were also times when my mother and I would plead with the services to let me try to 'recover' at home. She did this because she really believed I could do it, and because psychiatric hospitals were - well let's just say - not very good places at that time.

When I began to recover, I recovered because something changed in me. It was an internal change.

In conclusion, OP, I really and truly believe that your mother did everything she could. I know I have not written this very well, but please feel free to ask any questions.

Unbelievable! I think you should read sosaad’s post from 7:36 and ask yourself whether you really want to stand by this post.

Why would you just dump on her mother like that. Uncritically validating the OP’s opinion really isn’t going to help her.

Her response sounds very much like what someone who is in denial about a problem would say. People can't even get their child to school if they refuse, how would she force a teenager to get help if she doesn't want to?
How did you eventually go the doctor op?

do you have any contact with her OP?

struggled with further studies, training, finding a job and by 26 I only weighed 4 stone. I lived with my mum at this point

Had you ever moved out or always lived with her?
No father or siblings?

My friend has been through what your mum went through with you. Her daughter was extremely manipulative and her mum was distraught, but unable to show it because she was terrified that she would damage her daughter’s MH further.

Her daughter has always been completely self centred, and never understood the impact of her illness on the rest of her family- I suppose that’s part of the illness.

Please- I beg you- give your mum the benefit of the doubt on this.

Are you still receiving any specialist care yourself, it really does sound as if you need support to manage this latest change in your relationship with your mum for both your sakes and your own child now with a grandparent
in brief it’s such a fine line to tread as a parent with a child / teen struggling with severe health issues, the fear of pushing them too far and losing them is very very real. Please don’t underestimate her position.