Teen Eating Disorders support thread 3

[Girliefriendlikespuppies]

Thought I better get a new thread going!

Please come and join us if your teen is struggling with an Eating Disorder. We are a kind, supportive bunch of parents looking to support each other through the dark days of caring for a teen with an ED.

lougle sm701 great news from you both!

Wow that is great, @sm701!

Thanks both of you. I can hardly believe that 3 months ago I was asking for an NG tube because we were making no progress.

@Lougle that's such a good thing to know- shows it's all achievable.

Lougle and sm fab news, well done!!

Not had a great day here unfortunately, had a stand off at lunch over dd holding orange juice in her mouth, she eventually swallowed it but it was hard work. Lunch is our most difficult meal for some reason.

We had friends over this evening and went for a walk, dds OCD (running into corners, touching signs) was really bad 😕 it's like nothing else matters the compulsion is so strong ☹️

That's really tough, @Girliefriendlikespuppies. It's so hard to deal with this stuff in front of people.

It is lougle I hate to say it but it's embarrassing, people must think she's mad 😢 I know it shouldn't matter what other people think but it does to a certain extent.

I can't say I'm seeing the promised improvement in the weight gain vs mental state yet 😕 but I will keep plugging on.

Oh I get it. When we were in Bristol, SIL bumped into a colleague at the coffee shop. I spent that time trying to stop DD1 taking ice cubes and lemon from my glass, sprinkling sugar on her hands, taking wrappers from stuff...just everything. She's 15. It looks wrong! It's toddler behaviour.

@SilkyEars sorry you're going through this, it's utterly bewildering, especially when you first realise there's a problem.

Really thrilled for everyone's weight gains. We seem to be on a massive downward trend, certainly behaviourally. Having been compliant and sweet at the beginning, she's now vile and belligerent. Well she's not, the ED is. Massive meltdowns, walking away, storming out of the house, panic attacks at the thought of sugar, hiding under the table. It is like a demonic possession.

DH and I are arguing, I feel sorry for her siblings, I feel sorry for her and I feel sorry for us. I feel like everyone is sacrificing so much. I'm just desperately hoping that this dramatic resistance is a sign that war is being waged and the ED is being effectively poked.

Hi @Valleyofthedollymix yes that's what I thought too, like dd was possessed. Rage, violence so much that was not in her personality ever before. Felt like dd had been taken over by an alien. We did have months of that. Thankfully for now at least we have some respite. I don't think they can keep that level of fear and frenzy up for months though. I do think sertraline has helped here.
Hang in there. I thought the siblings would be badly affected but turns out they just want to be left to get on with minecraft and weren't you bothered. I did try separate mealtimes for a while to protect them.
It's awful isn't it

I'm feeling stressed today. DH agreed to go to see his brothers a month or two ago, and he mentioned it but didn't put it in the calendar. On Friday I was thinking 'at least it's the weekend tomorrow' and then DH mentioned that he was leaving at 10.30 am to visit his brother.

He doesn't go out much, so I don't begrudge it, but it's been a hard week,a hard weekend and he's sending me pictures of him with his brothers having nice times, relaxing.

I'm unreasonable and I know it, but it's not making me feel much better.

Do you all find the weather makes it harder to get them to eat? I'm not feeling hungry myself so it's hard to muster enthusiasm to encourage DD1 to eat!

@lougle I hope it's the weather, not a great day here! a lot of tears, she's "fat" its my fault etc etc etc etc
Looking forward to bedtime tbh

Yep Lougle my dd really struggled with dinner Ystd which is normally her most reliable meal, she said 'it's too hot to eat' 😕

Today's been slightly better, had a nice morning going round a table top sale. Dd and I love anything like that, hunting out bargains 😁 it was nice. Although felt a bit sad when I caught her looking at the cake stall ☹️ I did pick her up a small cake and swapped something in her lunch for it. She moaned but ate most of it.

Dd would usually be loving all the ice creams and lollies this time of year so that feels very lacking as well.

Valley that all sounds stressful and crap, I remember those days with dd and they were awful. They have got less frequent with weight gain but that also might be because I don't poke the beast as much as I should these days 😕

I bought the girls an ice-cream today. DD1 fed the cone and half the ice-cream to the dog. He was delighted, but me less so.

Girlfriend can you dd not have ice cream or cake?

NC dd would eat ice cream for pudding after dinner (and does have it quite frequently at that time) but absolutely would not have it at any other point in the day 😕

I did say to her today at some point this summer I will insist you have an ice cream for a snack and she just rolled her eyes.

My dd does eat a lot of foods that generally kids with anorexia would balk at but there is no freedom with any of it. Meal times are very much set in stone and there's no deviation or chance to be impulsive with food.

That said today dd has been in quite a good mood, she came into my room before bed and we were having a chat and a bit of a giggle like pre ED days. I have to hold onto those moments when I can see her and it's not the ED talking.

Earlier she started having a moan about wanting to do more exercise, I pointed out that whenever she has done more than the recommended the exercise her OCD is so much worse. She completely denied that being true!!

I just said once you're completely well and eating freely whatever food you want to then we can start to think about increasing the exercise 😕

So hard. DD has no appetite with this heat and I totally understand that - I would just love a salad! DD had an ice cream for a snack yesterday which I was delighted with. I tried to calculate the calories in a scoop from a kiosk but didn't feel like I could ask how much one scoop weighs!

@NCTDN great news re ice cream! Coping with this does drive you to random thoughts. I recall seriously intending to ring up an independent cafe to get a calorie breakdown of their menu - including coffee!

In general our difficulties/wobbles are now measured in moments in a week rather than day by day. Last week DD self harmed - the night before she'd gone a month with no self harm (the longest to date) she was so upset micro seconds after she did it and it was very much a sign of the anorexia wanting to sabotage progress. On the flip side she wore bikini and shorts to the beach (with a shirt as a cover up) with friends, and a possible romance may be on the cards (DD's self esteem often manifests around no one liking her). So progress definitely being made and Dd is determined that the only way to not have an eating disorder is to act like you don't have one.

Suspect September will be a wobble. But I'm hopeful she can had a good summer.

I'm so grateful for all the support I've had on these threads and I'll keep reading and popping on now and then to offer support and an encouraging whoop for all the small steps but hopefully (from a completely selfish point of view) my posts about Dd will be less frequent.

Oh I bought Dd a recovery t shirt from an Etsy seller with ED experience. It is embroidered with the following phrase "Thoughts are not facts" which is a good mantra for all our dc - sending love!

Hey everyone 👋 👋

Lovely to hear some good news @sm701 and @myrtleWilson! Excellent and positive mantra for your DD’s tshirt! Do you think it’s definitely the Setraline that has made the difference did your DD sm701?

Sorry to hear you’re having a rough time Valley. I think we are in a similar rut. DD veers between being so angry and hateful to me to so desperately sad. Everyone is walking on eggshells at the moment.

DD is very set in her ways with her food at the minute and won’t deviate at all and try anything new. She tried to persuade me to reduce the amount of milk she has with her evening snack because I’d used some milk in the omelette I made her at lunch and then proceeded to kick off when I wouldn’t. She has exams coming up next week and she is using them as an excuse for me not to start introducing any of her fear foods as it will stress her out too much. I understand where she’s coming from but her weight gain is too slow so we need to be making changes and I don’t want to delay too long as it’s just making her recovery longer.

She had a relatively okay day on Saturday. She had a session with her therapist and I always find she’s fairly reflective after them. Then she had a friend come over to the house for the afternoon and DD was definitely in better spirits after that. She even sought me out late on Saturday night when I had gone to bed to read and came and had a chat with me. She hasn’t done that since this all came out in the open.

I was glad that she had a nice time with her friend on Saturday but then I subsequently found out yesterday that when her and her friend went out for a bit to go and sit in the local park ( what she told me they were going to do) that actually they went for a walk instead. It was one of our running routes which is just over 5k. I was cross with her because she knows I would have said no if she’d asked to do that before she went. Then she started saying how this time last year her and her friends were going swimming in the river and some of her friends were doing that yesterday but she can’t do that anymore because she has to eat so much and I’m making her fat. I know she’s sad because she feels like she’s losing touch with her friends and she can’t do the things she used to do. I said to her that it’s not me stopping her but the Anorexia and this is all the more reason to kick it up the arse, so she can start living her life again. But no, it’s all my fault and if I wasn’t making her eat she’d be happy to be in a bikini with her friends.

Well a good week was followed by a terrible Sunday eve and Monday. I guess we will still have bad days. I do hope she gets back in track tomorrow. Made the mistake of allowing myself to make some plans for text few weeks. Silly me.
I do think sertraline has made a massive difference (baring today!)

@Rollergirl11 DD is always blaming me for the things she's no longer allowed to do (like a DofE expedition she was dreading) and I say the same, it's not me, it's the ED.

After our properly hellacious weekend, we've found that she's lost a kg (i.e. a quarter of what she's managed to gain over the whole thing). And that's with all the fights and arguments and misery. She chips away - morning snack seems to have disappeared because she gets up later at weekends. And we never seem to be able to make it up. She's hyper vigilant in a way she wasn't at the beginning - looking up recipes for the things I'm cooking, wanting the lower cal takeaways.

We've had the Olanzapine dose upped. So far it seems to have made no difference.

We let her go out with friends on Saturday and Sunday. Obviously that means she eats less but she's so under confident with friends, one of the issues that leads to her low self esteem, that it feels wrong not to. But from the point of view of eating, it's a knock back.

@sm701, I know exactly what you mean re. plans. We had friends over on Saturday night and it was just grim.

Valley we’ve had to stop DD from sleeping in at the weekend as we just wouldn’t get the food in! She’s always been a night owl and would think nothing of getting up at 11.00 on weekends and the holidays. Now I’m saying she has to be up for 9.30 latest for breakfast and then I try and keep to her eating snack/meal roughly every 2 hours to make sure we don’t miss any. She’s trying to do any socialising with friends after lunch and then she will face-time me when she’s out while she has her snack. Or she goes out after her evening meal which she has a little earlier and either has evening snack before she goes or when she gets home. These are pre-requisites in order for her to be allowed out. Do you think something like that might work for your DD?

Roller that's really good if she'll FaceTime you when having a snack. Dd met friends at the weekend and I just have to trust her that she ate what she said she did

Oh God valley that's rubbish, I'm sorry. I think I'd be banning all devices and school until she's back on track tbh. I wondered if part of the reason she is getting more angry is because you clamped down on school lunches.

I'm feeling a bit shit as well really, I've just seen a post on the fb support group from a mum who said they went to 'hell and back' but their dd is now eating freely and eating all the right things (high calorie/high fat foods) after 9 weeks!!! I mean that's great for them but we're nearly a year into FBT and still nowhere near that stage.

I need to clamp down on how much food dd is leaving, bit by bit she is leaving more. I feel like we sort of reached an uneasy cease fire with the ED and the thought of going head on with it all again really does not appeal 😕

I just keep hoping she will wake up one day and want to do it for herself but the longer it goes on the more unrealistic that seems.

That's tough girlfriend when you know that someone just wants to celebrate their success but actually can affect others in a different way. Social media has a lot to answer for!