I haven’t been on for a while. It’s been so tough. I had enough of dd controlling me for so so long by mid January and I pushed her a bit hard.. a basic conversation to the average teen, who’s pissed you off btw but not ok for someone like dd.
She was already at the start of relapse then looking back as she’d had a couple of stomach migraines over Christmas and they have a similar affect on her eating wise to a a stomach bug. I don’t regret it now but she properly relapsed off the back of this conversation and I had to deal with this one completely differently.
She became a ball of vile anger, hates me, wishes me dead etc and she is 17, an adult now. She said she was moving out, moving to Thailand if she doesn’t get a place at university, because it’s cheap or to dh’s father’s now empty place in another country as he’s in a care home. Or moving in with friends (ie their parents houses), plenty of people would have her etc. She scorned there is no such thing as snack time, she will eat when she wants, make her food herself, was going to shop for herself, wasn’t going to eat any of our disgusting food etc and halved her intake overnight. It was a hairy few weeks and I couldn’t tell her to eat at all so in a way it was a return to the start in terms of my level of ‘control’ over her intake… except I have so many tools for dealing with it now. And knew a lot of what to say back to her, some Socratic questioning, when I could get it in etc.
A month in and it was half term. I then spent all of half term sat on the sofa in the kitchen saying ‘grab yourself something’ (the words food, snack or eat, trigger her) every time she came in. It paid off albeit she had already started to relax and let me make her food again… but she has been flat refusing to sit and eat with us the 2 times a week we have done for ages (she won’t eat with us more than that). I finally cracked that one last Sunday.
Shes incapable of shopping for herself btw. A couple of weeks in, the first time going shopping, she decided she wanted a ready made meal for dinner and asked me to take her to M&S as there’s a meal she likes from when she was vegetarian (she restarted chicken a few months ago), no thought of anything else. I suggested maybe some fruit and maybe to get some chicken with the meal as there’s not much protein in it… and that was supposed to be her shopping for herself btw. It had to be pre cooked chicken as well… and she wants to move out for university in September…
I’ve not cracked morning snack yet, she’s only eating a tiny amount but it’s good as she wasn’t having anything and I managed to get breakfast up to a reasonable level again. She vomited over the weekend when she had a large afternoon snack and lots of cucumber. I think she probably felt sick tbh. She has a really good friend with ARFID, who purges regularly btw (dd recently told me about the purging) and we all know how EDs work... Dd vomited all over her bed then got herself to the loo to be sick some more so I think it was deliberate… but more she was surprised it worked. And it would make sense for her to do it on the bed as she has a seizure condition, which is normally set off with a bug when she vomits.
The good thing about it is that she’s stopped having an unhealthy level of control over me. And I’m able to stand my ground better. There have been some really good changes despite the fraught situation.
@Pearl97 ChatGPT sounds like an amazing idea!
@NanFlanders i would love to join. I probably won’t be able to. I have chronic fatigue so I’ll have to see nearer the time. Winter is tough on me and I would need to be strong. I will let you know if I can.
@LurkyLurkyLou that sounds like you’ve made excellent progress. My dd is about 2.5 years into her ED and she still doesn’t have any insight.