Did my mum handle my eating disorder badly?

[Teppamux]

My mum took my upstairs during my 15th birthday party (while all my friends where downstairs) to tell me she knew I'd been making myself sick and lost a lost of weight. I couldn't go back downstairs for the rest of the party because I was too upset

She then complained that she had made spaghetti bolognese for all my friends but I'd chosen to throw it all up

A couple days later I told her 'I'm not stupid mum' and she told me I was because I was making myself sick

This went on for years and I only managed to half recover from eating issues aged 27 or 28 (I'm 31 now) and still have massive issues

A few times I'd make myself a big plate of food and shed ask me what the point was, because 'you're just gonna throw it up after'. It would take me ages to decide whether to eat, and this would just throw me off completely. I wasn't necessarily gonna throw it up

I remember wearing a dress I felt really great in but asking her if I looked big and her telling me 'no but you're probably at a point where you don't wanna put any more weight on'. I wasn't overweight at all

I've tried to bring this stuff up with her before but she tells me that she had an eating disorder when younger too so she can't possibly have been insensitive because she understands. I don't think she understands at all. Whenever I've been at my slimmest is the only time she compliments me.

There are loads of other things, she eats v minimal and comments on portion sizes etc

I have a 2 year old now and I'm trying my best not to pass on any body/eating issues but I feel its so embedded into me to hate the way I look and feel negatively about myself.

I'm honestly confused as to whether this is a normal reaction to your child having an eating disorder because I always believed that I was the one making things hard between us but I think I should have been given some support. I feel my life has been made so difficult by my eating problems.

She probably handled it as well as she was able to. I imagine it’s incredibly difficult and stressful trying to feed your child when they’re refusing food or purging, and she probably does have an eating disorder herself. Ideally you’d be handed a pamphlet when you have a baby telling you how to get everything about parenting right, but you don’t.

Yes, she handed it badly.

Ignore the snidery of the poster above.

Yes sounds like she handled it beyond badly.

Did she really have an eating disorder when she was young? Or has she made this up to cover herself? If she did have one I suspect she may be repeating the behaviour she received when she was young.

i think that as a parent it’s hard to know what to do when your child obviously has an ED. The obvious thing is to seek ‘expert’ advice initially from a GP or a specialist charity. Often the child won’t or can’t engage with treatment for a while. It’s really agonising seeing your child suffer; if you suffer from the same thing yourself it must be even more difficult.

Its not great, but as you say, she has eating disorder history herself, so probably a trigger point for her.

Yes, she handled it really badly. She was very cruel and unhelpful towards you.

She should have been seeking medical help for you.

My parents got me sectioned. It didn't work at the time but they tried everything they could.

Have you had any help at all? Any therapy? You could talk to a GP now and ask for help.

Yes she handled it very unkindly

You were the child in this situation, it wasn't your fault.

She handled it in the way she thought best at the time - maybe coloured with frustration, fear, thinking of her own past rather then your present and all the societal norms that she regarded as important. She got it wrong. But you can't change the past, you can't change her beliefs and looking backwards will achieve nothing but more pain.

You're doing absolutely the right thing by trying to break the cycle with your own child, that's massively important. However, with any change you now want to make in your own life (especially those that require long-term shifts in behaviour and thinking) the first step is to guarantee yourself unconditional love.

It’s important that self-love comes without any qualitative judgement and as a base level below which you will never fall. It’s okay to hate certain aspects of who or where you are right now, but if you continue to love yourself in the midst of that perceived failing, you will very likely care enough about yourself to make those changes.

You are where you are now. Looking back to ruminate over who to blame will never help you. This applies to everything. If you want to change you have to disregard your Mum and take absolute responsibility yourself. Stop wasting your precious energy on analysing the behaviour of someone else.

I expect she did the best she could

I think there's reasons why the main treatment recommended for ED now is family therapy. Was that something you and your mum were able to access?

She sounds horrendous. For me this is NC stuff.

Her explanation makes sense. Kind of. Though she is looking at it differently/ incorrectly

She had an eating disorder so thinks she couldn’t have possibly have been insensitive. But in actual fact, she had an eating disorder so couldn’t see that her comments weren’t particularly helpful and making worse.

Parents, even ones that don’t have food issues, don’t come with the automatic knowledge to know how to handle these things. When you throw in food issues it becomes more difficult.

My mum was largely the same. She also had a diagnosis of Bpd and had a severe eating disorder. She did cause me issues around food. When she died, I found a photo of myself on holiday when I was about 13. I remember going shopping for the holiday, with her not liking the clothes she picked out. And her telling me it’s because I was greedy and fat and how she was really skinny at my age because she controlled herself. When I looked at the photo I couldn’t believe how slim I was. But I remember feeling like I was fat and disgusting. I went the other way, I comfort eat and am fat. Somewhere in my brain I believe I can’t control it. And that I look fat even when I am thin. So what’s the point in denying myself comfort. Even when I have been slim and fine to the gym 5 days a week, I still thought I was fat and needed to lose more.

Mum became disabled and put weight on, the last few years she didn’t go out much because she didn’t want people she knew to see the weight she put on. After lockdowns opened up she barely left the house and then passed away.

I am so angry at some of the things she said to me as a child. But I feel immensely sorry for her because she had issues she never managed to get on top of. It made her pretty unhappy even if she wouldn’t accept it. And I think she did her best given her issues and diagnosis.

So I think you mum didn’t handle it very well, but not everyone is equipped to deal with it or see what they are doing isn’t helping. Because their view of it is through their own issues. It’s not helpful and it doesn’t change anything for people like me or you, but that’s my view of it. And it makes me less angry.

She may have or not but you are an adult now so you are fully responsible now for what you and your child needs

It sounds very much like she had an eating disorder and wasn't/isn't as over it as she thinks - still has an overvalued idea of thinness and tiny portions being good

So she handled yours very badly as she just didn't have the insight on how to support you - she could see when you were losing a lot of weight and knew it was bad but still wanted to compliment you on being thin.

Only you can decide on how much you want to have to do with her, but it does sound like her disordered relationship with food is going to continue and it's not worth discussing with her. You are doing all the right things in trying to make sure your DD doesn't grow up with the same influences you did.

This is a really weird response. Part of making sure we, as parents, respond well and provide well for our own children can be exploring how our own parents parented. I find comments like this so incredibly rude because they shut down a valid exploration around emotions and thoughts, ignore that the person has usually made it clear they are asking because they see the importance of taking responsibility for themselves (and their child) and absolve the other party who dealt with it poorly of any wrongdoing.

@Teppamux I think she dealt with it poorly and the inconsistency sounds unhelpful. I’d really recommend counselling and focusing specifically on this issue. Unpacking all of that could really help in the long run, though it’s a tough road.

It sounds like she handled it quite unkindly and also like she doesn't really have the self awareness to see that. It also sounds like she was only able to.communicate concern about the impact on herself and that her ideas about bodies are pretty destructive - she wasn't even able to straightforwardly affirm to her own DD that she looked lovely without also passing on weight anxiety.

What I would say about that is that she is unable to manage the cultural pressure around body image in a healthy way and a lot of us are in that boat. If this is how she talks to you, I imagine her self talk is pretty vicious. And sadly even your need for her to be a supportive mother isn't enough for her to be able to move that stuff inside of herself. So in relation to food, weight and wellness she is not someone you can rely on or should turn to for actual support in this.

I think it is probably helpful for you to note and notice all the ways she essentially amplified rather than mitigated the cultural pressure on you. It also seems notable that historically you have blamed yourself for difficulties between you, it sounds like she is not at all capable of taking some responsibility for how she has related to you. In these contexts, you probably would do well to give up on her changing/ realising/ seeing things from your point if view. That doesn't mean you have to think it was okay at all and exploring that sense of being undermined or hurt is important. It's just that you probably need to accept that the path to your recovery can't depend on her changing or being sorry about how she related to you about body image and food because she has already shown she is not someone you can depend on in this context.

I had an ED and my mum had been really significant in my concluding I was unlovable if too fat. I was taken to slimming club as a child, told off for eating too much or "fattening" foods in front of siblimgs and anyone else who was around, told I was destined to be on a diet forever and couldn't eat what normal people could because I was naturally too fat. She wouldnt let me wear certain clothes because i looked fat. All in all, very hostile environment for me to be able to develop a healthy attitude towards food eatting and my body. I.now see that these are just my mums projections of her beliefs about herself on to me. But I have healed those attitudes and my mum is trapped in them forever. It is her I feel sorry for now. I am nearly 50 by the way and became dangerously ill with EDs in my 20s, recovery took probably if I am honest 15 years. I was about your age when I decided I properly needed to get a grip on my attitude (rather than mu diet) as a way out of my difficulty. Hard work but so worth it. One of the things I had to give up on is hoping to be able to explain myself to my mum such that she would understand and stop being foul to me on this stuff. She can't because it isn't even about me with her - it is about herself. Learning to shrug that off is possibly the thing I am most proud of myself for.

Good luck OP, I know you can do it, you have all the keys to turn this around - desire to, self reflection, and awareness. A child you want to do it for is also very supportive. I can't tell you how healing it is to build boundaries around your child's dignity that you weren't allowed. Good luck.

It wasn’t great but she clearly had her own unresolved issues to start with which clouded her perspective and also had absolutely no clue how to deal with it.

That’s not to say her behaviour was fine, it wasn’t, but it wasn’t coming from a place of malice by the sounds of things, it was done from a place of ignorance and emotion.

It sounds like you have dealt with your eating disorder which is great, so when you go into parenting with your little one, you will choose to do it differently.

You're 31 now? Time to get over it. Forgive your mum, parents are fallible and she didn't know what to do. Move on.

Yeah it's much healthier spending your whole life going over things that happened 20 plus years ago

This.

She passed on the self loathing she feels for herself to you OP. Go on, and break the trend for your gorgeous little girl

She handled it very badly, probably due to her own issues.
What is important now, though, is you and your dd. You can’t change the past, but you can change the future. See if there is some professional help out there for you.

What on earth are you talking about? What snidery? Is it snide to ascribe any motivation whatsoever to a mother of a now-adult woman on mumsnet that isn’t ‘narcissism’?

Surely 31 year olds are still allowed to discuss issues that were a big deal in their childhood/teens? I have 'forgiven' her, I've discussed it with her once. I'm not making her life difficult because of it. I'm just asking on a forum for advice from people who may have been in similar situations.