Living with binge eating teen is wrecking my mental health…

[EmmatheStageRat]

So sorry for the pity party, and I hope I don’t offend anyone struggling with food/eating issues here, but I am desperate to engage with others who either live with or are binge eaters.

In the interests of transparency, DD(15) has multiple complexities as she is adopted, has a significant physical disability and has ADHD and autism. DD has always been very interested in food and eating and has never had an ‘off’ button; all my party memories are of her being the last kid sitting at the food table while the others would be running around. Since puberty, there is not enough sugar in the world to fill her up. DD always has to eat her share then take ours. I have had to hide her six-year-old sister’s Christmas chocolates in the shoe cleaning bag in the hope that DD will not find them and eat them. She has no boundaries.

DD has previously broken into a lockbox where I’d tried to keep treats safe. I cannot keep a single penny in our house as she regularly ransacks my bag, purse, pockets, money boxes for cash to fund her habit.

My elderly and frail mother is totally housebound with no mobility and I’ve discovered that DD has been stealing huge quantities of £20 notes (money under the mattress generation, sadly).

It was DD’s birthday two days after Christmas and I spoiled her, despite our low income. The very next day, I discovered that she had actually stolen my mum’s bank card in order to go to our local sweet shop. I warned her that I would phone the police the next time I discovered a theft.

Unbelievably, today, I went to hand my lovely postie a fiver from my purse (I’d removed the last of the cash from my mum’s house and hadn’t been quick enough to hide it in the Dobble tin) only, you’ve guessed it, to find the £5 - plus other notes - missing. There is no reasoning with DD, she shows no shame or contrition and she respects no boundaries. I am broken. And I have no help as our local CAMHS is only funded for anorexia cases and not binge eating.

So sorry for this massive cry for help.

@GhostTown23 , I do hear what you’re saying but if I drew a Venn diagram of DD’s overlapping complexities, in the centre (for me) would be the binge eating disorder, which is recognised as a serious mental health issue by the NHS. DD is registered blind and is diagnosed with ADHD/ASC as well as neonatal abstinence syndrome. I’m 15 years into my adoptive journey and I’ve come to realise that many adoption social workers are very blinkered and attribute everything to attachment. There are very high heritability factors for both ADHD/ASC and, let’s face it, many birth parents who have their children removed due to neglect/drugs/alcohol/DV probably have diagnosed or undiagnosed needs themselves.

DD is ‘only’ violent to me and is good as gold at school but it’s the classic fizzy-pop model; she bottles up all the slights, social rejection by her peers, her anxiety and her deep seated worries and then explodes once she’s home.

I hear you re: the car; mine resembles a Tesco Express!

@Flapjack637 , thank you. Yes, I have found BEAT to be a literal lifeline.

@Chattycathydoll , thank you so much for sharing your personal experience. Please, may I ask what type of therapy you have found beneficial? How did you learn to deal with your trauma history? Maybe I’m not seeing the wood for the trees and I’m focusing on the binge eating rather than the trauma.

I'm wondering if school is exasperating this issue too. Not a cure but have you asked if she is finding school too much ? I don't know what schools are like now but I went to a grammar school and it was very high demand for good grades and the expectations were always there and you felt the pressure. I had BED and anorexia not caused by school but most certainly fuelled by a need to control at least one aspect of my life when my grades looked like they might slip. Not sure if it's generic either as my sister was also anorexic and couldn't cope with the possibility of grades not being as good as she was expecting them to be.

My school was also filled with people with mh issues because most people there want to do really well often at the cost of their own health. Your dd already has severe trauma in her life so services treating her 'like any other dc' is very unfair simply based on her getting good grades. It could well be that getting good grades means, staying in more, studying more and therefore piling weight on but getting ultimate comfort from eating when there's nothing else giving her that comfort and also therefore having no real distractions ruin from her trauma whether conscious or not and also grammar schools regularly (or at least the ones I know of these days check up and make sure your dc is on track for good grades and address this if they aren't.

Again, I'm not sure how it is now but when I went to a grammar school your grades were far more important to the school than your health. They had league tables to worry about, If you were going to achieve good grades most certainly they'd have rather kept you in school to sit your exams with irrelevance to whether or not it might affect you in other areas of your life no matter how seriously. I hope you get the help that you all need OP it sounds so very sad and stressful for you all.

Schema therapy is ultimately what worked for me. It allowed me to break down the messages I received as a child and really look at them, when before they were just assumed truths about the world. It allowed me to see what I should have learned instead, if I’d had a healthy family and upbringing. That in turn meant we could do reworking sessions later when I was able to cope with addressing some specific events head on, taking a deep dive into the most traumatic memories in a safe space so they weren’t held in a separate PTSD channel, but absorbed into the main memory stream like anything else that happened in the past. The combination meant I could unpack both the PTSD response that happened when triggered, but also the trauma-induced lessons I lived with every day.

Took a few years of solid work with a brilliant therapist but I went from deathly ill and not remotely coping, to thriving, going back to uni, getting a new job, raising my DD independently, and generally breaking the cycle. I’m a whole new person compared to the kid who would shoplift food to stuff down feelings, or the teen who denied food in order to deny emotions.

Does she have a learning disability? Does she understand that stealing £ is wrong? What consequence did she get for stealing?

@Chattycathydoll , thank you so much for sharing. I don’t know anything about schema therapy so I am going to go away and investigate. Your post gives me hope as, when I’m not mired in the daily bullshit, I do spend my remaining energy worrying about the type of future DD will have. Your path is the very best I could hope for DD.

Also, your comment about using food to ‘stuff down feelings’ really resonates for me. I’m so appreciative of your honesty, shared lived experience and insight.

@Spaghetti201 , no, she has no learning disabilities; she is thriving academically at a selective grammar school. She ‘knows’ that the societal norm is that people with a moral compass do not steal. With regards to consequences/punishments, so sadly, the net result is the withdrawal of a little more love/affection/parenting interest. Because I am human.

I am sorry I have no advice but have read this thread and I just wanted to say OP that you sound like an amazing mother to your adopted daughter. You have worked tirelessly to help, you clearly do lots of research and want the best for her and I have so much admiration for what you are doing. It must be exhausting but you keep going and although your mental health must suffer you are seeking the best you can for your daughter. I hope that something comes good soon from the services that have only seemed to let you down so far. It seems awful that you are coping with all of this on your own.

You are a wonderfully supportive mother. It must be very difficult for you all. I have had various EDs. I have managed to get much better (not 100%, but better) by following the advice in this book:Overcoming Binge Eating 2nd Edition: The Proven Program to Learn Why You Binge and How You Can Stop.

if you dig a little into the authors details, you will see that he is associated with a clinic which has just started running an online / app delivered support system.

however, it was driven by me, and at the moment, it sounds like your poor daughter might not have the motivation to get involved with it.

im so sorry that there are not the services you need. Can you write to your MP and see if they can help?

thinking of you

So no real, tangible consequence? Like reduced screen time etc? I think you need to implement something a bit more consequential, otherwise it will escalate. My parents enforced zero boundaries and I was off the rails by 18 (drinking, drugs etc).

It might be more helpful to work in a trauma informed manner and ensure that sanctions/consequences dont mirror a sense of rejection/withdrawal of secure attachment, so if you can try to go overkill on the emotional availability but introduce other types of consequences

@Spaghetti201 , genuinely, there is not anything I can do to punish my DD; she gives not one fuck about anything or anyone. In my most insane moments, responding to the discovery of yet more stealing, I have threatened to remove and tip EVERYTHING in her bedroom. The response is a shoulder shrug. I quite often take the WiFi box out with me; no problem, she has zero friends who want to communicate with her. I come back and DD is calmly reading a book. Genuinely, as someone who is a born rule follower and respecter of boundaries, I do understand the questioning by parents who are fortunate enough to have children who, in the main, are compliant, and are respecters of society’s values and can respond to punishments. I have most definitely not been an overly liberal parent and I am respectful of society’s boundaries so it is disconcerting for me to end up with a child who will readily steal from an old lady who cannot walk and is extremely frail.

@Lazyi , thank you so much for the book recommendation, I have ordered it and I will check out the app. You make a very important and salient point about the fact that the motivation to want to change things now has to come from DD. I’ve done a tonne of online courses with BEAT, I’ve knocked down the door to CAMHS, I’ve badgered my GP and the practice’s mental health practitioner etc etc but I don’t live in DD’s head. SHE has to want to make the change, I think - or is that too harsh?

I hear you - and therapeutically speaking, I know this is right - but living with secondary trauma snd in a state of blocked care is absolutely soul-destroying.

Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say so and more than I deserve, especially when I am teetering on the precipice of throwing in the towel and putting my DD back into care. I always question if I have done my best and what more I could do to be a better parent.

Sorry, I’m now working backwards to respond to the very kind and generous people who have taken the time to respond to my initial post. Yes, I hear you re: grammar schools. Honestly, DD’s school is the least worst option for her. DD lost her sight when she was 11, during Y6. The pastoral care at her selective grammar school was deemed to be superior to that at our catchment comprehensive. It’s a moot point as it’s taken me three years to achieve an EHCP for DD at her current school as they didn’t support me. DD is registered blind, is adopted, is diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome and has autism and ADHD. Of course, she needs a fecking EHCP!

My local authority has no specialist provision for children or young people who are blind or partially sighted. We’re too far in to DD’s school career to change now as she has started her GCSE courses. I’ve reached the stage where I do not care how many qualifications DD achieves - as long as she finishes school with MY mental health intact! Home schooling during the pandemic was utter hell because of her PDA tendencies.

I just worry for her future as I am an older parent and DD has to achieve some sort of independence but the employability statistics for blind young people are shockingly poor, not to mention her other diagnoses.

I'm so sorry to read your story. It sounds beyond tough! You really do sound like a mother who has done everything possible and wants what's best for both girls; it is totally understandable that you're at the end of your tether. What are your thoughts on putting her back into care? Does she know this is a possibility? I don't think you're being unreasonable to suggest DD needs to want to get better. I think she needs to want to engage in support found by you (if you can get any).

@EmmatheStageRat .. it sounds like some motivation needs to come from your DD. I can only speak of my own experiences, and the approach outlined in that book helped me when I was in my 30s, in a stable lifestyle with some motivation. I’m not sure it would have worked when I was in my teens, as I didn’t really see BED as a problem.

I wish I could offer you some practical support, but in the absence of that, thinking of you and the family.

You have so much on your plate. I hope some of the suggestions here help.

I can't offer practical advice, indeed I have read the whole thread word-for-word as one of my DC has similar issues, though they are younger. I recognise too many of the details for comfort. What I almost gasped to read, too, were the words of one PP that early trauma is hugely underrated/misunderstood, and often 'diagnosed' as other issues - though they can also co-exist, I know. At the same time I know our situation is also affecting my mental health.

Why I'm writing, mainly, though, is to say I hope you never blame yourself. I read your story and I'm humbled by everything you have done, from taking in DD to the almost unbelievable research, fighting for help, practical help, sucking up the aggression, disappointment, hurt and worry, and so, so much more. I am genuinely humbled by what you are doing, and inspired by you - and by some piercing and revelatory posts - to pursue this problem so, so much more. Thank you for all your honesty.

(PS sorry if I'm gushing, too tired to think clearly!)

I don’t have enough experience to offer practical advice but just wanted to offer a hand hold. My adopted DD is 6 and is extremely focused on food. I relate to the description upthread of being the one sitting at the food table at birthday parties while everyone else runs around and has fun.

You sound absolutely amazing. Don’t beat yourself up for thinking about putting her in care. It might be what everyone needs to give you a chance to reset. Put on your own oxygen mask first etc

Have you ever come across Jim and Susan Clifford? They’ve adopted ten older, very troubled children. They have worked with local authorities when a child has needed to go back to care for a while, and have taken LAs to court. He’s on LinkedIn if you felt like reaching out to him.

This everyday all day.
Eds are not about the food.food is a symptom of the mental illness.theregore nothi g will change until the mind is healing.
Also with binge eating there's the shame,binge,restrict,hunger,binge,shame etc cycle.
Binging only ever stops when the mind,person learns that all foods are ok.are there whether they want them or not.are unrestricted and they can leavevthrm knowing more is available.the body needs to trust the person again that it won't set it into a state of famine via restriction.and restriction can be both physical and mental.
The complexity here though is the other diagnosis.ive known asd and autism people who have the symptom of not being able to switch off eating.or hunger doesn't register properly.so in this sense she doesn't fall into an ed of BED and it could on its own be happening because of the autism!
Have you talked to her.has she indicated how she feels.about this.about here if.doez anyone talk to her about her mind not just what she's "acting out" via food.

Also if you can pay try better health.its an online therapy platform.they have trauma informed therapists on there too.

I would suggest having her switched to Elvanse from Concerta. The appetite suppressant factor of Methylphenidate tends to wear off after a while, but Elvanse is much more effective in preventing binge eating. A compulsion to eat is very much tied in with a dopamine seeking.