I've just been interviewed, in depth, for a national newspaper. Going back over everything was weird...

Before my c-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) struck around 10 or 11 years ago, I did quite a few media appearances and interviews about boys with eating disorders, also talking about how my son, Ben, was well on the way to recovery from anorexia. But I had to put on the brakes when the c-PTSD symptoms got worse. I got to the stage where I couldn't talk about eating disorders, I couldn't write or blog about eating disorders, I couldn't even think about eating disorders. And I definitely couldn't go into depth about our family's battle to get our son through anorexia. 

Then the other week a journalist from a national newspaper got in touch, asking if I'd be willing to be interviewed for an article on eating disorders in boys. I said yes, for the first time for ages. However...

14 years ago a parent contacted me through this blog... What happened next was amazing.

14 years ago, I got an email from a mum who'd been following this blog. She wrote to say that her own situation was almost identical to mine and that she'd found this blog tremendously helpful, especially as eating disorder services for teenagers were virtually non-existent where she lived. She'd been following this blog, reading about what worked for us and trying it out with her daughter - she'd also found the incredible resource https://feast-ed.org/ through this blog and had joined its Around The Dinner Table Forum for parents of young people with eating disorders after she learned how it had been a lifesaver for me.

That was just the start... What happened next was amazing...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water... Me, not my son (thankfully)

I've talked many times on here about how my son's anorexia caused me to develop Complex-PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) - and talking with my friends from the world of eating disorder parents, I'm far from alone. Not surprisingly, many other parents suffer from trauma symptoms, too.