The nasty comments on my article in the newspaper on Friday almost exclusively point the finger at me, Ben's mum, as the reason why he developed anorexia as a teen. Overprotective or controlling mother, bad family dynamics, emotional neglect, even abuse, a reliance on the medical profession to diagnose him when I 'should have known' what to do myself. The list goes on...
It's heartbreaking, but it can often be one of the first things families ask themselves when their son or daughter begins to show symptoms of an eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia.
'What did we do wrong?'
And we worry that others may point the finger at us, too, as they see the 'boy down the street' or 'on the school bus' getting thinner by the day.
At a time when we need friends and support like no other time in our lives, we may find ourselves withdrawing, frightened that others may see us as 'bad parents'.
Or we're just too terrified and exhausted to explain to other people that parents don't cause eating disorders.
Especially, as in our case, neighbours couldn't help but hear yelling, banging and screaming going on in the house (as my son was presented with food he wouldn't eat). What on earth is that family doing to their child???!!
For many years, the blame for eating disorders (in girls, back then, because it's only relatively recently that people have learned that boys get eating disorders too) was attached to the mother. Back in the day, the go-to manuals on eating disorders pointed the finger at the mother as the cause of her daughter's eating disorder.
Sadly, this belief still exists, especially with people who've never encountered an eating disorder.
And, unfortunately, old-school medical professionals can still hold this belief.
A friend in the States attended a conference about the intricacies of the brain's role in eating disorders and was dismayed when 'a psychotherapist who had been working in eating disorders for many years leaned over to me and said: “There may be some truth in what these two are saying but if it weren’t for pathological parents, we wouldn’t have eating disorders.”
Enough said.
The fact is that there is no single cause of eating disorders. Instead, eating disorders seem to be triggered by a whole range of different factors. One of the factors that triggered Ben's anorexia was the fact he was bullied at primary school for being slightly overweight. Another was the need to eat less in order to do less exercise at a time when he was tiring of playing rugby but was terrified of becoming the bullied boy at primary school again.
My book When Anorexia Came To Visit talks with 20 different families who've been through eating disorders. The range of factors that may have triggered their child's eating disorder is incredibly varied. For example, a death in the family. Or a serious physical illness that caused them to lose excessive amounts of weight, triggering changes in the brain that are also thought to contribute towards eating disorders.
This page - on the FEAST website - goes into detail about why parents DO NOT cause their child's eating disorder. As the author says: 'Eating disorders appear to be complex illnesses influenced by a variety of factors, rather than a single cause. They seem to arise from a mix of biological, psychological, and environmental factors and their interplay.'
So, it you're in the terrifying situation of beginning to realise that your son or daughter may be developing an eating disorder, PLEASE DO NOT BLAME YOURSELF!
And if you feel that the medical professionals you're talking to are pointing the finger at you, then please go elsewhere if you can.
I clearly remember the GP saying to my son Ben, when I was to-ing and fro-ing to the doctor's in 2009, desperate to get him diagnosed and referred for treatment: 'Would you like your mum to go out of the room? Is there anything you'd like to tell me while she's not here?'
In other words, is something happening at home that's making you want to cut back on food?
(In the event, me going out of the room never happened because Ben yelled at the GP: 'I don't know why I'm f*cking here!' and hurtled out of the premises...)
And I was often viewed as the 'overprotective mother', mollycoddling her son.
One of the first things CAMHS said to me was: 'You look like an anxious person. We believe your anxiety is rubbing off on Ben.'
Which, presumably, was why he was having 'eating problems'.
(Oh, and of course I was effing 'anxious'! Who wouldn't be when their child is in the process of disappearing off a cliff and nothing is being done to stop him?!)
But back to the main topic of this post.
Parents are NOT to blame for their child's eating disorder.
And that's a fact.
Please do read the information on the FEAST website. And then register for FEAST's forum which provides support for parents and families of young people with eating disorders.
FEAST and its forum was a lifesaver for us.
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