Post-eating-disorder - a definite shift for the better in my son

Anyone who's been in my situation, as the parent of a young person recovering / recovered from an eating disorder, will know: reporting something like this feels a little like 'tempting fate'. However here we go... Since the early summer or even earlier, I've noticed a definite shift in my son. A shift for the better. A shift that's pushed him over that '99.9-per-cent recovered' mark that I've found myself referring to over the last couple of years. A shift that has pushed his eating habits into the ranks of the 'normal' and his appearance from 'still on the thin side' to absolutely fine. A shift that has lifted a huge weight off my shoulders as I worried about relapse and / or that tiny remnants of his eating disorder may still remain.

Textbook case of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD)

I've been busy reading up on Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) - "a type of post-traumatic stress that results more from prolonged stress than it does from one-defining, life-threatening event" and how it differs from 'Simple' Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Although there is overlap, C-PTSD symptoms are slightly different - which is good news for me as, for some time, I struggled to understand why my particular brand of PTSD wasn't a textbook case. Take my nightmares, for example, and flashbacks, neither of which are visual carbon-copies of the actual trauma itself, more 'representations'.

"What you need to do to fix it is..." says my husband, helpfully...

"What you need," he said (having just returned from 10 days on the Goan coast), "is a holiday. We'll fly to Goa and you can spend a couple of weeks relaxing on the beach, maybe have a massage or do some yoga... That should fix the PTSD." "No, it doesn't work like that!" I explained for the Nth time running. But at least his 'helpful advice' for curing PTSD is better than: "Snap out of it / wake up and smell the coffee / get a life / there are people far worse off than you." At least he doesn't say that kind of thing.

Example of a flashback nightmare-in-disguise

Last night I was kept awake by Bonfire Night revellers until 3am. Yet from 3am onwards I managed to squeeze in 3 nightmares: (1) a Pure Evil nightmare where a serial murderer is on the loose, (2) a 'moving house' nightmare (regular anxiety-generated theme) where the removal men are about to arrive but I haven't packed anything and keep finding things that need packing, have run out of boxes, etc etc and don't actually WANT to move house in the first place, and (3) an example of a flashback nightmare-in-disguise. Flashbacks - and flashback nightmares - are a classic symptom of PTSD. However my flashback nightmares have always been slightly different from the 'textbook' version.

Who we were and who we are now

Seven years ago my life began to change in a way I could never in my wildest and most frightening nightmares have imagined. My 15-year old son was hurtling downhill into anorexia nervosa and getting worse by the day... hour... minute. The medical profession wasn't listening to me; after having finally got a referral from our GP for my son to be treated for his eating disorder we were waiting for a reply from CAMHS (Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services). I expected that reply to come by return, but it would be another three weeks or so before we would hear anything. And even then it was only to be told that my son was being put on a waiting list and it could be 18-22 weeks before treatment for his eating disorder began. It was the start of years of battling to get my son well again: battling with the illness and battling with the medical professionals.

But what of the 'me' I'd been before?

A blog post I never published while suffering from nightmares

I came across this draft blog post which I never published - from April 2016, on the subject of nightmares and lack of progress from the professional therapy I'd been undergoing. Really, it's as true seven months on as it was then. The difference, though, is that I don't feel quite so helpless and I'll tell you why in another post very soon, once I've 'tested the water' so to speak because I don't want this to be another "This is it, I feel soooo much better..." (end of 2nd paragraph). In the meantime, here is that draft post from mid April 2016:

One small step at a time - progress!

This morning the cat woke me up from my slumbers demanding to be fed and I was abruptly jetpropelled from the land of dreaming to the real world. I was dreaming. Not a nightmare, but a dream. Some paper had been blown off my desk in the breeze and Shirley ('Sheila', the school nurse in my book) picked it up and read it. I was busy explaining to her that, although not brilliant, this was the first piece of creative writing that I'd been able to put together for MONTHS, if not YEARS, and that it had been really difficult to write, yet easy in a way, as that part of my brain felt as if it was thawing from the ice of numbness, dissociation and general deer-in-the-headlights inability to do very much except knit.