Painting over past memories and nightmares

"You know those test paint patches on the horrible yellow wall?" I said to the decorator yesterday as he began work on our hallway, stairs and landing. "We did those six years ago!" I explained that the reason we'd finally got around to completing the job (see pic on left for completed job) was because, shortly after we experimented with different paint colours, my son had fallen sick. It's only now, six years on, that we've begun to pick up where we left off. "Next is the living room and kitchen, then the back bedroom, the loft, the small bedroom... the whole house needs a fresh coat of paint!"

Going back to my roots - why I began blogging in Jan 2011

Gosh, it's 52 months since I first began this blog about my experience of helping my teenage son to overcome anorexia! Back then I was a bit anxious about starting a blog so I sent a few blogging samples to various friends in the world of eating disorders like the Fairy Blogmother herself, Laura Collins, the founder of F.E.A.S.T. (Families Empowered And Supporting Treatment of Eating Disorders), the oracle of help for parents of young people with eating disorders, and its sister site, the Around The Dinner Table Forum.

A 'new approach' to eating disorder treatment that points the fingers at mothers again... Aaarrgghh!

Gloucester (that is, the Gloucester in the States, not the Gloucester here in the UK), is promoting a 'new approach' to eating disorder treatment in which 'mothers and daughters are educated together about eating disordered behavior, and the family and cultural patterns that contribute to it.' Apparently mothers talk too much about the size of their thighs and such like which triggers their daughters (no mention of sons here) to go on diets and develop eating disorders. Apparently 'learning to think differently about food and one’s body is the pathway to changing destructive eating patterns.'

It's liberating to know it's not me, it's the way the brain works...

"Well, don't," has been one of my husband's favourite responses over the past 16+ months as I've struggled with the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress. He would ask: "What's wrong?" I'd respond with something like: "Well, you know... I'm just feeling a bit down and that..."

The easy way to read my blog from 2011, etc

I began this blog in January 2011, almost a year on from when my teenage son began treatment for anorexia. Important and useful archive posts like these can so often be missed on eating disorder blogs (all that clicking to and fro!) which is why I've created a linear PDF of every post from 2011 which you can read by clicking here... Other parents have told me that my earlier posts were a tremendous help for them. One even described them as a 'lifesaver'. This isn't me being big-headed or boastful, it is simply me trying to ensure that any other parent facing this horrible illness has access to as much helpful information as they possibly can - because, as we know only too well in our family, learning about eating disorders and their effective treatment is a MASSIVE LEARNING CURVE that you can ill afford when you are battling to save your son or daughter from descending into the hell of anorexia. So please do check out this PDF and the subsequent years which you can find on this web page.

Example of successful CBT in practice from yesterday

As you know, to help overcome my acute anxiety issues that remain following my therapy for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) (as a result of training my brain to realise that my son has recovered from anorexia and is not still in the throes of it).... I have been using a combination of CBT tools learned through therapy and further CBT tools from the excellent Anxiety & Worry Workbook. Yesterday was a superb example of CBT in practice - and how it can be very successful. It may be of use to anyone else going through episodes like this.

How do visitors to the RCGP website access resources for eating disorders?

Well, at the time of writing, the answer is that, if they visit this page on the UK's Royal College of General Practitioners' website, they don't. This page says that it provides links 'to a range of eating disorder resources' and two of the most important links are broken - the links to the MARSIPAN guidelines for adults and adolescents with eating disorders.