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View Single Post Thread: Father of 22 year old AN has some questions
 
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neverloseheart
Mentor
Registered: May 01, 2009
Posts: 1,132

    Nov 11, 2009 at 09:40 AMReply with quote#9
Hi Dad,
Welcome to the forum! My d is only 15 but we are also a divorced family. I wanted to chime in on the power of unity. At first when my d started in treatment, my ex husband and I each did our part but separately, we didn't talk too much, I went to all the appointments and filled him in. I wound up with way more education about the eating disorder and her specific issues.

He was so good about feeding her, but as her anxiety over refeeding increased, ED was desperately seeking a safe haven and she would often lash out against one of us or the other (whoever seemed the easiest on ED at the time) and she did tend to draw us into these arguments and things were very tense for awhile. One day we had a long talk. We realized that we needed to work together to be a wall 100% of the time against ED. We switched to Maudsley style therapy and made all the appointments when we both could go with my D. We all three now had the exact same information and set of marching instructions. No blame was ever assigned to anyone, we were just moving forward together. There was no place for ED to hide. I cannot tell you how quickly things improved after that. I'm not saying it was easy! At one point we were both feeding her a snack in a public place and she was throwing the food on the ground and spitting at us, but we got through it and after that she knew that there was nothing she could do but eat. No where to hide. The power of unity against this disease is just incredible.

The thing to always keep in mind is that she really does want to get better. A few days ago, a young 17 year old was on this site masquerading as a parent and she said she was really wishing her parents would make her eat because she can't eat herself. My d has said to me a few times that she couldn't choose to get better. She had to be made to get better.

Welcome again to the forum and I hope it will help you as much as it has helped our family!
   
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