Viewing blog posts tagged with "Parental Distress"

This post was originally published on November 13, 2013.

Until I lived in the world of therapists and mental health professionals as part of the Kartini multidisciplinary team treating children with eating disorders, I had never actually heard the phrase “tolerating distress”, particularly as it pertained to parents.  Like most parents, I have a very difficult time tolerating pain in my own children, either physical or emotional and, when put in that situation, I immediately get…

Mother nature built us to protect our offspring and, where necessary, the offspring of other members of our “tribe”.  Elephants and non-human primates have been reported to foster or adopt motherless infants and raise them as their own.  Few adults can bear to see the suffering of a child.

Life can throw some of us a lot of pain.  But perhaps the worst kind of pain we endure is the kind we experience when our own small children are suffering.  We are supposed to be able to protect…

I am writing to you from Berlin tonight and thinking about a recent article written by Dr. Bulik on the challenges of international travel for those with an eating disorder, in particular anorexia nervosa. In the article Dr. Bulik talked about time changes and irregular meals, of long distance transportation being a danger to those whose brain chemistry is less anxious when they don’t eat and more anxious when they do. It's how a person’s weight may slide down inadvertently, because…

I can’t tell you how many parents report their child with anorexia nervosa (or bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, fill in the blank…) becoming very irritated, not to say ANGRY, at them for something we call “externalizing the illness”.

What does this term mean?  It actually refers to a very positive attitude adjustment undergone by both parents and patients whereby they are able to separate the sufferer from the illness and blame the illness, not the sufferer, for how hard life…

It has become almost trite to advise parents struggling with the “severe pushback” of doing battle with their child’s eating disorder to remember that flight attendants caution parents travelling with small children to “first place the oxygen mask on yourself (really counter-intuitive for parents) and then place it on your child.” When I first heard this advice on a plane (astonishingly not what would have come naturally to me) I thought “of course! If I am unconscious then my…

I’m sometimes not sure whom I make madder: some kids, some parents, or some insurance companies!

Making kids mad:

Me:  “Jill, help me understand why your weight would be way down this week?”

Jill (shrugging):  “I don’t know.  I actually exercised less and ate exactly what I was supposed to.”

Me:  “OK. I guess your body is just telling us you need more food.”

Jill:  “What!!?? No way!  I refuse to have more food.”

Me:  “Well…. unless you can think of something that didn’t go…

Eating disorders strike children at virtually all stages of development. Sometimes we think it’s most difficult when they strike a very young child, sometimes it seems the most difficult when a “child” is about to go off to college, or a student exchange program, or start a new school. Personally I think mid adolescence is one of the most difficult times for an eating disorder to strike a child.

Childhood and early adolescence are characterized by learning new skills, but also by…

Lots of ink is been spilled on the subject of the stigma associated with having an eating disorder.  And in order to discuss the subject sensibly we need to get a few terms straight. It was considered a giant step forward in our field when Dr. Thomas Insel, head of NIMH, began blogging, writing and speaking about the fact that all mental illnesses are brain disorders, and that anorexia nervosa in particular was a severe mental illness.  Prior to that it had been possible to…

Sometimes things happen to me that cause me to wonder what planet I have landed on.  Five years ago -- to say nothing of ten or fifteen -- whenever I insisted that parents didn’t cause eating disorders, any more than they cause schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or autism, I was treated like I hadn’t done my homework.  Thankfully, that has changed. Virtually no responsible eating disorder professional of any stature believes that parents cause severe mental illnesses, of which…