FosterWiki reposted this
Award winning author of the best selling series Thrown Away Children. Artist, illustrator, foster carer, Founder of Sparksisterhood.org BA, MA, MSc (I grew-up in care) contact thespeakersagency.com
My foster child nearly died from her Eating Disorder, she is now in recovery. She wrote this... "Tonight I watched a movie 'To the Bone' with Louise which I used to obsessively watch deep in my ED. It’s about a young woman who suffers from anorexia, goes to a residential for ‘treatment’. After a long 5 years of battling an ED myself, I didn’t realise until tonight how much I related to it. No matter what anyone told her, she still had no wish of getting better. That is until the end where she faces death itself, and makes a realisation which encourages her to begin recovery. Even through many hospital admissions, countless therapy sessions, being hooked up to a heart monitor and having a tube through my nose, seeing every bone, I still thought I wasn’t ’sick enough’. A common misbelief about eating disorders is it’s a diet gone wrong, or we just want to be thin. In reality, for many sufferers, it is more the feeling of being unwell rather than being thin enough. Feeling a rush of blood go to your head when you stand up; the tingling of your hands and feet as your blood sugars hit rock bottom; palpitations when you make the slightest movement. It’s an addiction, we get a rush of endorphins. We believe we deserve it, we use it as a form of punishment. There is never one cause for an eating disorder. Trying to shrink yourself, almost to the point of disappearing. I once had a carer accompany me after a difficult tube feed in hospital, and he told me “Do you ever wonder if it’s because you want to make yourself look unattractive, or get rid of feminine features to prevent others from being compelled to do the same thing again?” Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate out of mental illnesses, and the recovery rates are small. There is still no treatment or medication which is proven to efficiently help. My point is, eating disorders are such a complex illness- a rabbit hole of reasons to why it developed mixed with malnourishment and denial. You can not cure someone with an ED, only they can. They have to make the break through themselves to start REAL recovery. I’ve been on countless meal plans where i’ve been force fed and threatened to eat every thing put in front of me, which *not so surprisingly* made it a lot harder and made me not want to get better even more. Only when I looked around me and found reasons to become healthy FOR MYSELF, was the start of my recovery. You can tell someone 1 thousand times that they look awful / their heart is failing / they’re on deaths doorstep and trust me it won’t make a difference. PATIENCE IS KEY My best advice (from a girl whose been through it, not an ignorant clinician who read the maria ganci book) is to simply educate yourself by listening to your child and others who have experience, whilst also taking time for yourself. Recovery is not linear, but trust me having a good support bubble around you makes recovery 10x easier and the ED voice 10x quieter. " illustration by me.