At our last support group meeting, we discussed the importance of supporting our loved ones, but being strong enough to not support their eating disorder and it's accompanying manipulative behavior. We discussed how important it was to do our own work. Get help for ourselves, either through a support group or a personal therapist.
What exactly does that mean? It means that we cannot expect our loved ones to be the only ones to change. We need to change, too. How? It depends on your family dynamics. For me, it was relinquishing control. It was realizing I could not make my child recover from the eating disorder. What I could do was change how I responded to the eating disorder. That is what rebuilding a spine is all about. Getting stronger. Behaving differently. Not engaging the eating disorder behavior. I could love my child, but I set a firm boundary that the eating disorder behavior was not welcome. It's not easy and cannot be accomplished in a day. Start small, build that spine a little at a time. Change is difficult, but you won't regret it.
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