Among the many clinical paintings that exist in psychiatric manuals that of eating disorders – DCA or more simply of eating disorders (from) is certainly one of those that has a stronger emotional impact in the mind of human beings.
This is easily explained even only by focusing on the fact that compared to other psychiatric paintings this has a frank impact on the body and can even quickly come to put the life of a human being at risk. If we add to these considerations that more often the debut of these clinical paintings moves from adulthood to the first adolescencethe emotional impact becomes gigantic.
The image of a boy (or a girl) who begins to have rigid food rules, dysfunctional food behaviors until even to stop feeding for long periods of time is an image that makes us stay in touch with many emotions.
This premise only serves to make us even remotely approach to understand and tune in to what can happen in the mind of a parent who sees their child to start having symptoms until you get to a real diagnosis of eating disorder.
Treatment of eating disorders and parents involvement
Over the years, the role of the family in psychopathology has been very studied, both from a point of view of understanding its role within the clinical framework, and as a part to be involved in the process of intervention in terms of support.
They also were born real “Parent Training” programs aimed at assisting parents of patients with psychiatric disorders: giving parents the skills necessary to assist the child has the purpose of improving the support network of the sick child and helping parents in a terribly difficult moment for them.
Although the importance of taking charge of the family as a whole and therefore of the parents in the therapeutic path of a boy with an DA, this factor is often underestimated and sometimes even excluded, also by the contexts of care, is therefore undisputed.
In addition, some of the programs that are now considered to be the Gold Standard for the care of teenagers with DA, primarily the Maudsley approachremain faithful to family therapy models and do not always keep the focus on the parent’s mind. These remains a precious helper and an actor busy at the forefront, with a indispensable role in the care of the child But he often loses the important role of patient himself.
But what happens in the mind of a mother or father when the son stops eating? It is increasingly clear that in order for family members to become co-therapists in the intervention of the child we have to take care of them too and their suffering.
Both research and clinical practice, in summary, have come to underline the importance of helping the family to reduce the load of stress, improving communication strategies and making it feel less isolated and more supported.
In the parents’ mind: elements and strategies
Let’s see together what are the ingredients we have to keep in mind when we want to better manage the relationship with a child with a food problem.
Understand your child and differentiate his behavior
Understanding what behaviors of one’s child are linked to the disease and which instead concern his most typical way of working is fundamental: a teenager remains a teenager, he has his need for rebellion, contrast, identification.
The condition of illness is not in this sense identity. A disturbance becomes in this sense A “passenger” aboard the human being: grasping its differences can really be essential to stay in relation to him.
This can help primarily to remain tuned with their child, to recognize him (even in the most tiring events), to remain anchored to the idea that he is still there, before my eyes.
Furthermore, it becomes possible to adopt different strategies, more targeted specialized when instead I realize that the behavior that my son is implementing is one of the consequences of the disease.
Understand yourself: monitor one’s emotions and actions
It is equally indispensable to learn to recognize what is activated in us in front of our child’s behavior. Becoming explorers of ourselves, understanding in the face of what I get angry, in front of what I get along. Trace a real analysis of ourselves makes us more aware and therefore capable of directing our resources more useful.
In cognitive-behavioral perspective (CBT) every action is the result of a thought and emotional activation: if for example I find my daughter refuses to eat I can think “help, it is in danger” and therefore try fear and do everything to make her eat. But I can also think “I cannot help it” and feel helplessly and pain and remain paralyzed. Or I can think “but how is it possible! Why do you do it? What the hell passes through her head?!” And feel more the anger that invades me having the temptation to scream them against and strongly spurd on it.
But how difficult it is not to go automatically? How typical is it to notice how we only reacted a posteriori? And how often we are unaware of what happens to us and we only feel “a great chaos” or “great pain”?
Learn to monitor ourselves And understanding how they make us feel the things we live would make the life of each of us more centered, but it becomes indispensable in situations in which what we do and as we react risks not working and we have the feeling of “worsening things” or “not to be understood in our intent”.
Understanding the report: Reading the relationship as a cycle
The third important element to have in mind is precisely the relation that is between us and our son.
What we learned to monitor about him and what we are more aware of our internal world They also give us a different image of the relationship.
This leads us to be able to answer a whole series of questions that help us understand what is going on Between us.
- What did he do activate? (What is the element that made me react right now?)
- What did I think?
- What do I feel now?
- What behaviors did I implement?
- What purpose do I do it?
- How does this come to my son?
- How do you feel now?
These and other questions help us to give a different meaning to the space between us and our son (the intersubjective space); These questions fill our interaction of meaning.
Among these questions, the one that emerges among all in its importance concerns ours scopeour motivation.
Read the interactions based on our purposes
At the base of our actions there is a push, a drive Interior, more or less aware, which allows us to start, direct and maintain behavior.
This push is defined motivation And some authors have theorized the presence of real systems motivational.
Based on the lever, therefore, for the purpose on which we enter into relationship with the other, we will help behavior or another.
Faced with the symptoms of such an insidious disorder as food, parents can for example:
- maintain the purpose of look after their child: they will perhaps tend to indulge at risk behaviors;
- hear the push a protect themselves: they will have the push to move away from problematic situations, to take air and recharge;
- feel threatened their role parenting: they will feel challenged by the son, they will feel that the situation is slipping from hand and will act to return to the dominant role.
Based on the purpose, the reading of behaviors changes. There is not a wrong scenario and one right but if we are beating in retreat to take air or we hear our role threatened we must be aware of it, otherwise we will risk playing our child’s response wrong.
The motivation to cooperate: change course and ally with our child
Among the motivational systems stands out among all that context that cooperative. Although as we have said, every motivation is valid and has its meaning in the context, it is appropriate to emphasize that when the parent becomes supporting the therapy its motivation towards the symptoms (and therefore not towards the child, but towards the passenger of the son or the food disorder) one of the most functional and effective motivations is that to collaborate.
Allying us with him, ask for his opinion, try to understand how it feelstelling what we see and what our advice are all actions and attitudes that help us in our role.
Also for our son, who is already engaged in the internal struggle against his passenger, the relationship with us is important: to offer him the opportunity to read our mind, make him feel that we are part of his support team e stay in touch with the motivation to collaborate They are elements that literature highlights how capable of making the difference.
It is important to underline that these or other tools are addressed in dedicated programs, such as those present in the interventions of Parent training (both individual and group). These interventions are increasingly studied and renewed and in a context like that of a family with a teenager with a DA, imagining a specific intervention, calibrated on that context, is undoubtedly one of the best forms of help.
Bibliography
- Gatti, A., & Marchi, L. (2024). Parent Training for teenagers with eating disorders. Material for the clinician and cards for parents. Erickson.
- Rienecke, M., et al. (2015). “The Impact of teencent eating disorders on parents: a review.” Eating Disorders, 23 (3), 217-229;
- Treasure, J. (2021). The new Maudsley method. How to take care of a loved one with eating disorder. Hogrefe.
- Gowers, sg, et al. (2007). “The Role of Parents in the Treatment of teenascent eating disorders: a review.” Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 12 (2), 227-241;
