It was when I was 14 years old that I went into my parents' bedroom, approached my mother, and told her "I can't eat. I can't stop thinking about food." She told me to get over myself. It was a few weeks later that I revealed to my therapist that I had lost about 20 lbs in the past three months. She told me I had an eating disorder, and brought my mom in and told her she thought I had anorexia. My mother was beyond angry.
The next morning I went to my pediatrician, who confirmed the weight loss and a low heart rate. My family had planned to go on a European cruise, and we went, but I did not eat the entire time we were away. We spent time on the cruise ship, walking around Sweden and Finland and all the Baltic countries, and also spent a week in London. But I was weak and cold and tired, and not fun to be around at all.
When we returned home my parents did research and found the UCSD eating disorder treatment center. It was an intensive outpatient program and was three days a week for a few hours. I started in the adolescent program. As the weeks passed I refused to follow the program, and continued to lose weight. I met other girls with eating disorders and learned their "tips and tricks." If anything I became worse when I started treatment. It just wasn't a positive environment.
I started family therapy with my parents, and this is where everything started to go horribly wrong. The therapists decided that my family would be good candidate for Maudsley family therapy, where the parents take over ALL the food for their child. I walked into a family session where my mother had brought burritos and my parents and sister sat and watched me eat. It took an hour to eat the burrito, as I sobbed.
My parents came down hard on me. I woke up the next morning to an enormous ensure smoothie, toast, eggs, veggie sausage, cereal... I didn't know what to think. It took two hours to eat, only to be followed by a morning snack and then lunch. My parents fed me every meal and every snack while I sobbed and yelled and fell apart. When we went into family therapy session I was weighed and my parents and the therapist discussed how to put more weight on me. Nobody asked how I was doing or what could be done to make the process more tolerable. All that mattered was the weight. And I did terribly.
I did put on weight. Every day was ensures and Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and peanut butter, and butter, and pasta, and olive oil. I was stuffed to the gills. Everything had protein powder stirred in. Meal after snack after meal after snack I sobbed and threw things. My parents started to get REALLY frustrated. My mother screamed and called me a brat. My father shoved me into walls. Every week we went into family therapy to track my "progress" and as I gained weight I was considered a success. School started in the fall and my parents came to school for snack and lunch to feed me. I was beyond miserable. I was falling apart at the seams and nobody cared. My parents threatened inpatient treatment and I BEGGED to go. I didn't want to be at home, I wanted away from the so-called "family" that was trying to make me better.
It wasn't until I took a handful of tylenol and admitted I planned to kill myself that my team noticed something wasn't working. My mother drove me to the hospital while I sobbed and wailed that I wanted to be dead. That I would rather die than continue with Maudsley.
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