Is she exacerbating her daughter's body image issues...

My SIL rang DH about a month ago... we dread these calls.

After lamenting over her own issues/problems she moved onto her teenage daughter (she has just turned 15). She said that her daughter has anorexia and will, in all likelihood, have to be admitted to hospital. She's already seeing a psychologist. Her daughter has always been thin but now she's downright skinny. I haven't seen her (in person) for over a year now so I don't know anything about how she "is", ie, temperament, outlook etc.

She then proceeded to blame her daughter's anorexia on her older daughter as she is overweight. I immediately thought this was a load of crap.

Ever since I met SIL she has been overly vocal about how people should look. She constantly told daughter number 1 that she wasn't pretty because she was fat (her words - not mine) and would tell other people in front of her. As it was daughter number 1 started gaining weight at an alarming rate (since moving out of home towards the end of last year she has taken to exercising and eating healthy and is coming back into a healthy weight range of her own choice).

With daughter number 2 she would tell her how pretty she was because she was "thin and sexy". Who on earth describes a 12 year old (at the time) as "sexy"????? And would often say, don't get fat like daughter number 1.

Now SIL has taken photos of daughter number 2 which she in turn has posted onto FB. The photos show a severly underweight 15 year old in a series of provocative poses on the beach. Is she celebrating her daughter's condition? Or is this actually going to help her?

No, it will not help. It sounds like SIL is quite responsible for daughter 1 and 2's weights. how sad for those girls. SIL sounds like she has issues herself.

She does have issues PZ. It is never her fault always the fault of others and, unfortunately, a lot of the family encourage it by lamenting along with her.... so glad we no longer live nearby!

No thats not going to help. TBH your SIL's attitude makes me feel sick. Your niece needs help. From doctors. Your SIL needs mental help.

Clover you took the words out of my mouth. That attitude makes me feel sick.

Your SIL sounds like she is doing (or has done) an excellent job of giving both of her daughters serious body image issues. They have just dealt with it in different ways. I feel so sorry for both of these girls.

Anorexia kills. I really hope your niece can get help asap.
Your sil sounds fith and needs to get help and really needs to access help for her daughter urgently! !

:

---

Clover you took the words out of my mouth. That attitude makes me feel sick.

Your SIL sounds like she is doing (or has done) an excellent job of giving both of her daughters serious body image issues. They have just dealt with it in different ways. I feel so sorry for both of these girls.

---

^^^^^ this

As someone who suffered with AN for 7 years, I can say unecquivocally that her actions would (while not necessarily CAUSE an eating disorder) have a negative impact on both of her daughters body image and sunsequent actions. Always being praised for being the 'skinny' one, and watching your sister being degraded for being 'overweight' would reinforce the disordered eating and behaviours. If the younger daughter gains a little bit of weight, she's likely to see this as a failure and fear embarassment and degradation, and will go to any length to avoid gaining any weight at all, and it's likely that the further she goes into the eating disorder, the worse the mental illness is going to get and the more her thoughts will be distorted from starvation. She'll likely be seeing herself as being bigger than she is, causing her to stop eating and fear gaining weight for fear of 'not being good enough'. She's probably also degrading herself using the same words and behaviours that she has seen her mother using to her older sister.

Obviously there is always 'more to it', but I feel for the girl and if the environment is how you describe I can imagine recovery is going to be extremely difficult until she breaks free from the ideas that have been ingrained into her. Being an inpatient in hospital can make her gain weight to an acceptable level, through forced eating and an NG tube, but once she is discharged if she still holds those thoughts she will continue to starve herself and lose weight.

To be honest, I think that if your niece goes to hospital you should try to contact the ward and talk to someone about the environment. Knowing the true situation at home will help her. It won't help your relations with your SIL if she finds out, and probably impact on your extended family, but it's going to be very hard to break free from the eating disorder while she is still at home if your SIL is continuing with weight and body related comments and actions. The psychologist works with the family as much as with the patient, my parents spent as much time with my psychologist as I did. We all had our own 'stuff'. And support suring recovery is essential. For us it was very much a family process, and it took effort from every family member to bring me to a point where I recovery was a possibility.

It's possible though that your SIL thinks she is doing the right thing. Before my parents understood what an eating disorder was, they would continually say "you're being stupid, i thought you were smarter than this, you're an idiot for doing this, you're skinny, you look fine" etc because they were confused and didn't understand that what they were doing was making it worse. Your SIL might think that by praising her daughter and telling her she is beautiful and skinny, she is trying to send the message that she doesn't need to lose any more weight, she can stop now, she's nothing like her sister and she doesn't need to lose weight. It does seem like a pattern of behaviour though, but just another perspective on the situation.

It is hard, the aim should be on creating the most healthy environment for your neice to recover. I hope you can all work together to do that. xxx:hugs:

That's so sad. I can't imagine how awful it would be to be judged on your appearance by your mother. I hope your niece can get some help and it involves a wake up call for SIL.

How disgraceful! Sounds like my own mother to be honest & I too struggled with an ED when I was younger & have battled body image issues in my adult life. I can say without hesitation that my mother is and always has been my biggest trigger.
She always compared my body too my younger sisters, always berated us for eating, always told me that if I kept eating I would get fat, always complained about her own weight and has struggled with her own weight over the years.
This post made me both angry and sad, she definitely would be making the problem much worse!!

Thank you so much for your replies. I didn't know if I was over-reacting. TBH when she first told us that her daughter was anorexic I thought it was just another attention-seeking stunt. Seeing the photos today I was really shocked. She's a gorgeous girl (niece, not SIL) inside and out and it's horrible to see her looking like this - not that I would say horrible to her ...um, ballsing this up.....

Indadhanu, thank you for sharing your story with me. Of course there will be more to J's story but, as you say, her mother can't be helping the situation. If she is hospitalised I will try talk to the doctors - they live in WA and we're in the ACT.

My SIL does have a lot of "issues" but most are of her own making so it's hard to feel sympathy - mind you DH's aunts and father give her loads. As someone who joined the family late (DH and I have been together for 6 years) I was able to view her situation with fresh eyes - what I saw was a self-centred person who was delivered some rough end of the stick situations but who chose to blame the world and demanded that it ow her something rather than taking responsibility for herself.

Maybebaby that's awful that the one person who is supposed to love us unconditionally makes us feel less than worthy. I hope my children know that my sun rises and sets with them.

My mother did not cause me to be anorexic. But all my food and body image issues do stem from her.

Telling a teenage girl that she has one foot in the grave, she needs to be careful about what she eats because it's all downhill now and she must exercise to be slim (FWIW, I was called "bag of bones" for years prior to this and force-fed at home and instructed never to snack or say I was hungry in public, also told when I was and was not hungry and told off for disagreeing with her about that). Ignoring the lack of eating in front of you that said teen is doing, then offering surgery due to the girl needing her nose and breasts done - which would she like for her 18th?

My mother did not make me anorexic. But I do not have a healthy relationship with my body. And if I had been taught to celebrate my body and listen to it more, I doubt I would have the issues I do.

I would say that your niece is in a more unhealthy atmosphere with her weight and needs to be removed from that and have some intensive psychotherapy to aid her in discovering what is normal. Although I would probably see the pictures you mentioned and feel fat and wish I could be that slim, thinking your niece has a gorgeous figure. I do that with the "shock" pictures of girls near death from anorexia. And this is years on and many, many meals later.

I didn't realise that "recovery" (is that the word?) was an ongoing thing. I guess that's really quite naive on my part... but it's something that I've never experienced either myself or seen someone I was close to go through.

How does one get over, or get past, being raised that way? Do you come out stronger?

In terms of an ED, I say 'recovery' when I mean the process of recovering - not just restoring weight, because the weight loss is just a physical symptom of the mental illness, but also the emotional side of things, as well as changing behaviours and maintaining the weight and finding a new way of 'being'.

Like I said - I had AN for 7 years. I had been weight restored at three different occassions after a hospital admission but it didn't take me long to lose it again because it was really just treating the physical without addressing the reasons, so when the NG tube was removed and I left the intensive setting of the hospital, I still had the reasons and I still have the disordered behaviours. The hardest work gets done after you leave the hospital. My recovery started in earnest about 3 years into the ED, and took 4 years for me to be able to confidently say I didn't have an ED.

But at the same time, I liken my struggle to that of an alcoholic or someone who has had depression or anxiety, because there are triggers that I always need to be aware of. I'm going through one right now - gestational diabetes - which requires me to keep a food diary, and I can feel the pull quite strong. And I've been 'recovered' for 5-6 years, although had a minor relapse last year that required the support of my partner to get through. Having this trigger so close to a relapse is probably what is making this most difficult, because it's a bit like my 'defenses' are still rebuilding after being partially torn down last year, I'm perhaps not as strong as I could be. Pregnancy hormones don't really help the situation. But I have a lot of 'reasons' to be strong.
As TFB says, I also look at pictures of extremely emanciated girls and while I *know* they are unhealthy, a part of me see's beauty, control, strength, will-power, and I have a very deep and unnatural desire to be like that, and a little sense of shame that I am now "a picture of health". I suppose when it comes to rebuilding the ideas I have of strength and control, I am still working on it. I wish I could see strength and control in a confident, healthy woman. Sometimes I do. When you build and live your life around ideas like that, the thought pattern and habit is hard to break.
This is why I refer to recovery as a process, and something she'll likely need to keep in check for the rest of her life. Like depression or anxiety, she'll have to now her triggers, she'll have to understand what a healthy environment is so she can build a positive space for herself (physically and emotionally). It's not something that just goes away. It gets easier. I don't feel shame for eating, but seeing myself in the mirror is difficult, photos can be hard to look at, and I am very self-critical. My partner, and even my mum, still works at keeping me in check - if I am being very self critical they'll say something like "Is this really what YOU think?" or "Is this one of THOSE thoughts". Sometimes I need the reminder that what's going on inside my head isn't always a reflection of reality. It's important to remember, as this can be at the very core of disordered thinking - believing the disordered thoughts to be true.

Anyway, that's just a long-winded way of saying recovery from an eating disorder is a long and ongoing process. It won't happen in days, or weeks, or probably months either. It could be years until she is at a point where she is emotionally strong enough to declare herself free from an eating disorder. And even then, free doesn't mean that it's not there in the background deep inside. Free just means that at a certain point in time, she is in control of her mind, her body, and her actions/behaviours.

There's a really helpful website - http://www.something-fishy.org/ That might help you and also your SIL and even your neice. The sufferers forum was often a souce of strength and inspiration when I needed it most. The family forum was so helpful for the people around me.

Bearing in mind that I still class myself as anorexic - no, I'm not over it. I am working through my issues and it is less of a problem than it was, but I do have to be careful, especially as a teacher who has to tell girls anorexia and its effects are bad and I'm sat there wishing I could be as thin as the pictures I'm saying are wrong. As Indadhanu said, it's like being an alcoholic. Some people recover and can enjoy alcohol in moderation again. Others have to avoid alcohol and the surrounds whenever possible. Generally speaking, it's those who can challenge and change the underlying psychology that make the better recoveries.

However, my anorexia is linked to other abuse, so as I'm working through that I'm also coming out of the anorexic thought patterns. I don't know when I'll be able to stop thinking of myself as anorexic: usually when I've tried before I've gone straight back to it, so keeping in mind I have a problem seems to keep me out of trouble.

How is your neice? In some research for a uni assignment I came across this today, I think it is written very well, you might find it informative :)
http://www.ranzcp.org/Files/ranzcp-a...rvosa-pdf.aspx