Help Your Teenager Beat an Eating Disorder

anorexia nervosa as having an inadequate sense of self resulting from a problematic relationship with her parents, usually her mother.

come up with an approach to helping your child eat normally that you can carry out. It’s not much help to say you will eat all meals with your son if you’re working all day and can’t possibly be there.

Your lack of confidence and uncertainty will often be perceived as a lack of resolve.

defeating the illness.

bedeviling problems is the timing of these illnesses. They usually occur just when adolescents are both more able to be independent and certainly very interested in being so. Thus, you are battling both the symptoms of the illness and the developmentally appropriate stage of increasing independence.

Fourth,

A certain degree of anxiety is a good thing—it helps propel you to action—but too much anxiety can overwhelm and immobilize you.

Most of these studies, in both the United Kingdom and the United States, have shown that FBT can be very effective for adolescents with anorexia, especially for those who have been ill for less than 2 years.

For a child on the path to an eating disorder, on the one hand, eating is often associated with guilt, anxiety, and anger. Not eating, on the other hand, is associated with feelings of accomplishment, power, and strength. Paradoxically,