My best advice to you would be to reach out to your daughter by sharing in the work of recovery with her. Where are you right now in your own work to recover from the family dynamic that brought her abuse and subsequent eating disorder to light? What type of therapy are you currently involved with for your own health and wellbeing? Do you have a similar type of supportive community to the one you have provided for your daughter – where you can talk about parenting, your own needs, and issues as they arise? How are you modeling for your daughter the value of life after recovery? The best way children learn to trust their parents (and diffuse their anger towards a parent they perceive as part of the issue they are recovering from) is by seeing the parent’s vulnerability as well as strength, life-in-progress as well as success, and willingness to wade together through uncharted waters no matter how tough it gets. Commitment is key here. The more your daughter sees your steadfast, unwavering love for and faith in her, the more it will sink in and her anger will fade, to be replaced by trust and renewed love.

You don’t say how old your daughter is, but the level of intimacy and trust you and she can build as you go through the recovery process will look different depending on her age. If she is younger, she will need a tiger, a champion, a voice simply repeating over and over again, ‘You are loved. You are worth it. You are not at fault. You are precious and beautiful. You are safe and protected. You are cared for. Your life is worth it and you have what it takes to survive this and have a great life.’ If she is older, she will need all those things and much more – space at times, closeness at times, financial resources to get her the help she needs, an opportunity to confront both you and her father for harms (real or imagined) and their consequences on her life, an opportunity whenever needed to speak openly and honestly about her past and present circumstances, and an opportunity to forgive and be forgiven. Family therapy can be extremely beneficial at any age, but becomes almost essential as the child gets older and the issues surrounding the trauma feel and often are more complex.

As I am sure you know, relationships take time to make, break, mend and heal. My relationship with my family is no different. Every year new facets emerge. For awhile we stayed in our own little corners – although I would say this was largely due to the fact that when I got sick there was little common knowledge of eating disorders. It was not like it is now, where most everyone has at least heard the words ‘eating disorder’. We didn’t even know what I had for the first seven years! It is also very important not to compare your family’s progress with that of any other family, because the dynamics and personalities are always unique to that situation. What worked for me and my family might work for your family, or it might not. We are much healthier as a family today than we have ever been before, but that is due in large part to a significant commitment I made to achieving a safe and comfortable level of closeness with my parents that worked for me. This was because I was an adult by the time I began my healing work, so I approached family dynamics as an adult learning to care for herself on her own would. If your daughter is younger, that approach will not work for her. She still very much needs you to be the parent, and to take charge of some aspects of her healing journey that she is not emotionally or financially independent enough to provide for herself.

And if that also means passing anger on to you that she doesn’t know what else to do with, then it is important for you to realize that she may not know she is doing that. She may not have all the facts yet, or she may not have the ability yet to accept the facts as she is now understanding them to be, after believing them to be different for so long. It will take time for the truth and her understanding of what happened to her to mesh into ‘THE truth’. So finding a way to care for yourself during times when she is too angry to do more than express that anger in your direction is vital. She may either know intuitively that it is safe to show you her anger because she trusts you will never leave or abandon her, or she may truly believe her anger toward you is justified. Either way, therapy will help you both get to the bottom of that, and in the meantime all of your daughter’s pent up anger will have had a chance to be exhumed, felt, and released – a vital part of the recovery process.

I would recommend that you read a book called ‘Eating With Your Anorexic’ by Laura Collins for some ideas of how you as a parent can participate in your daughter’s healing process using tough parental love. ‘The Secret Language of Eating Disorders’ will help you as a parent to begin to speak the language your daughter hears in her head. ‘Surviving an Eating Disorder: Strategies for Family and Friends’ will also be helpful to you. And you may visit my website by clicking HERE for more excellent book recommendations.

I hope this helps. Please feel free to write again if you have additional questions, and all my best to you, and to your daughter.

Warmly,

Shannon

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