5 ms·

Semi-related: I'm currently interested in how people get into the seemingly closed and endless maze of believing in things that are relatively provably incorrec

Semi-related: I'm currently interested in how people get into the seemingly closed and endless maze of believing in things that are relatively provably incorrect or at odds with their own interests. My daughter has recently been diagnosed with an eating disorder, and she cannot get past wanting to lose weight, no matter that she's in hospital due to her heart rate having slowed down to alarming levels. She still wants it to go slower, as a challenge, as a goal, to show how strong she is in fighting her own body's will to live. It's fucking crazy, but it's her reality. I do not understand how this kind of fantasy gets a foothold. I feel like the power of an idea is woefully underestimated. Same goes with conspiracy theories. Maybe an idea has to fit like a puzzle piece into a real life scenario as a convenient surface-level explanation for something unpleasant or just unresolved. I used to think the brain was a logic machine, but I think there are strong elements of it that are coping mechanisms. Cling to a fantasy that makes unpleasant thing less unpleasant. Don't know how that relates to potentially starving oneself to death, but that seems to be entirely on the table for ye olde brain. Careful what you consider plausible folks!

RandomBacon 1y ago
It's probably a mixture of A and B, and maybe some C, etc. I believe a necessary element is that people want to be "better" (eg. ahead, smarter, or etc) than others, whether that's having some sort of "secret" knowledge or just wanting to be a contrarian.
esseph 1y ago
I'm very sorry to hear about your daughter, and I hope.... yeah. I "hope" for you, best way I can explain it. One dad to another.
justusthane 1y ago
Wishing your daughter the best. I can’t imagine how devastating it must be to watch your child go through something like that and feeling powerless to help.
throwaway8333 1y ago
I've been through that. Even with a BMI below 18 when you already look like a walking skeleton and can't do more than a minute of physical activity without having to rest, you still continue seeing yourself in the mirror as obese, focusing in on small imperfections and exaggerating them to absurd levels. I really saw myself as fat, even though the weight was far below the normal range. You don't believe what other are saying because the mirror is objective and won't lie to you. It can be fixed though — the hospital stay after passing out from low glucose levels finally straightened me out, but she really needs to figure this out for herself. Good luck.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Thank you. I recently spoke to someone who used to be an alcoholic and it also took them a somewhat near-death experience to create sufficient internal will power (or realisation) to change their behaviour. It must come internally. We keep working on what a wonderful happy life she used to have, hoping that such reminders will eventually seep in to create her own realisation.
rdgthree 1y ago
In my experience, I've found most deeply embedded self-destructive ideas to be rooted in fear. The brain and body are effectively locked in a paranoid "fight" state - "I know this behavior is unhealthy, but if I don't behave this way, then [insert irrational fear] will happen." If you can figure out what she is afraid of, you might be able to help her walk back the behaviors from there. But trying to correct the behaviors on their own is very hard. Since the fear is usually irrational, the behaviors may be a relatively rational response to said fear. They may hold the fear itself as table stakes - not understanding that they are afraid of something that isn't real (i.e. I will never find love if I'm not as skinny as the other girls on Instagram). Again IME - the feeling from inside the self-destructive brain is "I shouldn't be doing this self-destructive behavior, but I don't know another way to achieve X goal, and I absolutely need to achieve X goal." Asking the question "Why do you need so badly to achieve X goal?" is usually a good start to defanging the fear.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Thank you, I will work on getting an answer to that question today! Not the underlying fear that you mention, but seeing her reaction to being asked (forced) to eat is reminiscent of being asked (forced) to pat a spider. I'm not sure if visceral, immediate fear maps to an underlying fear or not, but fear seems to play some part at least.
  - therealpygon 1y ago
    No disrespect, but maybe you should instead be working on getting her into therapy instead of trying to be her therapist. If she is not inclined to be honest with you or herself in the first place, you don’t have the tools and are too close to the situation, especially if you are the one who is the “cause” (regardless of whether YOU think you do something to be the “cause”). A therapist is an independent person who is completely outside that persons life and their situation and is more likely to have the appropriate tools, or at least more so than a parent will (no matter how many TikTok’s they might see or blogs they might read). And if she is resistant, explain that “this is someone who you can talk to; I don’t expect anything, I’m only asking that you just go talk with them about whatever you want. It’s not my business what you discuss, and I won’t ever ask you to tell me what you discuss. You can talk about your homework or the sky, it doesn’t matter, I’m only asking that you go talk to them. If you talk to them a few times and don’t like them, we can find someone else. Again, I have no expectations from this and I’m not trying to “fix” you, it’s just someone you can talk with and who might be able to make good suggestions about whatever you discuss…no more, no less”. And then, more importantly, you have to both believe and respect it.
AStonesThrow 1y ago
[dead]
Mouvelie 1y ago
With our societal move away from religion, we lost (what I think is) the useful metaphor of demons to explain some behaviours and frankly, it is my theory that demons and ideas are akin to viruses : they come, take ahold of who they can, thrive where they can, to take everything they can until they can't. From the short post you shared, your daughter seems, for a lack of better words, possessed by this terrible terrible idea. Sadly, I have no idea (!) why some ideas stick to some whereas other won't attract ideas even close. But yeah, you are right, one should never consider their own thoughts to be absolutely true. Sorry that you got this lesson is such a hurtful format. Hope your daughter gets better.
- krapp 1y ago
  >With our societal move away from religion, we lost (what I think is) the useful metaphor of demons to explain some behaviours What we lost with religion is the belief in literal demons controlling people as an explanation for human behavior. Demons as metaphor is not a religious concept per se, and such metaphors still exist within secular society.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Whilst I'm not religious, there's a definite sense that my daughter is 'possessed' by this idea. Not necessarily like demonic possession but almost like a slave to this idea as her master. She is a chattel to what started as an idea but has grown into an entity to be obeyed.
deepfriedchokes 1y ago
Humans aren’t rational animals, they are emotional animals. They believe what they want to believe, emotionally. Body Keeps the Score kind of stuff, which focused on acute amygdala hijacking, but should have talked a lot more about continuous amygdala hijacking. I’m sorry about your daughter I hope she gets better.
bdangubic 1y ago
I'm currently interested in how people get into the seemingly closed and endless maze of believing in things that are relatively provably incorrect in the age of AI/social media/etc. almost nothing is provably incorrect…
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  I did pause when I wrote that. I'm sure there are such things... I'm sure of it. (attempting to be self-referential on the topic of beliefs and ideas)
xtiansimon 1y ago
> “I feel like the power of an idea is woefully underestimated.” You’ve heard of the “meme”? That afterthought of idea by Richard Dawkins? I first learned of it during COVID lockdown. There was a post—somewhere—linking to a post from NASA making a bunch of their publications available for reading. In these was a whole anthology titled Cosmos and Culture. One of the articles is by a professor and writer Susan Blackmore. She wrote an article, something like, What The Pandorans Knew. In it she makes the argument that what we will find, if we explore the cosmos past earth, is most likely not alien civilizations, but the remains of extinct civilizations. She argues that ideas are in fact dangerous and might just be the death of civilization. And with this in mind, we’re more likely to find evidence of the extinct civilizations than live ones. It’s a radical idea. At least that’s what I thought until people in positions of trust started into their non-scientific medical ideas during COVID. While I find memes of great interest, don’t expect to find memes beyond a curiosity. The big problem is, what can you do with memes that you can’t do with the current academic orthodoxy? I think if it like someone espousing on the merits of their favorite programming language, and the main line language users scoff and say they have work to do. Neither speculative non-fiction, nor meme theory, nor programming languages compare to the matters of health and wellness. This is the crisis of our time. My2c https://www.nasa.gov/history/history-publications-and-resources/nasa-history-series/cosmos-culture-cultural-evolution-in-a-cosmic-context/ https://www.nasa.gov/history/history-publications-and-resour...
orwin 1y ago
I am so sorry to be this guy, but did she tried CBT with a trained professionnal? You should allow her to vet the therapists (some are bad, other are worse, but good ones definitely exist). I'm not in the "you should seek help" camp, at all, but for eating disorders in particular, randomized trials show that CBT is extremely effective, on the short and long term.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  She was seeing a psychologist in the few weeks prior to her hospitalisation and my wife tells me that CBT was part of that. Post hospital discharge, hopefully in a couple of weeks, we'll be doing FBT (family based therapy, I think) which, according to this morning's information session, is rated above CBT in it's effectiveness. There's a 12-month-ish program she'll be going into once she's recovered to a healthy weight / nutrition level.
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    CBT: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/cognitive-behavioral https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/cog... FBT: Family Based Treatment. https://www.eatingdisordertherapyla.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-family-based-treatment-fbt/ https://www.eatingdisordertherapyla.com/everything-you-need-...
K2h 1y ago
My heart goes out to you fellow parent - work hard to get the help needed and through the difficult time.
BrandoElFollito 1y ago
> She still wants it to go slower, as a challenge, as a goal, to show how strong she is in fighting her own body's will to live. I closely know an 18-year-old who decided to show his body that there are no limits in sport. He trains an insane amount of time (more than professional athletes) despite his body not following up. He had a heart alert, and the cardiologist told him that the next time they will meet at his cardiac arrest, if he is lucky. This absolutely did not change his mind. He is intelligent, has ample opportunities to go forward in whatever he would like, lives in Western Europe, comfortable life and what not. He could be an excellent amateur athlete, competing at university level and doing well but he just wants to get his body past the breaking point. The only hope is that he will mature enough to realize this in a few years, hopefully survive by then without serious impacts on his health. Everything I the head, and this is an uncharted world.
- xeonmc 1y ago
  Did he by any chance watch One Punch Man?
  - BrandoElFollito 1y ago
    Yes he did but this was not the trigger. The trigger is much more complex with being the second in the brotherhood, needs to be different from the rest, and - certainly - influences from anime etc. I realized how difficult it is to relate to someone's mind without being the adult who tells you everything (and therefore you do the opposite)or to try to find ways to slow down the madness. I hope that time will help him to mature.
    - xeonmc 1y ago
      Curiously, I wonder if the most recent webcomic chapter’s philosophical themes may be of help: https://cubari.moe/read/gist/Z2lzdC9mdW5reWhpcHBvLzcxMjRhZjUyMWExMDU5NDVhNGRmNmEzMzFjOWZjZTU5L3Jhdy9vcG0td2MuanNvbg/155/1/ https://cubari.moe/read/gist/Z2lzdC9mdW5reWhpcHBvLzcxMjRhZjU...
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
fatbird 1y ago
I have a cousin who went through many years, from her teens on, of anorexia, bulimia, and substance abuse. Somehow she still managed to become a vet with a decent career, with parents actively supporting her in getting different treatments. The one treatment that finally broke the hold of her eating disorders was a live-in program at a hospital where all they did was, as a group, prepare and consume three square meals a day. It was like nutrition 101 coupled with some basic household management. Her words: "It had never been laid out like that for me, and I just didn't know it." Does that mean it would work for your daughter? Maybe, but one obvious thing was that it was the right treatment at the right time for my cousin. A decade earlier she'd probably have blown it off or missed the point. The only thing I can say worked for her, is her and her family not giving up, hanging on and trying different things, until some magical combination of action and receptiveness met up. As a friend to others with similar issues, I've seen the same thing: it's usually a lucky combination of action and circumstance. No treatment is guaranteed, no approach failproof. As you observe, the human brain is, in large part, a bunch of coping mechanisms (most therapists these days would nod excitedly at that understanding). It's not reasoning, it's reflexive defensives, and can take a long time to untangle. Don't lose hope, and keep trying. And consider counselling for yourself and your spouse. This is traumatizing to you too, and getting support yourself to keep at it also helps.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  We're currently preparing to both go part time to support her basically 24/7 when she's discharged from hospital, likely in a couple of weeks. Agree 100% that chances of beating it improve significantly with full family support, so that's what we're planning. I'm fundamentally an optimist, and plan to remain so in the face of anything and everything.
burnte 1y ago
I used to run IT for a rehab healthcare company that did chemical dependency and eating disorders. The number one thing to understand here is that she has mental health problems, that is the root of this. She's not choose to believe fantasy, there are mental illness aspects that are warping her reasoning processes. She needs to engage with therapists as soon as possible. I'd be happy to make a couple of suggestions.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Yes, 100% it's the mental illness and not her. The approach being taken (by the hospital) is to get her back to a healthy weight and level of nutrition before starting therapy because a nutrient starved brain doesn't respond to psychology / therapy.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    That's a horrible catch 22 you have there: Starvation hampers therapy, but without therapy the individual wants to starve. I know words don't help much, but I sincerely hope her situation improves.
    - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
      The last couple of days she's been noticeably better personality-wise (likely as a result of increased nutrition levels), but it's a very "up and down" kind of illness, it does mean that she's still in there and not totally swallowed up into the beast. I'm fundamentally optimistic, and more optimistic now than I was a week ago. The way the hospital gets past the 'not wanting to eat' is they give her a nose-feeding tube, through which they syringe a nutrition liquid. This is their base for getting them to non-starvation mode. My daughter had been eating enough to have tube removed a couple of days ago. Having said that, it's a 12-month-ish program, and potentially a lifelong 'back of your mind' concern.
  - burnte 1y ago
    I've seen hundreds of kids go through the program where I used to work, and it always made me incredibly proud to work there. She can do it, 100% no questions. It won't be easy, but she can do it. Sounds like she has a great parent. Good luck!
ropable 1y ago
As the father of a daughter: this is horrifying, and my heart goes out to you. I hope that you and your family all get through this. Godspeed.

RandomBacon 1y ago

It's probably a mixture of A and B, and maybe some C, etc. I believe a necessary element is that people want to be "better" (eg. ahead, smarter, or etc) than others, whether that's having some sort of "secret" knowledge or just wanting to be a contrarian.

esseph 1y ago

I'm very sorry to hear about your daughter, and I hope.... yeah. I "hope" for you, best way I can explain it. One dad to another.

justusthane 1y ago

Wishing your daughter the best. I can’t imagine how devastating it must be to watch your child go through something like that and feeling powerless to help.

throwaway8333 1y ago

I've been through that. Even with a BMI below 18 when you already look like a walking skeleton and can't do more than a minute of physical activity without having to rest, you still continue seeing yourself in the mirror as obese, focusing in on small imperfections and exaggerating them to absurd levels. I really saw myself as fat, even though the weight was far below the normal range. You don't believe what other are saying because the mirror is objective and won't lie to you. It can be fixed though — the hospital stay after passing out from low glucose levels finally straightened me out, but she really needs to figure this out for herself. Good luck.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Thank you. I recently spoke to someone who used to be an alcoholic and it also took them a somewhat near-death experience to create sufficient internal will power (or realisation) to change their behaviour. It must come internally. We keep working on what a wonderful happy life she used to have, hoping that such reminders will eventually seep in to create her own realisation.

rdgthree 1y ago

In my experience, I've found most deeply embedded self-destructive ideas to be rooted in fear. The brain and body are effectively locked in a paranoid "fight" state - "I know this behavior is unhealthy, but if I don't behave this way, then [insert irrational fear] will happen." If you can figure out what she is afraid of, you might be able to help her walk back the behaviors from there. But trying to correct the behaviors on their own is very hard. Since the fear is usually irrational, the behaviors may be a relatively rational response to said fear. They may hold the fear itself as table stakes - not understanding that they are afraid of something that isn't real (i.e. I will never find love if I'm not as skinny as the other girls on Instagram). Again IME - the feeling from inside the self-destructive brain is "I shouldn't be doing this self-destructive behavior, but I don't know another way to achieve X goal, and I absolutely need to achieve X goal." Asking the question "Why do you need so badly to achieve X goal?" is usually a good start to defanging the fear.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Thank you, I will work on getting an answer to that question today! Not the underlying fear that you mention, but seeing her reaction to being asked (forced) to eat is reminiscent of being asked (forced) to pat a spider. I'm not sure if visceral, immediate fear maps to an underlying fear or not, but fear seems to play some part at least.
- therealpygon 1y ago
  No disrespect, but maybe you should instead be working on getting her into therapy instead of trying to be her therapist. If she is not inclined to be honest with you or herself in the first place, you don’t have the tools and are too close to the situation, especially if you are the one who is the “cause” (regardless of whether YOU think you do something to be the “cause”). A therapist is an independent person who is completely outside that persons life and their situation and is more likely to have the appropriate tools, or at least more so than a parent will (no matter how many TikTok’s they might see or blogs they might read). And if she is resistant, explain that “this is someone who you can talk to; I don’t expect anything, I’m only asking that you just go talk with them about whatever you want. It’s not my business what you discuss, and I won’t ever ask you to tell me what you discuss. You can talk about your homework or the sky, it doesn’t matter, I’m only asking that you go talk to them. If you talk to them a few times and don’t like them, we can find someone else. Again, I have no expectations from this and I’m not trying to “fix” you, it’s just someone you can talk with and who might be able to make good suggestions about whatever you discuss…no more, no less”. And then, more importantly, you have to both believe and respect it.

AStonesThrow 1y ago

[dead]

Mouvelie 1y ago

With our societal move away from religion, we lost (what I think is) the useful metaphor of demons to explain some behaviours and frankly, it is my theory that demons and ideas are akin to viruses : they come, take ahold of who they can, thrive where they can, to take everything they can until they can't. From the short post you shared, your daughter seems, for a lack of better words, possessed by this terrible terrible idea. Sadly, I have no idea (!) why some ideas stick to some whereas other won't attract ideas even close. But yeah, you are right, one should never consider their own thoughts to be absolutely true. Sorry that you got this lesson is such a hurtful format. Hope your daughter gets better.

krapp 1y ago
>With our societal move away from religion, we lost (what I think is) the useful metaphor of demons to explain some behaviours What we lost with religion is the belief in literal demons controlling people as an explanation for human behavior. Demons as metaphor is not a religious concept per se, and such metaphors still exist within secular society.
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Whilst I'm not religious, there's a definite sense that my daughter is 'possessed' by this idea. Not necessarily like demonic possession but almost like a slave to this idea as her master. She is a chattel to what started as an idea but has grown into an entity to be obeyed.

deepfriedchokes 1y ago

Humans aren’t rational animals, they are emotional animals. They believe what they want to believe, emotionally. Body Keeps the Score kind of stuff, which focused on acute amygdala hijacking, but should have talked a lot more about continuous amygdala hijacking. I’m sorry about your daughter I hope she gets better.

bdangubic 1y ago

I'm currently interested in how people get into the seemingly closed and endless maze of believing in things that are relatively provably incorrect in the age of AI/social media/etc. almost nothing is provably incorrect…

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
I did pause when I wrote that. I'm sure there are such things... I'm sure of it. (attempting to be self-referential on the topic of beliefs and ideas)

xtiansimon 1y ago

> “I feel like the power of an idea is woefully underestimated.” You’ve heard of the “meme”? That afterthought of idea by Richard Dawkins? I first learned of it during COVID lockdown. There was a post—somewhere—linking to a post from NASA making a bunch of their publications available for reading. In these was a whole anthology titled Cosmos and Culture. One of the articles is by a professor and writer Susan Blackmore. She wrote an article, something like, What The Pandorans Knew. In it she makes the argument that what we will find, if we explore the cosmos past earth, is most likely not alien civilizations, but the remains of extinct civilizations. She argues that ideas are in fact dangerous and might just be the death of civilization. And with this in mind, we’re more likely to find evidence of the extinct civilizations than live ones. It’s a radical idea. At least that’s what I thought until people in positions of trust started into their non-scientific medical ideas during COVID. While I find memes of great interest, don’t expect to find memes beyond a curiosity. The big problem is, what can you do with memes that you can’t do with the current academic orthodoxy? I think if it like someone espousing on the merits of their favorite programming language, and the main line language users scoff and say they have work to do. Neither speculative non-fiction, nor meme theory, nor programming languages compare to the matters of health and wellness. This is the crisis of our time. My2c https://www.nasa.gov/history/history-publications-and-resources/nasa-history-series/cosmos-culture-cultural-evolution-in-a-cosmic-context/ https://www.nasa.gov/history/history-publications-and-resour...

orwin 1y ago

I am so sorry to be this guy, but did she tried CBT with a trained professionnal? You should allow her to vet the therapists (some are bad, other are worse, but good ones definitely exist). I'm not in the "you should seek help" camp, at all, but for eating disorders in particular, randomized trials show that CBT is extremely effective, on the short and long term.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
She was seeing a psychologist in the few weeks prior to her hospitalisation and my wife tells me that CBT was part of that. Post hospital discharge, hopefully in a couple of weeks, we'll be doing FBT (family based therapy, I think) which, according to this morning's information session, is rated above CBT in it's effectiveness. There's a 12-month-ish program she'll be going into once she's recovered to a healthy weight / nutrition level.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  CBT: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/cognitive-behavioral https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/cog... FBT: Family Based Treatment. https://www.eatingdisordertherapyla.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-family-based-treatment-fbt/ https://www.eatingdisordertherapyla.com/everything-you-need-...

K2h 1y ago

My heart goes out to you fellow parent - work hard to get the help needed and through the difficult time.

BrandoElFollito 1y ago

> She still wants it to go slower, as a challenge, as a goal, to show how strong she is in fighting her own body's will to live. I closely know an 18-year-old who decided to show his body that there are no limits in sport. He trains an insane amount of time (more than professional athletes) despite his body not following up. He had a heart alert, and the cardiologist told him that the next time they will meet at his cardiac arrest, if he is lucky. This absolutely did not change his mind. He is intelligent, has ample opportunities to go forward in whatever he would like, lives in Western Europe, comfortable life and what not. He could be an excellent amateur athlete, competing at university level and doing well but he just wants to get his body past the breaking point. The only hope is that he will mature enough to realize this in a few years, hopefully survive by then without serious impacts on his health. Everything I the head, and this is an uncharted world.

xeonmc 1y ago
Did he by any chance watch One Punch Man?
- BrandoElFollito 1y ago
  Yes he did but this was not the trigger. The trigger is much more complex with being the second in the brotherhood, needs to be different from the rest, and - certainly - influences from anime etc. I realized how difficult it is to relate to someone's mind without being the adult who tells you everything (and therefore you do the opposite)or to try to find ways to slow down the madness. I hope that time will help him to mature.
  - xeonmc 1y ago
    Curiously, I wonder if the most recent webcomic chapter’s philosophical themes may be of help: https://cubari.moe/read/gist/Z2lzdC9mdW5reWhpcHBvLzcxMjRhZjUyMWExMDU5NDVhNGRmNmEzMzFjOWZjZTU5L3Jhdy9vcG0td2MuanNvbg/155/1/ https://cubari.moe/read/gist/Z2lzdC9mdW5reWhpcHBvLzcxMjRhZjU...
BLKNSLVR 1y ago

fatbird 1y ago

I have a cousin who went through many years, from her teens on, of anorexia, bulimia, and substance abuse. Somehow she still managed to become a vet with a decent career, with parents actively supporting her in getting different treatments. The one treatment that finally broke the hold of her eating disorders was a live-in program at a hospital where all they did was, as a group, prepare and consume three square meals a day. It was like nutrition 101 coupled with some basic household management. Her words: "It had never been laid out like that for me, and I just didn't know it." Does that mean it would work for your daughter? Maybe, but one obvious thing was that it was the right treatment at the right time for my cousin. A decade earlier she'd probably have blown it off or missed the point. The only thing I can say worked for her, is her and her family not giving up, hanging on and trying different things, until some magical combination of action and receptiveness met up. As a friend to others with similar issues, I've seen the same thing: it's usually a lucky combination of action and circumstance. No treatment is guaranteed, no approach failproof. As you observe, the human brain is, in large part, a bunch of coping mechanisms (most therapists these days would nod excitedly at that understanding). It's not reasoning, it's reflexive defensives, and can take a long time to untangle. Don't lose hope, and keep trying. And consider counselling for yourself and your spouse. This is traumatizing to you too, and getting support yourself to keep at it also helps.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
We're currently preparing to both go part time to support her basically 24/7 when she's discharged from hospital, likely in a couple of weeks. Agree 100% that chances of beating it improve significantly with full family support, so that's what we're planning. I'm fundamentally an optimist, and plan to remain so in the face of anything and everything.

burnte 1y ago

I used to run IT for a rehab healthcare company that did chemical dependency and eating disorders. The number one thing to understand here is that she has mental health problems, that is the root of this. She's not choose to believe fantasy, there are mental illness aspects that are warping her reasoning processes. She needs to engage with therapists as soon as possible. I'd be happy to make a couple of suggestions.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Yes, 100% it's the mental illness and not her. The approach being taken (by the hospital) is to get her back to a healthy weight and level of nutrition before starting therapy because a nutrient starved brain doesn't respond to psychology / therapy.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  That's a horrible catch 22 you have there: Starvation hampers therapy, but without therapy the individual wants to starve. I know words don't help much, but I sincerely hope her situation improves.
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    The last couple of days she's been noticeably better personality-wise (likely as a result of increased nutrition levels), but it's a very "up and down" kind of illness, it does mean that she's still in there and not totally swallowed up into the beast. I'm fundamentally optimistic, and more optimistic now than I was a week ago. The way the hospital gets past the 'not wanting to eat' is they give her a nose-feeding tube, through which they syringe a nutrition liquid. This is their base for getting them to non-starvation mode. My daughter had been eating enough to have tube removed a couple of days ago. Having said that, it's a 12-month-ish program, and potentially a lifelong 'back of your mind' concern.
- burnte 1y ago
  I've seen hundreds of kids go through the program where I used to work, and it always made me incredibly proud to work there. She can do it, 100% no questions. It won't be easy, but she can do it. Sounds like she has a great parent. Good luck!

ropable 1y ago

As the father of a daughter: this is horrifying, and my heart goes out to you. I hope that you and your family all get through this. Godspeed.