EATING DISORDERS: PROBLEMS IN FAMILY THERAPY
Posted on Apr 22, 2009 under Weight Loss | No CommentLack of progress frustrates everyone, including a therapist. Patients also come from many different family situations – divorced, single-parent families, married patients. Such circumstances call for modifications in the course of family therapy.
In family therapy we encounter resistance on two fronts: from the patient and from her relatives. While an anorexic might want to be rid of her illness, she nonetheless relishes the special feeling of power her starved state gives her. Parents might sense the need to “give up” their child, but if they believe their children are holding the marriage together, they will be reluctant to make any changes in their family structure. “Giving up” their child means they will have to confront – and correct – the problems in their own relationship. During therapy we show the family that sometimes the changes they see – more open discussion of feelings, and thus more emotional conflict – are actually signs of progress and should be welcomed rather than avoided.
With younger patients especially, parents may not admit the seriousness of the problem. They delude themselves into believing that their daughter’s self-control, her physical activity, or her devotion to schoolwork is all signs of superiority. They delay therapy, or see the doctor hoping to be told that everything is all right, that their daughter is truly a noble, self-disciplined individual.
Sometimes parents recognize the problem but believe they can handle it on their own. They feel that asking for help is a sign of weakness, or that therapy might expose their own defects that they’d rather not have to confront.
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