and now, when I believe (because I want to) that Kitty’s fine and that we can slack off on watching, observing, recalculating. Anger: breaking a stack of dishes on the kitchen floor; pulling out clumps of my own hair, as I’ve done more than once; yelling, when I know it’s not her fault, when I know that she’s in pain. Bargaining: If I give up my life, stop seeing friends, do nothing but shop and cook and sit with her, she’ll be all right. Depression: not sleeping; crying a lot; feelings of despair, guilt, hopelessness. Acceptance: nope; I’m not accepting this; not yet; maybe not ever.
Two days before Thanksgiving, Kitty comes home from Ms. Susan’s lunch group distraught. She tells me she’s figured out what “the problem” is. “I’m doing this for you, not for myself,” she says.
“Doing what? Going to lunch group?”
“No,” she says irritably. “Eating. I’m eating what you tell me to. So I’m doing it for you, not for me.”
Slowly the story emerges. She’s pretty much the only one in the group whose family is doing FBT; many of the other girls have been in and out of hospitals and residential treatment centers for years. But all Kitty can see is that they’re somehow “doing better” than she is. “They seem like they’re so much more insightful than I am, Mom,” she says.
Ms. Susan warned me that competitiveness can be a problem in eating-disorders groups. I’m beginning to see what she meant.
“So what are you saying, Kitty?” I ask her. “You want to go away?”
In fact, that is what she’s saying. I can’t help but wonder if this has something to do with her weigh-in today. She weighs more than she’s ever weighed in her life by about ten pounds. In fact, she’s only about four pounds under her target weight. Could this all be a ploy by the demon, a last-ditch attempt to claw its way back?
“Kitty, you’re doing so well right now,” I begin. “It seems to me that we’d be going backward to send you away now. We’ve got momentum going. Why would you want to throw that away?”
“I knew you’d think it was just the eating disorder talking!” she cries. “But it’s not!” She pauses, then says, “Maybe I would lose a little weight at first if I went away. But I’d make so much emotional progress!”
We are talking to the demon, and it’s scary, because on one level what Kitty says makes perfect sense. She is a people pleaser, eager to do what other people want her to do. But real emotional insight and growth typically comes after physical recovery. That’s how FBT is structured, and for good reason. Starving doesn’t make you more insightful; it just makes you sicker. The demon is so very clever, taking a little bit of truth and twisting it into a lie. Right now, Kitty does have to do what we want her to, at least when it comes to eating. There will be plenty of time for her to become more independent later, when she’s recovered.
When Kitty realizes that we’re not going to send her away, she switches gears. If we’re not going to send her to a treatment center, maybe we can support her emotional growth here at home.
“We’ve been trying to do that all along,” I say carefully. “What do you have in mind?”
What she has in mind, it turns out, is to skip our traditional Thanksgiving celebration with friends, stay home, and eat dinner—alone—with another girl from the lunch group, Shelly, who’s just been released from the hospital.
I stare at Kitty. I want to say, Where the hell did this come from? Except I know where it came from—the demon, that’s where. The demon, who wants Kitty on the outside looking in. The demon, who will take every chance we give it to starve our daughter.
I get that this is a tough holiday for anyone struggling with an eating disorder. All the more reason to spend it with the people who love you, who care about you, who want you to get through it and get over it. And I get that teenagers crave autonomy. But starving at home with another anorexic for Thanksgiving? That’s the illness speaking. Not my daughter.
Anorexia wants Kitty to be as separate as possible from us, because we are its enemy. Anorexia wants Kitty to be isolated, with only the company of others who are ill, so that it can continue to sink its claws and teeth