I'm seeking help for a friend, and don't really know where to start. I'm not even sure if orthorexia is the issue, but am hoping that someone here can point me in the right direction. I am almost completely unfamiliar with eating disorders, so please forgive me if I'm in completely the wrong place. She is the mother of a one-year-old, and is (I believe) unhealthily obsessed with her child's weight and the food that he eats. I don't know her in real life, but we've become good friends through an internet forum for Baby Led Weaning. She is convinced that her breast milk is/was insufficiently nutritious and believes that is the root cause of her child's small size and weight gain. She focuses on every bite of food that he eats, how to get the very most nutritious food into him (putting flaxseed into everything, obsessing over various micronutrients, etc.). She has recently said that she finds herself "pulling away" from her child because she feels she cannot care for him, and I am frightened for both of them. I should say that, as best I can tell, her child is fine -- small, but healthy and meeting milestones. My friend says that the pediatrician is unconcerned. She has food issues of her own, although I believe it's just "garden variety" (hah) stress eating, etc. But it's the obsession with her child's eating that I feel has become dangerous, both for her and her child. She is in therapy, but her therapist does not specialize in eating disorders and I don't think she is honest with her therapist about the severity of this issue. Thank you for so much reading, and I greatly appreciate any resources you can point me to that I might be able to suggest to her. As a sufferer from anxiety/OCD/intrusive thoughts I am terribly sympathetic to her, but food issues are just not familiar to me. |
