If your daughter has been diagnosed with anorexia, you may feel like the bad guy or even the enemy now. Your compliant, loving daughter has been taken over by a tyrannical, angry person whom you no longer know. It is scary and you’re afraid you’ll never get her back.

Here is what you have to understand. The voice you are hearing and the behavior you are seeing is not her. She does not have multiple personality disorder and she hasn’t been overtaken by some demonic force like in The Exorcist. But there is another voice inside of her head and it is the voice of the eating disorder.

It is very important that you learn to separate this voice from your daughter. It will help you stay more objective and less emotional with her, and it will help her in recovery as she begins to see that the things she is hearing about her body, weight, and personhood are not true.

You will have to model this truth, that what she is hearing in her mind is not her voice, but the voice of the eating disorder. How you will model this is by helping her sort out what is her talking and what is the anorexia. Before you can help her identify it, however, you have to learn to see the difference yourself.

Early in the recovery process you can pretty much assume she is hearing and obeying the anorexic voice most of the time. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have lost so much weight or be purging or over-exercising. Most girls will eventually be able to say how much the eating disorder voice is influencing them.

One of the best ways to identify the anorexic voice is it will be combative, argumentative, defensive and angry. It’s like you touched a nerve and it is throbbing all over the place. You have to be careful not to assume and throw every outburst into this category, but it is a good way to begin teasing out what is the eating disorder voice and what is not.

Another indicator might instead be crying, whining and negotiating type behavior. This often occurs when the anger does not get her the desired result. The result being you backed off and she gets to listen to the eating disorder and what it wants.

The crying is a sign that she is overwhelmed and fearful that she is going to have to eat, not go to the bathroom to purge, etc. Sometimes girls will exhibit the crying, anxious behavior more than anger. Either way, it is probably the eating disorder voice she is hearing.

I’m going to end with this caution and I cannot stress it enough. These articles are your crash course on eating disorders. Don’t rush in and tell her all of this As you learn to identify her voice from the eating disorder voice, with her permission, you can share some of this with her.

If you use this language with her too soon or too often, she may get irritated and be less likely to be open with you about her thoughts and feelings. Just observe for a bit, action can follow soon after. You learn it first, then you can help her.

For a copy of my free e-book “Eating Disorder Basics for Parents” click here http://www.why-my-daughter.com/edb.html

Lynn Moore educates, coaches, and consults parents on how to help their adolescent with eating disorder behavior. She will guide you through the treacherous waters of deciding what kind of help you need and what you, the parents need to do and can do to help your child.

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