Morbidly obese SIL
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Anonymous
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Your BIL may not change either, spouses of the mentally ill, esp with things like hoarding, often get dragged down too. That is the reality.
Your niece needs immediate help both re: ARFD and having a mentally ill mom and a codependent and enmeshed dad and being left to more or less parent herself and cope with her own budding mental illness. There are ARFD treatment programs and therapists, she needs one yesterday. You can make some calls and help support BIL re: this piece. Of course, addressing the mentally ill behavior of the child might not be acceptable in their family dynamic where SIL's illness controls all 3. In that case perhaps there are resources you can provide to your niece, you can also have her come visit your family regularly to give her genuine support. You and DH might also benefit from NAMI and Al Anon, learning from people in similar situations, with ill loved ones who may not change, will be of more use than reading about hoarding or eating disorders. You need to learn to cope with what is and to focus on what YOU and DH can do to help your niece. Your BIL has tried to cope by working and not being home much but the house of cards is falling. Summer is a great time to invite young relatives to visit. Best to all of you. Mental illness in family members and in teens is very difficult for all who love them. It is also not that likely to change in a middle aged woman. BIL may eventually divorce when his daughter graduates HS but so often the spouse of a hoarder is just stuck and dragged down too. Hopefully he will seize this moment where he is very motivated about his own physical health conditions to save himself. |
Anonymous
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https://nami.org/Support-Education/Support-Groups/NAMI-Family-Support-Group
https://helplinefaqs.nami.org/article/50-how-can-i-get-help-support-for-hoarding-behavior https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Mental-Health-Conditions/Obsessive-compulsive-Disorder That a child is living in the home of a hoarder and is being encouraged/groomed to imitate mentally ill disordered eating as a coping strategy is tragic. While it is convenient for the adults to see the struggling child as a little adult, everyone is failing her. Y'all need to do what you can to give her the chance to be more than a mentally ill shut in herself as an adult. She is under way more stress than a child should be and is not having any healthy coping behavior taught or modeled. https://psychcentral.com/blog/dirty-little-secret-help-for-children-of-hoarders#1 |
Anonymous
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BIL will either divorce when the child graduates HS or be dragged down himself.
The child will either be severely ill and a shut in like her mother or will have little to nothing to do with them if she gets help. That he married someone who is this sick and that he lives like this and ALLOWED HIS CHILD to live like this suggests there is something up with him, too. OP, do NOT send him info on what could be wrong with SIL. Send him info to help his daughter and help him get support in place to help himself. You are all codependent and enmeshed. Why is your NIECE not a focus for her father or you and DH? She is showing signs of mental illness, is living in a home controlled by mental illness and has a largely absent and dysfunctional father. She may well have nutritional deficiencies herself. It remains to be seen if she is able to change in a healthier environment, but she needs therapeutic support STAT. If her own disordered eating is stabilized, a boarding school might be a better environment for her. Focus where change is possible. Hint: it ain't your SIL who in all likelihood is only going to stay the same or become sicker. Why does she have such a hold over all of you? Your niece is a CHILD and the adults are NOT stepping up. |
Anonymous
Anonymous
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https://answers.childrenshospital.org/parent-mental-illness
"“The presence of a loving, stable adult in a child’s life helps build resilience,” says Dr. Ibeziako. In a two-parent household, the other parent can provide comfort, stability, and support. The other adult could also be a relative, trusted friend, sports coach, teacher, or therapist. Having appropriate social supports within the family or community can help children of parents with mental illness learn skills to overcome adversity. The positive impact can last a lifetime." Your BIL is marginally functional himself at present. The extended family should help your young relative in any way possible. He needs help for his physical health and also sounds possibly depressed. Since he has allowed this situation to develop and continue, him changing/not should also not be a gatekeeper to you, DH and other caring family members becoming a stabilizing presence in your teen niece's life. He has failed her, you can do better. Invite her to visit on a regular basis. It could be life saving. Right now all she knows is illness and she is either imitating or developing it herself. Disorders like hoarding have an anxiety/OCD component. A different environment and healthier role models could benefit her greatly. |
Anonymous
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https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/February-2018/When-Your-Parents-Have-Mental-Illness-Healing-Chi
"Seek Help: If you’re a teen, you can reach out to your school's guidance counselor, a teacher, relative or friend. Books can also be great resources; I recommend “I'm Not Alone.” http://www.seedsofhopebooks.com/im-not-alone.html Learn To Self-Soothe Self-soothing is very individualized. Enjoying a delicious meal, listening to your favorite song, sipping tea in fuzzy pajamas or finding a fun hobby you can commit to weekly are all self-soothing activities. Is Your Family History Repeating Itself? Are you a people pleaser? Do you avoid conflict? If you’re engaging in a frustrating/painful dynamic with a friend, lover or coworker, ask yourself if you might be repeating a relationship pattern from your past. These patterns can be broken. With the help of a skilled therapist and careful awareness, you can identify and stop participating in abusive relationship dynamics. Engage In Healthy Relationships Healthy relationships have an equal balance of power. Try to engage with people who make you feel safe and respected, who listen well and are emotionally available. Shared vulnerability is true intimacy. Calm Mind, Calm Body The mind-body connection is real. Studies show that negative thoughts or feelings can actual create changes in our brain chemistry and even affect our immune, digestive and other physiological systems. There are a variety of mind-body practices to choose from to calm an anxious mind, including meditation and yoga. Finding And Coping With Triggers Everything may be going smoothly and suddenly, you find yourself furious, panicky or tearful and you don't know why. Your physical body may be reacting to an old trauma trigger even though your current situation is not life-threatening. Connecting with others, using grounding techniques, noticing and observing feelings without judgment—these are all techniques that can bring you back to the present moment of comfort and safety. I've found Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) especially helpful for physical symptoms or fearful thoughts. Let Self-Compassion Replace Self-Judgment As a child, shame and self-judgment probably protected you when you couldn't protect yourself. Thank your shame for protecting you and ask it to please step back. Your childhood was not your fault. It is now safe to love yourself. Go ahead and compassionately do so." |
Anonymous
This is what's going to happen. That's been my experience. "SIL" we'll call her for the sake of this thread, was threatened by the mere thought of her DC eating healthy food and actively pushed junk food -- which she brought -- when there was a choice (family gatherings). DC got fatter and fatter and fatter, just like "SIL". Guess what, people like that don't often leave home. In fact, they drop out of high school and keep their parents company for the rest of their lives. What a waste. OP, I'm glad you are beginning to think about how you can help your SIL and her family. Ignore the posters who claim this is about fat and fat shaming. It's not. Keep going. |
Anonymous
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OP has shown literally no ability to deal compassionately with any of her family members. She should not keep going, whatever that means. She will make the situation much worse. She’s enmeshed and narcissistic, and will probably be cruel to all family members (she appears to already have been cruel).
I don’t disagree that the family needs significant help, but OP is incredibly toxic based on her own words in this thread. She cannot help and will only make things worse. |
Anonymous
GMAFB. You think the current generation of parents invented healthy eating? Everyone else was shoveling frozen TV dinners into their kids? This must be one of the more idiotic posts I've read on DCUM, and that's saying something on a board full of petty morons. |
Anonymous
He likely won't and a normal woman would not have him with his own unaddressed dysfunction. He has been avoidant for years, even while his own child was neglected, now he wants his brother and SIL to step in and fix it for him. He is focused on his wife, the person LEAST likely to change rather than taking responsibility for HIMSELF and his CHILD. He is acting like it is a communication or information issue, not mental illness manifested as compulsive shopping, hoarding, ARFD, etc and now as physical health issues too. Rather than address his own physical and mental health he is triangulating in others and acting like his body is his wife's responsibility. Why has no one in the family developed a relationship with the girl who is living in a home where she is parentified? I get that works for the actual parents but WTH is wrong with the rest of you that you act like this is all normal and ok? Hoarding, social isolation, no properly prepared food, depression, OCD and eating disorders which the child is encouraged to participate in, this is all pretty sick stuff. WHY don't any of the adults in the extended family focus on the child? Your SIL is likely going to live just like this or decompensate until she dies one day. Her daughter deserves a chance to know what normal and healthy is. OP, maybe this will be enlightening to you: "As a child, Liz C. remembers having "heart palpitations" whenever the doorbell rang. Usually, she'd meet friends outside rather than let them see the stacks of newspapers, boxes, used paper towels and other trash cluttering her family's home in Short Hills, N.J. "My mother would tell me to lie. She'd say, 'Tell your friends we're painting -- that's why all these boxes are here.' How sick was that?" says Liz, who asked that her full name not be used. By age 11, Liz was working to buy her own food and clothing. "You expect your parents to have food for you, but the kitchen table and counters were just cluttered with garbage," she says. Yet her mother rebuffed any offers of help, and her father, an alcoholic, didn't want to upset her. "It was a mutual enabling situation," says Liz, who is 50 years old and works in marketing at a New Jersey university. Her mother now lives in a retirement community and, at 80, is still hoarding. "She'll never change," Liz says. "The psychologists say you have to forgive to move on, but it's hard, especially when you have to visit and you still think, 'Jeez -- look at this mess!' " Compulsive hoarding -- accumulating so much stuff that one's living space is rendered unusable -- is coming out of the closet these days, thanks to books, movies and TV shows like A&E's "Hoarders." (I first wrote about it in my Oct. 20 column.) Mental-health experts view it as a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's also seen in people with dementia, depression, attention-deficit disorder and brain injury, and after major life losses. As many as one in 50 Americans may fit the criteria. But many family members say the pain that hoarding inflicts on them is still largely unacknowledged. Some who grew up in homes like Liz's see it as a form of child abuse. Besides having their basic needs neglected, children of hoarders often grow up with little appreciation for cleanliness, or they seek out their own private space to keep clear of the clutter. Some become hyperneat adults, fearful of falling into the same pattern. "To this day, I will not clip coupons -- my mother used to save entire newspapers for them -- and if I haven't worn something in a year or so, I throw it out," says Liz..." Health & Wellness --- HEALTH JOURNAL: When Hoarders Make Life Miserable for Others Beck, Melinda. Imagine how the kid feels when there is no help or love from aunts and uncles? The child is not even being FED properly, the parents are too busy being ill and being avoidant to parent. Your BIL and SIL are both profoundly sick. Do not emulate his enmeshed dynamic with SIL. She is NOT the change agent. So sad. |
Anonymous
I'm the pp and grew up LMC. Almost all my friends mom's were like this, as well as my own mom pp. Did wealthier people eat this way? Did their moms and dads teach them what I was taught? I doubt it. This was my experience in the 70s and 80s, and I literally had to train myself to eat healthier and cook in my 30s and 40s. I was lucky, I was more intelligent, went to college, and then grad school and developed a whole new group of friends who had more successful parents who learned different lessons and tried harder. My old LMC childhood friends still mostly eat crap and wonder why they are severely overweight and unhealthy in middle age. They think I am an "idiot" for cooking so much and spending so much money on healthy food. Have you looked around the US lately pp? And, pp, you also think I am "idiotic" for sharing my own personal experience? And, my point was, how did the SIL grow up? Did she grow up poor or LMC? Did her parents grow up poor or LMC? Maybe not, but if they did she may have had no great role models and a lot of bad habits modeled for her that she has never questioned. Especially if she hasn't worked much and been exposed to new people. If she lies around all day watching TV and eating crap, she sounds exactly like the way my grandmother and mother and aunt behaved. She may think it's "normal," which it definitely isn't. |
Anonymous
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OP here. SIL grew up working class. Mom was waitress dad was factory worker. Her parents cooked but it was the typical working class fare of corned beef, chuck, eggs from their backyard chickens, lots of potatoes, stews, whatever produce they had grown in their garden, turnip, cabbage, white bread. Her parents were born in the 40s and inherited the thrifty post depression gene. Junk food was considered very expensive. Her parents who are elderly now are beside themselves and constantly worry about SIL health. Her elderly parents have fewer health issues than SIL. SIL was always picky as a child and would only eat potatoes or pasta with sauce mom had made. She wouldn't or couldn't eat any type of other sauce, even prego. SIL became a teenager and got more exposure to junk food. By the time she was at uni she was only subsisting on junk food. SIL grew up in a living home but they didn't have the type of resources for therapy. And frankly that type of thing was perhaps not recognized in rural rust belt America of the 1970s.
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Anonymous
Yet somehow your BIL thinks you will be able to undo an entire lifetime of restrictive eating issues?? Make it make sense. |
Anonymous
The only thing your brother can do is make his own food OP. And feed their dc. You could get him some sort of healthy meal kit for a gift, for him to cook. Wife is own her own, since she will only eat junk food. |
Anonymous
| Meal delivery sites sound like they'e be good here, or a farm share and a CSA with pre-made meals that are healthy - Purple Carrot, Blue Apron, Sun Basket. Her spouse should also step up and start cooking if he cares. Cook on a Sunday and freeze for the week! |