Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger
I'm going to estimate that the number of times people on the internet determine that a person they've never met or talked to might need therapy whereupon that person actually seeks out therapy are few and far between.
Before I gave my previous advice I'd already determined that KMD is a bright individual, and if he thought she needed therapy he'd already probably tried to approach the subject, but except for interventions and institutional commitments, you really can't force individuals to get help. And most of the time they either have reached a point where they are so unhappy with the status of their own life that they willingly seek out such a solution on their own (which KMD gave no indication of) or they are highly resistant to the idea.
I didn't want to encourage KMD to give any kind of ultimatum, because he wants the relationship to work. As I said, he can't change the way she thinks about weight or eating (because he's not a therapist and she's not interested in therapy at this time), so the "gentle", relationship-saving approach is to communicate his feelings about the way she treats him in a way that gets through to her.
That's why I suggested what looks like a simplistic approach that didn't seem to address the problem ... because the problem he can't solve is how she thinks, but the problem he might be able to solve is how she treats him.
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Erm, what? I was just wondering if she was still in therapy.
You can be perfectly functional and still have habits you had when you were destructive. I'm not telling him to tell her what to do, and really he can't do anything. I'm just trying to say that even though she's no longer anorexic, that doesn't mean that all the habits she had goes away and there's no trace of her past condition. So it would probably be best to keep that in mind to better understand where she's coming from.