Drugs and side effects

[Trust5]

So my 27 year old daughter with BPD and I have made great improvement in our daily conversations  which are positive and upbeat. While previously having to be hospitalized every 2 - 4 months, she has not been hospitalized for 8 months. However, I am struggling with her reliance on a great number of drugs - 7 or 8 of them and her obesity which was a side effect.  Her psychiatrist is supposedly reducing but also changing and increasing.  I hate that she has taken  Ambien for probably 2 years and still doesn’t sleep at night.  She was a healthy weight all her life until this past year.  She doesn’t seem to be making any progress to getting back to her normal weight despite seeing a nutritionist and working with a former chef to learn how to cook healthy. 

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Maya L]

It must be hard to see her struggle!

Do you feel that the drugs are helping?

[Trust5]

I feel like she has had to give up her physical health in order to make gains in her mental health.  After not having an argument for several weeks, she had a blowout tonight over spending money which is a huge trigger for her anger.  What made it so bad is that she opened the freezer, grabbed the ice cream and started shoveling it into her mouth until I could grab it from her.  She had never used eating as an ammunition against me before.

[formflier]

So...you saw her ice cream use as "against you"?

Do I have that right?

Best

FF

[Trust5]

FF I saw her eating ice cream use as a way “to get back at me”  because she knows how desperately I want her to get back to her normal weight.   It pains me so much to see her become obese after being a normal weight for her lifetime. I had a short period where I gained 20 to 30 pounds and I remember how awful it felt until I got back down to my normal weight so I feel her pain yet I feel her rebelliousness on top of it. She doesn’t seem to make an attempt to follow guidelines  despite hiring a chef to help her cook healthy for about 12 weeks, seeing a nutritionist, seeing a weight management counselor, etc. She doesn’t seem to apply what she is learning at all.   For the several days she stayed with us, there was hardly any healthy eating going on  although she did go on walks with us and go to the gym with us.  She still sleeps a lot and eats  during the night. I hate the way her drugs are controlling her life and now she is addicted to sugar on top of being addicted to her drugs.

[Trust5]

Maya L.  Thanks for your empathy.   I had such low self-esteem and felt so horrible when I was slightly overweight. I can’t imagine being obese and being happy  but she seems to just except it instead of work to make progress losing weight.  Her solution to the problem is to just buy more clothes. She handed us three bags to take to Goodwill. I counted 25 items.  She said they were too small yet most of them more up to 3XXX so I feel like she thinks she can just put clothes aside and buy something new whenever she wants with our money.  Again, I am hoping to bring  this up in couples counseling if we ever get there!  I don’t know what to think about the drugs. Am I supposed to be grateful that her mental health is better when her physical health has gone down the tube? 14 hospitalizations in four years and over 60 drugs have caused her to believe that drugs are the way to feel better. While I am happy that if she makes it to February it will be one year of no hospitalizations,   I still would like to see more progress in other areas.

[formflier]

What if she ate ice cream without giving you a second thought?  Or anyone else for that matter?

Perhaps she thought it would taste good, and gave it no further thought.

A helpful axiom is:  Figure out the most parsimonious explanation for something and stick with that.

If you want to change someone else's behavior, especially in your home, use what is within your boundaries. 

Your home, your freezer, you decide what is in there.  If you don't like people eating ice cream in your home, don't have ice cream in your home.

Much simpler that way.

Best,

FF

[PeaceMom]

Trust,
My DS 24 BP1 has been on about 20 different psych meds all causing weight gain and sugar/carb addiction. I will no longer debate whether or not that is true w/psychiatrists. It IS true with my son. One drug had him gain 50 lbs in 4 weeks.
My heart goes out to you, but you must learn how to detach and not be so filled with compassion and empathy that it clouds your own reality.
My counselor tells me to put on my raincoat and zip it up so I quit feeling, owning all my kid’s struggles. I’m compassionate to a fault.
The good news is, he did stabilize and was able to reduce meds and he’s much healthier than before.
Keep taking excellent care of you and maybe (or maybe not) it will rub off.

[twocrazycats]

Since you said she was a healthy weight all her life until this year with the many medications, it seems to me this is more an issue to work on with the psychiatrist, finding meds and doses that will help while not causing too much weight gain as a side effect. They're probably affecting her blood sugar. She probably can't help how she feels, and since she struggles anyway, it is probably extremely hard to make herself not eat. Honestly, I wouldn't make food or weight an issue with her at all at this point. I know it's hard to watch your daughter do anything that's harmful to herself. I hope the medications can be adjusted more to stop or at least minimize this side effect.
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