Testimonials

If you are thinking about coming to our Carer Support Group and / or Carer Skills Workshops, or you just want to be added to my Carer email list (blind copy to preserve confidentiality), these testimonials might be helpful. No family should feel alone at any stage of their loved one’s eating disorder, and being part of our Carer Community can really help.

Comments from Carers who have attended the Monthly Carer Support Group and who are on the Carer email list.

“I really appreciate all the help which you have offered me in various ways, particularly in respect of the anorexic issues I’ve struggled with. Your service is clearly run with dedication, expertise and warmth and I feel privileged to have been on the receiving end of it, if only briefly. I have felt both comforted and enlightened at a time of despair, which has meant a great deal to me. Should my daughter decline over coming months, I’ll be back in touch, but for the moment will opt to take a step back from meeting with the group (who I wish all the very best to and will continue to support in spirit).”

“Wonderful meeting and follow up e-mail Jenny! Again holding a light in the darkness for so many. What a wonderful day in my life when I met you Jenny. Thank you for taking the time and thought to send this. Hope you are all well. Warm thoughts and a big hug.”

“Keep up the good work dear Jenny. I shall always be indebted to you for breaking open the glories of successful communication despite the overbearing presence of an ED. I am continuing to build on that foundation with every help we are offered.”

“Thanks Jenny, I feel like I am living on a different stratosphere at the moment. It does worry me how she will ever eat for us. I took our daughter out on Saturday over her afternoon snack and she refused so I had to take her back early. I am coming tomorrow night to yours. Your sessions are keeping me going and enabling me to continue to talk to our daughter even in her angry moments.”

“The “new format” carers support group in which we use the skills from the New Maudsley method is working really well as it makes our conversation more focused and positive. For example, yesterday we used cycle of change, ABC, DARN, SMART, readiness/ confidence ruler, looking for green shoots, taking small steps and praise. It is amazing how you can reframe a seemingly negative behaviour change into something much more positive. The carers seem to be really embracing the ideas, they just need the odd prompt to remind them.”

“Thank you for the last meeting and for sending me this email about this awesome mother! It was especially moving as that was what I felt like when helping my daughter to get better. It felt like I was in a battle with anorexia and I wasn’t going to let her win. You need to remain focused and learn as much as you can to outsmart your enemy, and attending your workshops and group helped me to do just that. So thank you!”

“Hi Jenny, have just read this (follow up e-mail) and I’m so glad I did! Hope is very important for carers, maintaining it is very hard at times, but actually I don’t think you have a choice”

Comments from Carers Who Have Attended the Kent Workshops Based on the New Maudsley Approach

“Jenny you are an Angel! When I arrived (at the workshop) I looked around at some haunted faces, heard some traumatic stories, relived my own terror at times, and yet .. your unerring positivity, your calmness, your all-encompassing embrace, your skill, your knowledge and true EMPATHY(!) lifted the darkness and I am sure made everyone feel SO much better. I feel more positive today than I have for ages. It may not last, but that’s Ok because today is good, and tomorrow looks alright too! “

“Being in such a warm, relaxed and open environment with people going through such a spectrum of experiences that all shared a common thread was quite humbling. My older daughter’s openness about her recovery from her bulimia was inspirational and gave such hope as did hearing about your son’s incredible recovery. I’ve already seen my stopping to really listen rather than my talking has made a difference to my younger daughter today too! Whilst I know it is important to take each day as it comes but this evening, I feel optimistic that all will be as it is meant to be. Thank you so so much you give of yourself to so many of us, but like a ripple in a pond, the impact of your help reaches so far and is felt by so many.”

“Thank you for your workshops, I feel inspired to try all we have learnt not just because of the workshop but of the enthusiastic, dynamic & professional way you communicate it to us”

“My husband and I are overwhelmed with the care & support we receive and the abundant benefits of your workshops. We feel very lucky with all the care from everything you organise”

“You have helped us enormously in terms of increasing our knowledge and giving us confidence to deal with our daughter’s anorexia and the added issue of her ongoing depression. Not least, you have given us the means to communicate with each other; why is it so hard for a married couple to talk about their daughter? You are an inspirational woman, Jenny”

“Just a quick email to thank you for allowing me to gate crash your workshops it was very generous of you. I thought the course was excellent both in content and presentation and I was disappointed I had to miss two. I came away from your workshops thinking that if therapists had this type of training and input regarding eating disorders early in their training what a difference it would make because as amazing as it is there is to the best of my knowledge still, very little time dedicated to this subject whilst training” from a local Counsellor

“Jenny I don’t know how you have the energy and enthusiasm for helping us like you do but your workshops have held our family together over these past few horrendous months. You have given me the strength, support and practical language to try and get through to my daughter in a positive manner. You have also helped me to accept and to adjust to a long road ahead”

“It means so much to my husband & myself that you have put so much work & effort into presenting this workshop with so much information, help, skills & given with fantastic enthusiasm which inspired & gave us hope that we could make a difference.”

“Jenny has the ability to instill confidence and a belief that there is light at the end of what is a long, narrow, dark tunnel, which we can only reach when we accept that we can guide our loved ones but not solve their problems for them. There was a range of different caring scenarios that Jenny had to cater for in our group but the common theme was our wanting help, and Jenny’s guidance and inspiration was felt and appreciated by everyone there. My thoughts have turned to the session time & time again. I definitely had a eureka moment in that is not about how quickly I want or I think my daughter should recover but about the right rate of recovery for her and by coincidence she asked me this evening why she wasn’t seeing a faster rate of weight restoration whilst she was eating so much more & I was able to explain the increased metabolic rate and we chatted through your earlier email about the challenges of refeeding!”

“I want to thank you so much for your brilliant work shop. My partner gave you praise indeed for the professional yet interesting, intelligent clever way the work shop is presented & always thought provoking, which gives us so much support & material to work with, importantly it encourages us to hope”

“It has been a great comfort to have the support of the work shop for both of us. A big thank you for the 200% work & effort you put into the presentation /content, we are definitely the winners”

“Many thanks for all this, Jenny, and also for the great session on Wednesday; knowledge is empowering, and sharing problems is comforting even when we are forced to confront the horror of what has happened to our loved ones. Thank you for giving me the belief that my daughter can recover from her anorexia”

Comments from Eating Disorder Sufferers Whose Carers Have Undertaken the New Maudsley Approach

“I felt they (my parents) became “lighter” and “freer” somehow. It gave them comfort that other people face the same issues, the same problems, the same challenges. They were then less stressed around me.”

“I feel it really helped and the main thing that helped was her staying calmit really, really helpedwhen she stays calm, I sort of stayed calm myself and just got over it”

” I think my Mum realised that if my life was going to change, I had to want it to. She left more decisions up to me and gave me extra responsibilities. It was hard not to abuse her trust at times but the guilt and sense of shame I had if I did was unbearable. I think if she hadn’t have “taken a back seat” I would have just stayed stuck for years”

“It was like for years they (my parents) were just trapped with me in my illness. They wouldn’t leave me on my own, wouldn’t go on holiday, out to the cinema or anywhere. The whole family just lived through and focused on my eating disorder. It was like we were trapped in a bubble. The book I think gave them scope to look outside the illness in addition to caring; to take time just for them, to do things they enjoyed, to live their lives instead of living everything through me and my illness.”

“She recognises that I have AN, it’s not just my personalityand it’s the AN she hates I like that she sees it as separate in one way because it makes me know that she doesn’t hate me”

“I think mainly the confidence thingbefore they felt panicked; they didn’t know what to doso I think the confidence was the biggest one”

“Her attitude towards me has got a thousand times better”