i had sort of therapy yesterday. and my therapist asks me how i have been eating and sleeping. of course, i mentioned that i am sleeping a lot better but the eating is haphazard. she asked me to clarify and i said ... "well, today i had a scrambled egg with cheese and a granny smith apple for breakfast but yesterday i had one and a half pb&j sandwiches". well, she was understandably aghast. her response was "wait what?! do my a favour - look up 'neurodivergent eating' for me" ... and lemme tell you something ... RESONANCE!!!

so, first of all, i learned a new word interoception. then i learned that neurodivergent folks tend to have a problem with it... in that we don't often hear those signals. so "i am hungry", even if it exists, either never registers or we're so intent on what we're doing (flow) that we ignore the signals. this usually means we get stuck in this hell-cycle of having energy to do stuff, getting so into that stuff that we forget to eat or we put off eating, and then not having enough energy to do anything at all.

then i found this article that talks about how this lack or limited interoception shows up in neurodivergent folks.

now, that site is ... questionable at best. it's a glorified blog. but it gave me some basic information to help me recognise the symptoms in myself ... namely (and according to psychologytoday.com):

• Sticking to one type of texture (e.g., soft foods, crunchy foods)
• Avoiding cold foods
• Avoiding hot foods
• Only eating foods of a certain color palette (e.g., only tan foods, only red foods)
• Avoiding foods with a certain smell
• Refusing foods if small changes are made (e.g., new packaging, new brand, new presentation)
• Taking a long time to finish a meal
• Ingesting dirt, lotions, stones, or other objects
• Going long periods of time without remembering to eat or feeling hungry
• Eating alone or only in a certain location
• Going long periods of time without the awareness of hunger
• Eating large quantities of food after going long periods of time without awareness of hunger
• Developing a strong fixation on one, or a few, types of foods for a period of time

(btw: i should note that the psychologytoday.com article lists these as evidence of neurodivergent eating in eating disorders ... and not something i want to bring attention to intentionally ... so read with some skepticism of the entire article.)¹

now i recognise a few of these in myself ... namely the "going long periods of time without remembering to eat or feeling hungry" and "going long periods of time without the awareness of hunger". there's also a little bit of "developing a strong fixation on one, or a few, types of foods for a period of time". which ... bolsters that idea that i have always been this way, but learned very early to mask it so that i fit into what society thinks of as normal.

btw: i am not sure how to feel about how my masking was (a) so very thorough for so very long and (b) that is only now showing up in my life. but that is a story for another day. (i should probably be making notes of all that "story for another day" posts i need to be making, shouldn't i?)

anyway ... it hit me hard how i have been inadvertently fucking with my equilibrium for so very long... i immediately went and put some chickpeas (or garbanzo beans) to soak. i'll have to dig up the recipes i found later ... (making mental note to go look up the chickpea recipes i found last week or so)

ironically ... i am sitting here at my laptop, at almost noon ... writing this post ... essentically ignoring the fact that an hour ago, i registered that i was hungry and did nothing about it

i should go prep something to eat ...

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