How I learned to accommodate my sensory needs at mealtimes: Tips from an autistic “picky eater”
Originally published on Medium
I’ve never thought of myself as a picky eater; there was always a reason to refuse a certain food. It was either too squishy or too bland, too cold or the wrong color or smell. All these reasons made perfect sense and were problems that could be fixed, right?
Apparently not.
I, the undiagnosed autistic, was the problem that needed to be fixed. The proposed solution? Force me to sit at the table until I ate the cold Ravioli or black eye peas on my plate. Well, I was (and still am) stubborn. I sat there until the adults realized I wasn’t going to eat more than the small bite I had choked down. And yet, I worried about getting my daily serving of fruits and vegetables. My interest in the human body and health inspired me to want to eat more “healthy foods” but…I didn’t.
Compare my childhood diet of fast food and sweets to my current diet of mostly produce and whole foods, and my favorite food being a tie between Mexican and Thai. Is that surprising from a “picky eater”?
It surprised a great uncle at a recent graduation celebration. I had commented how much I had in common with a cousin’s very particular food preferences, then the conversation veered into favorite foods and I mentioned that I loved Thai food. I felt the surprised energy from my great uncle. I could guess the question: How does a picky eater like such “unusual” foods? I want to share my full answer in case it helps someone else become more comfortable with their food and sensory preferences.
The simple answer
I work with my sensory needs, not against them.
The problem defined
Understand this: I love food. I love to eat.
What my childhood self didn’t know yet was why I hated cheese and milk and ate my cereal dry, why I ate my mashed potatoes with corn, and why I only ate my mom’s crunchy spaghetti because any other spaghetti made me want to throw up. I didn’t understand yet that certain textures made food more palatable for me and the typical American diet did not prioritize those textures (unless you count my favorite snack: chips).
My childhood self couldn’t explain that I disliked most fruits because they tasted like water to my sugar-addicted taste buds (especially when eaten out of season). I didn’t know that good fruit could be crunchy, my favorite texture. My young self couldn’t explain that I disliked most vegetables because they were usually canned or overcooked. I didn’t know vegetables could be crunchy, savory, sour and delicious. All I knew was hard green beans and mushy carrots and too-fluffy boxed mashed potatoes.
Change your food perspective
Once I could go shopping and buy my own ingredients, I cooked the meals I liked. My go-to meal was canned black beans with canned tomatoes and white rice, the perfect combination of flavor and texture.
The biggest change? I made Mexican friends and they changed my social and food life.
The first time I ate a freshly cut avocado imprinted on my mind. My sisters and I were at a friend’s house on a hot summer day. She was hungry and decided to make herself a snack so she got an avocado and sliced it open, seasoning the fruit with a bit of salt. She offered us some. Hesitant, I tasted a little and wow, it actually tasted good! Later, I learned to see fruit as dessert, to see vegetables as part of a meal, not just unpleasant medicines we must consume. And the spices! My sensory-seeking tastebuds wanted more.
My food education continued with Vietnamese and Thai food charming my tastebuds. Rice just happens to be my other favorite food and I was ecstatic to discover rice noodles.
Figure out your sensory preferences
The different foods and cultures introduced a new way to view food. The most important step, though, was figuring out my sensory preferences. That meant paying attention to the foods I disliked and noting their common unpleasant characteristics. Is the texture a problem? The flavor? The color/presentation? The smell? Or maybe the food itself is fine but something affected it, like the storage method.
After this analysis, I know how to alter a meal to my liking. For example, in elementary school, I liked sandwiches but the bread became disgustingly soggy by lunch time. Packing the meat and vegetables separate from the bread and assembling the sandwich at lunch solved this issue.
Is there a food you want to eat but normally dislike? Analyze its sensory profile and experiment with altering those characteristics to create a more palatable dish. Can you add or subtract something? Another simple example: Adding corn to mashed potatoes adds texture to a usually too-smooth side dish.
Looking back, I’m impressed that an 8 year-old me figured out little tricks like adding corn to potatoes without fully understanding my sensory needs (or how the industrial production of food affects its quality). If I was older and educated, you could’ve called me a foodie, maybe even a connoisseur.
Definitely not a picky eater.
Attorney Woo is the k-drama version of my autism: Reaction from a k-drama sometimes-fan
Originally published on Medium
I’m not a typical Korean drama (k-drama) fan. I tend to get hyped by the plot summary, watch one episode, and then stop when the drama overwhelms/annoys me. One of the first k-drama I recall watching from start to finish was “Crash Landing Onto You” from Netflix.
Which is why I am shocked to tell you how much I loved The Extraordinary Attorney Woo.
As usual, the show’s premise, an autistic female lawyer, intrigued me. But would it actually deliver? And another potential issue: the actress in the main role was not autistic herself. Was I going to see an exaggerated portrayal of an autistic woman?
I decided: Let’s watch it. If I hate it, I’ll just stop.
Watching the show
I start episode one. Immediately, Woo is introduced as a genius. I sigh. Can’t this autistic character be just a regular person? (And then my k-drama background reminds me that k-drama doesn’t do regular characters so this plot choice isn’t too unusual.)
I keep watching and notice her comfy, roomy outfits in comparison to the more fitted outfits of the other women. As someone who prioritizes comfort over other things, I appreciate the costume designer’s choices.
But wait…wait, why isn’t she masking around these new people in her new job? And WAIT is she stimming? In a professional setting?? I shake my head. This is not believable at all. (I pause the video to google the actress and learn she at first refused this role and the reason for her eventual approach to playing the character.
Hmm, I like her perspective. Alright, let’s keep watching.)
Woo doesn’t make direct eye contact with people. I just stopped forcing myself to make eye contact around family and friends. Is that what I look like now?
I finish episode one and text a second message to some friends: “Finished episode 1 of extraordinary attorney woo and it’s official — I’m obsessed. It’s so good!”
Why this k-drama sometimes-fan loved the show
What kept me watching? This k-drama has a perfect blend of genres. I love a good mystery/law show but they can be too dark. Excessive drama can be overwhelmingly annoying. The show balances these characteristics to deliver seriousness, cuteness, and intrigue. Bonus points for delivering a story that baffles my trained pattern recognition and keeps me happily unable to predict what comes next.
I also see myself in Woo. She does an awkward walk that reminds me of my own awkward, happy walk that feels like I’m floating but looks the complete opposite. I see myself in her awkward eye contact and awkward hugs, in how deeply she cares about people. And my favorite part? She likes herself, stands up for herself, and she is herself in all situations.
That’s the kind of character I want to spend my time watching.
Information overwhelm is real: How a neurodivergent woman manages this ancient problem
Originally published on Medium
I check my Instagram and notice a budgeting page is starting a new podcast. I’ve followed this mom’s business journey for over a year now and silently cheered as her hobby became a thriving business. Her budgeting system was the first that made sense and actually worked for my brain.
Was I excited to listen to this podcast? Yes. Did I still get information overwhelm? Also yes.
Time for some deep breaths.
Information overwhelm is my constant awareness of the never ending waitlist of information available to consume. It’s knowing there are books and videos and people I will never read or watch or learn from. My YouTube “watch later” playlist is a perfect example: I keep adding videos that I know I won’t watch.
And as the list grows, so does my distress.
Information overwhelm started in childhood. I stood in the library one day and stared at the shelves of books. I realized for the first time that I will never open some of them. I would never even hear about many of these books.
When I learned Spanish and American Sign Language, I gained a whole new world of information. And a new realization of how many non-English language books and media I will never know about. My personal “Watch Later” waitlist grew.
Again and again I have this realization: There’s so much I can’t consume!
To stop the overwhelm spiral, I borrow perspectives from the past.
Ancient peoples experienced information overwhelm too. This is strangely comforting. No matter when in time people exist, we feel like there’s too much knowledge to take in. Even without internet and computers and mass printing, we felt this.
This is how I stop the overwhelm: I quietly paraphrase this ancient reminder while taking deep breaths: “Of making many books there is no end…” It helps. The overwhelm is downgraded to marvel at the volume of information our human creativity produces.
This is what people do; we create. Create for ourselves, for others, and for money. I can allow the overwhelm to, well, overwhelm me. Or I can accept I won’t get to everything and just marvel.
I choose to marvel and delete my Watch Later list. (Don’t worry, it’ll be full again in a month.)
Are conscious stims better than unconscious ones? An autistic adult wonders
Originally published on Medium
My goal is to write clearly about chosen topics but this topic might be less clear because I’m connecting a theme across multiple subjects. So bear with me, okay?
Thank you.
In 2021, I learned about stimming from autistic content creators and authors. I let myself stim more at home and around people that already knew me and noticed my well-being improved and my anxiety decreased.
Around the same time, I started doing qigong videos and learned a bit about traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Qigong helps move energy through pathways (meridians) in the body. It’s similar to acupuncture but, instead of using needles to move stagnant energy, you use movement. One movement I love is shaking my hands. It’s similar to what I naturally do to ease transition to a new task or to reduce overwhelm.
Also around this same time, I read about how movement helps children focus on learning. Doing some exercises before a lesson improves their performance.
Even more recently, I listened to a presentation about “S’cool moves” — movements taught in school to improve focus. Here are the movements that stuck out to me:
Rubbing specific spots on your hands
squeezing your arms
Interestingly, I do these things when bored and needing stimulation or just for fun. These are movements I noticed other autistic people do, too.
So the questions that get louder and louder the more I learn about how movement benefits us mentally, physically, and emotionally is:
What’s the difference between doing these movements unconsciously as stims and consciously as productivity tools? Why is one set of behaviors something to eliminate and the other set encouraged?
Why aren’t people who stim congratulated for being intuitively in tune with their body’s need to regulate? Why not encouraged to further their education in self-regulation?
(Note: These are rhetorical questions. I can think of some answers to these questions but want to share the connections I’ve made.)
I didn’t know what stimming was: But I’ve done it my whole life
Originally published on Medium
When I first realized I was autistic, I felt sad because I didn’t have a major trait: I didn’t stim.
At least, I thought I didn’t stim…
And then I watched more videos by actually autistic people. I listened and watched.
And I remembered.
At church, we stood and sang 3 times at every service and I always swayed to the music. If you’re imagining the rhythmic, cool movements of a choir singer, stop. This is a back-and-forth-rocking-on-my-feet-movement. As I got older, I noticed I was the only person moving so much during the songs. So I tried to stop. If I concentrated hard, I could stand still and sing like everyone else.
And I remembered
Apparently it’s common knowledge that only nervous people fidget and avoid eye contact during conversation. I didn’t want to appear nervous when I actually wasn’t so I willed my limbs to be still. No tapping feet, dancing fingers or floppy arms. Ironically, not moving made me feel nervous and really need to move.
And I remembered
Playing with my hands: fingers tip to tip, squeeze together, make fists, interlock fingers and rock forward. Pretending I need to stretch my arms every 5 minutes just to acceptably move in public.
I remembered
Explaining to people that I “make my own sound effects” so they aren’t surprised by the random noises I make.
Certain songs playing in my head when I’m anxious and catching myself unconsciously humming or singing them aloud.
Doing a happy dance when I eat delicious food.
Dancing alone in my room after school to shake off the emotions of the day. No particular dance style. Just let the music move me to spin and jump and feel.
I remembered:
I do stim.
How I learned to make phone calls (but I think there was a better way)
Originally published on Medium
Today I made a phone call, inquiring about a public event with unclear instructions on its website. It was a simple call, lasted less than 5 minutes and I hung up, relieved to be done, as always.
This time was a little different, though: I randomly remembered how upset I felt when my mom forced me to make a phone call.
Growing up, my mom handled phone calls for me. She made my medical appointments (doctor, dentist, etc) and answered their questions while I sat by her eavesdropping. And then one day, she wouldn’t do it. I needed to make a call and she refused. I don’t remember what specifically I had to call for but it was important and I was upset at this betrayal. I sweated through the call and finished, still upset.
But
Why did I do an anime flashback right now?
I pause, letting my words catch up to the moment.
Oh. Realization: I used to think I got upset because my mom suddenly stopped making phone calls for me. Her attitude? “You should already know how to do this.”
I wasn’t ignorant. I knew she couldn’t do my phone calls forever. I knew I should learn how to do it myself. And I wasn’t scared of hard things. I was willing to be a student. And yet I still got upset.
Because?
The rest of my words catch up.
Because she didn’t acknowledge this was hard for me. This willing student needed a teacher. This wasn’t something I “already know how to do”, no matter how many one-sided phone calls I eavesdropped on. I needed some validation and practical support.
Anime flashback over.
Yes, her method worked. I can make my own phone calls now and I’m grateful. But was that really the only way to get here?
A tale of the over- and understimulated AuDHDer: When watching a video is too much and not enough
Originally published on Medium
I stare at the carpeted floor, annoyed.
Earlier, I had started playing a video from my YouTube watch later list. Seconds passed. Inside, a swirling turmoil protested “This is too much.” Each new sound from the small speakers poked my ears. I was determined to not quit watching again so I muted the sound and turned on closed captions.
Didn’t help.
Ugh. Fine. I relented and closed the app.
And so here I am, on the floor.
I like myself but sometimes I can be really annoying.
Maybe I can listen to something, music? A book? Podcast?
The inner turmoil churns again and I sigh. Nope.
Well reading is always good. I open my tablet again to a new ebook and start reading… and a couple sentences later I close the tablet, put it on the table and lay on the floor, disgusted.
I can’t even read!! What’s going on?
I lay on my back and stare at the ceiling, thinking back over my past month.
I’d had a planned activity almost every weekend. And one weekend there were 2 different things happening (a lot for me)! And during the week, I worked more than usual but slept less than usual. Mostly because it was one of my period cycles where I lie awake pretending I’ll fall asleep any moment until midnight comes. Then I finally give up and read until I can fall asleep. And once my sleep schedule is that messed up, it needs time to get back on track.
“Wow,” I say aloud to myself. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I needed a break.”
So I keep staring at the ceiling and go back to an old childhood game: what would it be like if the ceiling and ground were swapped and we walked on the ceiling? I imagine it. Then I close my eyes and breathe, allowing the inner turmoil to slowly lessen enough so I can handle stimulation later with…a walk? Or some music?
Ehh, we’ll see what I can handle.
Thanks to Helen Olivier’s article If You Are Autistic with ADHD, You Are a Study in Contradictions for inspiring this.
Interpreting human emotion isn’t just about facial expressions: How this autistic woman uses information to read people
Originally published on Medium
I recently learned that we all have more than 5 senses. The 3 other senses are: vestibular (our movement and balance sense), proprioception (awareness of the body’s position in space) and interoception (feeling internal body signals like hunger and thirst).
Clearly, my first-grade science lessons are outdated.
I think I have another sense, too, that I use to understand people. Although I can’t read faces that well, I read other information like an open book written in a foreign language I learned overseas.
Let me explain.
In books, we can’t see faces, right? So how do we know when a character is upset? The author “shows” us with description, like the following sentence:
She crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes at the photo.
But based on this description, the character could be feeling suspicious, or standoffish, or maybe she’s just examining the photo closely with narrowed eyes since she forgot her magnifying glass at home.
The author needs to add clarifying information, either some context or a simple adverb. For example, she edits the sentence to say:
She crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes angrily at the photo.
Ah-ha! Now we know for sure that the character is angry for a reason the author will soon show. There’s no doubt about the emotion. The author told us and she knows her characters well.
Unfortunately, real life doesn’t have authors writing clarifying descriptions for me.
I’ve always thought of books as working backwards from real life. In books, authors set the scene for context, sprinkle in descriptive clues and reveal the feelings. In real life, we see the feelings, struggle to decide between red herrings and real clues, and then need to work out the context (which sometimes remains unknown). Real life can be a real mystery.
So how do I know what someone is feeling if I don’t rely on facial expressions?
Evidence, my dear Watson.
I examine the evidence available. I notice the person’s stance, eye gaze, body placement, stated cultural background and language. Are there other people in the room? Where are those people placed? Is the overall vibe positive or negative?
If the person I’m with is an acquaintance or friend, I gather all this evidence and run it through tests: What did the person say before this moment? How did they say it: rushed, slow, hesitating? Is this a normal speech pattern? If not, what’s changed? Is this a normal topic for them to discuss? If not, what’s changed?
If communicating by text with a friend, I check the textual information. Is the message all caps, all lowercase, properly capitalized at the start of sentences? Is that normal? If not, what’s changed? What happened before we started communicating? Has it been a long time since we talked and I need to update my mental database?
My mental database keeps a lot of information on people. Even I’m unsure how much information it contains. It runs in the background and updates me with working hypotheses. The longer I know someone and the more information in my database, the more accurate I am. With my husband, I have a 99.99% accuracy rate (so far) knowing whether a one word text means he’s busy at work or upset. I know the difference between a normal text and one that tries to hide a day going badly.
But even with strangers ahead of me in line at the store, I can read their character, which I will immediately discard as speculation because we all know to “Never judge a book by it’s cover.” And then the stranger begins interacting with someone ahead and…somehow I was right. Or I scroll past a post on social media from an old acquaintance I haven’t seen in years, then scroll back up, concerned suddenly but dismiss it for a lack of concrete evidence. And then later a mutual friend updates me about the old acquaintance’s new concerning situation. I’m not surprised but I can’t explain exactly what information led me to be concerned.
(My database doesn’t yet support conversion into words.)
So if you stand in front of me feeling complicated feelings, I will be busy gathering evidence and may not see your facial expressions. But next week, when you reveal big news, I will have already figured out a quarter of it and pieced together the rest by the time you are halfway done talking.
Of course, I wouldn’t have to do all this work if people just told me what they’re (honestly) feeling when asked and then (honestly) explain why.
So it’s up to you: do we want to do this the easy way or the hard way?
Do I wish I knew that I was autistic as a child? That’s a hard question for this black woman to answer
Originally published on Medium
I met up with family this past fall who hasn’t seen me since I was a little girl. Interacting with them, I noticed some neurodivergent traits. The possibility was confirmed when I found out one of my little cousins is officially diagnosed with ADHD.
When I met him, I could tell right away because we’re so similar: he’s a picky eater (we have similar favorite foods!), he likes to make random noises, and he jumped up and down every few seconds while sitting on the floor. I wanted to join him in his wiggles but I settled for (hopefully) subtly swinging my legs back and forth. My great-aunt called at him from her comfy chair to sit down and asked “Why couldn’t he keep sitting like everyone else?”
I winced. Because he has ADHD I wanted to say. But I didn’t know how to do that without being rude. You don’t talk back to your older relatives like that. Especially not to ones who last saw you as a little girl in hair ribbons and probably still think of you as one.
And that’s partly the reason why I’m not sure it would matter if I was diagnosed autistic as a little kid. No one fully understands autism, especially back then, and being black and female complicates things.
As a black girl, I learned to not talk back to adults, to not really talk at all around them. They didn’t seem to want to hear us kids. The only way to get heard was to talk louder and talk more and even that wasn’t a 100% guaranteed method. My little sisters could but I never figured out how and copying them didn’t work for me so I stuck to being quiet. This meant no one knew how much trouble I had expressing myself, especially as I got older. I didn’t know how to share the trouble I was having socially. And as a young person, I couldn’t ask questions and get the explanations I needed.
(“Because I said so” is not a reason, okay? It’s rude; kids are human, too.)
No one seemed to notice any of that. I was smart and doing well in school, so I had to be doing okay, right?
Did anyone pick up on my autism as a child? I was usually one of the few black kids in my classes so this obvious difference could explain away any odd behaviors. Interestingly, my one bullying experience was from the only other little black girls in my 4th grade class. Could they tell that something else made me different?
It’s possible an elementary school teacher noticed something too. She brought an event to my mom’s attention after a school assembly: I didn’t speak to a little girl. (My little kid memory is fuzzy so I don’t recall exactly what happened.) My mom pushed back that this wasn’t an actual situation so it was dropped. At the time I was relieved my mom stuck up for me (one of her often-used strengths: defending her daughters against unfairness). Looking back now, I wonder why this particular incident pushed my teacher to say something. Did she notice my autistic traits and want to get me some help? Who knows.
And if that was her goal, it might not have helped me.
Autism was and still is mostly seen as a mental health or intelligence issue. That label could have affected how people saw and treated me. I’m sure my mom would have fought against that outcome. To her and other adults, I would still be seen as shy, as needing to just try harder. And remember, I inherited autism from someone in my family so why would they consider my behavior weird?
I wonder: How many of us are black with no idea of our neurodivergence because our family members are also undiagnosed and didn’t notice anything odd, because they didn’t have the luxury to relax enough to notice there’s another reason why life is so hard?
When I saw my little cousin trying to stop jumping up and down during my visit, I wished he could wiggle around as much as he wanted to when visiting his grandma. And I recognized myself in his grandma, the version of myself before being diagnosed, always monitoring me and my sisters’ behavior and how we appeared to others, making sure we acted how we were “supposed to” even in the privacy of home.
We were all so alike.
So do I wish I was diagnosed earlier? I don’t know.
I don’t care anymore, honestly. I’m just glad I have the privilege to know now.