Not Going Back

I've been thinking about the visit to L-- (the registered dietitian and counselor) and I don't think I'm going back.

I had been leaning toward giving her a second chance, a chance to prove that she can stretch her thinking to encompass my autism in the aspect of eating disorders, but I have changed my mind.

I don't owe her a second chance. What I do owe is myself: I owe myself the kind of protection I would give my child if I had one.

L-- didn't listen, but instead strung together a series of catch phrases I uttered, put them together out of context, and came up with a cookie cutter diagnosis that doesn't even fit. (I sincerely doubt you can be anorexic without knowing what you're doing, and until I started using the app to track my food intake, I had no clue I was restricting my calorie intake as much as I was. How can I then be anorexic? Isn't the base of it deliberate calorie restriction for a variety of reasons (body dysmorphia, searching for control in an uncontrollable world, etc?) You can't do intentional calorie restriction if you don't even know you're doing it).

She wants to teach me how to eat naturally. IE, she wants to teach me how to eat the way a neurotypical person does, despite being told that I've never eaten that way in my entire life. An autistic person is going to eat differently--digestive and food issues aren't part of the diagnosis for autism but they are so common that perhaps they should be.

But I'd give her a second chance for all that.

No, where it breaks is my new special interest: food. She wants to take something that gives me so much joy, fascination, entertainment, and happiness and turn it into something shameful, a part of the eating disorder, something to be overcome and ignored.

No way in hell I'm letting her do that to me. I haven't had this much sheer, unadulterated fun with anything for a very long time. To a neurotypical professional like herself, I'm sure it looks like the obsession that's part of an eating disorder.

Special interests certainly are obsessive, I'll grant that. But obsessions that come with mental illnesses like eating disorders don't bring peace and joy into your life; they make your life worse.

And, simply put, I didn't start this special interest until after the binge eating was under control and no longer a problem.

So now I simply have to tell her.

*sigh*. Something that would be so easy for a neurotypical person and is so difficult for me. One simple, terror-filled, dreaded phone call. I hate phone calls; making them or receiving them.