This is something I’ve struggled with since early childhood and never had a name for until a few years ago, to this day have never spoken with someone who had ARFID as an adult. I can’t even say how it feels to hear an expert in their field validate that this is a real disorder and something I can really recover from, not just picky eating I chose not to grow out of. My parents tried everything with me to get me to eat, including the advice of one doctor who echoed the “she’s not going to starve herself” sentiment; thank goodness for the one doctor who told them to just make sure dinner had at least one food I could eat without having a panic attack. I so appreciate people like this who try to understand what happened rather than shaming and belittling those with problems like mine. Thank you for your incredible work, sir!!
I can remember as far back as being in pre-k having complete meltdowns when introduced to new foods. I don't know what exactly triggered it, but to this day I still struggle with trying new foods. I was the only kid who ate the same lunch everyday and I thought I was the only person in the world like that until about 4 years ago when I first discovered ARFID. I had no idea other people suffered with what I've been dealing with and I finally don't feel alone in this battle anymore. I'm married to a wonderful man who understands and encourages me to break out of my comfort zone and explore new foods. I'm so glad it's a recognized condition in my lifetime and I'm not alone.
My son was born in 2008 and struggled not just with eating issues, but with the lack of understanding of doctors/teachers you talk about. I am so glad to see people like you bringing so much more awareness to it, and glad for them there is an actual name/DSM category for this now. I think he fell into the 10% that was mostly sensory you mention. . At a few months old if you touched just a spot of tomato sauce or similar to his tongue he projectile vomited. Somehow this didn’t traumatize him, though, so he didn’t have the PTSD you mention. There were certainly major phobias around food still, especially texture, and LOTS of throwing up many times a day for years, and it was a very long road, and he didn’t eat a fruit, vegetable or meat for the first 6 or 7 years, but I can happily say that he now eats EVERYTHING. Sushi, haggis, octopus. I mean, stuff I won’t even touch. Just in case anyone ever needs a success story! Thanks for all your great work...
Please ,can you help me ? How did you cure him ? We have the same case ,she is 8years old ,she never eat any thing ,since she was born . No one can recognize her disease..
@@pathologypathology sorry, I don't always get notifications from youTube, Best way to reach me would be the contact form on www.the-heath.co.uk. Thank you
Thank you for your dedication and hard work. Thank you for helping people like me. Most of my entire life, I had no idea that I was struggling with a real issue. I never understood why I would only eat french fries. When I was little, I used to wish upon stars all the time to be like everyone else. As a kid, it's really scary to feel you are different; like you said, we avoided pizza parties and barbeques alike because it was easier that way. That way, we wouldn't have to be bombarded with questions, or deal with the judgement. People that don't understand can be cruel. I only discovered I had ARFID when I was 16, and when I did, I felt less alone than ever before. You validate what we are going through further than just "oh, she is picky" or "he is fussy" and give us the strength to want to overcome our own minds. Thank you for all you do ❤
Just wondering, if you don't mind me asking. For how long did you eat only fries? I have a son that French fries is his only food choice for more than 5 years. Did you get therapy and if so, what kind ? Thank you !
@@mayan9718 my biggest food is Pizza and French fries lol. It’s been over 25 years!!! I’m 35 now, and 90% my diet is pizza and FF. Started around age 5-6-7? I be glad to talk more.
Thank you ❤ I'm 63 yo and have suffered with AFRID all my life, but I am now just learning what it is. I've been told it's anorexia and symptoms of panic disorder. But with tears in my eyes and hope in my heart, I realize that I may be able to change and fix it. It's been an extremely debilitating issue that has dictated all events in my life. 🙏
i’m 18 now i’ve been eating just popcorn since i was five i have no nutritional deficiency’s and im a healthy weight but i’ve always had this lingering feeling i would drop dead randomly like the man who lived off of potato based products. ive never met someone older with arfid im glad ill be able to live a long life regardless of my disability
you certainly can change it. It's all about re-educating the mind to realise that food isn't actually dangerous in a way it understands. Once that's done, all the defence mechanisms become redundant
I clicked on a VICE video of a guy who's been eating only Mac'n'cheese for 17 years because I found it strange and could relate to it. I just now realised there is such thing as ARFID and that holy shit, I have mental health issues. All my life, I have been known in my family as being a picky eater. I cannot even begin to describe the feeling of shame & embarrassment whenever we'd be at a social event where people offer me food and 2 things would happen: 1- The absolute scare that if forced into it, I might gag and cause a scene for being weird 2- My family thinking they're doing me a favor responding on my behalf with something along the lines of "no, poor baby he's a picky eater" making me want the earth to open up and swallow me whole I actually have vivid memories of eating various foods, fruits & veggies. I know I did. But when asked, my mother says that when young, I had some sort of stomach issues which made me incessantly throw up and somehow developed a disgust feeling towards most foods. This is really ruining my life because I either have to decline invitations for social gatherings or be absolutely sure my safe foods would be available there. This usually is pizza, pasta & cheeseburgers with just the meat & cheese, that's it ! For all other foods, I find it super weird when people say "ohhh that looks so good" when inside I'm like "how does this look good ? It looks the total opposite of good" It's so bad, even the smell of some foods makes me very uncomfortable (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc) I really would like to know whether there's an actual treatment for this ? Or do I actually just have to suck it up and baby step my way to include other foods ? I'm 28 now and this problem is getting in the way of other aspects of my life, sometimes even dating.
@@FelixEcoPsych Thank you so much for writing back ! I looked into this video description but wasn't able to find any email address. Where and how may I get in touch with you seeing as I presently live in Morocco
Amazing work Felix. You have been the only therapist who've summed my experience with food so succintly and elegantly. I'm looking forward to the day I can afford some sessions with you :) (For self reference: 9:32)
I am a 57 year old physician. I have ARFID. I have had it since I was a toddler. I have been variously diagnosed with depression, bipolar 2, borderline personality, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and Asperger's (now known as high functioning autism). All were wrong. All were diagnosed before ARFID was known (before the 2013 DSM-5). Interestingly, when I was a child I was so emaciated I looked anorexic but was never diagnosed with that. I was a nurse before I was a doctor, and in nursing school I had a nutritional assessment that said I was fine. Nobody in my family or friend circle could believe it because my diet was so restricted. I was very skinny, but healthy, except for a calcium and vitamin D deficiency. I have been on vitamin D and calcium supplement since a very young age and I do have osteopenia (sort of pre-osteoporosis), and very poor teeth. I know how my ARFID started. I will not go into it in detail here, but it certainly was fear based. It originated in a sort of PTSD. It was not an illness, it was how one of my parents tried to get me to eat. I also happen to have a very high IQ (top 2%) and am a "physician's physician". I teach medicine at the highest levels and can out-think, out-diagnose, and out-manage the vast majority of doctors in all medical, surgical, and healthcare fields, including psychology. Doctors, residents, and medical students pay me well to teach them. Non of that matters. We are all just simply human. When I realized I thought I had ARFID, I went and got properly diagnosed. I have had no specific therapy and have simply progressively improved. I am definitely not recovered, but I suffer less, and eat more variety. What distresses me now is knowing how many children endure being tortured and simply labeled as "picky" because too many parents don't understand this disorder exists. Outside my professional life I work as a volunteer with abused children. I have found a few with ARFID that suffered abuse because of it. I am not on any sort of awareness bandwagon, but I do hope that people do become more aware of what ARFID is so that we can intervene long before it has a major impact on those who have it. Early screening and diagnosis is key. We need to reach pediatricians, child development specialists, daycare workers, teachers, nutritionists, parents, and anybody else that works with children. We need to screen all children. There is screening, but it needs improved and more widely applied. I want it to be standard screening for all children and am working toward that professionally.
My son literally started showing symptoms of ARFID after he had his tonsils and adenoids removed. Unfortunately he didn’t got diagnosed till he completely stopped eating food and now lives on nutrition supplements. Thank you for this talk, really helpful
found this video and your website from just recently learning that this is a problem i can work on fixing. very excited to learn more and start working on it. will be checking our your site this week. thanks for posting and your work in this field.
I’m 55 and have been struggling with this my whole life. You made me laugh when to mention eating gravel. Because I could without concern (like a bet or dare) put gravel in my mouth. Now I wouldn’t swallow it because of the harm it would cause. But I would before I would ever but any green vegetable in my mouth, knowing full well it is not only safe to eat but good for me.
I am autistic and had ARFID for around 8 years, but I overcame it mostly due to exposure therapy and also the need to survive/leave an abusive relationship. I never thought "survival mode" would help me push through and eat a bit more each day, gaining strength and weight more and more, enough to leave a bad situation... but it did just that. It took a solid year and a half to get better (still not fully over it at that point, however) - it was amazing to witness the change. So that's something else you could possibly add to your research with overcoming ARFID. :)
Unfortunately survival mode tends to work in the opposite way for many people, where they would rather starve to death in some remote future rather than believe they are eating something harmful and dangerous in the present. Exposure Therapy on it's own is the long hard way of overcoming ARFID but once the brain is led to believe that food is not dangerous then it can embark on experiments with food exposure, often even after one session
@@FelixEcoPsychHi there, I have been diagnosed with ASD at 40 years old, which then also lead to an ARFID diagnosis. It explains so much about my life-long unhealthy relationship with food. I have all the gagging/retching/avoidance that comes with certain foods, but I just don't believe it's due to a phobia around those foods. I feel a real sense of disgust and revulsion to certain foods and cannot bring them up to my mouth without gagging. It's not at all because I think they are going to make me sick, it's because I'm expecting their taste, smell or texture to be too intense and overwhelming for my senses. I feel like it's a nervous system overreaction, due to heightened senses (common for people with ASD), rather than a phobia over food. I get a physical shock, akin to being slightly electrocuted, as soon as certain foods hit my senses, especially my taste buds. I hypothesise that for people who are ASD, it's not a food phobia as such, but rather a sensory / nervous system reaction. What are your thoughts on this, specifically the relationship between ARFID and ASD?
Thank you Felix! I just discovered yesterday that ARFID does not have an ICD 10 code and that infuriated me. You doing talks like this and spreading awareness means the world.
@@FelixEcoPsych Oh that’s great to hear! I noticed when I researched it that it was listed in the “other eating disorders” category rather than a named category such as bulimia or binge-eating disorder. Definitely a huge plus that insurance is willing to cover the treatment, very validating!
5 years old is a little young. I have worked with a mature 6 year old but he is the exception to the rule. I've pasted his story below taken from : www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/9888789/children-afrid-eating-disorder-treatment/? SIX-YEAR-OLD Louis De La Cour lives in Hertfordshire, with mum Natalie, 43, dad Leon, 45, and sister Florrie, ten. Louis began receiving treatment for ARFID last month, as he would only eat a handful of foods. Natalie, a freelance writer, says: "Louis was a great eater as a baby, but we feared there might be a problem when we tried to introduce new foods when he was three. Until he was six, Louis would only eat plain, beige foods such as cereal and toast. He liked smooth peanut butter, chicken, yoghurts and milk. He’d only eat fruit that had been blended. I’d get family members saying ‘If he’s really hungry he’ll eat’, but when a child has this condition they won’t, due to their fear and anxiety around food. Louis has never eaten a crisp, a chip or potato of any sort and getting him to try new foods has been impossible. Louis's mum Natalie self-diagnosed him after doing her own research when she couldn't get help from the NHS 8 Louis's mum Natalie self-diagnosed him after doing her own research when she couldn't get help from the NHSCredit: Louis Wood - The Sun Holidays are tricky. Last year we went to Greece. He can’t stand herbs, but they were on everything, so he only ate chocolate pancakes. There is little understanding of this condition and I felt very alone. After a lot of research we self-diagnosed Louis - you don’t get any help on the NHS. We went to see psychologist Felix Economakis, a specialist in the disorder. He explained what ARFID was and how it’s only in the past ten years they’ve put a name to this condition. One therapy session with Felix has made a huge difference and Louis has been able to expel his fear and begin eating new foods - even a bit of home cooked lasagne. There needs to be more awareness, it’s not just a child being a fussy eater. Support is there, if you know where to turn."
Thank you for the talk! I was in a face-to-face session with Felix myself a few years ago and ate food afterwards that was previously associated with disgust for me. That was a great experience. The problem, however (and I have since been to a non-specialist, non-recommendable clinic where I ate a lot of new things anyway): I don't like it enough to expand my food palate. None of it, and we're certainly talking about 30 new dishes. So the question remains for me, how do I expand my food palate after treatment?
SO much great stuff happening in your talk, Felix. I love the flow that you are in, while you introduce people to helpful ideas. Excellent! Thanks for the hypnosis shout out, btw.
Great content Felix...Good to know people like you making this awareness...my son is 3, got this disorder..he only drink milk after 2 years old till now..nothing else...I feel much relieved after seeing your video that this disorder can be reversed or mitigate.. thank you
I have trouble swallowing food when I am stressed. Doesn't help if you work at a company that would punish you if you took one minute extra for lunch because it took 20 mins to get the food and now you have try to shovel it in in less than 10 minutes and zero seconds. Those seconds will have you in the managers office.
Sorry to hear that. However trouble swallowing tends to be psychological. If your mind doesn’t trust food to be safe, closing up the entrance makes sense, it’s possible to address this even in one session
Thank You For Highlighting This Topic...Enhancing Awareness Regarding This Will Be Beneficial For Both The ARFID/NON-ARFID People Who Think It Is Not A Mental illness.
I wonder how you'd treat a person who's ARFID stems from needing to have control in life. I developed ARFID when I was 4, not because of food related trauma. My hypothesis is that since I grew up having an Autistic brother and felt like I had to take care of him and felt like I wasn't receiving enough attention from my parents, and all of this wasn't because of a choice I made, but something that was forced on me- I needed some form of control in my life, and unconsciously did so with food. Great talk. You really hit the nail on its head. Although, I would have loved if you had brought to light a bit more of the social impact and the anxiety that occurs around social eating a bit more than just the sentence at the end about accommodating your friends with ARFID.
It’s about addressing the unmet need and leading a part to help you in healthier ways because those old ways no longer serve the purpose they were intended for. ARFID can develop for many reasons, including nothing to do with actual distress from food itself. However, if you avoid food long enough for unrelated reasons, over time the mind will assume there must be a reason for avoidance and end up assuming that food cannot be safe or why would I still be avoiding it? So primary problem - control. Secondary problem - assumption that must not be safe. Both still amenable to a single session therapy
At 60, I’ve had this since I was 3. My mom told that I really liked most every thing until I turned 4. At that time I would drop eating a food here and there. Then one of my four sisters decided to tie me into a chair and force feed me. I still remember- it was hot dogs and beans, no I won’t won’t eat either!! I’ve decided that, it’s ok to only enjoy about 30 things that I will eat, and die not eating the things I won’t. Btw, I feel that my fear of balloons ties in with this: I didn’t want to go to a party for fear of balloons, so then I didn’t have to embarrass myself with my picky eating. I tried one party one time and was teased terribly about both
@@FelixEcoPsych my lack of speech was simply due to disbelief 😅 i still eat korma to this day! Still not keen on fish though, some "white" fish i can endure but food like salmon im really not keen on.. besides, i have so many other foods i can choose from now anyway! 🤘
@@FelixEcoPsych i have it saved already 🤣 proud moment for me.. oh and the initial pause was because i burnt my tongue.. i had never eaten proper hot food before other than pasta, which doesnt exactly get too hot 🤣
Thank you so much Felix for the talk. I genuinely wonder if you could help us. So context, i am used to being told, i am lying and that what i have isnt real and that its all in my head, here in the state's its all Ive been told. I am a bit complex because at my mental base i have Schizo-affective disorder, dissociative identity disorder and autism. This context is important because....(please try to understand) i have 12 alters and over the last 2 years have been in treatment for eating disorders. I, Micheal, have OSFED and ARFID while several of my alters have bits and pieces of my trauma. Most of that isnt relevent; what is relevent is I have an alter named Charlie (the name he tells people he doesnt trust yet) that suffers greatly from things i struggled with as a child. Charlie has schizophrenia and autism like me (and we went undiagnosed for majority of both of our lives) but he holds onto my mysophobia/severe OCD, emetophobia, severe genralized and social anxiety and very severe ARFID. I understand at this point this is confusing but the best way to describe my alters and their traumas is if they didnt exist I (Micheal) would be suffering actively with what they hold. This is where i begin to explain Charlie and his issues. For one thing he has struggled to eat for as long as he can remember, always being underweight and avoiding food or in his childhood food being taken away as punishments. He grew up with little consistancy in his life no saftey and little to no control and tried to find control by keeping himself, and his space as safe as he could make it with abusive people as parents. This meant having obessions with multiples of 2, 4 and 20, washing his body til it sometimes cracked and bleed, cleaning and recleaning objects, counters, anything, til it made his intense anxiety leasen. As a child both of us struggled with drinking and prescriptions to cope with level 40 out of 10 anxiety, dopamine hallucinations and being ignored and never listened to. After leaving the abusive situation he was born into....nothing got better. Out of every food possible he only ate, white rice, tricuits, iceberg lettuce and subsisted on clear meal supplements, any food past that is too terrifying or made him feel too sick (which triggered his emetophobia). In his life time he was tube fed several times but was denied help from his mother and eventually himself. He is disgusted by the concept of digestion, and tries for as long as he can to avoid taking part in it, and actively struggles to not become psychotic over the fact that he can hear his own swallowing and stomach churning. And when he doesnt have appetite or energy. He's trying desperately to not self medicate to control overwhelming anxiety levels. Today as a 33 year old, he is plaugued with intense anxiety over not being able to keep our (and partners) apartment clean, he had gotten some help a residential before (though barely any) but relapsed after breaking his five year sobriety, and now eats less than before and even safe foods some days arent safe. And his intense struggle with not being able to get his brain to be okay with eating has affected the rest of us in the system (the group of alters). Some days, none of us can eat because his anxiety permeates our mind and cuts our appetite. He for someone so terrified of throwing up gets sick often (taking our medication, trying to drink water, just thinking of anything remotely sickening) and it only leads to his anxiety worsening and our food intake getting smaller. (This is slightly off topic: You had mentioned your work can help BED as well, which is conveinient because another on of my alter picks up slack for days of barely any eating by binging horrendously, basically the opposite of Charlie. Isaac binges til we cant hold food anymore and is so full and so sick we foten throw up as a result. We're trying to figure out if he has bulimia or is developing bulimia). Essentially our lives are chaos because no one is ever consistantly in control and the two people struggling the most have opposite severe eating disorders. But genuinely, I (Micheal) have had anorexia, bulimia and BED for a decade and have been able to recover pretty well from them, im familiar with the methods of reasoning logically about why restricting, binging and purging dont help, im good at that. But at this point, no one knows how to combat Charlies delusional and astronomically intense fear and disgust responses. He has issues with texture, taste, smell. He is unknowingly vegan because animal products are commonly known to cause food poisoning and he will do anything to avoid needlessly throwing up. He at this point only every so often manages juice and maybe some rice. And being in Arizona no one at this point has been able to handle our complexity and....well, its not getting any better any time soon. I know a lot of this isnt your expertice and thats fine, im not asking to treat DID, i need help dealing with someone who my brain chemically and physcologically register as someone different from me. Seeing your video made me feel that maybe there was a chance there could be help. But i also know practically everyone else (doctors, psychiatrist, psychologists, dietician) have turned me down. I....dont know if you or anyone can help but my partner told me to try....so hopefully. Thank you for what you do Micheal (host of the Grimm System)
Hello Michael This is a very complex situation and you would likely need preliminary work on building a strong enough foundation for self management for my approach to take effect. My approach is very much focused on self management and directing the mind accordingly. One suggestion might be to consider my online streaming pre- recorded therapy to see if you gel with my approach. It’s available on www.felixeconomakis.com. If you find it useful, then we can discuss further. Regards
@FelixEcoPsych Hi there, I have been diagnosed with ASD at 40 years old, which then also lead to an ARFID diagnosis. It explains so much about my life-long unhealthy relationship with food. I have all the gagging/retching/avoidance that comes with certain foods, but I just don't believe it's due to a phobia around those foods. I feel a real sense of disgust and revulsion to certain foods and cannot bring them up to my mouth without gagging. It's not at all because I think they are going to make me sick, it's because I'm expecting their taste, smell or texture to be too intense and overwhelming for my senses. I feel like it's a nervous system overreaction, due to heightened senses (common for people with ASD), rather than a phobia over food. I get a physical shock, akin to being slightly electrocuted, as soon as certain foods hit my senses, especially my taste buds. I hypothesise that for people who are ASD, it's not a food phobia as such, but rather a sensory / nervous system reaction. What are your thoughts on this, specifically the relationship between ARFID and ASD?
this is a good question but it also does not have a simple answer. There are a lot of factors at play. I talk about these issues on my FB forums all the time but it would be easier if I addressed these questions with a UA-cam video rather than a very long text. Hopefully will do it this weekend
My son is 2.5 and will only drink infant formula and 1 specific yogurt. He doesn't eat solids and won't drink water. My pediatrician had been telling me for over a year to just stop giving him formula to get him hungry enough to eat food. I always knew it wouldn't work. Our food therapist said she had never seen such a severe cade and said it could be ARFID. Im devastated and so worried.
I told a doctor about my struggles with food and he just told me to find a support group. There aren’t any. At least not in the Uk or in my area. Given up tbh i know i dont like the food, no point forcing myself to try it.
Thank you for this. My 17 year old is dying of ARFID. Do you have anyone in your network that we can work with in Northern California? We’ve met many “experts” that have done more harm than good.
You can have a session with Felix via Skype, it’s a one off session. My daughter had a session with him and we had some success, she was able to try 3 new foods at the end of the session. Good luck
ive suffered from arfid since i was 1 after I had been abducted and told for weeks that my family food was poisoned. of course I stopped believing that as you'd expect but my eating didn't return to normal and arfid manifested itself over time, I'm now 17 and I've been eating the same small menu. I also struggle with the visual of food and the smell of it, sometimes the smell smells so strongly that my head almost feels foggy and I get a headache like a severe aversion to sensory input in relation to food.
i should reinstate that i was 1 and a half. I believe that my psychological trauma jumpstarted my neophobic stage and that due to the context of the abduction and what was drilled into me by them, that the function of neophobia, stuck around a but longer and may even still be active in my brain. Im no expert of course but fro my experience this would make sense, alongside possible SPD aswell as ARFID which i know i have.
As a mom to a 17month old who has recently been diagnosed with food aversion, I would love to get some advice on how to deal with children this young. We live in Belgium and I can't seem to find real help around. He was hospitalized already because of his weight and it's a daily nightmare. It real drains you of your energy and it's scary to have him starve himself like that, especially at such a young age...
Great presentation explaining ARFID. You closing line has me a bit confused though. “There’s no need for long drawn out therapy, it can be done in a session” How does that work. Are you the only person that can do this or are there resources nation wide that we can utilize?
It's about a helping induce a rapid conceptual shift in understanding with food. For dramatic results two things need to happen - a good client and a good effective therapy. Sometimes you have a mediocre therapy and a great client close to a threshold for change, and the therapy gets all the credit. A great therapy is one that can take a 'bad' client who did not have success with many other therapies and seem to convert and get great results. This is what this approach does day in and day out, not just for me but for the handful of others I've trained. I was on a TV series called 'Extreme Food Phobics' alongside another therapist trained in my approach. We each saw 10 people and each one at something. Some had spectacular results, some had modest results. But all ate something after one session. Some needed follow up sessions because they went backwards, others continued great progress. This represents a cross section of society at large. Everyone is able to get some success but then temperament and other traits determine how well they stick with things, how good they are at self-comforting or self-soothing when things are tough, or do they work themselves into an anxious state again? some people will need more input than others. But the possibility of one session change has been repeatedly demonstrated on TV programmes, journalists etc.
As mentioned there are different forms of ARFID including the sensory processing version (SPD). Whether fear was created through more intense taste sensations, or choking or colic or some stomach bug, the end result though is a phobic type response - dread, aversion, avoidance, panic, gagging, vomiting, throat closing etc. The most common version is a trauma with food but even with SPD, bad experiences will inflate the fear. If you have 10% biological sensitivity to foods, it's rare you will find tasting food just 10% harder. In practice bad experiences will inflate this fear anywhere up to 100%. So what therapy can do here is reduce the anticipatory anxiety associated with food, so its back down to 10% challenge, not 90%!
hi felix. i am a 13 year old girl and i just found out about this eating disorder. i don't know if i have it because i eat foods like: nuts, cheeses, sandwiches, salads, pizza, quesidillas, junkfoods, pastries, i eat some veggies like: celery, cucumber, carrots, radish, lettuce, spinach and i put those in salads. i also eat all fruits. i dont eat any meats besides bacon and pepperoni from pizza, i hate eggs, ive never tried fish because of the smell.. and some more foods. the thing is, i am scared to try new foods but i do get all my nutrients because i eat pretty healthy. i havent been to any professionals because my parents won't take me because they believe i dont have an eating disorder.
Hello Anabelle A simple test - if you'd genuinely like to try food but experience a mental block, panic or strong aversion to that food, regardless of bribes or threats, then you have some form of ARFID. You eat more than the average person I see but you can still have a block about other food groups.
Dear Felix, what is your take on a general fear of food? Lets say someone is able to eat almost everything presented to them but goes through periods in which they cant eat anything but meal replacements (and has no body dysmorphia)
@@FelixEcoPsych thank you for the reply! I just came across this comment. I guess depression would be the most adequate answer for these periods. Although a lack of interest in food and feeling like the act of eating is a chore is generally present most of the time.
Very interesting. I'm working on a project about ARFID to get more insights into this disorder. I would like to contact you to do an interview or to answer some questions if it's no possible to do the interview
I’ve been wanting to get in touch with you for a while but I’m not sure if it’ll be beneficial to me because my phobias with food are so so intense and there’s so many foods I won’t eat, what’s the best way to contact you?
Any one know how the one time session works? Is there videos on youtube describing it? how would you end up calmly eating the food? I'm in the US and wondering. this video was great info for me. I want to find out how its done now 👍
The therapy is about addressing the underlying fear driving the behaviour. I don't change taste buds or food but the main block in the way of trusting food using rapid de-traumatising techniques
@@FelixEcoPsych I have a 21 year old son very likely on the spectrum (we never tested him) who has ARFID and is a professional athlete. Needless to say it’s been very difficult for him, esp the social aspect as he’s basically isolating himself from social situations where food is involved. He’s finally come to accept he has a problem and is willing to deal with it. Had his first therapy session last week and is continuing. I’m interested to know more about your therapy and whether you think it would be beneficial on top of what therapy he is getting now, most likely CBT with a specialist on eating disorder. Your response would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Mrs. Parker
as long as i can remember i’ve been vegetarian it’s not just meat though and food other than things like , pasta , toast / bread , bananas, apples , pizza , chips , beans and so on i have a mental block stopping me from trying them even though i want to be able to eat normally. i used to be vegetarian for the principle but now i can’t make myself eat meat
What have i got then cos if someone told me there was onions in something and their was id know they were lying because i can smell the difference and it doesnt matter how small its cut i will feel the onion in my mouth, like i wont vomit but i wont be able to swallow it if i know theres onion cos of the slivers in the sauce that i know is onion...
@@josefinabaridon239 Same here. The only fruit I eat is Dates and the only juice I drink is Lemon juice. I'm almost ok with Orange juice and Pineapple juice.
This is something I’ve struggled with since early childhood and never had a name for until a few years ago, to this day have never spoken with someone who had ARFID as an adult. I can’t even say how it feels to hear an expert in their field validate that this is a real disorder and something I can really recover from, not just picky eating I chose not to grow out of. My parents tried everything with me to get me to eat, including the advice of one doctor who echoed the “she’s not going to starve herself” sentiment; thank goodness for the one doctor who told them to just make sure dinner had at least one food I could eat without having a panic attack. I so appreciate people like this who try to understand what happened rather than shaming and belittling those with problems like mine. Thank you for your incredible work, sir!!
I can remember as far back as being in pre-k having complete meltdowns when introduced to new foods. I don't know what exactly triggered it, but to this day I still struggle with trying new foods. I was the only kid who ate the same lunch everyday and I thought I was the only person in the world like that until about 4 years ago when I first discovered ARFID. I had no idea other people suffered with what I've been dealing with and I finally don't feel alone in this battle anymore. I'm married to a wonderful man who understands and encourages me to break out of my comfort zone and explore new foods. I'm so glad it's a recognized condition in my lifetime and I'm not alone.
My son was born in 2008 and struggled not just with eating issues, but with the lack of understanding of doctors/teachers you talk about. I am so glad to see people like you bringing so much more awareness to it, and glad for them there is an actual name/DSM category for this now. I think he fell into the 10% that was mostly sensory you mention. . At a few months old if you touched just a spot of tomato sauce or similar to his tongue he projectile vomited. Somehow this didn’t traumatize him, though, so he didn’t have the PTSD you mention. There were certainly major phobias around food still, especially texture, and LOTS of throwing up many times a day for years, and it was a very long road, and he didn’t eat a fruit, vegetable or meat for the first 6 or 7 years, but I can happily say that he now eats EVERYTHING. Sushi, haggis, octopus. I mean, stuff I won’t even touch. Just in case anyone ever needs a success story! Thanks for all your great work...
Please ,can you help me ?
How did you cure him ?
We have the same case ,she is 8years old ,she never eat any thing ,since she was born .
No one can recognize her disease..
Very glad to hear of this progress!
@@pathologypathology sorry, I don't always get notifications from youTube, Best way to reach me would be the contact form on www.the-heath.co.uk.
Thank you
@@FelixEcoPsych Thank you
@pathologypathology were you able to get help? I have a 2 year old who won't eat and looking for answers 😕
Thank you for your dedication and hard work. Thank you for helping people like me.
Most of my entire life, I had no idea that I was struggling with a real issue. I never understood why I would only eat french fries. When I was little, I used to wish upon stars all the time to be like everyone else. As a kid, it's really scary to feel you are different; like you said, we avoided pizza parties and barbeques alike because it was easier that way. That way, we wouldn't have to be bombarded with questions, or deal with the judgement. People that don't understand can be cruel.
I only discovered I had ARFID when I was 16, and when I did, I felt less alone than ever before. You validate what we are going through further than just "oh, she is picky" or "he is fussy" and give us the strength to want to overcome our own minds.
Thank you for all you do ❤
Pleasure! :)
Just wondering, if you don't mind me asking. For how long did you eat only fries? I have a son that French fries is his only food choice for more than 5 years. Did you get therapy and if so, what kind ? Thank you !
@@mayan9718 my biggest food is Pizza and French fries lol. It’s been over 25 years!!! I’m 35 now, and 90% my diet is pizza and FF. Started around age 5-6-7? I be glad to talk more.
@@documentarydelight Really? Aren't you worried for not getting enough nutrients? I'm constantly worrying my son isn't getting the proper diet.
@@documentarydelight Also, are you diagnosed with ARFID or is your restrictive diet by choice? Thanks
Thank you ❤ I'm 63 yo and have suffered with AFRID all my life, but I am now just learning what it is. I've been told it's anorexia and symptoms of panic disorder. But with tears in my eyes and hope in my heart, I realize that I may be able to change and fix it. It's been an extremely debilitating issue that has dictated all events in my life. 🙏
i’m 18 now i’ve been eating just popcorn since i was five i have no nutritional deficiency’s and im a healthy weight but i’ve always had this lingering feeling i would drop dead randomly like the man who lived off of potato based products. ive never met someone older with arfid im glad ill be able to live a long life regardless of my disability
you certainly can change it. It's all about re-educating the mind to realise that food isn't actually dangerous in a way it understands. Once that's done, all the defence mechanisms become redundant
I clicked on a VICE video of a guy who's been eating only Mac'n'cheese for 17 years because I found it strange and could relate to it. I just now realised there is such thing as ARFID and that holy shit, I have mental health issues.
All my life, I have been known in my family as being a picky eater. I cannot even begin to describe the feeling of shame & embarrassment whenever we'd be at a social event where people offer me food and 2 things would happen:
1- The absolute scare that if forced into it, I might gag and cause a scene for being weird
2- My family thinking they're doing me a favor responding on my behalf with something along the lines of "no, poor baby he's a picky eater" making me want the earth to open up and swallow me whole
I actually have vivid memories of eating various foods, fruits & veggies. I know I did. But when asked, my mother says that when young, I had some sort of stomach issues which made me incessantly throw up and somehow developed a disgust feeling towards most foods.
This is really ruining my life because I either have to decline invitations for social gatherings or be absolutely sure my safe foods would be available there. This usually is pizza, pasta & cheeseburgers with just the meat & cheese, that's it ! For all other foods, I find it super weird when people say "ohhh that looks so good" when inside I'm like "how does this look good ? It looks the total opposite of good"
It's so bad, even the smell of some foods makes me very uncomfortable (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc)
I really would like to know whether there's an actual treatment for this ? Or do I actually just have to suck it up and baby step my way to include other foods ?
I'm 28 now and this problem is getting in the way of other aspects of my life, sometimes even dating.
Yes what you describe is common place and that's the therapy I've developed. You can email me for more details
@@FelixEcoPsych Thank you so much for writing back ! I looked into this video description but wasn't able to find any email address. Where and how may I get in touch with you seeing as I presently live in Morocco
@@modan5246 Hello, I updated the links sorry but you can contact me on felix@the-heath.co.uk
35 here. Been on mostly pizza since I was 6~.
Amazing work Felix. You have been the only therapist who've summed my experience with food so succintly and elegantly. I'm looking forward to the day I can afford some sessions with you :)
(For self reference: 9:32)
Looking forward to it!
I am a 57 year old physician. I have ARFID. I have had it since I was a toddler. I have been variously diagnosed with depression, bipolar 2, borderline personality, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and Asperger's (now known as high functioning autism). All were wrong. All were diagnosed before ARFID was known (before the 2013 DSM-5). Interestingly, when I was a child I was so emaciated I looked anorexic but was never diagnosed with that. I was a nurse before I was a doctor, and in nursing school I had a nutritional assessment that said I was fine. Nobody in my family or friend circle could believe it because my diet was so restricted. I was very skinny, but healthy, except for a calcium and vitamin D deficiency. I have been on vitamin D and calcium supplement since a very young age and I do have osteopenia (sort of pre-osteoporosis), and very poor teeth. I know how my ARFID started. I will not go into it in detail here, but it certainly was fear based. It originated in a sort of PTSD. It was not an illness, it was how one of my parents tried to get me to eat. I also happen to have a very high IQ (top 2%) and am a "physician's physician". I teach medicine at the highest levels and can out-think, out-diagnose, and out-manage the vast majority of doctors in all medical, surgical, and healthcare fields, including psychology. Doctors, residents, and medical students pay me well to teach them. Non of that matters. We are all just simply human. When I realized I thought I had ARFID, I went and got properly diagnosed. I have had no specific therapy and have simply progressively improved. I am definitely not recovered, but I suffer less, and eat more variety. What distresses me now is knowing how many children endure being tortured and simply labeled as "picky" because too many parents don't understand this disorder exists. Outside my professional life I work as a volunteer with abused children. I have found a few with ARFID that suffered abuse because of it. I am not on any sort of awareness bandwagon, but I do hope that people do become more aware of what ARFID is so that we can intervene long before it has a major impact on those who have it. Early screening and diagnosis is key. We need to reach pediatricians, child development specialists, daycare workers, teachers, nutritionists, parents, and anybody else that works with children. We need to screen all children. There is screening, but it needs improved and more widely applied. I want it to be standard screening for all children and am working toward that professionally.
My son literally started showing symptoms of ARFID after he had his tonsils and adenoids removed. Unfortunately he didn’t got diagnosed till he completely stopped eating food and now lives on nutrition supplements. Thank you for this talk, really helpful
found this video and your website from just recently learning that this is a problem i can work on fixing. very excited to learn more and start working on it. will be checking our your site this week. thanks for posting and your work in this field.
pleasure and let me know if you have any questions
I’m 55 and have been struggling with this my whole life. You made me laugh when to mention eating gravel. Because I could without concern (like a bet or dare) put gravel in my mouth. Now I wouldn’t swallow it because of the harm it would cause. But I would before I would ever but any green vegetable in my mouth, knowing full well it is not only safe to eat but good for me.
I am autistic and had ARFID for around 8 years, but I overcame it mostly due to exposure therapy and also the need to survive/leave an abusive relationship. I never thought "survival mode" would help me push through and eat a bit more each day, gaining strength and weight more and more, enough to leave a bad situation... but it did just that. It took a solid year and a half to get better (still not fully over it at that point, however) - it was amazing to witness the change. So that's something else you could possibly add to your research with overcoming ARFID. :)
Unfortunately survival mode tends to work in the opposite way for many people, where they would rather starve to death in some remote future rather than believe they are eating something harmful and dangerous in the present.
Exposure Therapy on it's own is the long hard way of overcoming ARFID but once the brain is led to believe that food is not dangerous then it can embark on experiments with food exposure, often even after one session
Could i talk to you? I am so desperate:(
Hello what kind of therapy is that? Thanks
@@FelixEcoPsychHi there, I have been diagnosed with ASD at 40 years old, which then also lead to an ARFID diagnosis. It explains so much about my life-long unhealthy relationship with food. I have all the gagging/retching/avoidance that comes with certain foods, but I just don't believe it's due to a phobia around those foods. I feel a real sense of disgust and revulsion to certain foods and cannot bring them up to my mouth without gagging. It's not at all because I think they are going to make me sick, it's because I'm expecting their taste, smell or texture to be too intense and overwhelming for my senses. I feel like it's a nervous system overreaction, due to heightened senses (common for people with ASD), rather than a phobia over food. I get a physical shock, akin to being slightly electrocuted, as soon as certain foods hit my senses, especially my taste buds. I hypothesise that for people who are ASD, it's not a food phobia as such, but rather a sensory / nervous system reaction. What are your thoughts on this, specifically the relationship between ARFID and ASD?
@@sarahrose9652 This is me also so I'm anxiously awaiting the answer!
Thank you Felix! I just discovered yesterday that ARFID does not have an ICD 10 code and that infuriated me. You doing talks like this and spreading awareness means the world.
ARFID is recognized in the DSM-5 though, so that has helped.
Pleasure Brianna - but ARFID does have an ICD 10 code. I will find it tomorrow when I return to work and post here :)
@@FelixEcoPsych Oh that’s great to hear! I noticed when I researched it that it was listed in the “other eating disorders” category rather than a named category such as bulimia or binge-eating disorder. Definitely a huge plus that insurance is willing to cover the treatment, very validating!
@@briannastoohs8153 Hello again... Ok I found the ICD code it is F50.8 . Hope this helps :)
@@FelixEcoPsych Wonderful! Thank you so much 😄
My five year old son has suffered from this since he was 6 months old. I cannot imagine how the right treatment could change his life.
5 years old is a little young. I have worked with a mature 6 year old but he is the exception to the rule.
I've pasted his story below taken from : www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/9888789/children-afrid-eating-disorder-treatment/?
SIX-YEAR-OLD Louis De La Cour lives in Hertfordshire, with mum Natalie, 43, dad Leon, 45, and sister Florrie, ten. Louis began receiving treatment for ARFID last month, as he would only eat a handful of foods. Natalie, a freelance writer, says:
"Louis was a great eater as a baby, but we feared there might be a problem when we tried to introduce new foods when he was three.
Until he was six, Louis would only eat plain, beige foods such as cereal and toast. He liked smooth peanut butter, chicken, yoghurts and milk. He’d only eat fruit that had been blended.
I’d get family members saying ‘If he’s really hungry he’ll eat’, but when a child has this condition they won’t, due to their fear and anxiety around food.
Louis has never eaten a crisp, a chip or potato of any sort and getting him to try new foods has been impossible.
Louis's mum Natalie self-diagnosed him after doing her own research when she couldn't get help from the NHS
8
Louis's mum Natalie self-diagnosed him after doing her own research when she couldn't get help from the NHSCredit: Louis Wood - The Sun
Holidays are tricky. Last year we went to Greece. He can’t stand herbs, but they were on everything, so he only ate chocolate pancakes.
There is little understanding of this condition and I felt very alone. After a lot of research we self-diagnosed Louis - you don’t get any help on the NHS.
We went to see psychologist Felix Economakis, a specialist in the disorder. He explained what ARFID was and how it’s only in the past ten years they’ve put a name to this condition.
One therapy session with Felix has made a huge difference and Louis has been able to expel his fear and begin eating new foods - even a bit of home cooked lasagne.
There needs to be more awareness, it’s not just a child being a fussy eater. Support is there, if you know where to turn."
This is just philosophy, I can philosophise my way through this, thanks for giving me the words to think about my eating.
Thank you for the talk! I was in a face-to-face session with Felix myself a few years ago and ate food afterwards that was previously associated with disgust for me. That was a great experience. The problem, however (and I have since been to a non-specialist, non-recommendable clinic where I ate a lot of new things anyway): I don't like it enough to expand my food palate. None of it, and we're certainly talking about 30 new dishes. So the question remains for me, how do I expand my food palate after treatment?
SO much great stuff happening in your talk, Felix. I love the flow that you are in, while you introduce people to helpful ideas. Excellent! Thanks for the hypnosis shout out, btw.
thank you Kelley and looking forward to catching up and talking shop soon!
Great content Felix...Good to know people like you making this awareness...my son is 3, got this disorder..he only drink milk after 2 years old till now..nothing else...I feel much relieved after seeing your video that this disorder can be reversed or mitigate.. thank you
glad to know !
Thank you for your work. Our 7year old has it. A daily struggle. Australia
I have trouble swallowing food when I am stressed. Doesn't help if you work at a company that would punish you if you took one minute extra for lunch because it took 20 mins to get the food and now you have try to shovel it in in less than 10 minutes and zero seconds. Those seconds will have you in the managers office.
Sorry to hear that. However trouble swallowing tends to be psychological. If your mind doesn’t trust food to be safe, closing up the entrance makes sense, it’s possible to address this even in one session
Well done Felix! Thank you for all your videos and support, Nancy
thank you! :)
Thank You For Highlighting This Topic...Enhancing Awareness Regarding This Will Be Beneficial For Both The ARFID/NON-ARFID People Who Think It Is Not A Mental illness.
I wonder how you'd treat a person who's ARFID stems from needing to have control in life. I developed ARFID when I was 4, not because of food related trauma. My hypothesis is that since I grew up having an Autistic brother and felt like I had to take care of him and felt like I wasn't receiving enough attention from my parents, and all of this wasn't because of a choice I made, but something that was forced on me- I needed some form of control in my life, and unconsciously did so with food.
Great talk. You really hit the nail on its head. Although, I would have loved if you had brought to light a bit more of the social impact and the anxiety that occurs around social eating a bit more than just the sentence at the end about accommodating your friends with ARFID.
It’s about addressing the unmet need and leading a part to help you in healthier ways because those old ways no longer serve the purpose they were intended for. ARFID can develop for many reasons, including nothing to do with actual distress from food itself. However, if you avoid food long enough for unrelated reasons, over time the mind will assume there must be a reason for avoidance and end up assuming that food cannot be safe or why would I still be avoiding it?
So primary problem - control.
Secondary problem - assumption that must not be safe.
Both still amenable to a single session therapy
At 60, I’ve had this since I was 3. My mom told that I really liked most every thing until I turned 4. At that time I would drop eating a food here and there. Then one of my four sisters decided to tie me into a chair and force feed me. I still remember- it was hot dogs and beans, no I won’t won’t eat either!!
I’ve decided that, it’s ok to only enjoy about 30 things that I will eat, and die not eating the things I won’t.
Btw, I feel that my fear of balloons ties in with this: I didn’t want to go to a party for fear of balloons, so then I didn’t have to embarrass myself with my picky eating. I tried one party one time and was teased terribly about both
I remembered your name from all those years ago on freaky eaters to when i saw you afew years ago felix.. thank you!
That live demo is still a legend. I used the video it for my last training. You were translated into German :)
@@FelixEcoPsych my lack of speech was simply due to disbelief 😅 i still eat korma to this day! Still not keen on fish though, some "white" fish i can endure but food like salmon im really not keen on.. besides, i have so many other foods i can choose from now anyway! 🤘
@@murder13love glad to hear that. BTW, here's a trip down memory lane for you... :) ua-cam.com/video/WUqhoi7YPIg/v-deo.html
@@FelixEcoPsych i have it saved already 🤣 proud moment for me.. oh and the initial pause was because i burnt my tongue.. i had never eaten proper hot food before other than pasta, which doesnt exactly get too hot 🤣
@@murder13love I didn’t know you’d burnt your tongue ! Hopefully no new PTSD :)
I would love to write portuguese subtitles for this video so I could show it to some people!
If you do, I will ask my IT chap to add it and upload another version in Portuguese
Your spot on.
Thank you so much Felix for the talk. I genuinely wonder if you could help us. So context, i am used to being told, i am lying and that what i have isnt real and that its all in my head, here in the state's its all Ive been told. I am a bit complex because at my mental base i have Schizo-affective disorder, dissociative identity disorder and autism. This context is important because....(please try to understand) i have 12 alters and over the last 2 years have been in treatment for eating disorders. I, Micheal, have OSFED and ARFID while several of my alters have bits and pieces of my trauma. Most of that isnt relevent; what is relevent is I have an alter named Charlie (the name he tells people he doesnt trust yet) that suffers greatly from things i struggled with as a child. Charlie has schizophrenia and autism like me (and we went undiagnosed for majority of both of our lives) but he holds onto my mysophobia/severe OCD, emetophobia, severe genralized and social anxiety and very severe ARFID. I understand at this point this is confusing but the best way to describe my alters and their traumas is if they didnt exist I (Micheal) would be suffering actively with what they hold.
This is where i begin to explain Charlie and his issues. For one thing he has struggled to eat for as long as he can remember, always being underweight and avoiding food or in his childhood food being taken away as punishments. He grew up with little consistancy in his life no saftey and little to no control and tried to find control by keeping himself, and his space as safe as he could make it with abusive people as parents. This meant having obessions with multiples of 2, 4 and 20, washing his body til it sometimes cracked and bleed, cleaning and recleaning objects, counters, anything, til it made his intense anxiety leasen. As a child both of us struggled with drinking and prescriptions to cope with level 40 out of 10 anxiety, dopamine hallucinations and being ignored and never listened to. After leaving the abusive situation he was born into....nothing got better. Out of every food possible he only ate, white rice, tricuits, iceberg lettuce and subsisted on clear meal supplements, any food past that is too terrifying or made him feel too sick (which triggered his emetophobia). In his life time he was tube fed several times but was denied help from his mother and eventually himself. He is disgusted by the concept of digestion, and tries for as long as he can to avoid taking part in it, and actively struggles to not become psychotic over the fact that he can hear his own swallowing and stomach churning. And when he doesnt have appetite or energy. He's trying desperately to not self medicate to control overwhelming anxiety levels. Today as a 33 year old, he is plaugued with intense anxiety over not being able to keep our (and partners) apartment clean, he had gotten some help a residential before (though barely any) but relapsed after breaking his five year sobriety, and now eats less than before and even safe foods some days arent safe. And his intense struggle with not being able to get his brain to be okay with eating has affected the rest of us in the system (the group of alters). Some days, none of us can eat because his anxiety permeates our mind and cuts our appetite. He for someone so terrified of throwing up gets sick often (taking our medication, trying to drink water, just thinking of anything remotely sickening) and it only leads to his anxiety worsening and our food intake getting smaller. (This is slightly off topic: You had mentioned your work can help BED as well, which is conveinient because another on of my alter picks up slack for days of barely any eating by binging horrendously, basically the opposite of Charlie. Isaac binges til we cant hold food anymore and is so full and so sick we foten throw up as a result. We're trying to figure out if he has bulimia or is developing bulimia). Essentially our lives are chaos because no one is ever consistantly in control and the two people struggling the most have opposite severe eating disorders.
But genuinely, I (Micheal) have had anorexia, bulimia and BED for a decade and have been able to recover pretty well from them, im familiar with the methods of reasoning logically about why restricting, binging and purging dont help, im good at that. But at this point, no one knows how to combat Charlies delusional and astronomically intense fear and disgust responses. He has issues with texture, taste, smell. He is unknowingly vegan because animal products are commonly known to cause food poisoning and he will do anything to avoid needlessly throwing up. He at this point only every so often manages juice and maybe some rice. And being in Arizona no one at this point has been able to handle our complexity and....well, its not getting any better any time soon.
I know a lot of this isnt your expertice and thats fine, im not asking to treat DID, i need help dealing with someone who my brain chemically and physcologically register as someone different from me. Seeing your video made me feel that maybe there was a chance there could be help. But i also know practically everyone else (doctors, psychiatrist, psychologists, dietician) have turned me down.
I....dont know if you or anyone can help but my partner told me to try....so hopefully.
Thank you for what you do
Micheal (host of the Grimm System)
Hello Michael
This is a very complex situation and you would likely need preliminary work on building a strong enough foundation for self management for my approach to take effect. My approach is very much focused on self management and directing the mind accordingly. One suggestion might be to consider my online streaming pre- recorded therapy to see if you gel with my approach. It’s available on www.felixeconomakis.com.
If you find it useful, then we can discuss further.
Regards
@FelixEcoPsych Hi there, I have been diagnosed with ASD at 40 years old, which then also lead to an ARFID diagnosis. It explains so much about my life-long unhealthy relationship with food. I have all the gagging/retching/avoidance that comes with certain foods, but I just don't believe it's due to a phobia around those foods. I feel a real sense of disgust and revulsion to certain foods and cannot bring them up to my mouth without gagging. It's not at all because I think they are going to make me sick, it's because I'm expecting their taste, smell or texture to be too intense and overwhelming for my senses. I feel like it's a nervous system overreaction, due to heightened senses (common for people with ASD), rather than a phobia over food. I get a physical shock, akin to being slightly electrocuted, as soon as certain foods hit my senses, especially my taste buds. I hypothesise that for people who are ASD, it's not a food phobia as such, but rather a sensory / nervous system reaction. What are your thoughts on this, specifically the relationship between ARFID and ASD?
this is a good question but it also does not have a simple answer. There are a lot of factors at play. I talk about these issues on my FB forums all the time but it would be easier if I addressed these questions with a UA-cam video rather than a very long text. Hopefully will do it this weekend
Hi @sarahrose9652. I uploaded a video reply to you but forgot to upload it (life takes over). However, just uploaded it now and will tag you
My son is 2.5 and will only drink infant formula and 1 specific yogurt. He doesn't eat solids and won't drink water. My pediatrician had been telling me for over a year to just stop giving him formula to get him hungry enough to eat food. I always knew it wouldn't work. Our food therapist said she had never seen such a severe cade and said it could be ARFID. Im devastated and so worried.
I told a doctor about my struggles with food and he just told me to find a support group. There aren’t any. At least not in the Uk or in my area.
Given up tbh i know i dont like the food, no point forcing myself to try it.
Thank you for this. My 17 year old is dying of ARFID. Do you have anyone in your network that we can work with in Northern California? We’ve met many “experts” that have done more harm than good.
You can have a session with Felix via Skype, it’s a one off session. My daughter had a session with him and we had some success, she was able to try 3 new foods at the end of the session. Good luck
Did you guys ever get help?
ive suffered from arfid since i was 1 after I had been abducted and told for weeks that my family food was poisoned. of course I stopped believing that as you'd expect but my eating didn't return to normal and arfid manifested itself over time, I'm now 17 and I've been eating the same small menu. I also struggle with the visual of food and the smell of it, sometimes the smell smells so strongly that my head almost feels foggy and I get a headache like a severe aversion to sensory input in relation to food.
i should reinstate that i was 1 and a half. I believe that my psychological trauma jumpstarted my neophobic stage and that due to the context of the abduction and what was drilled into me by them, that the function of neophobia, stuck around a but longer and may even still be active in my brain. Im no expert of course but fro my experience this would make sense, alongside possible SPD aswell as ARFID which i know i have.
I live in Greece and i have an 8 year old son with arfid.What would you suggest i should do for him?I have tried many things without success.
sorry, I don't always get notifications from youTube, Best way to reach me would be the contact form on www.the-heath.co.uk.
Thank you
I have anxiety, I have a bird phobia and I have SED, and it feels way too simple to put my SED down to a phobia 🤷🏼♀️😢
As a mom to a 17month old who has recently been diagnosed with food aversion, I would love to get some advice on how to deal with children this young. We live in Belgium and I can't seem to find real help around. He was hospitalized already because of his weight and it's a daily nightmare. It real drains you of your energy and it's scary to have him starve himself like that, especially at such a young age...
Great presentation explaining ARFID. You closing line has me a bit confused though. “There’s no need for long drawn out therapy, it can be done in a session” How does that work. Are you the only person that can do this or are there resources nation wide that we can utilize?
It's about a helping induce a rapid conceptual shift in understanding with food.
For dramatic results two things need to happen - a good client and a good effective therapy.
Sometimes you have a mediocre therapy and a great client close to a threshold for change, and the therapy gets all the credit.
A great therapy is one that can take a 'bad' client who did not have success with many other therapies and seem to convert and get great results.
This is what this approach does day in and day out, not just for me but for the handful of others I've trained. I was on a TV series called 'Extreme Food Phobics' alongside another therapist trained in my approach. We each saw 10 people and each one at something. Some had spectacular results, some had modest results. But all ate something after one session. Some needed follow up sessions because they went backwards, others continued great progress. This represents a cross section of society at large. Everyone is able to get some success but then temperament and other traits determine how well they stick with things, how good they are at self-comforting or self-soothing when things are tough, or do they work themselves into an anxious state again? some people will need more input than others. But the possibility of one session change has been repeatedly demonstrated on TV programmes, journalists etc.
So Ardid is a fobia? No matter the cause?
As mentioned there are different forms of ARFID including the sensory processing version (SPD). Whether fear was created through more intense taste sensations, or choking or colic or some stomach bug, the end result though is a phobic type response - dread, aversion, avoidance, panic, gagging, vomiting, throat closing etc.
The most common version is a trauma with food but even with SPD, bad experiences will inflate the fear. If you have 10% biological sensitivity to foods, it's rare you will find tasting food just 10% harder. In practice bad experiences will inflate this fear anywhere up to 100%. So what therapy can do here is reduce the anticipatory anxiety associated with food, so its back down to 10% challenge, not 90%!
hi felix. i am a 13 year old girl and i just found out about this eating disorder. i don't know if i have it because i eat foods like: nuts, cheeses, sandwiches, salads, pizza, quesidillas, junkfoods, pastries, i eat some veggies like: celery, cucumber, carrots, radish, lettuce, spinach and i put those in salads. i also eat all fruits. i dont eat any meats besides bacon and pepperoni from pizza, i hate eggs, ive never tried fish because of the smell.. and some more foods. the thing is, i am scared to try new foods but i do get all my nutrients because i eat pretty healthy. i havent been to any professionals because my parents won't take me because they believe i dont have an eating disorder.
Hello Anabelle
A simple test - if you'd genuinely like to try food but experience a mental block, panic or strong aversion to that food, regardless of bribes or threats, then you have some form of ARFID.
You eat more than the average person I see but you can still have a block about other food groups.
Dear Felix, what is your take on a general fear of food? Lets say someone is able to eat almost everything presented to them but goes through periods in which they cant eat anything but meal replacements (and has no body dysmorphia)
I'd need more info -
what are the circumstances like leading up to these periods e.g periods of stress, depression, S.A.D?
I have this too, but I think it's linked to stress and anxiety for me. But most days I crave the food but hate it when I eat it halfway...
@@FelixEcoPsych thank you for the reply! I just came across this comment. I guess depression would be the most adequate answer for these periods. Although a lack of interest in food and feeling like the act of eating is a chore is generally present most of the time.
Where can I find info on de correlation Arvid and autisme? ❤
google search
I have ARFID since i am one year old. Now i‘m 19 years old and i hate it.
you know help is possible now
Very interesting. I'm working on a project about ARFID to get more insights into this disorder. I would like to contact you to do an interview or to answer some questions if it's no possible to do the interview
Hello
That’s fine. You can email me on felix@the-heath.co.uk
I’ve been wanting to get in touch with you for a while but I’m not sure if it’ll be beneficial to me because my phobias with food are so so intense and there’s so many foods I won’t eat, what’s the best way to contact you?
sorry I didn't see this until now - please send me details on felix@the-heath.co.uk (best to copy and paste to avoid typos)
Any one know how the one time session works? Is there videos on youtube describing it? how would you end up calmly eating the food? I'm in the US and wondering. this video was great info for me. I want to find out how its done now 👍
The therapy is about addressing the underlying fear driving the behaviour. I don't change taste buds or food but the main block in the way of trusting food using rapid de-traumatising techniques
@@FelixEcoPsych I have a 21 year old son very likely on the spectrum (we never tested him) who has ARFID and is a professional athlete. Needless to say it’s been very difficult for him, esp the social aspect as he’s basically isolating himself from social situations where food is involved. He’s finally come to accept he has a problem and is willing to deal with it. Had his first therapy session last week and is continuing.
I’m interested to know more about your therapy and whether you think it would be beneficial on top of what therapy he is getting now, most likely CBT with a specialist on eating disorder. Your response would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Mrs. Parker
@@ornamentalgoodgrass5014 pls can you email me on felix@the-heath.co.uk and I can send information. Just copy and paste the detail above.
as long as i can remember i’ve been vegetarian it’s not just meat though and food other than things like , pasta , toast / bread , bananas, apples , pizza , chips , beans and so on i have a mental block stopping me from trying them even though i want to be able to eat normally. i used to be vegetarian for the principle but now i can’t make myself eat meat
Get in touch and you can research how you can be free of old fears
What have i got then cos if someone told me there was onions in something and their was id know they were lying because i can smell the difference and it doesnt matter how small its cut i will feel the onion in my mouth, like i wont vomit but i wont be able to swallow it if i know theres onion cos of the slivers in the sauce that i know is onion...
Sensory disorder im guessing if not arfid
I really need help cos i cant even go to resteraunt dates because if i do t know what their food textures are like i wont be able to order
Can we schedule an appointment from Colorado- USA?
yes but please send me details on felix@the-heath.co.uk (best to copy and paste to avoid typos)
Have you had any success with patients that have reached the point they don’t eat anything and are on a feeding tube?
Yes including people too scared to even swallow their own saliva. If you PM, can send more details
@@FelixEcoPsych Thanks. Downloaded your videos to try. Is it ok to combine your therapy with an exposure based therapy?
Can you have ARIF without vomiting?
Yes absolutely. Revulsion or aversion is also common
Do anyone in the comments section have aversion towards fruits?
There can be an aversion to absolutely anything. Fruits on their own, fruits and vegetables, veg and meat but not fruits,..,, etc
me . i don't eat any fruit in any way possible. My only improvement is orange juice. (i have to take off the juice pulp)
@@josefinabaridon239 Same here. The only fruit I eat is Dates and the only juice I drink is Lemon juice. I'm almost ok with Orange juice and Pineapple juice.
OI big man arfid aint good innit
You got that right