We've seen the ED therapist a few times and she's pretty nice. She seems like a good fit so far.
On the other hand, we saw an allergist on monday and while it's incredibly relieving that our asthma and food allergies are real, it's also become incredibly destabilizing. We have lost pretty much all of our safe foods. No more peanut butter, no more oreos, no more silly treats out unless we're absolutely sure they're safe. Fast food and restaurants are a no unless we either know for sure they're safe or decide to be okay with being sick after eating. Even for the foods that we didn't show as allergic to, we are so allergic to the pollen that they just aren't safe to risk. We even forgot to mention some foods that we react to because we have been able to avoid them for so long; now that we're looking for replacements we're kicking ourself over it because we can't find replacements! We truly think that we have lost peanut butter and it's alternatives as a whole because all the alternatives we've found either include other allergens or intolerances.
It truly feels like the universe or something has decided that we should either never enjoy food or just never eat. If the textures good and it tastes good it will hurt us. If it brings us joy, if we have fond memories of the food, if it's safe by eating disorder or autism standards, it will hurt us. There's something incredibly demoralizing about finally getting answers after 16 years only to find out that we've been right all along, that our disordered eating, our asthma, our skin problems, our inability to lose weight, our severe environmental allergies, our personality shift between 3rd and 5th grade.. could have all been avoided? Or at least, softened? Not only our FOO, but our peers, teachers, extended family, friends and their families, the rare doctor.. they were all so mean! Almost nobody believed us, even fewer tried to help. It's further proof of neglect against our FOO, if not abuse with the way they treated our allergies. Just kinda lost in all the what-ifs and memories.
We want to get to the point where our eating and relationship with food isn't disordered. We want to stop feeling sick all the time and we want to stop feeling worse every time we eat. We want to stop fearing food. We want to stop getting consumed by contamination fears. All we've ever wanted is for food to stop being such a big, scary, impossible to deal with thing without turning our brain off and dissociating from the body. It just doesn't seem like we'll ever get that. It's hard coming to terms with something when every time you've previously accepted it, someone else has convinced you that it could be different. It doesn't seem like it could ever be different. Even if we do allergy shots and xolair, we will always have foods to avoid, we'll always have to be hypervigilant about food, and food will never be easy. So we're trying to figure out how to accept it in a healthy way.
On the other hand, we saw an allergist on monday and while it's incredibly relieving that our asthma and food allergies are real, it's also become incredibly destabilizing. We have lost pretty much all of our safe foods. No more peanut butter, no more oreos, no more silly treats out unless we're absolutely sure they're safe. Fast food and restaurants are a no unless we either know for sure they're safe or decide to be okay with being sick after eating. Even for the foods that we didn't show as allergic to, we are so allergic to the pollen that they just aren't safe to risk. We even forgot to mention some foods that we react to because we have been able to avoid them for so long; now that we're looking for replacements we're kicking ourself over it because we can't find replacements! We truly think that we have lost peanut butter and it's alternatives as a whole because all the alternatives we've found either include other allergens or intolerances.
It truly feels like the universe or something has decided that we should either never enjoy food or just never eat. If the textures good and it tastes good it will hurt us. If it brings us joy, if we have fond memories of the food, if it's safe by eating disorder or autism standards, it will hurt us. There's something incredibly demoralizing about finally getting answers after 16 years only to find out that we've been right all along, that our disordered eating, our asthma, our skin problems, our inability to lose weight, our severe environmental allergies, our personality shift between 3rd and 5th grade.. could have all been avoided? Or at least, softened? Not only our FOO, but our peers, teachers, extended family, friends and their families, the rare doctor.. they were all so mean! Almost nobody believed us, even fewer tried to help. It's further proof of neglect against our FOO, if not abuse with the way they treated our allergies. Just kinda lost in all the what-ifs and memories.
We want to get to the point where our eating and relationship with food isn't disordered. We want to stop feeling sick all the time and we want to stop feeling worse every time we eat. We want to stop fearing food. We want to stop getting consumed by contamination fears. All we've ever wanted is for food to stop being such a big, scary, impossible to deal with thing without turning our brain off and dissociating from the body. It just doesn't seem like we'll ever get that. It's hard coming to terms with something when every time you've previously accepted it, someone else has convinced you that it could be different. It doesn't seem like it could ever be different. Even if we do allergy shots and xolair, we will always have foods to avoid, we'll always have to be hypervigilant about food, and food will never be easy. So we're trying to figure out how to accept it in a healthy way.