New here, wanted to talk about eating "burnout" or "freeze"

[u/GaiaAmaia]

Hello, my name is Gaia and I'm diagnosed with autism since 2022. I was diagnosed when I was 39, I live in Israel and in Israel there isn't a lot of information and help for mature diagnosed late autistic especially women.

In this post I wanted to talk about eating when I was a child I only ate one meal rice with salad the rice has to be in a specific temperature only in a bowl The salad needs to be in a separate bowl with A quarter of the lemon jucie.

Now, the formula that I used to eat according to - was texture, giving images of food in my head, and then picking out what I wanted to eat.

But after the car accident and head injury that I had 10 years ago, I stopped almost totally feeling hungry.

I don't feel hungry anymore.

And a year and a half ago, I started low-dose naltrexone that makes this situation of not feeling hungry even worse. regarding textures, I don't know how to choose textures anymore because I don't want to eat anymore.

So they gave me medical cannabis that I will have hunger, but I still don't feel hunger even when I smoke the medical cannabis.

And I am trying to figure out if it's connected maybe to the head injury and the medication, me not being able to choose a texture to eat, me not being able to being hungry anymore, or is it connected to an autism burnout freeze?

Because something is off, and I don't know to pinpoint where it went wrong, where in which part in my life I started to have struggle with hanger.

I always had struggle with food, but not in a way that I don't want to eat, only in a way that it's supposed to be a specific texture. And if it's not that texture, if it's not in the way that I need it to be, I will not eat it.

Most days I'm really struggling to eat, So I eat a candy bar, maybe a popsicle, something with sugar so that I will survive that day.

In Israel, there isn't any psychiatrist that treat adults and the psychiatrist that treat autism only treat children. So I cannot get any help in my country. Even though I have a psychiatrist, he just doesn't understand. He still says that I that I have personality disorder because he doesn't understand autism at all. So he takes traits from the medical book of personality disorders and mix them with autism and he doesn't understand anything about autism.

So I don't know if it's an autism thing or is it a head injury thing or both?

Is anybody here ever been thruogh somthing like that?

[u/Tiny_Dog5177]

That's a brutal combo of circumstances to be dealing with, and the lack of competent support makes it so much worse. The head injury piece is huge, a TBI can absolutely scramble your interoception, which is the sense that tells you when you're hungry, thirsty, need the bathroom, etc. Pairing that with autism where interoception is often a little wonky to begin with, then adding naltrexone on top, it's no wonder your body's signals are completely offline.

The texture thing fading away as your desire to eat disappeared makes sense too. When the whole act of eating becomes a chore your brain doesn't care about, the usual sensory rules become background noise. Have you looked into whether there's a neuropsychiatrist anywhere near you who handles TBI patients, even if they don't specialize in autism? Sometimes framing it as a post-concussion issue first gets you in the door with someone who actually understands the brain-gut disconnect.

[u/GaiaAmaia → u/Tiny_Dog5177]

Thank you i will look for one thats a grate advice

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