Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)

At first, you thought it was just picky eating.

All kids are picky, right? But, your kiddo seems to be more picky than the average child. It has gotten to the point where, if their specific foods aren’t available, THEY JUST WON’T EAT.

Crackers, cookies, chicken nuggets, and milk.

There’s a limited variety of very specific foods that they’ll eat. Not only are they limited to a small variety of foods, but they are even specific about the brands that they’ll eat.

Goldfish original crackers. Don’t you dare try to get them to eat the store brand or another flavor of goldfish, because it isn’t happening!

You have to pack food for them when you send them to friend’s houses, otherwise they likely won’t eat while they’re there.

Vacations can be challenging, because you’ve got to make sure that you can either pack enough of their foods to last the entire trip, or that their specific foods will be available at the local stores where you’re going.

You’ve tried it all and nothing seems to work.

You’re terrified for your kid’s life. They just won’t eat, no matter how hard you try.

You’re worried about malnutrition and how their eating habits might be impacting their overall wellbeing.

You’ve brought it up with the pediatrician and they’ve told you, “They’ll grow out of it.” Only, THEY HAVEN’T GROWN OUT OF IT. 

Nobody seems to get it.

You’ve taken them to therapists, feeding therapists, and occupational therapists, only for things to remain the same or get worse.

You are at a loss and don’t know where to turn.

While it can be normal for kids to have picky eating habits when they are younger, some kids struggle with severe picky eating to the point of having a phobia of food, what we now call Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (or ARFID for short).

ARFID is unfortunately very misunderstood by most medical and mental health professionals.

It’s not as simple as forcing your kid to eat a wider variety of foods. In fact, doing this increases the anxiety and makes the problem worse.

ARFID is often the result of implicit trauma… meaning a trauma that is stored in the body, rather than in the mind. It might result from trauma that occurred when the child was a baby in utero, at birth, infancy, early childhood, or from a medical condition or procedure. The trauma often has nothing to do with food, but food is the thing that triggers the trauma in the body. Kind of like how if you were attacked by a dog and have a scar on your arm, you might become triggered if something brushes up against the scar.

Talking about it isn’t enough.

Since the traumatic memory is not held in the thinking brain, we can’t treat it with the normal talk therapy approaches (like cognitive behavioral therapy). Exposure therapy (which is often used for phobias) makes the condition worse. Essentially, as you continuously expose them to the unfavorable foods, you are triggering the child’s fight or flight response and growing the phobia to the food.

So, if typical treatments don’t work… what do we do???

This is where I come in. I work on healing the trauma in the body, to help the child return to a sense of safety around food.

Through somatic touch therapy, I am able to help calm the nervous system down which allows for physiological openings, leading to the client being able to feel safe and comfortable eating new foods.

Often my clients come to me after trying every treatment under the sun, only to feel as if their child has made no progress or has regressed and gotten worse.

Slow and gentle is the name of the game here.

As we begin to work with the body, and the nervous system settles, only then can we begin to see progress around food. Rather than forcing them to eat new foods, we wait for the nervous system to get regulated, equip them with skills to maintain a sense of calm and safety in the body, then we begin to gradually introduce new foods while helping them to stay calm and regulated throughout the progress.

Eventually, as the body begins to feel safe, the variety of foods becomes wider. Food feels safe again. Eating is no longer an issue. Family dinners can become a joyful experience and eating can feel fun!

If you or your loved one is struggling with ARFID and needs help, call me today so that we can get you on the path of healing.