5:14pm August 6, 2013

➸ Social skills for autonomous people: Why some of us need food strategies

youneedacat:

realsocialskills:

tizatee asked:

I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand the post about reminders that food exist? Can you please explain it to me? I really can’t relate to this problem. Thanks

It’s a common problem for people with neurological disabilities, and it can have many different…

One of my big problems was the moment food went into cupboards or the fridge, I would forget it existed. Because the doors were just flat surfaces, I’d forget you could move them. And that was one of many factors in actual starvation.

Mine hasn’t gotten to quite that point. Sorry you ended up in that kind of shape before you got the services you needed. :(

But, I do also seem to have an extreme “out of sight, out of mind" problem that I’m still surprised it took me forever to figure out, until I saw somebody else mention a very similar thing.

I see a very visual illustration of this in the fact that objects in my house remind me of what I need to do. I have started putting a glass of water in my kitchen, so that when I come down in the morning, I see it and drink it. I always refill it, so that whenever I see it, I drink it. Whenever my dad visits, he is always telling me I need to tidy my house and ‘put things away’, and he gets very annoyed by the mess – but the truth is that having things all out on display is actually a really helpful strategy for me. I have learnt not to put things in the closed drawers of my fridge, for instance, because I forget they are there. When I open my fridge, I eat things that I see. It’s not that I don’t know, at an abstract level, that there are drawers with food in them – obviously I know that, and I can remember putting the food in them – but it’s more that I don’t think of it while I’m focusing on something else.

I will actually totally forget that an item exists if it is, say, back in a cabinet or the fridge where I can’t immediately see it when I open the door. I can buy, say, a bag of pasta and put it in the back of the cabinet, and not remember it’s there the next day when I’m trying to find something to eat. It’s not just because I’m focused on something else, it may as well just not exist anymore once it’s out of sight in the cabinet. It was actually more than a little disturbing to realize how my brain was doing that, but yeah, at least now I can try to find workarounds.

Which includes cluttering up the counters, but I’ve been trying to figure out better options for organizing things so that I can actually see them. (Besides just trying to keep less stuff in there regularly, so it’s easier to find what is there.) Having to replace the fridge recently was a PITA, but getting a bigger one with an extra shelf has already helped with that, because it’s easier to put everything at the front of the shelves so nothing is lurking way back in there to go disgusting.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had much luck with keeping an inventory going, and remembering to add and remove items as they come into the kitchen and get used up. It may be worth another try.

But, yeah, there are lots of reasons people may have persistent trouble with staying adequately fed. I’ve blogged a little before about my own personal collection of factors I’ve figured out so far; there are probably even more that I haven’t yet.

I think my problem is that object permanence is very… impermanent… for me. So I literally much of the time don’t notice things I can’t see.

(See really means, detect through any of my senses, or through my ability to notice patterns in sensory input.)

I eventually put bags of rice cakes all over the house. It helped a little, but I also have trouble recognizing objects and understanding what I see, so it wasn’t perfect.

Seriously many of the kinds of assistance I get just involve people putting things in my hands. Because touch and motion are my most reliable senses. And because I have much more trouble reaching for something than reacting to its presence in my hand.

But once it’s in my hand, that triggers my ability to both recognize it and use it.

I can sometimes do that without something in my hand already, but it’s nothing like reliable because initiating is hell.

Notes: