A Conversation with Zoë Bisbing About ARFID & Neurodivergence

Debbie:

Hey Zoe, welcome back to the podcast.

Zoë Bisbing:

Thank you, Debbie. It’s so nice to be here with you.

Debbie:

It’s nice to have you back. I, you know, I always when I have returned guests, I go back and look, how long ago was that conversation? And it was March of 2020. Like, what a crazy time in history. It was probably recorded before everything went down, but it was released in March of that year. So first of all, five years ago. And, yeah, we don’t have to go down the covid rabbit hole. But it’s really nice to see you again.

Zoë Bisbing:

Same.

Debbie:

And we have such an interesting topic to explore together today, but I always ask my even returning guests to take a few minutes and introduce themselves and talk a little bit about why they do the work that they do. So would you do that for us?

Zoë Bisbing:

Yeah, so I’m Zoe Bisbing and I guess by day I’m a therapist. I run a group therapy practice in New York City called Body Positive Therapy NYC. We specialize in eating disorders and body image across the lifespan. And we are a neuroaffirming practice. So we work a lot with neurodivergent folks struggling both with eating disorders and without. just offer affirming therapy for autistic people and folks with ADHD, et cetera. I suppose most importantly, I’m a mom of three. I think we have our own sort of neuro spicy household that I’m proud to be a neuro affirming family. And then my side hustle passion project has actually changed names since I last saw you, now that I think about it, because it was what started as the Full Bloom Project with a friend of mine has sort of bloomed into what I call Body Positive Home now. So it’s a prevention effort. I do a lot of consultation and public speaking and social media posts under the handle My Body Positive Home, really trying to bring prevention effort, sort of competency around feeding kids and talking about body and food and all these tricky things in ways that are hopefully promoting body image resilience and hopefully increasing the likelihood that people won’t need my clinical services. Although if they do, that’s fine too. But it’s really a sort of advocacy arm of the front end of what I do on the back end.

Debbie:

Yeah, and I just want to mention for listeners too, I will have a link in the show notes page to the first time you were on the show and we talked about body positive households. You know, that conversation stuck with me a lot of, you know, you know, I talked to a lot of people, but there were some things that came up in that conversation that profoundly changed the way that I talked about food in my family and had my husband listen to it. And it really just, made a big impact on me. So I would really encourage listeners to go back and check that out. But we’re going to go kind of a little more narrow today. And as a way to get into that, because we’re going to be talking about our feed, and I am going to want you to kind of walk us through what that is. But before we do that, just to set the landscape for disordered eating in general, even in the past five years, I’m wondering, has it gotten more intense with social media? Like, are you noticing any trends in terms of teens, children, and disordered eating?

Zoë Bisbing:

Well, the pandemic, mean, it’s talking to you, it’s disorienting me in terms of time, as you and I were talking about before we started recording. Five years, it’s wild. the pandemic, unfortunately, maybe not surprisingly, there was sort of an explosion of a lot of mental health concerns among people of all ages. But eating disorders definitely exploded during the pandemic. And there was a time during the pandemic where I mean, like inpatient units didn’t have enough beds to cover the need. And then similarly, I mean, I’m sure it’s partly why my practice expanded during that time, because there were just a lot of people that were struggling with eating disorders and disordered eating, you just like across the spectrum. So there are legitimate statistics that I can find for you that showed an explosion of that. I mean, and I don’t know how that really impacts RFID in particular, but I know that over the last five years, there’s just more, more cases. And then I would like to think that RFID is becoming more widely discussed. I feel like more people, certainly more parents that like follow me on social media, they use that language or let’s say my kid has RFID or I’ve heard about RFID, like, it definitely over the past, since I became an eating disorder therapist, it’s been 15 plus years now, ARFID in particular seems to be more known and more discussed, but there’s still, I feel like a lack of resources out there. Most providers don’t support ARFID or most eating disorder providers that I know don’t support ARFID or it’s like a big learning curve there. So it’s probably both more awareness, more incidents and I would like to think more professionals trained but that’s the lag I think.

Debbie:

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. all right, so you’ve mentioned ARFID a few times, and I think probably the first time I heard that term was the first time you were on the show where we just touched upon it briefly, but we’re gonna talk about that today. That’s kind of the core topic for this episode. So could you lay the groundwork for us and define it for us?

Zoë Bisbing:

Yeah, I mean, I think as I define it, I wanna be like right off the bat, I wanna be really open about how controversial it is, even just the sort of differing ways of thinking about ARFID, especially for this community, in part because ARFID, know, certainly if you asked me, I don’t know, five years ago, 10 years ago, I might’ve just told you ARFID is a type of eating disorder. I probably told you that on the show and to, it’s an acronym. So avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, right? Like disorder is in the title and there are sort of different types of RFID, which I can break down for you so that you know what we’re talking about here. But as I’ve become more versed and trained in neurodivergent affirming models, I am even personally at odds with how I think about ARFID now, because in some ways we can look at ARFID as its own type of neurodivergence, which is sort of in conflict with calling it a disorder, right? If we truly want to be affirming. And so ARFID in some ways, we want to think about it both as a type of neurodivergence and It can be like life threatening, right? It can be severely impairing. If you think about avoidant and restrictive food intake behaviors even, right? If we take away the word disorder. And so obviously we have to address it, right? If a person’s welfare is being threatened, right? So I don’t mean it to, you know, I’ll slow down. I don’t mean to be confusing. I want to outline what it is, but I also want to be really careful about how we talk about it, right? There might be other professionals that would come on here and just talk to you about how it’s a pathology. But I want to be able to talk about how in some ways of thinking about it, it might just be a type of being human, you know? And then in other ways of thinking about it, it might just be a pathology to be treated and sort of how we find the most affirming way of thinking about a human being that might be struggling with ARFID. Is that making sense so far?

Debbie:

It is, and it is messy. And you warned me this could be messy, but I love that. I love messy conversations. And let me just ask a follow-up question then, because I’m wondering, are there people who have ARFID, if it’s something that you have, who don’t have any other neurodivergent diagnoses? If you guys could see Zoe’s face right now. So you’re, you’re having feelings. So tell me what you think.

Zoë Bisbing:

The incidence of ARFID is very high among people that are also either autistic and or have ADHD. So you do tend to find ARFID in people who are already or will be identified in these other ways. Are there people that just have ARFID and not any other type of neurodivergence? Maybe, but I might still say they are neurodivergent. Because I really do think of RFID as a type of neurodivergence and one that is high support need, right? Because RFID, just so that we’re not being too vague, it’s picky eating on steroids, right? So oftentimes you’ll see picky eating in all sorts of people, even neuro-typical kids, right? Picky eating is not that unusual, but there are the kids that sort of over time kind of organically grow out of picky eating, right? Or selective eating, however you want to say it. And then other kids who just don’t, like they’re sort of unable to kind of organically just develop more and more of those food acceptance skills. Arfid, if we could kind of break it down into maybe three types of ARFID. You have avoidant. So this is sort of sensory based. It’s characterized by strong aversion to certain food textures or tastes, colors, smells, and that those aversions lead to a limited diet. There can also be avoidant sensory, but based on more introspective sensations. So the way I feel when I eat, right? So that can become an avoidant behavior as well if you’re trying to stave off an adverse sensory experience internally. there’s the textures, the temperatures, things that are not working for someone’s sensory profile, right? And then there’s sort of the internal sensory ones. There’s aversive type, which is characterized by like a significant fear of negative consequences. So if someone’s afraid of choking or vomiting or GI discomfort, GI discomfort could be related to a sort of internal sensory experience, but I’m afraid I’m going to have diarrhea if I eat, for example. And often those can be rooted in like a genuine traumatic experience that was had. Like you could see this maybe going back to your question before, a kid who is like a neurotypical kid  who chokes on something and becomes so afraid of ever having that experience again that maybe starts to develop ARFID symptoms literally due to a fear of having that experience again, right? So that might be a presentation in a kid where we wouldn’t look at that as like a form of neurodivergence, but rather a reaction to a traumatic experience. And then you have a restrictive type, which is characterized by a general disinterest or kind of lack of motivation towards eating. And all three of these types can lead to an insufficient food intake and sort of nutritional deficiencies which can happen. But the restrictive one, I mean, there are kids who for just different reasons have low appetite or don’t experience sort of hunger cues in the same way that other people do.

It’s not like you have to have one type. You might have a combination of them. But this is sort of what we mean when we say ARFID, right? There’s these reasons for why certain individuals are struggling to get their needs met. They’re sort of not just nutritional needs, but their energy needs met, right? And then we can sort of talk about or question together, is it always a problem? know, if there are some kids that are getting their energy needs met, maybe they’re even getting baseline nutritional needs met, but they still kind of look like, quote, picky eaters, right? Or they’re 25 and they’re still relying on chicken nuggets and hot dogs and goldfish, you know, as sort of safe foods, same foods. And do we want to pathologize that? Do we want to let that alone? You know, like these are the questions and this is where it gets messy. But I want to make sure that the baseline is covered in terms of, or the bases are covered in terms of what our fit is and the multiple categories that exist.

Debbie:

Thank you so much for walking us through that. I have so many questions. I find this so fascinating. So thank you. I just wanna circle back for a minute. The way that you defined ARFID and even question, is it a disorder? And I have similar feelings around pathologizing so much. And I’m wondering if we’re thinking about eating disorders and using air quotes, but I think they are like bulimia or anorexia. It seems like a very different thing, yet I kind of had always lumped them together. So would it be true to say that people who experience anorexia and bulimia, that those are more common, maybe not more common, but it isn’t, it isn’t connected to neurodivergence in the same way that you would say ARFID is?

Zoë Bisbing:

Yes and no. mean, what I am finding, and this is more anecdotally, but my team and my therapy practice and I are finding that there is just an enormous overlap between, this is a common profile, a neurodivergent person who’s high masking, who comes to us with an eating disorder, and then through recovery, we sort of, or through recovery, meaning like through stabilizing eating behavior, I’m not talking about ARFID, although ARFID can be part of it too. We’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s say coming with anorexia or bulimia in sort of regulating the sort of quote problematic behaviors, right? Restoring weight if they are malnourished, restoring eating behavior of regular eating and getting nutritional needs met, overcoming fat phobia, things like that. Often we will find that what we’re left with is sort of either a very highly sensitive person or somebody that was just missed all these years ago. It was invalidated and had some sort of neurodivergence, right? There was just high masking and in part of their sort of self-actualization, oftentimes them stepping into the fullest version of themselves. We’re seeing a lot of that. Now, is that everybody? No, no. But it’s interesting the way that these things seem to correlate, right? Now, anorexia and bulimia do feel to me like a kind of different and binge eating disorder. They do feel like different animals to me when I think about ARFID in part because what ARFID doesn’t not never, but what our fit doesn’t share in common with the other eating disorders is a drive for thinness or a preoccupation with weight, shape and their control. Now I will say this isn’t – I apologize because it’s very messy. There’s like a lot. It’s a dense topic and I want to make sure that it’s clear. One of the things that can. OK, a drive for thinness, right, which we find present in other eating disorders can be the thing that kind of kicks off an eating disorder. However, weight loss, even without the drive for thinness, like even without the pursuit of thinness, weight loss in an individual, given their sort of genetic load, that in and of itself can be a risk factor for anorexia. So that means that someone who’s struggling with ARFID, let’s say a sensory-based one, right? Where there are so many strong aversions to textures and tastes and colors and like their system just cannot handle all that is required to just eat enough food to sort of maintain their weight and maintain development. If their weight dips, right, because of that kind of RFID challenge and their genetic loading is such that their weight loss then kicks in anorexia you can start to see both at the same time. And so that person might start to become preoccupied with their shape or with fear of gaining weight. But it didn’t necessarily start that way. None of this is perfectly clean, but generally speaking, RFID is not really about the control of body shape or weight, at least the shape of weight, the shape of the body. Whereas the other eating disorders do have that element. There’s like a dieting component to the other eating disorders. Does that make sense?

Debbie:

Absolutely, it does. And you touched upon, you know, some of the problems of our food, you know, not being able to maintain weight or, you know, maybe impeding development. What are some of the other problems? Why? Why is this a big issue? Because I’m imagining that there are people with ARFID who have very limited, you know, diets and maybe that’s okay, I don’t know. So I’d love to know when it really becomes problematic?

Zoë Bisbing:

I mean, I think the most obvious place it becomes problematic is when physical health is being compromised, right? you know, there, and I think this is where now if you’re a parent listening and this is your kid that is, you know, in a hospital because they are so medically unstable as was due to malnutrition, malnutrition because of the ARFID, this is the hardest situation to be in, right? Because in some ways, in order to keep that child, this is the most extreme case, but in order to keep that child alive, there might need to be interventions done that are very much violating that child’s bodily autonomy, like a feeding tube, for example, right? Which can be just very harrowing. I know from working on inpatient units, the hardest kids to treat when I was on the inpatient unit, this was over 15 years ago where that unit I was working on was not at all informed about, I think, neurodivergence at all. But the kids that would come in that nobody knew what to do with were the kids that were autistic and had some kind of eating disorder. Those kids, it’s almost like they didn’t know what they were doing with them. And I think that in some ways, that is still a little bit the case. These are sort of, at times, can feel like all bad choices, right?

So when somebody’s welfare, like when their literal ability to walk around and be a person and participate in life is being threatened to the point where they might need hospitalization, like we have a problem. We can’t just say, we need to affirm that. No, we need to both affirm and then find the least harmful ways to keep this person fed and hydrated and alive, right? But I think on the other side of the spectrum, no pun intended, It’s just terribly inconvenient. I I spoke with a family once where they were just the parents. They just want to go to Disneyland and like, we can’t bring this kid to Disneyland. It’s just not possible. All of the food accommodations and they were looking at it as like a barrier to the life they wanted to live as that family. And I think it’s really hard to tell a family like that. It’s possible that in order to affirm your child and give them the experience of health safety, you might not be able to go to Disneyland. Disneyland just might not be in the cards. It’s not accessible to your kid. So part of what we’re always looking for is that line. How do we increase the amount of accommodations that I think most of our kids just aren’t… Our world’s not set up for this. That’s part of the problem. If you have an avoidant or if you have a restrictive diet, it’s hard to go to a birthday party. It’s hard to go to school. It’s hard, right? But I think we need to work harder at finding those accommodations first, right? To see if we can make the world a little bit more accessible to these kids before we start applying essentially interventions that could be very invalidating at best and like actually harmful at worst.

Debbie:

So you’ve walked us through this avoidant type of ARFID, aversive, restrictive. Can you give us a couple examples of what a parent might notice that would kind of raise red flags that this is more than just picky eaters? Like what does it actually look like?

Zoë Bisbing:

Yeah, I will say that there’s an idea that any kind of picky eating is actually attuned eating. Like, I don’t know if you know Noreen Hunani. Have you had her on yet? I highly recommend. I think you will really enjoy her. She’s a dietician and she’s a, I think her handle is like dieticians for neurodiversity. She’s all about looking for affirming models of working with challenges like this. And she literally calls picky eating a tuned eating. I think she’s asking us to change the way we’re looking at all of it, right? I think that picky eating or it’s like a child is doing what they’re able to do, right? I think that when you notice that the kind of feeding dynamic in your family or like the sort of experience of eating in your family feels awful, feels really hard. You know, it’s like you could count up how many foods is my kid actually eating and normally if it’s like five to 10, you know, we’re kind of starting to worry that it’s not enough variety, right, to sort of maybe get all your nutritional needs met. But I really find that for families, if you’re just, it’s one of those things like if you know, know, like mealtimes are a battle. There’s just, you know, it’s impossible to get the morning started because no breakfast, there’s like nothing that the child will eat for breakfast. You know, it’s almost more of a vibe that I want parents to sort of trust. Like if it feels awful, there’s probably something going on. And definitely if your kid is finicky, right? Or sort of, you know, some kids with ARFID are so exquisitely sensitive that they can tell if a tiny little ingredient in a Pringle has changed, like, and then all of a sudden it’s not an acceptable chip anymore. And it’s like, nothing changed here, but they’ll be able to tell, you know? So if you’re noticing that your kid is sort of like an exquisite sensitivity, like can really pick up on these things. These are the things that are so easy as a parent to invalidate or to say, you’re, this is ridiculous. It’s the same thing that it was yesterday, but not really being able to be flexible, not really being able to, yeah, tolerate change, change of brands, change of things. I’m not saying it’s inherently a problem, right? But it will require more accommodation and it requires us to think about this as, as our fit, as opposed to just like picky eating. It’s a spectrum and it’s sort of, there’s so many factors because I think some parents have just sort of a natural ability to be more tolerant and be more curious. And then other parents have much more instinct to be invalidating and disappointed, you know, and think about what it should look like. And so I think that’s a factor too.

Debbie:

So if the ARFID symptoms in the behavior of the child, it is something that requires some intervention or some more support because it’s problematic. As you were just responding to that last question, I’m thinking there’s overlap or similarities with anxiety, with OCD. And of course, we know there’s exposure therapy and there are all these different ways. So I imagine that’s really, and you mentioned in the very beginning that are neurodivergent affirming and that’s really important in the way that ARFID is treated. So what are the best practices ideally in treating a neurodivergent child who has ARFID?

Zoë Bisbing:

i would say that you, as a parent, have to ask the provider that you’re interviewing, for example, this question, not what is the best practice, but rather, how do you think about treating ARFID in neurodivergent children? Because I think the question will, it will, allow the provider to reveal to you whether or not they even know what you’re talking about. Because ARFID, there might be a need and it might be appropriate to work on certain exposures, for example, right? But the way a provider who is really neurodivergent affirming is going to sort of think about those exposures and the way to incorporate them is going to be very different than someone who’s really just applying a kind of cookie cutter model of like exposure and then I’m gonna help you learn how to tolerate your distress. So in some ways, I think that the more neurodivergent-affirming a provider is, the more, it’s not that they’re not interested in offering quote, evidence-based practices, but they’re going to bring their own sort of even just like trauma-informed approach into the room, right, to make sure that we’re not gonna cause harm by trying to prevent harm. Because in some ways that’s part of what we’re working on, right? 

Let me give you an example. I’ve had, this was like an OT, I think, or an OT that I was speaking to. He wanted to refer a family to me. And I had to tell him, it’s possible that the kind of treatment I’m going to offer this family is going to sound like it’s in, it’s going to be undoing everything you’ve been doing with him. Because I think that that feeding therapy he was in was helping him essentially over time, learn how to eat more foods in a compliance based approach, right? And it was not taking into account an accommodation model at all. And I think that this child was probably masking more and more and more and dissociating more and more and more in order to please the clinician and the parents, right? And he was able to do it, but then when he was on his own, this was like when he was with his providers, but then on his own, he was defaulting to his safe and sane foods, right? So this is an example of where I would be working with that family to get to know what this child is actually capable of, helping them look at their ableism, right, which they’re probably bringing here, and then helping them figure out ways to accommodate this child. So another example, you want a provider that is going to be really open to using other kinds of distraction tactics, right? Like, you might have a provider that’s wanting exclusively to increase a child’s ability to tolerate distress of the sensory experience, right, of the food. Whereas another more neurodivergent affirming provider might say, okay, we need to do a little bit of that and we need to get this kid on an iPad so that they can find ways that they can experience meal times in a more accessible way. Not everybody is working that way. And you just want to make sure that the clinician you’re working with, again, sort of has some kind of philosophy around working with neurodivergent kids. I just think that’s paramount because otherwise you might get into one of these like behavioral, cognitive behavioral approaches that really, you know, even the more playful ones, there’s a very interesting treatment program that

I think for certain kids it is great. It’s called Feelings and Body Investigators for ARFID. And I can share the info with you. It’s called FBI ARFID. And it’s lovely. It’s like, it’s getting kids curious about their internal sensations and like teaching them about the way their unique body works. then from there sort of helping them work on some of these more avoidant behaviors in these more playful ways. For the right kid, that could be a great fit. But for another kid who really is more, let’s say, it just has less ability, right? We need to be able to say, okay, this playful intervention is maybe making them feel, I’m thinking about like a PDA kid. It’s like not making them feel equal at all, it’s making them feel like they’re a little kid in a model where they have to learn from puppets or something. It’s like, it’s not working for this kid. Or this kid is not actually necessarily going to be able to learn how to eat fruits and vegetables in the next few years. Like that’s maybe not a realistic goal. So we just need to make sure that there’s a lot of flexibility and a lot of curiosity that’s not giving up on kids because, you know, we obviously want to offer interventions, but we want to make sure that we’re never pushing kids to the point where they might again start dissociating or masking even more. Does that make sense? It’s so complex, but…

Debbie:

Yes, that makes so much sense. Thank you. Just that reaffirmation that there is no cookie cutter approach and we really want to look at our kids as individuals. I’ve done episodes on the show. I did one last year on neurodivergent affirming therapeutic modalities and how hard it is because there are all these tools that exist in CBT and these evidence-based approaches but they don’t necessarily work with complex kids, especially kids who have a higher drive for autonomy, or they’re just complex. So we can’t just kind of slap these labels on and just say, this is how we do things and expect to get good results with these kids.

Zoë Bisbing:

It’s true and we have to really think about this in a nuanced way because I don’t ever want people to misunderstand that, what you just said or what I was saying before, for like, so we do nothing, because that’s disempowering. But we all, and I’m sure you talk about this on this show a lot, like we all carry a high level of internalized ableism, right? And so, and then as parents, we are inundated with what we quote should be feeding our kids. And it’s really hard to then have a kid, let’s say the kid is actually, their calorie needs, their energy needs are being met and maybe they don’t even have any nutrition deficiencies. Their diet just looks like what anybody else would call junk, right? This is why I’m such a big believer in food neutrality and moving away from thinking about, you know, quote, healthy foods and unhealthy foods, because the last thing I want is for a neurodivergent kid who maybe has RFID or, is just has sensory needs that make it so that their diet is really hinging on a lot of same foods and a lot of safe foods. And that’s what allows them to take care of themselves. I don’t want that kid to feel bad about himself or herself or themselves just because they can’t eat the rainbow. You know what I mean? Like we have to be thinking about that. And we just need to appreciate that not every person is going to have the ability to eat as wide a variety as the ideal. But that doesn’t mean that people can’t learn how to attune to their bodies and take care of their bodies. As you probably know from just introspective differences, not everybody even feels hunger and fullness at all, let alone in their stomach, right? Like there isn’t one way to feel a feeling or a sensation. And so any treatment for ARFID should be one that is deeply curious and deeply expansive and is working both with parents and kids in a way that maybe is pushing a little bit, right? Because you don’t want a completely do nothing approach, but he’s constantly making sure that felt safety and nervous system regulation is first and foremost.

Debbie:

So as a way to wrap up then, I’m just thinking of the many parents that I hear from whose kids have ARFID who in these parents, so many of them are just stressed. They feel a lot of stress, you know, whether it’s getting their child to be able to take medication that they need, and that’s a problem, and that’s probably a whole other conversation. And they’re just really seeking out these neurodivergent-affirming providers and trying to figure out a path. You just mentioned that what we want is for our kids to learn to attune to and take care of their bodies. Like what is kind of zooming out? What is the big picture goal and what kind of hope can we share with listeners whose kids have ARFID in terms of where ideally this goes for their children?

Zoë Bisbing:

Yeah, I mean, again, ideally, there would be a plethora of professionals out there that were, you know, easy to find and cost effective and like all these things that just aren’t the case, right. But so that you could have your own kind of personal coach to sort of support you through this journey. Right. I do think it is helpful to instill in kids that there are a lot of different ways to be a human being. There are a lot of different ways to be an eater, right? And that however we discover, you know, whatever type of eater you are, it’s fine. You know, like if your child does have ARFID, I do think it’s useful to conceive of it as a type of neurodivergence, rather than just a pathology or a disorder to overcome. So that we could think about it as like, okay, you have feeding differences. It’s okay to have feeding differences. It’s better to know what they are. And we wanna make sure that there’s room to eat weird, you know? Like it’s gotta be okay to eat weird. If there’s a lot of health conscious folks in your kid’s circle, you need to make sure that they can get some, there’s some boundaries. Like our kid is learning, we want our child to have a decent relationship with themselves, their bodies and food, and they are a different kind of eater. And the worst thing we could do is create shame and stigma around that. I feel like that’s kind of the first layer, right? And that’s hard. We live in a culture that has a lot to say about bodies and right ability and the way you eat and it’s like a whole value system, right? But I do think that that’s first and foremost, because if your child can be like, okay, you I have, I have ARFID, I have feeding differences and some of those, I’m actually just really working on being okay with getting my needs met with my same foods, my safe foods, like making sure that’s okay. That’s a much better foundation to then say, and here’s what I want to expand, right? Like ideally you get buy-in from a young person or, I mean, by the way, adults have ARFID, right? To say, I really wanna work on being able to eat more flexibly so that I can go on vacation, so that I can go to a birthday party and not have a panic attack. Like, I want to figure that out, right? And so I think that there might be some exposure therapy in there, but it’s like you can’t jump to that before making sure that it’s safe to be who you are.

Debbie:

So good. Okay. First of all, I just want to say thank you so much. This has been such an insightful, fascinating conversation and I just so appreciate everything that you shared today. Where would you like listeners to connect with you? You mentioned you’re on social. What’s the best place?

Zoë Bisbing:

Yeah, okay. So I know I have such mixed feelings about social media right now. I have so many, oh my gosh. You know, the best is my website. So bodypositivehome.com. I don’t know when this will air, but there is a sub stack forthcoming. So all of the content that has been living on Instagram, I’m hoping to migrate and create even more offerings both for educators and parents on Substack. But in the meantime, bodypositivehome.com is the best place to go.

Debbie:

Awesome. Listeners, I’ll have links in the show notes page and I’ll keep track of when your substack goes live. So I’ll make sure that it’s incorporated in the show notes when it does. Thank you again. It’s been such a pleasure to talk with you. I’m grateful that you’re doing what you’re doing and for all the lucky people who get to work with you, who are neurodivergent and dealing with ARPED. So thank you.

Zoë Bisbing:

Thank you.