After recently doing some online research, I read about Selective Eating Disorder and I believe I have SED. Like most of us here, my parents and I thought it was a childhood habit or a strange unique quirk I just never grew out of! I had never met anyone like me before and have felt so alone with it most of my life. It's incredibly healing and powerful to read everyone's stories so thank you all for sharing! We really aren't alone, and there is nothing wrong with us. For whatever reason, this is just a set back we were born with, and hopefully together we can help each other deal with it better in our own lives. I'll share a bit of my story in the hopes of adding to all of yours! I just turned 21 yesterday, and after all that time I was finally motivated to research what was going on with my extreme levels of picky eating during this past semester (I'm a junior in college) studying abroad in China. I came to China because I am studying Chinese language and culture for my future career. It was a wonderful decision for my education and personal interests, but Chinese food includes very very few of my safe foods. I am a vegetarian (used to eat bacon and pepperoni only, but eventually decided to give them up although I love the taste to become a full vegetarian as I am also grossed out by the idea of eating dead animals), and on top of that I only eat certain fruits and vegetables uncooked and without dressing, cheese pizza, fries, plain pasta with only certain kinds of sauces or butter, eggs or tofu but only prepared in particular ways, some Western breakfast foods like pancakes or cereal or oatmeal, lots of dairy products like yogurt and cheese, and some desserts. I won't eat the vast majority of menu items in your average American restaurant because like most of us I have a lot of specific preferences even for my safe foods, so at a Chinese restaurant you can forget about it. I usually use the full extent of my Chinese language capabilities to explain that I literally want noodles without soup or veggies or meat, which is very hard for Chinese waiters to wrap their heads around. Or I go the simple route and only eat a plain bowl of white rice... which for me isn't very filling or satisfying as a whole meal. The hardest part hasn't just been finding food I feel comfortable eating in China, but also finding social acceptance. Unlike some of us, I have been extremely lucky to have a family that has been incredibly supportive without being enabling in an unhealthy way of my food preferences. My friends in high school and college and current boyfriend of three years are also all very accepting - they sometimes tease or make jokes but ultimately try to understand and respect me as I am. However, in my study abroad program in China, I am very frequently in social situations with lots of other students who aren't friends of mine at Chinese restaurants where my diet is very very publicly displayed - and of course, noticed and picked apart by other students. At first I can try to cover it up as "I'm just a vegetarian," but it quickly shows that there's much more going on when everyone tries to help by pointing out lots of vegetarian dishes and realizes that I don't want to eat any of those either. People in the program have been gossiping and misunderstanding my diet a lot, and I suspect that it was one reason I wasn't able to maintain the first group of friends I was a part of during the semester. Luckily, I found a new group who were much more understanding and not at all bothered by my diet, but it was still very difficult to face all the social pressure and public conversations from strangers my age about my eating habits where I knew that they really were judging me. In reading others' stories, I have seen that one of the most common threads among us is that many are afraid to eat around other people - especially as we get older and have to maintain a more "normal" and professional appearance - and will do anything to avoid those situations. I am a very outgoing and extroverted person, so I have always tried to be relatively open about my eating habits with strangers even when it feels extremely embarrassing or difficult to be honest about. I often cope by making fun of myself in front of new acquaintances to make my diet seem more acceptable through humor and an ice-breaker topic rather than something to cover up completely. But the reality is that it's just another coping mechanism like avoiding eating with people at all, and sometimes those self-effacing strategies and attempts at humor still don't work. Because just as people can be ignorant or insensitive about race, religion, disabilities, one's body type, or other characteristics that distinguish people from each other, there will always be people who do not understand that our way of eating is not some casual choice or a lack of maturity. Trying new foods for some of us is terrifying and sometimes seems impossible - and that is a very real thing. We are all doing the best we can for our health and our lives, and our happiness is also very important within that! Never forget that you are wonderful, and so much more than what you feel comfortable eating and so much more than what anyone may choose to think of you! For me, talking to and hearing from all of you has already made such a big difference just in the past two weeks of discovering this community. So thank you! Keep sharing and keep loving yourself 🙂