A Neurodivergent Reflection on Gender, Puberty, and Eating Disorders

I never planned to share anything about my recent body changes. But when I found myself tossing and turning on a chilly October night a few months ago, I knew I had to let the words flow out of me. So I grabbed my phone, opened the VoiceMemos app, and started talking about how going through puberty has led to ponderings about gender identity and feeling trapped in a human body. This blog post is a written version of that 12 AM voice memo – enjoy!

Second Puberty in Eating Disorder Recovery

In the past year, I've experienced what I can only describe as a second puberty – a direct result of honoring extreme hunger and allowing my body to heal after an eating disorder. As I detail in my book How to Beat Extreme Hunger, hormonal shifts are a natural, albeit terrifying aspect of the recovery process.

As an autistic person, these shifts have been particularly challenging to navigate. My body has developed in ways I've never experienced before: new distributions of fat tissue, the appearance of cellulite, and being confronted with the harsh reality of PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) every month. It goes without saying that the unpredictability and sensory overwhelm of these biological changes has been overwhelmingly intense for my highly sensitive autistic body.

And even this view – of seeing a body as a possession – has been a large part of my ponderings. In fact, I’ve written before about how an ecological view of my body actually helped me make peace with weight gain. But just because I can now accept circumstances that my eating disorder “helped” me avoid, this doesn’t mean I have my life fully figured out!

One of my current struggles is just “being” without distraction. Interestingly, I know exactly why it’s so difficult for me to be present: When I'm not hyper-focused on my work (including writing, coaching, or recording podcasts), I become acutely aware of feeling trapped in a human body. In those moments, I am confronted with the sensation that my vast, abundant, infinite energy is being forced into a physical form that does not encapsulate my essence. The awareness of this constriction can make mere survival incredibly painful.

Some Neurodivergent Reflections on Gender Identity

This sense of feeling “trapped” in a physical body deepens when we bring gender into the conversation. While I use she/her pronouns and identify as a girl, I am very uncomfortable with being perceived as a "woman." When people address me as "ma'am" or "miss," my insides start screaming "That’s wrong!"

Upon reflection, I can clearly see how my eating disorder was an unconscious way to repress maturation. Even today, being called a "girl" feels more authentic to my experience, despite my adult age. This might be partially related to a common autistic trait of appearing younger while communicating more maturely, but it goes deeper than that – personally, I wish gender didn't exist at all. I wish we could all see each other as the essential beings that we are, unrestricted by societal labels, judgments, stereotypes and stigmas.

Working with many trans and non-binary individuals has given me so many insights about the relationship between neurodivergence and gender identity. I’ve discovered that a lot of the time, the eating disorder serves to “protect” someone from full embodiment – including the characteristics associated with specific genders.

This mode of protection is deeply intertwined with the fear of growing up and being healthy. As I’ve written before, anorexia was my way of “staying young” in every way possible. As long as I didn’t grow up, I didn’t have to face the responsibilities that come with being a healthy adult in a world not built for the neurodivergent being.

Finding Peace in the Questions

As I reflect on that late-night voice memo now, I realize that it's okay to sit with these questions about gender, body, and identity without having all the answers. Maybe the discomfort I feel isn't something to be solved, but rather a valid part of my neurodivergent experience of being human.

What I do know is that recovery has forced me to confront not just my relationship with food, but my relationship with growing up, with gender, and with the very experience of being embodied. And while these revelations can be overwhelming, they're also liberating. They remind me that our journeys of self-discovery are never fully figured out, which allows us to keep learning, growing, and evolving into wiser humans.

So I'll keep exploring, keep questioning, and keep sharing my truth – because sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is simply acknowledge the complexity of our experience. After all, isn't that what being human is all about?