Have you ever shared something deeply personal about how you feel, only to have someone dismiss it, question it, or tell you that what you’re experiencing “can’t possibly be true”?
For many people, this kind of invalidation is a common occurrence when they share their experiences. And for individuals with ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder), it can be a daily reality. Their lived experiences, especially around food and eating, are often doubted, dismissed, or ignored.
This is a form of injustice that impacts not only emotional well-being but also interoception, which is our sense that helps us notice and understand signals from inside the body.
In this blog, we’ll explore:
- Why felt safety and validation of interoceptive experiences around food are crucial for people with ARFID
- What epistemic injustice means, including its two forms: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice
- How epistemic injustice can undermine someone as a credible knower of their own body signals, limiting body trust and the ability to understand and communicate their inner experiences
- What we can do to meaningfully support and believe people with ARFID
Interoception, ARFID, and the Need for Felt Safety
Interoception is the sense that helps us notice and interpret internal body signals like hunger, fullness, thirst, safety, and stress. For people with ARFID, interoception needs to be a key area of consideration because it helps us understand how food uniquely relates to and feels in each person’s body.
Supporting someone with ARFID shouldn’t be about using external forms of control to convince them to “eat more variety.” Rather, meaningful and effective support relies on creating conditions that help the body feel safe around food. When the body perceives eating as unsafe, signals related to stress and protection can become more urgent than signals for hunger and nourishment, making eating much less desirable (Read our blog Affirming Supports for Interoception, Feeding Challenges & ARFID).
Recognizing when the body feels safe (and when it doesn’t) depends on trusting our own internal experiences. If we repeatedly dismiss, question, or override someone’s descriptions of what they are feeling inside their body, we make it much harder for them to trust what their body is telling them and to use that information to create the conditions their body needs to feel safe.
This is where the concept of epistemic injustice becomes especially relevant.
Epistemic Injustice: When Someone is Not Deemed a Credible Knower
The philosopher Miranda Fricker coined the term epistemic injustice to describe a distinctive type of injustice in which a wrong is done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower. In other words, it happens when a person’s knowledge about their own experiences is unfairly dismissed or given less credibility because of assumptions, stereotypes, or prejudice related to their identity (for example, because of disability, neurodivergence, a mental health condition, race, gender, or age).
For people with ARFID, epistemic injustice can have profound consequences. When someone’s inner experiences are repeatedly dismissed or misunderstood, they may begin to question whether what they are sensing is real. Over time, this can undermine body trust, making it more difficult to interpret, and respond to their own internal body signals.
Fricker describes two primary forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice.
Testimonial Injustice: When Communication Is Dismissed
Testimonial injustice occurs when someone’s words, actions, or other forms of communication are doubted, minimized, or dismissed because of assumptions or stereotypes related to who they are.
For people with ARFID, testimonial injustice can occur when they communicate something important about how food feels in their body, but others assume they are simply “picky,” “attention-seeking,” or refusing food on purpose.
For example:
A child pushes food away, says, “This food makes my throat feel gaggy” and runs away from the table.
An adult responds, “You’re fine. That’s silly. Just swallow. Take one more bite.”
Despite communicating a genuine internal experience, through words, pushing food away, and running from the table, their knowledge is dismissed as inaccurate, exaggerated, or impossible. Over time, repeated experiences like these can teach people to distrust their own bodies. They may begin to question whether what they feel is “real,” making it harder to rely on internal body signals as guides for safety and nourishment.
Hermeneutical Injustice: When Existing Frameworks Fall Short
Hermeneutical injustice occurs when people lack the shared concepts, language, or frameworks needed to understand and communicate their own experiences. While testimonial injustice happens in individual interactions, hermeneutical injustice occurs at a broader societal level. When the lived experiences of marginalized groups are repeatedly dismissed or ignored, those experiences are less likely to shape the concepts, language, and frameworks our society uses to make sense of the world.
For individuals with ARFID, this is all too common. Historically, our understanding of ARFID has been developed primarily by clinicians, researchers, and observers rather than in partnership with people who have lived experience. As a result, many of the frameworks used to understand ARFID do not fully capture what it actually feels like to live with it.
For example:
A child repeatedly refuses certain foods but can’t explain why. They only know that something feels wrong.
Adults ask:
“Why are you so picky?”
“You just ate this yesterday. What’s wrong with it today?”
“Do you want to earn iPad time? Just take another bite.”
The child doesn’t know how to answer because the available frameworks don’t capture what they are experiencing. Instead, the child is expected to explain their experience using concepts that don’t fit, such as “picky eater,” or “bad kid” . Without shared frameworks that recognize these experiences as legitimate, children (and adults) with ARFID may struggle to understand what they are experiencing and communicate it to others.
Why This Matters: Interoception and Justice
Epistemic injustice isn’t just an abstract philosophical concept. It shows up in the everyday lives of people with ARFID. When someone’s lived experiences are repeatedly dismissed, the harm extends beyond each moment of communication. Over time, they may begin to question, discount, or distrust what their own body is telling them. And when our shared language and frameworks fail to reflect their actual experiences, it becomes harder for people with ARFID to understand themselves, communicate their needs, and advocate for meaningful support.
As a result, their knowledge is less likely to influence how ARFID is understood by clinicians, researchers, families, and society. When we believe and learn from people with ARFID, we do more than support one individual; we help create a more accurate and inclusive understanding of ARFID for everyone.
This is why ARFID cannot simply be viewed as a “behavioral problem.” Interoception is an important part of the picture, and so is justice.
How To Support People with ARFID
If we want to support individuals with ARFID, we must:
- Believe what they tell you. Take their words and actions seriously.
- Validate their interoceptive experiences. Seek to understand and reinforce that what they feel in their body is real and meaningful, even when we do not yet fully understand it.
- Expand the language. Co-create terms and descriptions that reflect their actual lived experiences of ARFID.
- Recognize them as experts. People with ARFID are the ultimate authorities on how food feels in their bodies.
When we do this, we can not only support their nourishment and wellness, we help rebuild trust in their interoceptive awareness and protect their right to be seen, heard, and believed.
Final Thoughts
At its core, supporting someone with ARFID means respecting their inner experience. It means creating felt safety around food, validating body signals, and dismantling the injustices that silence or distort their experiences.
Because people with ARFID are not just struggling with eating. They are navigating a world that often tells them their bodies are wrong. And that is a justice issue we all have the power to change.
Want to learn more about ARFID and interoception?
If you’d like to explore these ideas more deeply, our two on-demand ARFID courses examine the relationship between interoception, feeding challenges, and lived experience. We take a closer look at topics like epistemic injustice, felt safety, body trust, and practical, affirming approaches to supporting people with ARFID. Whether you’re a clinician, educator, caregiver, or someone seeking a deeper understanding of ARFID, these courses offer research-informed, neurodiversity-affirming strategies you can begin applying right away.
