The Greatest Speech In 20th Century Film Has Hidden Lessons For Neurodivergent Binge Eaters
My favourite ever speech in a film comes from the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. Robin Williams plays a therapist working with Matt Damon’s troubled maths genius Will. In one scene, Williams is getting through Will’s defenses so he can help him.
I’ve linked to a clip of the scene below, but I want to focus on a couple of lines here:
You’re an orphan, right? Do you think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are…because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you?
This quote speaks to a deep truth about not just eating better, but change in general:
Humans crave simplicity, yet the path to failure is paved with oversimplification.
Let me give some examples
#1 Willpower might sound great, but if you have ADHD you need to tap into something better than executive (mal) functioning.
#2 Binge eating is a very emotional experience. Many neuro-typicals love to spout the idea that thoughts control feelings. Tell that to any neurodivergent caught up in sensory overload. How can our thoughts possibly have created that?
#3 If an expert on neurodivergence assessed me, they would label me HSP – a highly sensitive person. I loathe this term. Just as Dickens’ novel could never encapsulate Will Hunting, those three words can never express the relish I feel at no longer kowtowing to neurotypicals’ low standards of empathy. HSP says nothing about how I have dismantled my victim identity, or the satisfaction I get from teaching clients to be their neuroD selves in a world that doesn’t get them.
#4 I read recently in a book by two ADHD experts that eating issues and ADHD are all about time blindness. You get hyper focused, forget to eat, and then bam! …Starving, you overeat.
But… I have had more ADHD clients who came to me using food to numb themselves to the overwhelm they felt. Forgetting to eat just wasn’t a thing for them.
Neurotypicals are also human beings, and human beings love to oversimplify because it helps us make sense of an increasingly complex world.
So they oversimplify your ADHD – Oh that. It’s caused by too much sugar, isn’t it?
They oversimplify your autism. Oh yes, I’ve seen Rain Man. They have no empathy, do they?
They oversimplify your high empathy levels. She’s just far too sensitive.
We neurodivergents have had to tolerate this oversimplification of our whole identity our whole lives. We do ourselves no favours by taking on that oversimplification when dismantling binge eating. As Einstein said
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler
That’s why you need a neurodivergent food coach to put food out of a job. Find out more here
And now here’s that speech in full. Enjoy!