"Bean soup theory" and the use of pattern recognition to replace curiosity

If your social media algorithm has any overlap with mine, you've surely come across "bean soup theory."

Bean soup theory, coined from the comment, "What do I do if I'm allergic to beans, though?" on a video of a recipe for bean soup, has become internet shorthand for a particular social norm: not everything is for everyone, and we don't need to announce every way something doesn't apply to us. I do think that's a useful reminder sometimes, especially when we pour precious energy into being seen by people (strangers on the internet) who aren't interested in seeing us. The norm itself has utility, but what happens when we begin applying it outside the situations it was meant for is a problem.

There are two very different categories of comments between which it's important to differentiate:

1) Those that genuinely don't add much to the conversation but put the burden of responding on the original speaker: "I don't like beans," "This things you're selling is ugly," "I hate Sundays," "This meme doesn't resonate with me."

2) Those that aren't trying to redirect attention toward themselves and instead aim to expand the conversation so it becomes more accurate: "Actually, this intervention consistently harms people with my disability," "This advice assumes abilities I don't have," "People keep telling me this should work, but here's why it doesn't."

The broad-strokes use of the term "bean soup theory" to describe both categories one and two gives folks permission to disregard and move on, when in some cases they would greatly benefit from hearing and internalizing the feedback they're receiving, even if it is hard to sit with the reality that they put something out there that hurt someone else. There is potential to grow in that discomfort.

"Bean soup theory" as a snarky accusation has created a new problem: people are increasingly suspicious of genuine exceptions (e.g. disabled and neurodivergent folks), if not downright presumptuous, and feel justified in expressing this in ways that are extraordinarily painful to those who already carry the weight of being "othered" in the first place.

Sometimes the exception really is the point

Sometimes it's the fact that the strategies for daily living tasks that the majority of people use don't work (either at all or less effectively) for a disabled individual that clues them into the possibility they may be disabled for the first time. If generic advice consistently worked, many of us wouldn't have gone down the diagnostic exploration rabbit hole to begin with.

When I first learned enough about ADHD in graduate school to recognize myself in it, it wasn't because someone had convinced me I was different but rather because I'd spent years trying to do what everyone else seemed capable of doing and repeatedly discovered that my experience didn't match theirs. Before I had language for that, there was only one course of action available to me: try harder (and everything that went along with it: stop making excuses, be more disciplined, etc.). The possibility that I might be an exception feel terrifying, not comforting.

The problem is that our culture has become suspicious of exceptions, and I've witnessed the damage this suspicion causes throughout my career. In the various multidisciplinary meetings I've sat through advocating for clients whose experiences didn't fit prevailing assumptions, I was perceived as a pushover, over-valuing being liked, gullible, naive, you name it, for believing my clients that told me they felt like exceptions to normative treatment. For instance, the person who suspected they were experiencing a sensory-based food aversion rather than a food fear, whom I was told to respond to with, "No one likes eating in eating disorder treatment." Though I didn't yet understand many aspects of my own neurodivergence, I felt empathy and a sense that something was off about how quickly colleagues dismissed experiences that didn't fit the pattern they were taught. Looking back, I realize I wasn't responding to disagreement but rather to the disappearance of curiosity.

Patterns are real

They're just not universal. They matter in the way research and community wisdom matter: they're relevant and useful, but they're not the end of the story. If 80% of autistic people find noise-canceling headphones helpful, that's pretty valuable information, right? But my auditory system is hyposensitive, not hypersensitive, so headphones actually cause me greater distress much of the time. If we dispose of that as bean soup, we miss the opportunity to meet 20% of people's needs. If most people recovering from eating disorders experience fewer intrusive food thoughts over time, that's encouraging, but I want to know more about who those people are, what they have in common with me, and why what is helping them is helping before I conclude that I too am likely to fall under the "most" umbrella.

These observations aren't any less true simply because they're not true for everyone. The problem begins when patterns become expectations, and expectations become assumptions. Assumptions end up tests of belonging. Now, the autistic person who seeks auditory input has to explain themselves in order to protect the perceived validity of their autistic identity. The person whose eating disorder recovery doesn't follow the expected trajectory begins wondering whether they're somehow doing recovery incorrectly. Communities formed to challenge one-size-fits-all thinking can accidentally create a new version of one-size-fits-all thinking.

Why do people get so uncomfortable with exceptions?

I don't think people push back against exceptions because they're cruel. Often, exceptions feel threatening or exhausting because they introduce uncertainty. If every piece of advice requires a dozen caveats, we lose the ability to make general recommendations, to give advice, to feel confident in our assertions without having established a close relationship to someone. We lose the comforting illusion that if we can just find the right strategy, it'll work for everyone.

There is also a genuine concern underneath much of the internet's frustration and a nugget of reasonableness inside it: sometimes people really do reject every suggestion before trying it. Sometimes fear, hopelessness, or repeated disappointment lead people to assume nothing will ever help. But that's different from someone saying, "I've tried this repeatedly, and my brain doesn't respond the way yours does." Unfortunately, these two situations can sound remarkably similar from the outside. The difference isn't found by assuming one or the other. We need curiosity.

You don't have to convince everyone you're the exception

One of the most freeing moments of my disabled identity exploration came when a family member suggested, yet again, that I set an alarm so I'd remember to do something I was struggling to hold in my mind. For most of my life, I would've spent fifteen minutes explaining why alarms don't reliably solve my working memory issues. This time I simply said, "It's okay if you don't understand. You're not inside my brain. You don't have to understand why it doesn't work, you just have to believe me." This became possible because I'd finally found a community of people whose brains worked enough like mine so that I didn't need validation from those whose didn't. Sometimes people just won't believe us. Sometimes they'll continue assuming that because something worked for them, or even because it worked for most people who share the same diagnosis, it should work for you, too. Both their experiences and yours are real; neither cancels out the other.

Staying curious long enough to recognize that human variation doesn't disappear just because we've found a useful pattern generates a whole lot more compassion and understanding (which in turn foster self-esteem and safety needed to explore options for change) than trying to test the validity of individuals' limitations.

The internet has become really good at recognizing patterns and sharing them far and wide. Pattern recognition, as many autistic folks will agree, helps us make sense of complicated worlds. But it also has a shadow side: once we've decided we know what category someone belongs in, curiosity often stops altogether. For example, we decide "they're reassurance seeking," "they're trauma dumping," "that's bean soup," "they're making excuses." Maybe! Or maybe they're teaching us where the pattern stops.

Disability justice asks us to resist the temptation to assume. At its core is creating access not by giving everyone who falls under a certain category the same thing but by making room for variation in what everyone needs and giving them that. For disabled people especially, being believed has always been an uphill battle. Historically, we've had to fight to convince people that our experiences are real, precisely because they don't resemble those of the average person. The answer isn't to stop looking for patterns but rather to remember that patterns describe populations, not individuals. Relationships happen between individuals, and individuals deserve at least a little more curiosity before we decide we've already figured them out.