Re. bean dad:

I learned how to ignore hunger and exhaustion until another goal (often academic) was achieved.

The problem is, this isn't a skill you level up. It's a trade where you _lose_ your ability to perceive your own needs accurately.

It's like missing pain sensitivity. You wind up damaging yourself badly sometimes because you don't have the threshold warnings most people do, and you don't realise how bad stuff is until it's _really, really_ bad.

At some point I realised that I would find myself muttering "I'm hungry" under my breath while working, because my conscious mind was squelching that information so hard that some other part of brain decided to send me a verbal message.

Not joking.

This combined with the lesson that emotions were irrational things to be suppressed, as opposed to signals that could be unpacked for important information.

Between those factors, it's taken/is taking a lot of adult work to learn basic self-preservation.

Like yeah, it's good to learn not to lash out every time you're angry or sad, and it's useful to be able to delay gratification when you need to.

But neither the sadness nor the hunger is itself wrong or unimportant, and suppressing them isn't an end goal in itself.