food behavior

[Brayton]

For some reason, a thread asking about a link between a vegetarian diet and being a survivor was closed.

I think it is plain that there is no connection, but as a vegetarian of 20 years and having had personal experience with an eating disorder, I plainly see that there is often a connection between the effects of the abuse I experienced and how I eat. It may, to some small extent, be an effort not to harm other living beings, animals in particular.

I see now that I chose and continued a vegetarian diet because it offered order in a life that was otherwise disordered. It was and is a discipline in that way I suppose, not a punishment but a way of avoiding or softening the sharp feelings of despair.

So, too, is an addiction to simple carbohydrates. They are, for me, a mood altering substance. As that, they are a problem for me. I am also a recovering alcoholic and understand now that the mood altering properties of alcohol are complex.

Diet can be used, along with exercise, to bolster good mental health. To feel fit and wide awake as I start the day helps me deal with everything that comes up that day.

Unfortunately, I do this only in spurts. My self-loathing is such that I usually do not make the effort.

It is odd that way. Doing it bolsters my self-esteem but I need self-esteem to start it and, inevitably, it falls apart anyway.

 

[outis]

For some reason, a thread asking about a link between a vegetarian diet and being a survivor was closed.

Actually, it's only moved here .

Thanks,

Joe

 

[reality2k4]

Brayton, I am not a veggie, but would love to be. Like yourself, I hate seeing animals killed to be eaten. I always remember the faces of the little things as I am caught in a jam on the highway. Those trucks filled with little animals for slaughter, it is horrifying for me.

People who hunt animals for their own perverse fun, and say to everyone they are doing it for ecological reason, and not because they are really perps in disguise of hunters.

The winter geese fly over my house from the Arctic, they fly thousands of miles to be shot by these inhuman things. They shoot them for no other reason than a hobby, truth is, the geese they shoot would not make a bowl of soup, they have wasted their body mass on the long flight to better pastures, and they are shot down. That is why I relate to them as perps.

A real hunter is one who hunts to stay alive, where he has no other means of finding food to survive!

I don't eat much meat, but I have to, to maintain a healthy diet. A healthy diet is a must for me to keep myself fit, so is exercise.

We must always be mentally alert, a learned experience. One I could do without, but I learn to live with it,

take care,

ste

 

[Brayton]

This is a conversation I want to participate in because I think the apparently mundane parts of our lives are left largely unexamined even though, I believe, they have often been fundamentally altered by the CSA we experienced.

Is there a heightened sensitivity to what happens to other living beings because CSA was experienced?

I know that, even if that is true, it is not something that is universally true among survivors. It may even be something that only a small percentage experience.

I think most of us do, however, experience hypersensitivity. We are more alert, watchful of being taken advantage of, of being hurt. On that basis, I think that all of us can relate to this extraordinary sensitivity to animals, be compassionate, and not treat it as something trivial.

I control most of the mundane parts of my life because they are the most controllable. Some call it OCD. For me, it is simply a way of coping. If every time I hang up the laundry I put it in a certain order, if I choose clothespins 'appropriate' to each item, if I hang each item in a certain way, I feel better. I vacuum the floor and do dishes in a certain way each time, I clean the bathroom in exactly the same way each time. This is comforting, I feel more at ease doing things this way although to a casual observer it might seem that it is an intense and stressful way of doing things.

Choosing to not eat meat (and, yes, that includes seafood and chicken) comforts me in the same way. Its organized, rigid, carries with it a sort of sensitivity, creates a protective wall, all the things I want.

I don't think that a vegetarian diet carries with it a lifestyle. Its sub-categories, such as Vegan and Macro-Biotic, seem to, especially the latter.

I really think that imposing any degree of rigidity on the controllable parts of our lives is a response to the emotional chaos that results from CSA.

Regardless of the justifications that are offered, physical or spiritual, for me it is simply a way of controlling the most controllable parts of my world.

 

[reality2k4]

I think, and this is only what I think, that CSA makes us hyper aware of pain. Why? should an animal go through the pain of slaughter for us to survive. We interact with the pain of CSA, we compensate, by using irrational behaviour that was a learned experience.

The only way to deal with OCD is by knowing what is happening, and you are half way there, because you know what is happening.

Ocd is hard to break, but be conscious about it, and do things differently, break the cycle.

Most survivors are very conscious of hurt, they will probably be the meekest people on the planet. I for one, would never see anyone hurt, physically or mentally.

My mindset is always before the abuse, when I was the little kid, who loved everything and everybody I met. A World where there is no violence, no war, no arguments, and no child abuse.

ste

 

[ak]

I know that the abuse, it afect me how I can eat, in that it make me throw up lot. Part is maybe to be athlete, I am afraid I will get fat. Part is sometime feeling panic, to not want food or nothing at all in my mouth. But also, I know part is some control to have. When I was home at training, I lived in dormitory, and we have eating area where you are given your food, how much, what kind. There are some things I do not like to eat, there are some things, like to much sugar, I can not eat. But they always have control, they give you the food and how much of it. So I would take away some control by not eating it, or eating only some things, or eat it and then throw up. I know now that is stupid thing, it is not healthy thing, because sometime I do not control it now, it control me instead. But it make sense I think at the time.

andrei