Wednesday, September 30, 2009

September 30, 2009 Wednesday-Hungry-

Yesterday evening, I got hungry, too hungry. I could not tell if I was really hungry in the body or in the mind. One of the advantages of not blogging under my name is that no one knows who I am and I can be honest here. I get scared when I am hungry. It is at this time I am tempted to prop a book open or find something on the Internet that relates to what I felt yesterday; however I am not going to do that. When I was in group therapy, the one criticism that I received that I thought was valid was that I intellectualize everything. I thought it was valid. I did not even know I did that. That was the advantage of being in group therapy. The other criticism that the others or at least the group members really landed me for was that I would not join the group think. I like to think for myself and to consider things first before I hope on the wagon so to speak. It is also my training as a Buddhist. Buddha cautioned us to always consider everything first through our heart and mind before accepting anything even what he said before accepting it. I wish I could have stayed in the group for the sake of feed back because it was that hint that is keeping me from running into books and other people's words that has been looking into my own mind.

I am also going to follow one of the rules of being healthy by not beating up on myself. I did not binge yesterday. I just had some toast with some preserves on it. I had not planned on doing it. What I should have been doing was writing in here. I actually thought I should not be ruminating on such a dull subject although if I had readers in the same situation as I am presently in now they would have the same problem as I do. I am looking at the problem of being hungry as a huge block of concrete as big as a 12 story building and I am very reluctant to tackle it.

I had a very angry mother who did not want to be a mother. She saw us kids as grasping parasites who took away her time and energy from the things she wanted to do. She did not have the knowledge and ability to stand up to her older sister and go to college and get an education and a job that she would be compatible in. More than anything in the world, she had wanted to be a nun but was pulled out of a Roman Catholic University by her older sister when she found out that was her sister's plans along with the nuns' complicity. My mother never forgave her for it. They had even given my mother a scholarship. My family were not Catholics although my mother had converted. They were Russian Orthodox. She married my father because he had a French aristocratic name like the catholic university she had been in. He was anything but aristocratic. He barely made enough money to support her and she lived the life of a poor woman unlike her two other sisters. She was one angry woman. The only thing she had over her two sisters was that she was the only one that had children.

Every time, any of us kids got hungry as babies we cried for milk and she got very angry at our demanding food. Now, I know all of this because I went into hypnotherapy for other related problems and all of this were brought out. Of course when babies cried we made noise and we messed the diapers. All of this made my mother so much more angrier. I know all of us kids had injuries from being shaken, smacked and so forth. I grew to fear my hunger. My brother and sister were the same. When we got older, we would break into other people's houses and steal food. My mother would give good food to our father but not to us kids and we had to watch our father eat wonderful food while we kids ate beans. To this day, I hate beans. I also hate canned soup especially Campbell. I had Campbell vegetable soup every single day for years. I love vegetable soup but not if it comes from Campbell. I also make my own soup. We also did not get bread with it. I can still see that awful soup. We also had oatmeal for breakfast every single morning while I had to watch my father had eggs, bacon, pancakes and we just had oatmeak. I hated oatmeal. It made me feel so bad and then I found out later I had Celiac Disease and could not eat it anyhow. All of us kids had evidence of starvation as seen in pictures from that time.

I have written all of this before. I wish I could get rid of this anger. It helps to write about it, but there is so much of it that I need to do more. I can't go to group therapy as I don't belong in that group and they don't have one for people in the particular situation that I am in. In a sense, this blog in my group therapy except there is no feedback. I have been lucky in that I have been able to help myself in so many ways. I have survived over the years especially when medicine had not caught up to help me I was able to help myself. I was a social worker with a case load of people who had mental health issues for many years. I noticed that I never closed a case because they got better. I closed the case because the patient died. They were in therapy and in and out of mental hospitals all of their life, taking heavy dosages of medication but it all continued until they jumped off a bridge, took an overdose or died of old age. I thought to myself that there had to be a better way. When I did see a therapist, he got mad at me when I questioned his wisdom and wanted to know why I should just accept his word on this or that issue without knowing why. Thank goodness, therapy has changed since then.

I think part of the problem that I had yesterday was that I was not doing what I wanted to do. I wanted to work on my book, but I watched the news and did other things instead. I even posted on the newspaper. Thank goodness, I still felt good about the day, but I could have done better if I just did what I wanted to do. I prevented myself from really enjoying the day because I did not think I deserve it. I see my aunt when I wrote that. That is how I journal things when I am trying to uncover attachments. I just put down the images I see. I am a visual thinker and not a word thinker although I love words and love it when a concept or an idea that has been bothering me has a name and I learn what it is. That is what I am doing now. I am putting words to the fear that was bothering me yesterday.

It is strange to me now and always has been that the biggest problem or stumbling block has always been me. My mind plays tricks and I use journaling and free association in my writing to try and uncover exactly what is happening. My brain is not going to send me a telegram. The closest to that is dreams and even those dreams that waft in and our of our sleep are in codes and symbols that we have to decode. Look at all of the books that are sold on the market that give us the "real meaning" to the dreams we have. I find that the meaning of dreams are in each of our heads. You put your finger on a symbol and the picture that comes up is the real key and not something in a book.

For instance, I know I am not going to die if I don't eat. That is the symbol in my head as I am writing because it is morning and I am drinking coffee. I see death because I am hungry, really hungry. I don't want to eat because I am washing the dishes and the electric skillet is in the dish washer. I see the Grim Reaper as I type this. For some reason when I was a child I associated death and eating. I know consciously it makes no sense and that the opposite make more sense. There are people starving to death and then I hear my mother's voice telling me that kids are starving to death in Korea and would do anything for the bowl of oatmeal that I don't want to eat. She ignores my pleas and explanations that it makes me hurt and makes me sick. It does. It gave me migraines and made my stomach turn into lead and I would feel so heavy and depressed. Now, I am understanding the connections. I could never have gotten this from books or the Internet because it is something that is particular to me and my life.

The results of all of this writing was that I was able to clearly make the choice of what I wanted to eat this morning. My plan was low carbohydrates breakfast. I need to switch to this kind of diet as it is the best way for me to control what I eat and to build the strength that need to do the things I need to do today. My exercise plan is to housework and some outside work in the yard. I have not been able to do that for some time. It is now cool enough to do it. I am hoping I can do it with a clearer head, but if for some reason I can't I won't hit myself over the head by trying to overeat because I am frightened and want to eat so I can feel loved. As I said before, it would seem so much easier if I could just send a telegram but then that is what this journal and posting is for me. The human brain is not so simple as that.

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