Food Is Difficult And Is A Trigger

[Marlene]

I've read all of what's written here and I can relate. My father was very strict about foods and such, but not to the point of abuse. But the thing I relate to the most is the need to make sure that there are equal portions for all. I positively neurotic about it. When my girls were small I would make smaller plates, but equal portions. Even now when they're grown and I make plates at dinner I make sure everyone has equal amounts of food. I always thought that this was just me.

Also I relate to the being denied or denying myself foods because of being given a distored body image. I used to try to starve myself thin as a teenager. And my mother would encourage me to do it by saying unpleasant things about my body. It took years to be able to say that I'm content with my body the way it is now (strong and healthy), but I still have issues with food.

Lisa

 

[goingonhope]

Hello Seychelle, and Welcome to the forum.

Must admit this thread is a most difficult read for me. Though it is always most important not to side-step the discussion of traumatic events, (in one form of theraputic fashion or another), and all that surrounds it, owning and exposing some trauma's really can be most brutal. I'm beginning to loathe this particular subject: starvation, because I do so relate and did not really know how well, before reading here.

It all surrounds and awakens my memories of a living hell that I was once trapped in. So to be invited, along with others, to relate or identify with this subject is all good, because I can't expect to escape what's buried alive within me forever, but some subjects I certainly would like to. This is one such subject.

And I don't know if this sounds totally crazy or not, but it does help a lot to hear that others have had similar experiences, even if I wish none of this had happened to anyone. I feel a bit less scared by it now, more calm/balanced.

What you've said above here, does not at all sound crazy to me, nor sound like anything else negative. In fact, I understand. On one hand, I wish for nobody else to have to ever suffer (or have suffered) the living-pain of similar traumas or any other trauma, while on the other hand, I'm so very, very glad I am not all alone; Completely, alone is exactly how I felt, day-in and day-out for my childhood after the age of 5.

Though as a teen and into my 20's, I did have long-standing, untreatable, eating disorders, this thread has really got me remembering the years preceding this, and the lack of food then available to me, among some other frightening and hurtful eruptions around food and the lack of there of.

I'm reminded of so many things: Like eating the stems and leaves off so many plants, often and for years. As well as, tearing open and dragging my teeth up the inner sides of what I thought then were bamboo shoots; Who know what they really were.

Also, that empty refriderator and near empty closets; the contents of those closets being rusty cans of pumpkin paste littered with mouse turds, or a bag of rice that never got opened instead it was there readily available for mice or something to chew through and into, and nothing else.

I remember starving, and wanting so bad to eat that rice, but not knowing how on earth to cook it, and considering spooning out the pumpkin paste fill.

I remember my feelings of amazement, and sudden deeply-rooted higher respect for my friend and her mother when I first discovered their refridge, closets and food shelves; They had food in the refridge, closets, halfway down the stairs to the basement on shelves and then into the basement on rows of shelves covered in cans of soups, ravioli's, pasta and so much more; Only now remembering my mixed feelings of jealousy, confusion, dread and self-judgement shifting to self-contempt and contempt for my mother and let us' say, my step-dad.

There was always my preoccupied thoughts of finding food to eat and confiscating it, while visiting over my other friend's homes; I was preoccupied with their refridgerators, food closets, countertops, and the possibilities of shelves of food elsewhere, just like my other friend whom I had stolen two cans of ravioli's from. I then felt very much ashamed for my preoccupying thoughts, of eating and stealing their food; I even felt guilty, afraid that my friend or another family member might observe me glancing at their food supply and imagine and guess what I was thinking.

There was a period of time that I would lay my head down at night and fantasize about trespassing friends homes and stealing nothing more than cans and cans of food.

I remember biting into and attempting to eat from the bit of frozen packages found in our freezer at times; I just couldn't eat too much of it and I was still so hungry.

And, sh't this thread has brought up all sorts of memories of starving and both memories of that physical pain, plus sadness and hurt and memories of internal outrage when I had awoken mornings at 8yrs. old to nothing for breakfast and nobody in the house, only to later meet my mother, her boyfriend and my two sisters coming in our front door after having gone out to eat breakfast at the local diner, and then to hear my step-dad bragging and those details about the food ordered, eaten and then enjoyed. It hurts remembering.

Seychelle, as it was for you, very frigtening to start this thread, it feels likewise to me to participate in it, but if other's participation makes it any easier for you to write and helps you, (as you've said) as well as it painfully helping me too, ...........then it's a win/win and well worth the pain and difficulty of this.

Well done on starting this thread, and please do take care Seychelle.

Sincerely,
Hope

 

[Seychelle]

Must admit this thread is a most difficult read for me. Though it is always most important not to side-step the discussion of traumatic events, (in one form of theraputic fashion or another), and all that surrounds it, owning and exposing some trauma's really can be most brutal.

Yes. It's still very weird for me that food is harder than dealing with assault memories. I have known for a few years that facing up to the trauma memories and writing/talking about them reduces their impact. But food is surprisingly difficult to deal with. I can see that there are lots of different threads and posts on here, some with the same issues coming up over and over again. It was odd that I couldn't find any threads about food (ok, so it may have been be me being inept with the search function on here, but I'm not new to forums and I'm reasonably familiar with the software). So I thought maybe I was the only one with this issue, till I saw a post of brokenchild's and realised that there was at least one other on here. But turns out there's quite a few of us on here.

I'm reminded of so many things: Like eating the stems and leaves off so many plants, often and for years. As well as, tearing open and dragging my teeth up the inner sides of what I thought then were bamboo shoots; Who know what they really were.

This reminds me of a weird habit I had in my teens. I'd get little bits of kleenex tissue or pieces of paper and ball them up and chew on them and eat them. I stopped once I left home. There's another habit that I still do that I am too ashamed to mention yet.

There was always my preoccupied thoughts of finding food to eat and confiscating it, while visiting over my other friend's homes; I was preoccupied with their refridgerators, food closets, countertops, and the possibilities of shelves of food elsewhere, just like my other friend whom I had stolen two cans of ravioli's from. I then felt very much ashamed for my preoccupying thoughts, of eating and stealing their food; I even felt guilty, afraid that my friend or another family member might observe me glancing at their food supply and imagine and guess what I was thinking.

This was a very hard paragraph for me to read. The cupboards and refrigerator at home had plenty of food in them. I was just not allowed to eat anything extra - only what my mother supplied. I was not allowed to ask for extra food. Fruit was an acceptable in-between meals snack. During the year or two of not being given enough food, I ate extra apples (according to my high school diary, I went through a phase of eating two apples a day and getting in trouble for eating two a day). Apples are not enough to stave off hunger for a growing teenager being forced to do lots of exercise. I went to [edited for privacy] training voluntarily because I was allowed to have two extra pieces of toast an hour before training. I liked the toast a lot.

I am drifting from the memory brought up by this paragraph because I don't want to think about it. *focus* About 4 years ago, a little while after I came out of denial and the first memories came up, my OH and I went away for a weekend with a friend and a bunch of other people. There were shared kitchen facilities and people made stuff to share at dinner. There was plenty to eat but I kept having to stop myself from stealing food from near-strangers. It was very odd and I couldn't work out why. My friend then mentioned that when she and I used to live together at college, I was a bit weird with fruit and I would only eat it if she cut it up for me. That sounded odd to me, and then when we got home again, the food stuff came up and I looked at the old photos and got in touch with the fear of no food. Silly me, I thought it would only take me a month or two to get over it. 4 years on, and it's still SO HARD to deal with and I still go into starve myself or overeat mode when I get distressed.

I'm currently also dealing with a new memory that's just starting to surface. Impression is of sexual assault from childhood, I'm terrified to go to bed and I had a freak out late last night, cried and cried and was too scared to sleep till about 2am. Food is still way scarier than that sort of memory. I'm still avoiding writing about the food stealing issue. If I had to choose between the two in terms of what to write about, I'd choose the sexual assault stuff because it is easier to face and write about than food. This is just crazy. :wall:

Seychelle, as it was for you, very frigtening to start this thread, it feels likewise to me to participate in it, but if other's participation makes it any easier for you to write and helps you, (as you've said) as well as it painfully helping me too, ...........then it's a win/win and well worth the pain and difficulty of this.

I was too scared to write about any of it when I started this thread. Reading the other posts made it less scary enough to start touching on some of the easier details to write about. Thank you for writing (and thank you to everyone else as well). I hope to continue writing and hope that others can too.

This bit is the trauma for me. In my early teens, wasn't given enough food, had to exercise too much (not my choice). Stole extra little bits of food here and there, felt extremely guilty about it. I always remembered the stealing extra food (eg pinches of sugar from the sugar bowl in the cupboard) and being confused why I did it, because I I blanked out the hunger/being too skinny thing. Buried the fear. This is where most of my food issues come from.

I've noticed that I've written a lot but there's just one very short paragraph about the real issue.

I didn't know I was being starved at the time. I blanked that out. Mother always said I was fat and I believed her. Photos show that I was skinny at age 12/13. Too much exercise, not enough food. Not an eating disorder imposed by myself. Imposed by mother. It is written in my high school diary and elsewhere. I'm leaving out a lot of details here, I can't bring myself to make them public. Not sure why.

I stole food from the cupboards at home. I was terrified to be found out. And hated myself and felt guilty for it. I secretly took money to school to buy food at the school canteen. I was terrified that somebody would tell my mother.

 

[Seychelle]

I have hope now that I can overcome this particular trauma or at least make significant improvement. I didn't have hope before. I've come much further with this in the past few days than I have in the past 4 years.

 

[Seychelle]

I've stirred up a lot of stuff for me writing this stuff. Dinner is back to being way hard.

It's occurred to me that an additional reason why food is hard is that I actually have proof of what happened. The rest of the abuse has just been flashbacks and body memories with the occasional confirmation that I was at a particular place at a particular age.

The food thing. It's recorded in photos and my diary. And somewhere official too. Makes it really real, can't deny it. *silent scream*

 

[hodge]

This thread makes me think of some of my own food memories/issues. They are different from yours, Seychelle, and others, but thought I'd share. Especially since I've never brought this up in therapy or really dealt with it, because it sounds so crazy.

My mother would sometimes start fights around dinnertime and I'd get so upset I couldn't eat. I'd go to my room and lie on the bed with an upset stomach. To this day, when I'm upset, I feel nauseous and can't eat.

But the thing that really bothers me and is hard to talk about is that when my mother was angry at us or otherwise acting really weird, I was afraid she'd poison us. I can't remember how I got this idea, but it was a very real fear and it lasted for years, the fear of being poisoned. I think I was always afraid to mention it in therapy (or to anyone else) because I couldn't explain it and I thought it meant I was paranoid schizophrenic. I also worried a lot about having that mental illness till I left home.

 

[hodge]

Just thought of something else that might have something to do with the fear of being poisoned as well as my problems in general - I have some vague memories of my mother letting us know that life would be easier for her if she didn't have us. I think she usually said this in the context of "look how much I do for you; why can't I have some gratitude from you?" What she meant by "gratitude" (I'm not even sure that's the right word, but it's close) is a whole host of other complicated things. It was like she was a martyr/saint for taking such "good care" of us.

 

[Crucible]

My mother-in-law would force my wife (PTSD) to eat. She had the "Clean Plate Club". If that didn't work, she'd bring down my wife's pillow, and my wife would spend the night at the table until she ate.

In the morning she would suffer the consequences if she hadn't eaten, or her mother would wait until she returned from school. After school was worse because she spent the whole day dreading to go home.

We have a five year old daughter whose eating habits are the same as any other five year old. When things arise with my daughter even though they're handled calmly it triggers many memories.

More from self esteem and trust issues my wife developed an eating disorder as a child

 

[goingonhope]

I used to try to starve myself thin as a teenager. And my mother would encourage me to do it by saying unpleasant things about my body. It took years to be able to say that I'm content with my body the way it is now (strong and healthy), but I still have issues with food.

As a teen, I too had a seriously distorted body image, .....and distorted, - so many different things, - image. I don't exactly recall why or how I started losing lots of weight at 12 yrs. old. But when I did, family suddenly took some notice. Up until then nothing, .........

Recalling now some of what was occurring around me: One things is, besides there being little to no food, and many meals, unavailable for me, Mom was going to college full-time some days and evenings; When she wasn't in classes, or on college campus, she was Always studying and she would be seriously annoyed with me when I interrupted her studying, regardless of what it was for; She'd complain and shame me horribly for wanting her attention. She was the only one that might be available to me or to help me find or prepare something in which I could eat, and I would pay dearly if I told her I was hungry, or anything else; It was as if she didn't think,

......just spouted out some of the most negative constructed phrases and sentences, that would make me wish to God, that I didn't exist, ........that I didn't need her, anything from her, and anything at all for that matter.

When I was hungry, it became more and more less important as to whether or not I ate anything, bc to be hungry and need to eat something, and to inconvience or frustrate my mother in this need, was perceived by her as just another thing to make her life a living hell; I did come to believe that I was doing something terribly selfish and wrong, many times, by interrupting her to let her know how terribly hungry I was and that I couldn't find anything in the house to eat.

In fact, I was then learning and re-learning that to desire to meet, and/or have met, some very basic human needs was my sheer selfishness, self-centeredness, too high of self-regard, and made me rotten and evil.

Her words and insinuations: Why on earth should you complain that you're hungry. "All you want is my f'n attention!" "Don't you know that there are other people literally starving to death, that don't have a house, a parent, a school to go to." "You ungrateful, spoiled brat, wtf is your problem." "You're always making my life a miserable hell."

yikes...........how did I go there. This thread continues to bring back many, many memories.

Hope

 

[Seychelle]

I'm working through some other things at the moment. Home has become complicated. One of those short term pain for long term gain things. I hope, anyway.

Today was hard with food. I didn't eat lunch. I only ate sweet biscuits. I'm scared about dinner. I don't want to cook.

 

[Seychelle]

I've started talking about food issues in therapy. I've now realised that there's a fear of death (ie being in danger from my mother) tied up with food. It's a deep fear and buried, but I'm aware that it's there. I told the counsellor about partially starving myself earlier this when I was not coping with another (completely unrelated) trauma. She said something like that there's a part of me that believes that it's not safe to eat and shuts down from eating straight away if I'm not feeling safe in general. There's more but I've kind of blanked it out now unfortunately.

 

[Seychelle]

I talked about the food thing in a therapy session yesterday, and I briefly wrote about it somewhere else.

In the last couple of days, I haven't been eating well. Breakfast is ok. Lunch is ok, because I'm at work and I buy myself good food from the cafe. This is the second night in a row that I don't want to eat dinner, and I can't even face the thought of it, despite my OH offering to cook.

I'm starting to get over the guilt of stealing the food when I was being starved. Because someone pointed out to me - how could I have known whether I would have been taken to the doctor or not? (which is what happened with my sibling 2 years after that)

I've managed to greatly diminish the fear of mother since I started this thread. I've mostly desensitised to a bunch of other triggers, including a rape memory from age 5, since I started this thread.

But food is still so DAMN DIFFICULT. Ugh.

I remember it helped a lot having other people reply to this thread when I first started. If anyone else would like to reply with their experiences, please feel free to do so.