My anxiety made me go vegetarian.
It may sound crazy, but a treat of anxiety is overthinking and boy, I'm a master of it. It wasn't the first time I went vegetarian. When I was a teenager I tried for a few months but it was hard without my family's support.
But this time was different, I was living almost alone in Ireland, as my roommate was more time travelling than at home so I used to spend a lot of time on my own, so one day I watch the typical video anti-meat, just after buying a lot of cold meat to fill up my fridge, and I felt terribly guilty about it. Now, with time I can see that it was the somatisation of my mental state, I wasn't well, but I didn't know yet.
There’s nothing wrong with being vegetarian as long as you don’t lecture everybody around you with endless guilt trips, I wasn’t one of those, tho. I just decided that eating meat was poisonous and very harmful. I did lots of research and started to take vitamins and learn about vegetable proteins. Well, maybe sounds like I used to eat very healthily, but that wasn’t the case as I used to eat huge amounts of food, thinking that I needed more to get the nutrients that I would be missing from animal sources, then again I was wrong.
I didn’t lose a gram by stopping eating meat, and I didn’t feel any healthier, I just had my mind a little at ease when I was eating, but my anxiety is always there, so there were new worries, like the job I was doing, my personal relationships, my future. How can it be possible that turning vegetarian didn't fix my life?
Well, I was focusing on something else but on the real problem and that’s something I’ve realised I do a lot, even though I try to work on it every day. I get extremely focused on problems that are not a big deal because I’m anxious but I haven’t identified what’s the reason. So after two years of being vegetarian, I went back to eating meat.
It was at the same time that I started to take medication for anxiety and depression. I just started craving meat and thought to myself that if I craved it I should have it. I guess that it was part of the process of realising that I don’t need to add more pressure on my shoulders than life itself brings.
This was my personal process. I'm one of those who decided to be vegetarian because I felt disgusted about it, but now with the perspective of time I can see that it was just my connection of ideas, once again I’m not a nutritionist and can’t say which diet is the best.
This is just my own experience being vegetarian because of my anxiety.
I'm right there with ya. Its gotten so bad for me I can't leave my house sometimes. Thanks for letting me know I'm not alone, and the links are super helpful.
ReplyDeleteYou're not alone, seek for help in anyone you trust, or if you can, go to therapy. Don't be afraid of letting know to those who loves you how you feel. It's going to be Ok, there's good and bad days, but please keep going!
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