Endless luke
Well known member
When I was eight years old, forced feeding event/experience happened. I feel resentful of it.
This is a difficult subject for me to write about because almost no one gets it. I've had one therapist that instantly got how destructive it could be and two friends who saw it but for the most part people seem to think it doesn't sound bad. What they don't understand is the day-after-day tenacity which my mother pursued it with. Anyway, let me get down to describing it.
I felt like dinner time was when my mother would try and break my will. That she resented that I could think in any way that was different from her perfect view of the family and that this was the only avenue that she found morally acceptable. Since she was child psychologist she couldn't get away with beatings or other forms of abuse but if she could disguise it to herself as something good for me than it was allowable.
I had a set amount of food each night that I had to consume or I was not allowed to leave the table. The first part of the meal was difficult but the second part of the meal was a huge fight against my gag reflex. By that time my father had left to go do his thing and so it was either me alone at the table or my mother staring at me.
I tried in so many ways to get this to stop and she steadily boxed me. She destroyed my ability to communicate. I wasn't allowed to say I didn't like the food. We had a list of rules on the fridge that included that we had to say we liked the meal.
I wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom because I used to store some food in my mouth and spit it in the toilet. This to me seems to be the point where a sane or loving person would stop and think that something needs to be reevaluated. But with my mother any negative feedback always meant that she did more of it.
Since I couldn't speak I used to let my resentment show through my eyes. I was communicating that I knew that this wasn't something being done for me- it was her own power trip. So she would scream at me that I looked at her "with hate in your eyes".
I trace this to losing my ability to be in touch with my anger. I also think she taught me to ignore my body. That was 45 minutes each day where she was teaching me to ignore one of the body's most valuable signals.
I feel that this was abuse. I've never told her that because at even lesser levels when I've tried to talk about it she's utterly unreasonable. Her stance is, "so I made you eat your vegetables".
When I thought I was finished I needed to get my plate inspected by her. If I didn't pass then I had to keep eating. I remember much of my life at that time being a series of inspections. After I washed all the dishes they were inspected, my room was inspected, etc.
I wished for a mother that cared less about me. I wanted her to read a book, to have something she was interested in, something that she liked doing, so I could get a little peace.
[For a great fictional account of this type of experience there's a dinner scene in Jonathan Franzen's _The Corrections_ which mirrored my experience.]
Have you been overly critical of yourself lately? How and why have you done this?
I don't think so. I've been hating where my life is at and my lack of progress but what I need to do to move myself forward is so mystifying I don't even know where to aim my criticality at.
This is a difficult subject for me to write about because almost no one gets it. I've had one therapist that instantly got how destructive it could be and two friends who saw it but for the most part people seem to think it doesn't sound bad. What they don't understand is the day-after-day tenacity which my mother pursued it with. Anyway, let me get down to describing it.
I felt like dinner time was when my mother would try and break my will. That she resented that I could think in any way that was different from her perfect view of the family and that this was the only avenue that she found morally acceptable. Since she was child psychologist she couldn't get away with beatings or other forms of abuse but if she could disguise it to herself as something good for me than it was allowable.
I had a set amount of food each night that I had to consume or I was not allowed to leave the table. The first part of the meal was difficult but the second part of the meal was a huge fight against my gag reflex. By that time my father had left to go do his thing and so it was either me alone at the table or my mother staring at me.
I tried in so many ways to get this to stop and she steadily boxed me. She destroyed my ability to communicate. I wasn't allowed to say I didn't like the food. We had a list of rules on the fridge that included that we had to say we liked the meal.
I wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom because I used to store some food in my mouth and spit it in the toilet. This to me seems to be the point where a sane or loving person would stop and think that something needs to be reevaluated. But with my mother any negative feedback always meant that she did more of it.
Since I couldn't speak I used to let my resentment show through my eyes. I was communicating that I knew that this wasn't something being done for me- it was her own power trip. So she would scream at me that I looked at her "with hate in your eyes".
I trace this to losing my ability to be in touch with my anger. I also think she taught me to ignore my body. That was 45 minutes each day where she was teaching me to ignore one of the body's most valuable signals.
I feel that this was abuse. I've never told her that because at even lesser levels when I've tried to talk about it she's utterly unreasonable. Her stance is, "so I made you eat your vegetables".
When I thought I was finished I needed to get my plate inspected by her. If I didn't pass then I had to keep eating. I remember much of my life at that time being a series of inspections. After I washed all the dishes they were inspected, my room was inspected, etc.
I wished for a mother that cared less about me. I wanted her to read a book, to have something she was interested in, something that she liked doing, so I could get a little peace.
[For a great fictional account of this type of experience there's a dinner scene in Jonathan Franzen's _The Corrections_ which mirrored my experience.]
Have you been overly critical of yourself lately? How and why have you done this?
I don't think so. I've been hating where my life is at and my lack of progress but what I need to do to move myself forward is so mystifying I don't even know where to aim my criticality at.
