Food crisis coping: tips from someone with o-c
Alright, I’ve already gotten some interest, so:
Top note: this is not advice for how to avoid polluted food or how to make food not polluted. I am not the right person for that. This is very specifically for the situation where you know you will have to eat potentially polluted food (you live somewhere with very poor food labeling, you won’t be able to afford certified non-polluted food, you live in a low-priority district and your government is routing non-polluted food elsewhere, etc).
Also, this is crisis advice. This is not in any way what I would recommend to people trying to increase their pollution tolerance or anything. (The time for that would have been before Allocator Savo was this much of a fucking idiot, if that was in fact the problem). This is not some magic recipe that will make this not an awful experience. This is crisis survival.
Finally, this is geared at people who aren’t in ‘I have already eaten polluted food’ right now. If you are, you could try to handle that first, and then go through this plan. You might also still be able to draw on elements of this plan to help yourself, though not all of them will work the same.
1, this is not permanent: A common panic-inducing element can be that the awful feeling you anticipate experiencing will last forever. So, remember that this is not permanent. Voa is no doubt taking steps to secure their supply chain now. It might take some time, but it will happen. Food is a resource that is consumed and renewed. Whatever food is polluted now will cycle out of consumption and be replaced by new food. It might take months or seasons but it will happen. This is not forever. This is for a span of time that will end.
2, take an effort to think consciously: This is going to come up repeatedly so I’m laying it out now. Your default response is going to be to live in the moment, react to your feelings in the moment, etc. Going with only that will make things worse. Thinking and planning will help. Pull back and do it.
3, pin down your ‘worstness’ endpoint: if left to it’s own devices, your brain is likely to go into ‘and then this awful thing will happen, and then this other awful thing will happen, and then EVERYTHING WILL BE HORRIBLE FOREVER’. You want to interrupt and preempt this. Make yourself think this through. You have to eat polluted food for ___ amount of time. What is going to happen. (I don’t mean with getting sick, that is also not my area. I mean, with your sense of pollution.) At the point at which the food will be completely fine again, what ‘but this is still polluted!’ feelings do you expect.
4, use that make a plan for pre, during, and post: example: ‘even once there is clean food, I will feel that my body and belongings are polluted. I have not yet eaten polluted food/I have dealt with that. I will now take belongings I don’t expect to need during this time, especially ones that cannot be cleaned, and put them somewhere where I will have no contact with them during this period. Once there is clean food, I will wait __ amount of time (some people use the numbers on how long it takes for about all your skin cells to replace themselves, but this will be very individual, including people who don’t feel the need to wait at all). Then I will decontaminate myself, decontaminate my living space, decontaminate and throw out belongings, and so on.’
5, set up transition help for your brain: the hardest part is going to be the transition back to feeling clean, and trying to assure yourself that it will work. Help your brain as much as you can. Repeat your decontamination plan to yourself. Set up additional brain-aids - somehow mark things you will feel are contaminated and remove the mark when transitioning out. Find a future-decontamination friend to do it together with and reassure each other.
6, when it’s time to eat polluted food: there are two main classes of approaches to this - gradual and all-in. In gradual you will take a small piece of food, eat it, then give yourself time to adjust before eating the next. In all-in you just eat a bunch at once. Can be compared to wading vs jumping into a cold pool. Very person dependent, see what might work best for you. Some people may find it helpful to get hungry and then do the all-in approach. However, unless you have very good reason to believe you will have clean food if you just wait a little, do not starve yourself. Starvation takes a major toll on your brain and fast. It will not help, it’ll just make you less able to handle things when you do them.
7, living through: remember - you are living through a crisis that you are managing. You have a plan. You are going to have a miserable span of time, but you can make it through. People get through these kinds of things. You just have to make it through this span of time, and then it will be over, and you have a plan for the end. You will make it through.
