An Adventure in Doublethink

Many of my friends were confused when they learnt the extent of my mental health problems.

It confused them how I can be a well-informed person and not believe half the things I know to be true; how I can give other people sound advice and yet apply none of it to my own life; how I can be so pro-rational thinking and yet think so irrationally at the same time. All of this confuses me as well. How is it possible to be both sane and insane?

There are two terms for this apparently paradoxical state: the first was coined by psychologists and is called ‘cognitive dissonance’; the second I stumbled across while reading 1984, and it is called ‘doublethink’.  That is…

I believe that nobody should be judged by their appearance or eating habits. I believe that weight-watching and calorie-counting are products of capitalism and patriarchy. I believe that ‘low fat’ food is more often harmful than cake, that health cannot be measured by size or BMI and that the best diets should be varied and sufficient.

I also believe, however, that I am fat. I believe that me being fat makes me disgusting, that it makes me undesirable to be around. I believe that I am greedy, and that I don’t deserve the food I eat. I believe that my size is a reflection of my personality, and that I am more worthy if I am hungry. I believe I will be happier if I weigh less.

(Addendum - I believe the children are our future, teach them well... etc.)

One set of beliefs is influenced by fact and consideration, and the other by emotion, but that doesn’t make either less pertinent in my mind. I want the former paragraph to be more true to me than the latter – but if that were true then I would now be eating disorder free, something which I am not.

I hold two contradictory beliefs in my mind simultaneously, and I accept both of them.

I’m not going to use this post to speak about my mental illness, as that is something I have covered considerably (specifically here ). I want to write about how I came to be so reliant on doublethink to begin with. I want to write about religion, and my upbringing. I want to write this while adding a nice little disclaimer about my experiences being subjective, and reassuring my theist friends that nothing I write is a personal attack on them.

Thanks disclaimer dinosaur - it’s like you read my mind.

For sake of non-bias, I will make up a religion. This isn’t too difficult to do. I own a large cross-dressing, chimney dwelling deity named ‘Trevor’. He’ll fit the bill nicely – apt as he is also a rubber duck. He’ll foot the bill too, cos he’s a total babe like that.

My parents told me a lot about Trevor. They said that Trevor was the embodiment of good. They said He had created everything. They said He had he created me, that He had a plan for me, that He guided my every move… but that if I did bad things they were my fault. I was taught that He loved each and every person, but that if you ever questioned 
His presence then He would punish you.

To my adult mind, this sounds like an abusive relationship, but as a child you don’t challenge what you are taught. You accept everything as normal – especially if you are told that questions might result in damnation. Trevor was somebody you should be terrified of, but want to spend eternity with. None of this made sense to me, but I trusted my parents to tell me the truth and so tried my best to believe. Trevor was the epitome of doublethink.

I have always had a very active imagination - as ‘Digger’, my then yellow imaginary excavator friend will tell you. Or at least he would, but he can’t type due to a “broken arm”.

Having an active imagination, and being a natural over-analyser, means that I have always thought too much. Not all of these thoughts are welcome and not all of these thoughts would be pleasing to Trevor. I was a very quiet, very well behaved and very hard working child; yet because I could not differentiate between my actions, my emotions and my thoughts, I believed that I was bad.

I want to leave Trevor out of this now. I am too fond of him.

Around the age of 15, I began to seriously doubt my faith.  It is also when I had my first mental health crisis, which I believe was related. All of this questioning took place in my mind which, as moving through agnosticism is a gradual process, I still shared with an all-powerful deity. This meant that my mind was not a safe place to be. I couldn’t cope with the internal conflict. I was entering a phase of negativethink. I couldn’t believe, yet I couldn’t disbelieve either. I had no place in the world, and no place in my own head.

My decision to firmly identify with atheism was gradual, and drawn out. It was painful. Nonetheless I survived this time, though it feels like a miracle now, (metaphorical, I hasten to add. You can reset your irony counters!). I am now very much an atheist. Trevor is now very much  just a duck, in a fireplace, using lower-case pronouns. And why would I want him to be anything more?

In spite of this, I have never shaken the constant guilt, nor the vague nagging feeling that I am being judged for existing. I may in hindsight perceive my past beliefs as nothing more than a strange delusion, but there is still a long way to go before I am free of all faulty thinking processes.

I will not apologise for sharing this, because none of it is a lie or written with the intent of hurting anybody. I know that faith and religion bring a lot of joy and hope to some people, but I feel that there is little said of the mind-messery-misery it can cause, (or how the truth of either statements has no bearing on the likelihood of there being a ‘higher power’).

With that in mind - if you have any complaints, I ask that you send them to the Disclaimer Dinosaur.

Yours in good faith,

BT x

An Adventure in Open Letters

Dear Graze.com,

First of all I would like to say how much I enjoy my Graze boxes.  My comments within this letter are concerned with the marketing of your products, rather than the food itself.

Initially I was bemused when I received my Pumpkin and Ginger Cake with an Afternoon Infusion. I was bemused because the Nutritional Information Leaflet told me that this box contained 75.7 kcal. It struck me as bizarre. Is it possible to be so accurate about the amount of energy contained in a unique piece of food?

Delving a little deeper, I realised that all Guilt Free High Tea products, alongside a few select others (e.g. Brilliant Black Forest - 91.3 kcal and Fruit Mango Chutney - 80.4 kcal), included calorie information to one decimal place. Not only this, but the contents of non-standardised boxes, (e.g. Pear Tatin and Apricot Torte), were measured so precisely as to be implausible, (143 kcal and 151 kcal, respectively).

As I am sure you are aware, the calories purported to be in food do not correlate with the calories absorbed by the consumer. Ambient temperature, how the food is processed, and a person’s physical state, to name a few, all affect the way nutrients are absorbed by the body. Given that all nutritional information is prone to being up to 30% more or less than the figure stated, anything other than an ‘approximation’ or ‘average’ of calories is misleading.

While I fully support your company aim to “deliver tasty, natural snacks through the post”, I am disappointed by the use of ‘dieting’ language in descriptions of your products. Encouragement of calorie counting is one such example. This seems at odds with your ethos - if it were natural to count calories, surely fruit would grow with this information printed on the skin? Humans survived for hundreds of thousands of years without knowing such details. In this way, the following quote contradicts your ‘natural’ viewpoint,

“All our lowest calorie nibbles. Everything’s between 50 and 150 calories and nothing tastes like diet food. Great if you’re watching your weight.”

Weight almost always takes care of itself when eating a varied diet – its mention here prays more on insecurities about the cosmetic aspects of weight gain. Unfortunately, obsession over calories is not the only example of 'dieting' language present on your website.

On ‘The 80/20 Rule’ page, you state,

“Be good 80% of the time and treat yourself the other 20% of the time.”

This appears at odds with the Graze idea that healthy foods can be treats, and that treats can be healthy. I also take issue with the premise of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ food. Food, by its definition, is either nutritious - or it is not food. We need fats, sugar and salt as well as fruit, veg and fibre. In fact, the ‘Variety, You’re My Hero’ page succinctly relays this.

Vilification of food is a common theme within the diet industry, and I did not have to search for long to find more examples on the Graze.com website.

“It really is amazing the difference you can make to your diet just by swapping something naughty for one of our nutritious nibbles. It’s a heroic double effect giving you healthy benefits (every graze snack has at least one) and the big bonus of avoiding snacks that are a lot more evil.”

I appreciate that the use of the world ‘evil’ here was probably flippant, but that does not excuse the characterisation of those who consume ‘naughty’ nibbles. I suspect that painting certain nutrients as ‘forbidden’ merely makes us desire them more. Worse than this, however, is the implication that your customers should feel ashamed for eating food that is not produced by Graze.

“Guilt-free High Tea”

“Just how guilt-free is my cake? They're so light, we even include them in our lightbox.”

“This means that all our little puds are under 140 calories so you get just enough to remind you of your old favourites (without feeling guilty afterwards).”

“We love brownies but we wanted one that didn’t make us feel rubbish afterwards.”

Graze presents itself as being friendly, and uses a conversational tone in all communications, which makes the emotional language here feel manipulative. It is not unreasonable to expect a food company to speak positively about eating. Brands such as ‘Eat Natural’ manage to market wholesome snacks without pandering to the weight-obsessed philosophy of the diet industry.

Of course Graze is not unique in any of the aforementioned factors. The reason I am writing is because I feel the brand has a chance to stand out from the majority of self-proclaimed ‘healthy’ products - by also encouraging a healthy attitude.

I look forward to hearing your response.

Yours faithfully,

BT

An Adventure in Italics

"What a banana."

"You are cross-stitched."

"I hate it when you're being a total bottom quark."

Being insulted. It's not nice is it? Still, at least comebacks aren't too hard to come-by. You can make anything sound like an insult if you put it in italics.

"You're so gay."

"That's mental."

"Stop being such a girl."

Ah.

See, by comparing being gay to A Thing Worth Insulting, you are saying that all gay people are A Thing Worth Insulting. By labelling A Bad Idea as mental, you are misunderstanding and dismissing the experiences of people with mental health problems. By using 'girl' as a pejorative, you are making 51% of the population feel that they are inferior simply because of their gender.

This might seem petty - and I'll admit that it is more of a consequence of oppression than a cause - but use of language can have a really negative effect on how people from these groups view themselves. This can be hard to explain, so I've enlisted the help of my second favourite imaginary platypus for a little role play. Enjoy.

PLATTYR

"Hey you, what's your name?"

"Cool. It's a shame some people oppose Reason, but you seem like a pretty nice platypus.

On a completely unrelated note - Duck of Optimism, don't you think the Beaver of Half-Truths can be a COMPLETE PlattyR sometimes?"

"Just a bit of banter, Beaver! Urgh, aren't the the tables here totally PlattyRed*?"

"While we're talking about MASSIVE PlattyRs - did you hear about those people who caused the apocolypse!?"

"Oh."

"Oh. But I never meant to insult you. I guess nobody has ever pointed out the effects my words could have. I can see now - if I replace 'PlattyR' with my own name - how it could make you feel like I think being a PlattyR is a bad thing. I'm sorry. I'll try to stop."

Thanks, Platypus of Reason.

More than anything, insults such as 'queer', 'insane', 'retarded', 'spastic' and many more are boring. (See what I did with the italic there?) If you want to be insulting, then at least say what you mean. There are so many words in the English language - be inventive! Arguments and criticisms carry a lot more weight if you use your brain. Or a thesaurus.

Yours fabulously,

(Err, need to stop getting carried away with italics...)

BT x

*At school somebody genuinely referred to the layout of a classroom as 'gay'. I informed them that I thought the it was unlikely tables had a sexuality. I was met with a blank stare.