PERSONAL

19

1,192

I Saw An Occupational Therapist - A Rant (I'm Not Interested In Cooking)

2 years ago1,887 words

I saw a person about my mental health issues yesterday, who told me to eat better and go for walks. Thanks, I'm cured. Also, I hate cooking.

The job title of the person I saw was 'Occupational Therapist', and she seemed to have no background in Psychology, though I'll be seeing her again next week so I'll be curious to ask about that.

I was extremely anxious before going out to see her, not because of anything about the appointment itself - once it started, the anxiety entirely lifted - but because I've been an isolated shut-in for so long that it was essentially a kind of withdrawal from that.

She was in her fifties, and seemed pragmatic and extroverted in ways that clashed with how I am. She seemed frustrated by and reluctant to use technology, insisting on giving me printed hand-outs and dismissing the idea I could keep track of things on my phone.

There's a concept called 'psychological mindedness' which was explained early in the first year of my Psychology course: essentially, some people are inclined to analyse behaviours in psychological terms, to figure out what's going on, while others are averse to the very idea (and I suppose commonly hold the belief that minds are essentially malleable and all behaviour is deliberate and susceptible to simple redirection).

She seemed to fall into the latter category, reacting with frustration and trying to redirect me when I attempted to explain some things in academic terms that encapsulate concepts better than trying to use several adjectives to do the same.

Like... Imagine a teacher with two students with the extremely common name Binglefump McTrogglestelch, one of which is black and the other white. One misbehaves, which the teacher has to explain to the headmaster... but she doesn't want to seem like a racist by saying 'the black one', so she instead says 'the, uh... taller one, with the shorter hair'. Avoiding some succinct and useful descriptor due to underlying beliefs.

I notice most people who don't have a psychological-mindedness approach to behaviour regard psychological labels as prescriptive and essentially dangerous rather than purely descriptive ("if you start calling yourself depressed, you'll act all moody to try and fit the label, so give up the label"), and this was the case I got here too. Frustrating.

We talked for about two hours, and my problems are complex with no simple solution. But she had to do something, so she said I should work on improving my diet and getting more exercise.

Which feels like telling someone with a gaping chest wound to 'just take a rest'.

I certainly don't eat well or exercise often. But the main issues I face relate to isolation, trauma, and poor rolls of the dice which mean I haven't had the chance encounters that others' happy lives blossomed from.

I found it interesting, back when I spent a couple of months lurking around some incel subreddits before they were banned, how many of the members went to the gym regularly and obsessed about their physical health, but that in itself wasn't enough to save them from the specific species of demons that held them in their grasp. They made memes - in the lingo sense rather than just images - out of mocking the banal platitudes the luckier 'normies' gave them to escape their cursed pit ("just have a shower, bro").

More generally, there's a subreddit called ∞ r/thanksimcured ∞ for collecting this kind of "to be rich just earn money" kind of 'advice'. I think I've probably mentioned it on this blog before.



That frustration vented, I am aware that there's science backing the idea that diet and exercise help at least somewhat, and I should work on them alongside everything else even if they're not in themselves the solution to the primary problems.

I'll start by going out for more walks. Now that the weather's improving, this should be easier anyway. I'll aim to go for at least one walk every day this week. That's not nothing.

More difficult though is diet. Mine's always been fairly poor. When I was little, food was scarce because my lovely father spent most of his dole money on alcohol, and certainly didn't cook for us; my younger brother and I had to navigate the literal rubbish dump of a kitchen to cook frozen chicken nuggets on a never-washed grill, which we'd then eat off paper plates. Hardly set me up for a positive relationship with food.

(Though bizzarely, that brother now seems to be a professional chef, so the fault is likely more due to whatever's wrong with my specific brain than the environment.)

Later in life, social anxiety meant I was often too scared to go into the shared kitchens at uni, and my gregarious step-dad randomly invites his friends and family over and into the kitchen here, so I've got used to 'cooking' things I can bung in the microwave for five minutes and then quickly escape afterwards.

'Microwave meals' tend to be listed among the 'DON'T EAT THESE THINGS YOU FOOL' foods in healthy eating guides.

Over the years, I've looked into all kinds of ways to improve my diet. Many, many recipe books and apps. But even things explicitly for beginners assume a level of competence and interest in the cooking process that I just simply don't have.

I touched on this with the 'OT' (as she referred to her profession), who didn't seem to get it, even after I used a hypothetical example of a programming tutorial for complete beginners telling you to "set up a new class and add a couple of public int variables", to which she immediately turned away and said "no no no you're talking a different language!"; this kind of "I don't understand that and don't WANT to understand it" reaction people tend to have to things that fall far outside their areas of interest and expertise.

That's what cooking is like for me. I don't understand things, and I'm as interested in trying to understand them as I am in watching an hour-long video essay about the historical geopolitical landscape of Uzbekistan or something.

The most complex thing I can make is boiling pasta and adding microwaved sauce, which takes about 15 minutes and feels like an ordeal I can barely tolerate.

I was just checking recipe suggestions yet again, explicitly searching for 'recipes for people who hate cooking', and saw things that 'only' include 9 ingredients or 'super simple' meals that take 15 minutes of preparation and 4 hours to cook.

Plus I'm a picky eater, and I don't like the look of meals that to me resemble what I see in a food disposal bin: a messy tangle or stuff all just dumped together.

∞ This one at least looks from the image more like the sort of thing I'd want to eat. ∞ The mess of a page begins with the unnecessary life story that I've seen more tropes about than I've ever encountered it in the wild; weird that that seems to be par for the course. It has five ingredients, most of which I have no familiarity with, and I don't understand the point of adding teaspoons of multiple flavourings because I have no experience of food made that way. The recipe also requires first leaving the whole thing overnight and then cooking for 8 hours the next day.

I suspect that wait is a bit more extreme than most, but I just can't get my head around even wanting to spend ages preparing something so ephemeral, which will take less time to consume than was spent bringing it into being. It just feels like such a waste of time to me.

I'd surely feel differently if I was raised in a house where this kind of cooking was just a normal background feature. Anything alien feels perplexing unless directly experienced.

The leap between 1 or 0 ingredients (depending on how you look at a microwave meal) and a 5 minute 'cooking' time in total and that is just too vast.

And I've never managed to find anything that bridges the gap, which is suited for people who have neither the skills nor the interest in developing them.

My ideal meal would be... well, something similar to what I do now, I suppose. Something I take out of the fridge, put in the microwave or - though this feels far more tedious - a single pan, press a button, then wait about five minutes and then I'm done. Something which requires a list of spices and things and implements I've never even heard of and/or takes a big chunk of an hour or more evokes the same revulsion as if I'd been asked to masturbate a dolphin or something. I don't LIKE wanking cetaceans!! And where would I even get a dolphin??

Ugh. Anyway. I don't drink, or do any drugs, or eat snacks at random (I eat two small chocolates every day, that's it), which probably already means my diet is less unhealthy than a significant chunk of people. And how many people eat ideal diets anyway? This woman's figure was hardly that of a health nut.

I was also told that I'd be getting a call from someone who'll be able to tell me about some local groups and clubs I could go to. Whoopee! I've never tried that before! Certainly not like a dozen times over several years which bore absolutely no fruit because they were all full of people decades older than me because younger people in sleepy seaside towns just don't go to them!

I mean, I'll still give things a try, but... ugh. It's just so frustrating and I'm frustrated (can you tell??) because I've been down this path several times before and I know from direct experience that it doesn't work, at least for me. But it's not as if there are any better options either. Sometimes there are only bad options.

I actually felt really good directly after talking to this person just because I'd got the opportunity to interact with someone in a deeper, personal, one-on-one way in the real world, which is what I feel so starved of, but which seems so tragically hard to find. At least in my less-than-lucky experience.

I also got a phone call from one of my three remaining friends - whose presence in my life is a reminder of what eventually did work - after the appointment, and I suggested going to see her next week... where I'll likely spend the whole time listening to her vent about her self-absorbed bad boy boyfriend's latest mistakes. I'm grateful to know at least someone, and there are positives to our connection, but...

Bleh, I'm just too bitter and frustrated at the moment; shouldn't really be writing. But it helps to get it out.

I should prepare some music to upload, then go for a walk.



I just got a call from the other person while reviewing this post... though not to say anything other than that she'll have a proper talk with me next week. Better than just hanging over me for weeks with no idea about when the call would come, at least.