My obsessive pursuit of health
I’ve been kinda obsessed with “health” for as long as I can remember. The intensity and focus of the obsession (e.g., diet, exercise, germs, toxins) may have varied over time, but it’s all one ongoing phenomenon. Unfortunately, the last year of my life has been laden with health scares and death, and it feels like these stressors have drenched my health obsession in gasoline and tossed a lit match on top of it.
I can’t quite decide whether this freshly fueled obsession is something that I should be feeding or trying to squash. One part of me is totally wary of it, while another part clings to it with devotion. The wary part points out that it was this obsession (in the form of health-related fears) that triggered and perpetuated my interstitial cystitis (IC) symptoms. The devoted part counters that it was also this obsession (in the form of tenacious research and striving) that allowed me to find mind-body medicine and overcome these symptoms.
It’s true that my health obsession has come with some serious downsides:
It can be alienating. It makes it hard for me to feel totally at ease in our society, where full participation requires us to swim in the causative agents of disease (e.g., ultra-processed foods, pesticides, alcohol). I’m often haunted by a feeling that the people around me are unwittingly being poisoned, which has me swinging between an impulse to try to save them and a fantasy of running away to live in some sort of toxin-free bubble.
It is resource intensive. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time, energy, and money planning/preparing healthy meals, trying to rid my home of “toxins,” and performing other such “safety rituals.”
It is mindless. It gets me stuck in negative thought spirals, which darkens my mood and takes me away from the present moment.
I don’t want to let my obsession drive me to make my anal little world even smaller or cause me to miss out on life. But the thing is, I LOVE health. Learning, talking, and raging about health makes me feel alive, and I’m in desperate need of that kind of passion right now.
I’d like to think that I can find a way (e.g., mindfulness, therapy) to keep this passion alive without letting it slip into obsession. I’d also like to think that I could use this passion as a means to connect with other humans rather than as an excuse to run away from them. This blog is part of my effort to make that shift.
