On this site, I have frequently mentioned that I have cyclical patterns of internal experience and subsequent behavior due to my presentation of DID. It took me quite a while to realize this as I had not seen this presentation documented anywhere in the academic literature, although I now know that other people with polyfragmented DID also experience this phenomenon. Once I realized this was how I operate, my understanding of my internal experience grew substantially as it provided a framework for which I could apply my experiences to. Right now, for the most part, I don’t know which specific “part of the cycle” I am in, but I do have some distinct parts that help me to index where I am which help me to know what could be coming next.
I am currently in a very distinct part of the cycle. For the past two days, I have been extremely preoccupied with food. I am constantly thinking about when my next meal is going to be, and, at any given time, I feel like I should be eating because I feel like this will be my last meal for a long, unknown amount of time. I feel like I do not know when that time will start, so I need to make sure that I am full at all times so that when it does start, I will have as much food in my system as possible. As a result of these feelings, I have nearly constantly been eating snacks throughout the day to top off my stomach. When I am not eating, I feel like I am not preparing for what is coming next and I should be eating, so much so that it’s difficult to focus on anything else.
I know this is my trauma brain speaking—there is no food shortage about to happen to me. This is also abnormal behavior for me, as I am generally someone who is not very interested in food, so I am much more inclined to undereat than overeat. However, right now, I am constantly thinking of food and having to refrain myself from eating as much as my brain is telling me to eat.
Leading up to this part of the cycle, I also exhibit distinct, but much more subtle, behavioral changes. For about a week or two prior to my food preoccupation occurring, I fully stock my fridge and pantry with food. This is done gradually—every day, at the end of my walk, I will spontaneously pick up a few items at the grocery store. This is also odd behavior for me as I generally experience a lot of anxiety around shopping1, so I tend to go as infrequently as possible and always plan exactly what I’m going to get ahead of time. This experience of stocking up on food every day occurred last week and early this week, just before the current food preoccupation occurred. At the time my food stocking was occurring, it didn’t register to me that anything was abnormal—I always have the feeling that however I am experiencing the world in that moment is normal. It’s only in retrospect, when I am able to take a step back and look at my behavior, am I able to tell that anything abnormal occurred. Now that I know that I am in the part of the cycle that is preoccupied with food, I can look at my past bank statements and see that I was preparing for this part of the cycle to occur over a week ahead of time without even being aware of it.
This preoccupation with food was last documented in mid-November, which was just over 2 months ago, and lasted 2-3 days. Looking at my bank statements prior to that, I also experienced the same food hoarding behaviors leading up to the event. This brings an important realization—in the future, if I notice that I am going to the grocery store excessively, that may be an indicator that the food-craving part of the cycle is coming up next. This is how I have been building awareness of my cycle—I started by realizing the obvious signposts indicating where I am in the cycle, and have been slowly incorporating my understanding of less distinct parts of the cycle as I become aware of them. My awareness of my cycle is growing, but it’s still far from complete.
This brings the obvious question—why am I preoccupied with food? I personally did not experience food insecurity as a child, but my parents, who both grew up in poor farming families, did. Besides being in this food-preoccupied part of the cycle, I also show signs of having experienced food insecurity during more “normal” times, including carrying food everywhere I go, planning in advance where food is accessible when leaving the house, always fearing that food will run out before I get to it when meals are served in a group setting, and a general sense of anxiety about when my next meal will be. I believe what I am experincing now is an acute manifestation of my ordinary baseline fear of not having food available. Growing up, my mom was concerned with food in a similar way to me now, likely stemming from her own personal experiences. Did I pick up these feelings and behaviors through osmosis, rather than personal experience? This is not my trauma, but it is my experience.
Could my feelings surrounding food be influenced from further up my family lineage? My paternal grandfather, who was a Staff Sergeant in the US Army in World War II, was captured in Germany and taken as a prisoner of war for 118 days, during which less than 15% of his cohort survived. He experienced immense amounts of trauma during that time, the degree of which could not appropriately be honored in this post. One major aspect of his experience was a severe lack of food, leading to starvation. Could his experiences, passed down three generations, have an effect on me today? Is this even something that would be appropriate for me to question, given my lack of any concrete food scarcity compared to the severity of his experiences?
Transgenerational trauma, or the potential transmission of the effects of trauma through multiple generations, has been documented in the academic literature. While I’m personally of mind that it’s unlikely that my grandfather’s experiences are influencing me today directly, I can clearly see how my parents' personal experiences, which subsequently influenced how they raised me, affect me today. I did not personally experience any real food insecurity, but they did, and the effects still linger.
UPDATE: This transient period of food preoccupation lasted 3 days, and is now over as of January 27, 2024.