That sick feeling at the grocery store...and how to move through it

HEADS UP: There are a couple of f-bombs in this one. 

You know that feeling. The eighteen-wheeler with the happy cows on the side. The refrigerated aisle. The friend in a barbecue-mascot t-shirt. The sick, furious, grieving, how-is-nobody-else-seeing-this feeling that hits a hundred times a week.

It has a name. And once you name it, you can do something with it.

In this episode I get into what moral injury actually is, why being triggered by that truck is more layered than it looks (hint: part of it is grief for the version of you that didn't know yet), and the small body-based moves I use to keep the energy from getting stuck.

Plus — some real optimism about where the movement is, eighteen years in. And a Bob Marley song that's got me smiling.

Links

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🌐 Website: krimdom.com/veganfireside

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📚 Krimsey's Books: dabblerouser.com/books

💌 Contact: krimdom.com/contact

Vegan Fireside: A podcast by Krimsey Lilleth — honest conversations about the inner life of being vegan in a world that mostly isn't. 

Transcript

That Sick Feeling Vegans Get At The Grocery Store

A name for what you’re feeling, and how to move through it

[00:00:00] Have you ever been driving on the freeway and you see an eighteen-wheeler with some happy cows in a rolling green field plastered on the side of it, and you think, "Gahhhhhh, that's so annoying." Or you go down a certain refrigerated aisle and you get sick to your stomach, and watching people pick through the plastic-wrapped packages

makes you literally wanna barf.

Or one of your friends is wearing a shirt from their favorite barbecue place that has a mascot of a smiling pig on it, and you go, "What the fuck?"

Today, I wanna talk about this scenario, about the overwhelming mixture of feelings that comes up when you see something and you go, "How is nobody else seeing what I'm seeing? How is no one else grossed out?"

Maybe you get sick or furious or filled with grief in your chest, bewildered and confused. [00:01:00] Let's give this a name because sometimes naming something, it pulls the sheet off of the thing that feels like a ghost. It makes it feel a little more tangible, and when something is tangible, you can do something with it.

It takes away the power when you give it a name.

So this icky feeling you get when you see someone in front of you at the checkout line grabbing a handful of beef jerky sticks like it's no big deal,

and you get hot face, that's called moral injury.

It's a term that was coined originally in the '90s by a psychiatrist working with Vietnam vets. He needed a word for something that PTSD didn't capture because PTSD is more about fear. And moral injury is about what happens when your soul gets injured by what you saw or you did.

So you can imagine how this might apply to soldiers. Maybe you're someone kind who wanted to serve and [00:02:00] protect your country and your fellow citizens, and you get over to wherever they sent you, and suddenly you are having to kill people, innocent people, and you know it's wrong, but everyone around you is doing it, and no one is running the other way.

And maybe it is for the greater good. Who knows? I'm not here to judge on that.

But that soldier still has to kill.

And kill in the presence of others who are all doing it and don't seem to have a problem with it.

So that's a version of moral injury where someone is having to do something that they don't agree with morally or ethically. And our version of moral injury is more about seeing something and looking around and going, "Everyone knows this is not normal, right? Why is no one freaking out?

Why are you buying that mother's milk in a carton like it's no big deal?"

Okay, so that thing has a name now, moral [00:03:00] injury.

So let's go a little deeper so we can combat it, and then I'm gonna share what I do in those moments to help diffuse that energy.

This is gonna feel like a sidestep, but I promise you we're still on track. I wanna talk to you about what it feels like to be inspired versus what it feels like to be triggered. Because there's this idea that what inspires you is the thing that you know you want, and what triggers you is the thing that you want that you're not aware you want or maybe don't want to admit that you want.

All right, so when that truck drives by with a big steak slab on it or whatever triggers you most, it's a double whammy because on one hand,

I'm burdened by the knowing. I can no longer see that truck and go, "Yummy," or even be neutral about it. It's charged for me. I [00:04:00] know what is behind that steak.

Violence, cognitive dissonance, hypocrisy. So that's the first part of me being triggered. Triggered by what the knowing means. And then here's the second one that might be a little harder to digest. Please sit with it because if you can accept this as part of yourself, it can help you understand what's happening and move past it quickly in those moments.

So the other part of this is I wanna eat whatever the fuck I want and not have to think about it. Sometimes I wish I could go back to before I knew and just eat a freaking burger. But I can't. I can never do that again. And there's a part of me that still wants that freedom, that is mad that those other cars driving by might look at that same thing And go, ooh, let's pull over at the next exit and get [00:05:00] some of that.

I can never have that again, and it pisses me off. So zooming out again, the triggering comes in two main parts for me. It's one, oh my gosh, I feel sick to my stomach because I know how that steak was made. And number two, I'm jealous.

The ignorance is bliss thing is gone for me.

The next time you get triggered by something like this truck driving by or a billboard or something in the grocery store, let's just take a minute, breathe, and sit with what we're feeling. Because it's much more complicated

than we might want to think. It's very layered.

And peeling apart those layers is what's going to give you freedom.

Let's move into the reframe a little bit. What happens when this feeling comes and you don't want to feel it anymore?

When your cousin orders lamb at dinner and thinks it's funny.

First part of the reframe is to remember [00:06:00] that this feeling isn't a malfunction in you. It's not you being too sensitive or too much or whatever. It's you being accurate about reality. The rest of the world is in a trance, and you are not.

But just because you're accurate about something doesn't mean you have to sit in it all the time and feel icky about it.

' Cause that's not fun, and you're not gonna live a joyful life that way. Like, you can let it land, feel it, and then let it move through you. Five seconds of, "Oh, God." Take a deep breath, keep driving. Because sometimes when I go into a grocery store and I'm purposely avoiding certain aisles or whatnot, it's the bracing that wrecks me.

It's the not wanting to see it and not wanting to feel it, because the feeling itself is very quick if you don't clamp down on it.

But if you're not gonna clamp down on it, what do you do [00:07:00] with it? I'm a big believer in using your body to move emotions through. So when you have these emotions, you gotta do something with them. You can't just absorb it. Well, you can, but I think when you don't do something with that energy, with those emotions, you're just storing it all over your body.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. Smart people who know a lot more about it than me agree. The body keeps the score and so on and so forth.

So if you're not gonna absorb it, what do you do with it?

Pretty much almost anything. So sometimes I do silly things with my body. So I might, uh, do a little, like, jizzle-izzle-izzle, or even do a few squats. I might do, like, ten squats.

Anything that makes my blood pump and my body feel strong or alive, that's one good way to keep things moving through. Or actually, this podcast [00:08:00] is a channeling of that energy. Because I was triggered today, and I thought, "What can I do with this?

How can I help my vegan friends, my fellow vegans, who are experiencing this every day?" I know you are because I do. It's very hard to go out in the world and not be triggered constantly. So here's me channeling that energy into something positive for you, for my friends I want to name this thing and talk about how we can overcome it and not get sucked into the black hole of anger, grief, fear, frustration, hatred even.

Okay, but every time I'm not going to record a podcast, so maybe I'll write about it. It can be private or public, you could cook a very nourishing meal for yourself, colorful, healthy something that's going to make you feel good. Or text a vegan friend.

But let's not trauma dump [00:09:00] on each other. Sometimes it's necessary to talk about our feelings, but when I say text a vegan friend, I don't mean send them a picture of the thing that triggered you and go, ah, how could people, ah. Right? Who is that helping? Might make us feel a little bit less alone, but what is the point of sending someone that when you could choose something positive? Just check in on them. See how they're doing. Invite them to meet up for something. Or you could text a veg curious friend. Just check in with them. Not to convert them on veganism, but just to connect and be a good friend.

Show up to that meetup group you've been meaning to go to. You have to move that energy through you into something. It could be as simple as wiggling your toes in your shoe and singing a song in your head or founding a nonprofit. You know, happy medium somewhere.

Before we close today, I want to talk a little bit about the way bigger picture because I do want to [00:10:00] leave you not only with strategies for how to deal with moral injury, but also some optimism for the movement because at times it can seem like nothing is happening. How could people still be doing this, right?

But again, let's zoom out. I've been vegan for over 18 years. And when I started, the numbers were so small, you couldn't even measure them. There wasn't much data. There weren't organizations really tracking it.

At least not in a big way. It was just a handful of us, and we were weird, right? And now there are whole organizations looking at this data, finding undercover footage regularly, releasing it, growing the movement. There are documentaries, and we are documented as a movement.

It's happening. You're still a minority, yes, but a minority that is growing.

For the rest of your life, you get to watch it [00:11:00] grow.

Not everyone's gonna be vegan, and definitely this isn't gonna happen all at once. but bit by bit, person by person, year by year,

the world is unfolding toward you.

One day people will look back and be horrified by what we've done to animals.

And the fact that we're sickened by it right now,

that's the beginning.

That's the building of the movement that's going to lead toward that day.

Anyway, thanks for being with me.

This song by Bob Marley caught me this week, and I thought you might like it. Something about it.

It's called Cheer Up

I love you, my friends. [00:12:00]