Do you feel your body is a mere meat bag?

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Irulan
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13 Aug 2022, 3:30 pm

I’m hereby turning to you all with such a small request – could you tell me how you perceive your own bodies and your male/female identity? :) As well as the human, physical bodies of other people from your environment? What I mean by this is that as for myself, i always tend to see the organic, weak bodies of others (and my very own flesh, too, of course) as some sort of quite disgusting meat bags; every time I imagine something, I am always in said fantasies, some sort of non corporeal, psionic entity like Proteus from The X-men, a mutant who didn’t have his actual living form and was forced to possess the bodies of others who – for some time at least – became his hosts :) It’s not like that I actually don’t like having a body as such (although when I am sick, I feel like my own flesh was somehow… „betraying” me :? to put it in this way for the lack of a better word that would express my thoughts on this topic better); I just feel it would be much, much better to have a body that would be either:

a) Said noncorporeal form.
b) A replica of an ordinary human body, but perfected and made of something indestructible, like the bodies of the vampires from „Twigliht”.
c) A robotic body – the best option for myself – if we compared it to the ones of the cyborgs from the „Terminator” movies – would be having the body of T-1000, made of a mimetic polyalloy or the endoskeleton of a T-800; no living tissue over it, just the metal endo itself.

I sometimes also like to imagine that I am some sort of pure digital consciousness, uploaded to a computer, too. I feel human bodies are so weak and frail – and they, well… leak all the time (sweat, urine, saliva, tears etc.) It is quite odd to me that an ordinary Joe Smith (or maybe rather, I should say, Jane Smith, for it’s typically women who worry so much about what they look like) pays so much attention to the meat suit that they call their own body :) After all, in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter that some anonymous naked ape from some insignificant planet lost somewhere in the vast space, has a protruding chin/long nose/plump legs or whatever their inferiority complex concerns. I don’t feel my actual physical body, I feel my thoughts – all my thoughts, knowledge, memories and experiences I have managed to gather so far on my life account – I even don’t feel a woman too much, someone having some particular biological sex, although I was born with the body of a female. I don’t feel like a man either though, rather like someone not having any gender, such a mixture of a female and a male. Actually, if I had a choice, I would prefer to be an effeminate man – just for some time – for a change - and the only reason, for which I wouldn’t want to be always male is that men aren’t typically as attractive physically as women and that all those items (for example clothes, shoes and so on) dedicated to them are also quite boring in terms of what they look like (no decorations, dark colors etc.). Anyway, for a woman/girl is is acceptable to be a tomboy as well as a girly girl, while in case of men, it’s socially accepted only to be masculine - effeminate men are mocked. I like jewellery a lot but I don’t wear any sort of make up (mostly due to my sensory integration issues which cause that I don’t like having my face touched by anything, make up including; I use only a cute pink lip gloss I bought recently :D and paint my nails with a nail polish from time to time and oh, I like to use sweetly scented perfumes, too but that’s all). In all honesty, I even didn’t use to pay attention to what I wore until I was 18 and got some nice clothes from my mother – earlier than that, all clothes looked practically the same to me. I remove also the hair from my body but that’s all when it comes to all those things women/girls like to do with their bodies. I also feel ageless, as in not belonging to any age group because ever since I developed the ability of abstract thinking in my early teens, I was always the same in terms of my being able to perform the same thought operations, whether I was 13 or 38, like now. Since that time I haven't changed as such, I just have kept developing and completing what there already was about me. I could be a person of any age or any gender or race because I identify with none of those. I also don't identify with any social group I belong to, either, in general - one can offend a group I belong to in theory, but I don't care. I just don’t have the feeling my physical body is me, if you understand what I want to say, of course. I would feel much better as a robot or pure consciousness without a physical body on my own. Does anybody else also share this personality feature with me? :)



funeralxempire
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13 Aug 2022, 3:39 pm

Hey meatbags, I'm one of you.


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Irulan
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13 Aug 2022, 3:45 pm

Maybe the meat bag I am, wouldn't be so bad, if only it didn't leak practically all the time - I don't like the idea of all those waste products of our human digestive system, it's so annoying that you have to pass urine/stool etc. I have the Irritable Bowel Syndrome so I have to deal with those more often than healthy people, not suffering from this sort of problem. I also have bad teeth and my eyesight is poor.



KitLily
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13 Aug 2022, 4:18 pm

That was very long so I didn't read it all.

But I'd be happy to be a brain in a jar, I don't take much notice of my body and live in my head completely. Poor body... I suppose I do eat healthily.


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Irulan
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13 Aug 2022, 4:25 pm

If I lived in the X-Men universe, I could be this mutant girl who was reduced to a mere brain in a jar, too :D But I would prefer to be rather like the Shadow King who lived in the astral realm, possessing his human hosts from time to time :) With this exception that he was very obese while in his human form - and the same thing happened to the bodies of all his hosts because he loved eating, while I don't like eating (maybe but for pizza :D) :D



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13 Aug 2022, 4:29 pm

I do find it interesting that in regards to my consciousness, and what really matters when it comes to what makes me "myself", is that I'm mostly just a brain and nervous system, and that most of the rest of my bodies main purpose is to just support and protect that nervous system. I also think a lot about the fact that I'm really just a bunch of individual cells that somehow evolved to cooperate with and depend on other cells. It's cool, but can make my existence as a conscious being feel very "fake" and give me a bit of an identity crisis sometimes...

I also identify as "nonbinary" because, while I do associate myself with "masculinity" and more "male" terms, I don't really put a lot of significance onto my gender, nor do I put much significance onto my sex aside from the fact it allows me to potentially reproduce. At the end of the day the only thing that really matters in a basic reproductive, evolutionary, and survival sense is that I'm a specific type of weird, bipedal great ape and that I can either carry offspring or contribute to the production of offspring.

I also think about other people in the same way I think about myself and don't often put a lot of importance onto people's gender or sex. I also see humans as having a lot of similarities with other great apes, animals, and other organisms, and I don't think that a lot of the things we find "important" about us and that make us "different" are really that "important" or make us that "different". We don't behave too differently and don't really have any different needs compared to other animals.



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13 Aug 2022, 4:42 pm

Human body (even more at the tissue level) is regretably weak and vulnerable, it is "rounded", not "slashy", it can stink, it produces humiliating substances. This ugliness is a result of corruption of physical universe made by moral transgression against The Absolute.

When I was about 11 years old, I "fantasized" about being very powerful, headless, black-only creature made of slashy triangles named Megamon. Having the head was shameful for me and it was considered "ugly" or maybe even "humilitating" by me. Flatulence, defecation, having digestive system and its fluids also looks repulsively and siginificantly unpleasant for senses (I believe that senses are "product" of spiritual area, not physical, somatic one).



PhosphorusDecree
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13 Aug 2022, 5:02 pm

My body is important to me as the medium through which I experience chocolate. Other than that, we have a slightly fraught relationship. I'm less hostile to it than I used to be.


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13 Aug 2022, 8:33 pm

Worse;
A meat bag that is internally reactive.
My relationship at it is this hostile and petty unacceptance. Like my life; never on the outside.
My conflicts are mostly internal including anything that concerns my body.

It's not that it's fragile like easily get sick or weak like easily injured or slow to heal or be unreliably clumsy since birth.
Just annoyingly sensitive to subtle changes that it dysregulates often which I'm sure would make me prone to sickness, injury or clumsiness.

So people don't see a sickly person.
Just unreliable and with no apparent medical justifications why except blame it on autism. :roll:
Not dysfunctional or in pain, just unreliable.

Fine with survival. Survival, in my perception, is easier.
Yet maintenances beyond that are not fine. Being a female with monthly cycles does not help.

The worst part for me isn't digestion and excretion -- because sometimes, I can afford to ignore that...
It's the limbic brain and the endocrine system. I'm unable to ignore that and not even know it kicks in before it's too late.
And there's no help there because everyone just blames it on autism.

In appearances and figures, I don't give a damn. I take my mom's genetics for granted.
Yet at the same time, I held quite a grudge on my dad's genetics on being prone to diabetes. Maybe this is why I'm 'sensitive'.

So yeah.
I won't have a hormonal symptom of visibly gaining weight and being fat.
Yet underneath that, it's uncertain.

Except I just don't feel like myself. That I don't find this 'balance'. That all I feel is 'coping' with this body -- I'm not even coping around autism -- I just don't enjoy it, and I feel more like a prison in this body.
The limbic brain as a child, the endocrine system as soon as I hit puberty... All adds up to both in adulthood. :x

And I'm not even worried or scared about survival. Again, I don't have any serious grievances beyond myself.

That all this body is these 'symptoms' manifests as sensations, thoughts and translated maladaptive behaviors that turns into thoughts. :x

The real me is just this helpless and very frustrated observer, seeing the tools I work hard gaining increasingly less accessible as time went on.
This is not a sign of growth, this is a sign of whatever untreated and undiagnosed unmet need and I hate it.

I rarely felt like myself in this body when there's no stupid symptoms. No stupid demands. This body is more demanding that it appears.

I could be unhealthy this whole time, blame it on lack of discipline, paradoxically being called lucky because I don't have to watch my figure and no one would figure the whole story until doing bloodwork or something else...


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IsabellaLinton
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13 Aug 2022, 9:48 pm

100% every word of the OP.

I've always felt dissociated from my body like it's a suitcase I need to drag around.
My brain and body have never felt integrated.

I'm just a floating consciousness without gender or form.


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Diverse4Me
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13 Aug 2022, 10:38 pm

To some degree I do, but then again I don't think I would totally *want* to be without my body. Maybe a twilight form though.

Or better still, one I could mould at will to be more how I feel on the day. I'm nonbinary, and like flexibility in many things. Be also very cool to change my colouring at will :) see below!

My body though often tells me how I'm feeling. Emotions aren't often expressed intellectually, but in our bodies. When I'm feeling fear, my throat becomes dry and scratchy, when I'm feeling pain I feel uncomfortable in my gut. I feel anger in my neck and as a rising of a headache. When I'm feeling shame I tend to stick a smiling mask on my face to hide behind.

All these feelings in my body inform my brain, and my behaviour changes when they arise, but if I am not paying attention or ignoring the feelings, my outward behaviour is less likely to reflect the person I want to be.

Of course it took a lot of therapy to start to get to understand my feelings and why emotions are even *CALLED* feelings! :idea: :heart:

Colouring:

Image


I'd like a body that wasn't physically disabled though. I got infectious mononucleosis (EBV, Glandular Fever) in 2006 and went from being a workaholic to an invalid. :cry:

Except that I have learnt a lot through being disabled, and have grown from it too, I think.

It would be nice to have a healthy body to slip into occasionally though. No, not that way, get ur mind out of the gutter! Started thinking about a Heinlein (I think) story where you could rent bodies to 'wear'.

:D


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Dear_one
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14 Aug 2022, 12:56 am

I've called my brain "wetware" but that's about it. What I am aware of is that all domestic animals make fine pets if you have the room and the attention for them, so all commercial meat is from abused, abandoned pets.



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14 Aug 2022, 7:09 am

No I've never seen my body as a mere meat bag. It's just my body. It gives me pain and pleasure, and I wish it would give me less pain, but I suppose I'm relatively well off in that respect, at least until old age starts to really kick in. I'm rather resentful about being a vessel for a bit of DNA to replicate itself, a slave to the carrot and stick of pleasure and pain, but I don't see any sustainable way around that.

I probably feel as disgusted as most people about the muck that bodies produce, but I just see it as DNA's way of keeping us from catching infections.



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14 Aug 2022, 7:50 am

I don't see my body as producing disgusting substances, that's just how it eliminates stuff. As I've given birth, it would be weird if I wasn't astounded by how clever and strong my body was to produce a perfect human from itself.

However I am not a physical, active, body-centred person, I'm just not interested in that. I like words, ideas, talking, language, thinking. I'm impressed with these tough, strong people who can run miles in the heat or swim or do gymnastics. I don't relate to those people at all.


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Irulan
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14 Aug 2022, 9:39 am

Thank you all for your replies :) Ah, and this one thing more - I also have to feed my body as well, so as it was able to function properly and eating is such a boring task to me. I would sometimes forget to eat, if I lived on my own, I bet.



KitLily
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14 Aug 2022, 9:44 am

Irulan wrote:
Thank you all for your replies :) Ah, and this one thing more - I also have to feed my body as well, so as it was able to function properly and eating is such a boring task to me. I would sometimes forget to eat, if I lived on my own, I bet.


Oh tell me about it. I hate eating. Preparing food etc. I wish I could take tablets so I wouldn't have to bother eating :?


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