Matt the Meaty Maths Master

Matt called to ask if I could help with his diet. As he described it, he only ate things which bled. He meant things which had bled. Just as well. For a minute there I thought he was a vampire. 

But no. Matt is a Maths teacher who, for some reason, could not eat vegetables, or fruit or salads or nuts and especially not mushrooms. If a bit of carrot was deeply hidden in a highly spiced curry such that he didn’t notice its presence, he might eat it and not vomit. Otherwise he was pretty much limited to meat. 

Unless you’ve experienced something similar it is hard to imagine how socially debilitating this is. First, all Matt’s friends thought he was nuts. They never said that but Matt knew anyone who couldn’t eat anything but meat must be nuts so he assumed everyone else thought so too. 

Then there were the difficulties inherent in socializing with his vegetarian friends. 

Going to restaurants was a nightmare. In fact, it was a non-starter. At school he ate in a corner and tried to conceal his unbalanced diet, never knowing who knew or what they said about him at the other tables. 

He had no knowledge of why he was like this but suspected it had something to do with his childhood. On the couch we did a regression with his subconscious indicating ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers by moving fingers it had chosen for the job (technically these are called ideo-motor responses - IMRs). We were quickly able to pinpoint an event when he was two that led to his peculiar eating habit. Sometimes a subconscious mind will tell its host what happened and sometimes it will tell me but not allow the patient conscious awareness. Matt’s subconscious didn’t want anyone to know. But it agreed the device was no longer necessary and couldn’t wait to give it up. 

Matt had the alivest IMR digits I have ever seen, bouncing off his thighs even before I’d finished asking the questions. 

The first session didn’t clear everything though his food range expanded enormously. In the second session we found he needed to forgive himself for causing his mum so much upset with his odd appetite. 

A couple of weeks later Matt phoned me to say he was having great fun finding the things he really, genuinely didn’t like. Seems he’ll never eat cucumber, but he’s really into mushrooms now.