Vegan Practically

A recent study shows that being vegan in a non-vegan world has a psychological cost. I know this from both my own experience and the experience of others, not just friends but also a broader community of people in online vegan groups to which I belong. It’s hard to care about animal suffering in a world where most people are so cavalier about it that they have no compunction about eating products from factory farmed animals at every meal, even when there are excellent alternatives.

The article, “The Hidden Mental Load of Being Vegan and How Meditation Helps Carry It,” talks about “the weight of knowing what you know” and the “low-hum grief” that operates in the background for people who care deeply about animal suffering and choose veganism for ethical reasons. It states, “The clinical name is vicarious trauma, and it tends to land hardest on people whose ethics are tied to ongoing harm they can’t personally stop.”

The “good news” is that meditation can help with the mental load of “pretending you’re fine at family dinners” featuring dead factory farmed animals, images from documentaries and documentary footage, callous jokes about vegans made casually in workplaces and social spaces, or simply being surrounded by animal products at restaurants, supermarkets, markets, billboards, and clothing stores. Mindfulness and loving kindness practices can stave off the burnout people experience because these forms of meditation have been shown to reduce overall stress and increase compassion.

A Harvard study in 2011 showed that after an 8-week mindfulness meditation course, “participants showed measurable increases in grey matter density in regions tied to learning, memory, and emotional regulation, plus a shrinkage in the amygdala, the brain’s threat alarm.” The smaller amygdala apparently means that the nervous system doesn’t fire as intensely “at every reminder of suffering.”

A further benefit comes from the distinction between empathy and compassion. As vegans, our ethical position keeps us highly attuned to the vast suffering of helpless others. A German study has shown that empathy lights up the same pain region of the empathizer’s brain as the sufferer’s brain, thus simulating the pain. That’s a straight path to burnout. A loving kindness (metta) meditation practice inspires compassion. After training people in that practice, the researcher found that the same images activated a different region of the participants’ brains, “the ones linked to warmth, care, and motivation to help. Same suffering, different internal response.”

The upshot is that you can “care deeply without falling apart.” My own life has been significantly transformed through daily meditation that began back in grad school and was later bolstered by that 8-week course described in the Harvard study. I have done a great deal of mindfulness practice as well and loving kindness practice. I can attest that both approaches have benefitted me. Not only do I have better emotional regulation overall (not perfect!) than I used to, but I also have more compassion for all beings, whether human or non-human.

There are tips at the end of the article cited above, which I recommend if you’re interested in pursuing meditation. I also recommend the Insight Timer app for anyone serious about starting a regular meditation practice. There are tons of resources, including many guided meditations for mindfulness and loving kindness. It is my favourite app of all the apps on my phone. There is a free version, but the developers are worth supporting and the annual subscription is not very expensive for the unlimited access to a great timer, thousands of guided meditations covering all sorts of topics, access to excellent teachers, talks, even challenges, and a sense of community.

As the article says, learning to manage the emotional and mental load is no replacement for activism and efforts to instigate change. Ultimately, we want to find ways of reducing the vast suffering, both in our own choices and in raising awareness.

Involving ourselves in vegan community where others share our values and our struggles and our commitment to reducing animal suffering is another way to find some relief in a non-vegan world.

It’s a worthy cause. And we can take care of ourselves while we seek change.