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Killed an animal 4 years ago – Still Suffering

HomeForumsTough TimesKilled an animal 4 years ago – Still Suffering

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Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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  • #74783
    Oskar Petterson
    Participant

    Hey!

    Just thought I’d see if anyone has been through similar, or if anyone might have any solution to this.

    So here it is:

    About 4 years ago I went and hunted for the first time. Hunting has always been a big thing in the family, so it was clear that I would get a hunting license at 16 and then follow out and hunt. Has followed in the forest countless times before, but it was only when I was 19 that it was time to have my own rifle in the woods.

    After an eventful hunting week including close encounters with bears (!) Came the last day. We were able to be a moose, came behind it and my father signaled to me to sneak up on it. I sneaked, saw the moose, put the gun to my cheek and fired.

    The moose stopped and collapsed. It was a perfect lung shot.

    It is after this that it happened. The rest of the hunting party came with the quad to retrieve the moose, and I went down to the road with my cousin. He talked on, and I felt a very odd feeling. As I was not really great, like something was missing. Oh well, it was an experience and maybe a little shock I thought, this is will certainly pass. It did not.

    4 and a half years have passed and I still feel the same feeling, that something is broken within me and a big part of me is missing. I’ve lost many friends, who miss the frisky, happy guy who I was. Struggling daily with social situations.

    Has anyone experienced this? Could it be that a part of me died along with the moose? Sounds crazy, but now I’m actually tired of waiting for this to go away by itself.

    Sorry for the long post. / O

    #74800
    Mia
    Participant

    hi Oskarpe, I’m glad that you have written about your experiences because it always helps to get things on paper/screen, out of our heads and to get another perspective. Reading your post I am wondering a bit more about how you felt that day. Did you feel sad, shocked or something else perhaps? How do you feel about it now, and do you still go hunting? I’m just wondering what effect killing the moose had on you.. and was there anything else going on at that time that may have added to your struggles?

    Sorry to ask lots of questions but it might help to see clearly how you have been feeling. I’m really sorry that you feel like part of you is missing – I want to let you know that you aren’t broken just maybe numbed a little or you have buried part of you away. That happy guy still exists, your essence/soul/character (whatever you’d like to call it) is still there just lost a little because of some difficult circumstances.

    I would perhaps recommend seeing a counsellor/therapist if possible. It might help with the anxiety in social situations. I struggle with that too so I don’t have some ground breaking solution I’m afraid but I do find that grounding techniques, mindfulness and self forgiveness are very helpful. I hope those might be of use to you.

    I don’t think it’s crazy to say that some part of you may have died along with the moose. It was clearly an experience that greatly affected you in some way and as a result you have lost yourself a little. But as I said ‘died’ suggests that that part of you won’t come back which I don’t think is the case. that part of you is just lost and you will find it again. Have faith in that. In the meantime I hope you can work through these feelings more. I hope that helps. Take care.

    #74822
    Rock Banana
    Participant

    The first thing to do here is to realize that your thoughts are creating this reality for you, not what actually happened. The evidence for this is here: Are there moments when you are not thinking about this, you’re distracted from you’re thinking, e.g. watching a movie, listening to a song etc., and you feel fine? If so then you can see that it’s not what happened that’s creating these feelings, you’re actually feeling the effects of your thinking in the moment. To give you another example, could somebody else feel differently about this? Yes, there are people that kill animals all the time and they don’t feel bad. Therefore killing an animal doesn’t actually make you feel bad for years – it’s your thinking in the present moment that creates the feelings. If killing animals made people feel bad for years, then everybody would feel bad after killing animals, and also you would feel bad all the time after having done so. Are those things the case? No. Therefore can you accept it isn’t what’s happened that creates your feelings, that it is actually instead the effects of your thinking in the present moment?

    Once you can realize that it is your thinking creating the feelings, i.e. you are feeling the effects of your thinking, the solution is to see the thoughts for what they really are: mental projections, not reality. For example, a thought you might have from time to time could be, “I am a bad person because of what I did”. To dispute this, you could ask yourself, do bad people feel bad for 4 years after killing an animal? Does thinking I’m bad make me bad? On this last point, if you like a song, is that song actually objectively better than other songs, or do you just think it is? If you think a painting is bad, is that painting actually objectively bad, or do you just think it is? Similarly, if you think you’re bad, does that objectively mean you’re bad, or is it just a thought you have about yourself in the moment? Can you actually “be” “bad” when “bad” is a humanly generated concept? A conceptual construct in your mind? In reality things just “are”, there’s no good or bad.

    To get even deeper, how do you know what you did is “bad”? It was a perfect lung shot. What if you saved that animal from a worse fate? Maybe if you hadn’t done that, it would have suffered a really brutal, savage death the next day that was extremely painful and prolonged. Maybe you actually rescued it from suffering. Now this can’t be proven but the point is: it disputes the thought you have that what you did is definitely “bad”. How can you know it was bad? I’ve already given you one example of how that could be the case. Another example is, maybe if you hadn’t have done it and felt bad for all these years you never would have reflected upon your experience of life so much. Maybe this experience will lead you to becoming much more conscious of how your thoughts create your feelings which could enable you to be happier in the future. So that is also an example of how maybe what happened wasn’t actually definitely “bad”. I’m not saying any of this is “true” in reality, it’s just perspectives to help you dispute the thought that you have done a bad thing.

    It’s worth noting here that my response here is heavily, HEAVILY influenced (if not borrowed) from Noah Elkrief. Check out his YouTube videos. Check out Eckhart Tolle – his book “The Power of now” is a good one. Check out Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Also, “You can be happy no matter what” by Richard Carlson will be great for you. MINDFULNESS MEDITATION will likely be a huge help for you. And if you do get somebody to help you through this, get somebody really good and solution focused. A lot of therapists just go over the past and problems and don’t actually like solving problems and creating solutions! So make sure you get somebody good.

    If it helps oskarpe, I have no negative judgements about you in this moment and you are 100% ok to me. You are feeling the effects of, and believing in, the judgements you are making about yourself in the moments you feel bad.

    Of course it is lovely not to want to kill animals, but the natural feelings of the grief would have passed pretty quickly, that gut sensation of “this is horrible” which you can experience on a purely feeling level. These feelings you’re having now are ok but are unrelated to that immediate primal gut feeling. They are thinking-induced. Nothing to do with what happened. It’s time to move on my friend!

    #74850
    Paul
    Participant

    Killing the moose was of course wrong. It has affected you badly which is a good thing. It means that you realize what you did was wrong. You could be having a spiritual awakening. This might sound silly but, in your mind say you are sorry to the moose. Ask for forgiveness. Then say thank you. You have to let go at some point. You are a better person now.

    You can also campaign against hunting. That way you will save many animals and feel great.

    #74860
    MichelleZ
    Participant

    Dear Oskarpe,

    My suggestion is to go through a process of forgiveness.Every day for 30 days, take at least 5 minutes of quiet time for yourself and forgive yourself what happened. Pray for the moose and all the other moose that are in this world. This process may seem odd at first. It may seem emotional at first. But you will find within the 30 days, an important shift happening within yourself. You will feel softer with the guilt you carry. You will truly learn to understand that was an incident that happened 4 years ago and you have learned your lessons and are ready to move on. Perhaps it is hard to move on because of the guilt you feel. But the prayer and the forgiveness will reverse that. It takes deep work to really face what is within us. But the love that is within you will eventually win. Right now you are run by regret and fear. Love is your essence, as it is the essence of every human being. So by praying and forgiving, you reverse the fear and go back to love again.

    I wish you much peace and strength 🙂

    Michelle

    #74872
    Kirk
    Participant

    Sorry this affected you so badly. I’ve had bad experiences with animals like that too. I’m a farmer and I have also dealt with those feelings. Bringing animals to slaughter ( ones I have raised) is very hard . I’ve hunted, slaughtered, AND birthed nearly everything that’s walked or crawled at one time or another. It’s part of life and its just how we stay alive. Living close to those realities makes us truly understand life. The life that so many lead is artificial, removed from the truly brutal, beautiful, natural world. Thats why there are so many unhappy people with problems that they just cannot express. They’ve lost their way. You were not in touch with reality before you killed the moose. That brief encounter with the real world shocked you deeply, because you were so far removed from it.

    I recommend getting back into nature. Go hiking, canoeing, whatever. Watch nature. Watch the birds catch their dinner. Plant a garden. Then go fishing. Scale, gut, and eat your fish. Do this regularly. This is where food comes from. This is what sustains your life. Food is not meant to come in a bag, from a store. Its an abomination that the majority of people get their food this way. Its all artificial and is too far removed from life.

    Kirk

    • This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by Kirk.
    • This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by Kirk.
    • This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by Kirk.
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