Hi so I have a food avoidance disorder because I have been scared I'm gonna have an allergic reaction to the food. For context I have never had an allergic reaction to food ever. This food avoidance disorder is causing me to lose a bit of weight and I don't enjoy it. It is also obviously causing me lots of stress and taking alot of "enrichment" from my life. Any advice to getting over this?
I have this fear too it is just awful. I do have allergies to certain foods and have had anaphylactic reactions to them in the past and now I am terrified that foods are cross contaminated. It has ruined eating for me and I hate it. I know that my therapist is going to help me with this fear. I am hoping it works and I can learn to eat food again.
Know that you are acknowledging that you aren’t comfortable with this and that’s a big step toward the right direction!
I was avoiding foods because I was afraid of bad or more trips to the restroom. I kept avoiding more foods. After a number of years it effected my ability to absorb food properly and I was hospitalized for malnutrition. The solution is to take the risk of eating feared foods starting with the least scary and smallest amount. It is not significantly different conceptually than standard erp therapy. I was so bad off I went to Rogers Behavioral residential eating disorder and ocd treatment center - I have successfully managed my food concerns since then - I eat a normal variety of foods, all the foods I used to eat (except a few I am actually allergic to) and am a healthy weight. They also helped me tremendously with many of my other subtypes of OCD in addition to my ARFID. I remember when I was fist at Rogers I ranked spinach a “7” on a fear scale of 1-7 and when I finally worked my way up to spinach it was incredibly hard to eat one tiny piece of spinach. I now eat plentiful servings of spinach when I eat out or we have spinach. In other words, you can do it.
Hey, I’m in a similar situation except I’m scared of getting food poisoning of any kind. I get it, it’s so exhausting because I get to a point where I know I should eat something cuz I’m hungry but I don’t want to. Do you have “safe foods?” For me, a Nutella and banana sandwich for example, is one of my safe foods so when I need something to eat but can’t get myself to eat something else, I have that. It probably counts as a compulsion, but I think it’s fine as long as you’re also doing some sort of exposure at a pace you’re comfortable with. At least in this case I think it’s fine since it’s still important to eat something. Don’t go all in with exposure therapy is basically what I’m saying and if you have safe foods, try to eat those at least in really tough days because it’s still important that you eat.
@Alex_89 Just to share I stayed with “safe foods” that were healthy but was still not okay - it’s all about making sure you have a varied diet as I learned the hard way by being at a point where my health was very compromised- then again I had only 11 safe foods/ drinks for a several years.
@Alex_89 Not trying to be harsh it’s just ocd told me that as long as I was eating healthy foods what I was doing was okay because of my bad stomach issues. If someone is still eating a good variety and only avoiding a few foods and keeps it at that without obsessing and stressing about food all the time then I totally agree no need to over erp it. But Corinne mentioned losing weight and lots of stress which is why I am suggesting doing gradual erp. Glad to hear you are doing exposures with food so you don’t end up where I was. I was down to 89.2 lbs and I’m 5’5 and over 40 - my face had started to cave in and my brain wasn’t working well and I was tired all the time. I do think I would have died from it - my family actually did an intervention to get me to go to the hospital. I’m now around 125-135 lbs which is a good weight for me.
I do have safe foods and that includes things like cereal, yogurt, fruit, veggies, applesauce, eggs ect. So I feel as though I'm still getting a well rounded diet.
Hello, I don’t know if I have this but I know for sure I have a bad relationship with food. I fear that if I eat something other than what I always eat, I will gain weight and ultimately look ugly. I don’t necessarily know if you’ll ever get over this, but I do know that with erp you Will definitely find hope! I’m sorry you have this. It’s really no fun because it starts to control you. Like I’ll avoid meeting friends because I’ll fear they’ll want to eat somewhere. It sucks and I appreciate you sharing
So something that kinda pops up with my anxiety is about a year or so ago i ate an edible gummy after not doing anything for a while and i tripped out really bad… for example i thought i was gonna overdose and die, and that i was already dead.. that is the most fear i have felt in my entire life, and even though its over and has been over i have this constant fear in my mind “what if your still high and this is all a dream” or “your gonna wake up and it will still be that night” i never wanna feel that way again. i can’t even go around the smell of weed with out freaking out. i can’t take pills, or vitamin gummies because “what if it will make me high” when it comes to sleeping i wanna try this dr teals sleep blend but i struggle so much with it because of my mind saying “it will make you feel high”.. even when i feel tired i feel scared cause it reminds me of feeling high.. its just i feel so stuck with the same reaccrujng thought “this could be the time you wake up and it was all just a dream” “you could wake up from coma and this was all imagined” i don’t know what else to do, its my own mind no one can help me and that sucks i don’t know how to win the battle when it’s such a deep rooted fear. i feel like im pushing my family away. i feel so numb.
Hey guys! So I struggle with OCD, especially harm, relationship and moral stuff and I am somewhat recovered now. However, my current girlfriend has started showing signs of OCD but it’s abou5 something I don’t know much about so I wanted to see if anyone on here had thoughts about it. She is constantly thinking about food (when to eat it, what is healthy, what is too much, what is too little) and controls the thoughts by giving in and controlling her entire day around food. She don’t really know the feeling of being full. She never starved herself and always eats, but then she feels extremely guilty afterwards. Her thoughts do have to do a lot with her body image and not gaining weight but also not losing any either. Does this sound like ocd or an eating disorder?
I'm having awful stomach pain and nausea and it's really worrying me and scaring me
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond
