Fear of eating-how do I make it stop?

[sweetfreak]

Supposedly, the way to cure a phobia, is to expose yourself to the fear. Well, recently,I have developed the fear of eating as well as emet. But, even though I am afraid of eating, I force myself to do it every day. If I don't, I will die. But why is the fear of eating not going away. I am exposing myself to the fear about 5 times a day because I eat about 5 times a day. However, the fear has not gone away and actually is worse. My throat closes up when I eat, I feel nauseous, I sometimes cry. Why doesn't this phobia go away if I am continuously exposing myself to it? [img]smileys/smilies_12.gif[/img] Edited by: sweetfreak

[Melikasa]

There is something that you are not confronting. I went through what you are going thrrough. Sadly I never truely found out what it was that was the root. I know that my thought was (and sometimes still is though rarer) is that if I don't eat I won't get sick. My mom started to threaten to take away privilages if I didn't eat which KIND of worked then the doctor said I should see a psychologist. Which now that I look back on I REALLY wish I would have done. I was soooo mortified at the thought of going and exposing myself. No one knew that it wasn't anorexia but EMET that was making me afraid to eat. I wish I would have said something. I didn't know what EMET was or that there was a such a thing.


Any grats on exposing yourself to food that is awsome. You are trying. It isn't going to be an automatic CURE though. You can't expect it to just go away because you have made yourself face it. It will take some time. Keep up the good work you are taking the steps. I wish I had better info but IF you had a choice to see a proffesional definatly do it. I wish I had and now I can't afford it for myself.

[sage]

Exposure in and of itself will not cure anything - in fact it may continually re-traumatize you. The point of gradual exposure is to expose yourself to the stimulus WITHOUT ANXIETY. If you expose yourself WITH anxiety, then it backfires.


Now I'm not sure how this theory applies to your situation - I have to think about that. Probably if you could learn some really good relaxation techniques, and a ton of positive self-talk (such as "I am well and healthy" or "I am perfectly safe", etc.) this would help a lot. Then you could eat a tiny little bit, and practice the relaxation and self-talk...and perhaps your anxiety would diminish. You could then enter into some MORE self-talk about how you ate, and you didn't get sick, in fact felt a little better and "eating is good for me" "I feel better when I eat", etc. Once you'd mastered that, you'd go on to eat a little more and try the same thing.


You'd have to approach this with all the determination of any Olympic athlete...practice, practice, practice...train train train! After a while, just like the athlete - you'd start to see results.


But just deciding to eat and being anxious the whole time is NOT gradual exposure therapy...I suspect that's why it's not "working" for you.


But nevertheless eating is better than not eating. You didn't get sick, right? You were not in any danger, right? Keep talking to yourself in a positive way!