the intimacy of sharing a meal

how the intersection of anxiety and food has affected me

Feb 15, 2024

“For a dinner date, I eat light all day to save room, then I go all in: I choose this meal and this order, and I choose you, the person across from me, to share it with. There's a beautiful intimacy in a meal like that.” - Anthony Bourdain

the best french toast I’ve ever had at this Italian restaurant I went to with my mom and aunt

I hold fear and anxiety in my stomach. As soon as I feel even slightly nervous, the first symptoms that usually appear are loss of appetite, upset stomach, and digestive issues. The intensity of these symptoms depends on how strong the anxiety is. Sometimes I can push through it with every hesitant bite until the nerves dissipate and I enjoy my meal. Other times it takes all of my energy to force down something light. Then there are those times when it’s so bad that bringing a fork with a mouse-sized portion to my mouth feels like carrying a shovel full of rocks.

I wasn’t always like this. I used to be able to go out to restaurants, eat on the go, and eat while traveling without a second thought. Sometimes I still can depending on the day and situation but there’s still a level of unpredictability that hums underneath the surface of every situation that involves a mix of food and people. I’ve always been very shy and anxious but the onset of these particular symptoms can be traced back to when I was 13 years old, and they unfolded in 3 events that happened in succession.

First, I turned 13. If you weren’t a teenage girl at one point, I’ll explain what it’s like: it’s absolute hell. Amidst going through puberty, facing imminent life changes like the horrors of middle school, and coming to understand that you’re viewed as an object in this world, Social Anxiety Disorder typically begins around age 13. So even though I always had SAD to some degree growing up, it really kicked into gear once I entered my teen years.

Second, I caught a stomach bug and got sick at school. That’s happened to me before, but when you’re 13 and everything suddenly embarrasses you, it becomes so much worse. I started the day feeling fine and then at 2:55 p.m., just when I was so close to being let free, I ran to the bathroom and watched my cheeseburger and pineapple slices come back up. I felt totally helpless in the bathroom stall, at the mercy of nausea, cold sweats, and vomiting. How would I be able to stand up and get myself out of here? Who could I ask for help, and how could I ask them for help? Eventually, a girl heard me and got the principal, who asked me my name and kept getting it wrong because I couldn’t pronounce it clearly enough for her in the middle of vomiting, crying, and panicking. Eventually, I felt well enough to come out, they called my dad to come get me, and I arrived home where I could be sick in peace. The whole ordeal probably only lasted about 15 minutes but it felt like an eternity. This was the first time that I became acutely aware of the concept of unpredictability, that things outside my control would happen and I’d be left dealing with the consequences. From this point on, I developed emetophobia.

Third, the week before I started 8th grade, I had what I would describe as a prolonged anxiety attack. Anxiety attacks are hard to define because they technically aren’t diagnosable but they mirror a lot of the same symptoms of panic attacks. For 5 days straight, I’d wake up with uncontrollable shaking. I could hardly get out of bed and I felt weak. I couldn’t eat at all despite the sharp hunger pains in my stomach and when I did manage to eat, it was something more like girl dinner. I couldn’t stop worrying about the fact that, after a whole summer of getting to be by myself or with friends, I’d be forced back into a building with hundreds of people in a matter of days and there was nothing I could do to stop it. To add to my worry, I’d be in a new building–it didn’t matter that nobody else knew the layout of the new building, I only imagined myself getting lost and looking like a complete idiot in front of everyone. On top of the anxiety that caused shakes and a loss of appetite, I worried about the anxiety and loss of appetite. I was afraid that my anxiety would cause me to be sick, so I avoided eating as much as I could.

From that point on, my anxiety and emetophobia joined together to morph into a new monster. It’s hard to explain how it works but it goes like this: I’ll be anxious about something, which causes me to lose my appetite. But I know that I can’t avoid eating forever–I’ll have to do it at some point or risk the possibility of fainting, getting sick, or just feeling generally worse. But since I’m already anxious, I’m already feeling sick, which makes me not want to eat. But I know that I have to eat because I might get sick from not eating. But it’s hard to eat because I’m afraid I’ll be sick if I eat. So I don’t eat, or I eat very little, just enough to ward off the low blood sugar for the time being. But that doesn’t always work. Sometimes I’ll eat and feel better. Other times I’ll eat and it makes things worse, which makes me not want to eat, which makes me feel worse, either because of the low blood sugar, faint feeling, or embarrassment from not being able to just enjoy a meal like normal. My anxiety about getting sick from anxiety combines with whatever is making me anxious in the first place, creating a bundle of nerves that I must untangle fast lest I look or act weird.

Anxiety turns the natural act of eating into a performance. I hesitate to make plans that involve eating, especially eating in public because I’m afraid that if I have anxiety about the plans–whether it’s the activity, the location, or the person I’m with that’s making me anxious–I won’t be able to eat when I’m expected to. This makes sit-down restaurants complicated because their sole purpose is to eat. And not just eat, but eat with others. You walk in, the restaurant might be crowded and noisy. It may take forever to get a table. You have to wait to order, then you order, then you wait for your food, then you have to eat it, and not just a few bites but the whole thing, unless you want to be judged or made fun of for not eating, or carry leftovers around, which most people do not. Everything is on a schedule, it’s not completely in my control. I can’t just walk in, grab a sandwich, take some bites until I feel satisfied, and then shove the rest in some plastic wrap and store it in my purse before getting out of there. At restaurants, you take your time. And you never know how long that time will be because you’re with other people who want to enjoy it. I have to sit there, trapped in my head, taking note of where the bathroom is just in case and spending the meal internally talking myself down enough to take each bite while pretending to be a normal human invested in the conversation happening at the table. All the while being aware of all the people in the restaurant and what it would feel like to suddenly feel sick and run past them all to the bathroom.

This turns eating into a solitary act. A lonesome cup of coffee and a croissant in a cafe. A few bites of yogurt to get some protein in my body before leaving the house, leaving my comfort zone. Packing a protein bar in my bag just in case I’m out somewhere and I get hungry enough that I want something but am too afraid to get food so I have this other option that I can safely nibble on. Planning an event for me also means planning what I’m going to eat and when so that if I get anxious at said event, I’ll hopefully have enough food in my system to power me through the event without needing to eat, but not so much food that I feel sick. Example: I went to a party once and I spent the whole day making sure to consistently eat good, filling, yet easily digestible food so that when it came time to start getting ready for the said party and the nerves kicked in, I had a comfortable amount of food in my system that would keep me from getting the hunger shakes but not make me feel sick and make everything worse. When I got to the party, I eventually calmed down and felt comfortable enough to enjoy a cupcake. I relayed that information to my therapist with the utmost joy but also felt sad and pathetic underneath it all. Because normal people don’t have to put this much thought into something as basic as eating. The mental energy it takes sometimes to do this is like running a marathon.

So much of our social culture revolves around food. Whether it’s snacks at movie or game night, grabbing fries after a night of drinking, cooking a meal for loved ones, getting brunch with the girls, or going to a restaurant on a date. It’s inescapable. In an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Captain Holt says, “I have zero interest in food. If it were feasible, my diet would consist entirely of flavorless beige smoothies containing all the nutrients required by the human animal.” Sometimes I wish I could do that. Just drink a quick smoothie every morning with every nutrient required so that I don’t have to worry about what, when, and how I’m going to eat when I feel anxious.

But I love food. I may be a little picky and hesitant to try new things but food is comfort! Food is joy! A sad day is saved with chocolate, a happy day is made even better with ice cream. French toast is the MVP of breakfast foods, soup gets me through winter. There’s nothing like a good gossip session over brunch. Pasta and red wine are the backbone of society, a reliable option for any day, mood, or occasion. One of the best parts of traveling is enjoying the local restaurants. My anxiety takes this enjoyment away from me and at times has caused rifts between me and my loved ones.

I traveled with friends to Columbus once and I was anxious about it but I thought it would go away once we got there. Only it didn’t. It kept coming back in waves, to the point where I’d be shaking at night in our hotel room trying to get myself to calm down and go back to sleep. The question of “Where should we eat?” caused dread every day because I wanted to put off eating as much as I could to avoid the possibility of getting sick from the anxiety, only making me feel more anxious in the process. When we weren’t eating, I could function a little bit more normally and enjoy our activities, but I was always worrying about when the time would come for us to eat. When we were at restaurants, I’d spend so much mental energy trying to get myself to eat that I shut down, appearing bored and uninterested in the conversation, in my friends, in the trip itself. I wanted to escape every crowded restaurant, with its overly noisy patrons, loud music, and the overwhelming smell of grease. Every time we decided to grab food and eat in the privacy of the hotel instead, I’d feel relieved.

On one particular night on that trip, one of my friends wanted to meet up with an old high school friend of ours at a restaurant. I knew this friend but not well, and I hadn’t seen them in years anyway so it would be like meeting a stranger. I was already anxious about it but prepared to go through with it until I found out two other people would be joining. This was already stressful enough but adding the performance of eating a meal with them was too much, especially after an entire day of walking that made me already feel weak and tired because I was using up all of this energy on very little food. By the time we were supposed to meet them, I felt so tired, weak, shaky, and anxious that I just needed a break from everything. So I went back to our hotel room and nibbled on leftovers alone while my friends went to the restaurant, feeling bad about myself to the point of tears.

I sincerely needed the break but with every hour that they didn’t return, I felt worse. I imagined them laughing together and having fun, enjoying alcohol and ginormous plates of food at 11 p.m., the kind of fun that you’re supposed to have in your twenties. I had let myself be left out because I couldn’t manage my anxiety enough. It didn’t help that when I told my best friend (at the time) about how bad I felt and why, she told me, “It was actually kind of nice that you weren’t there because then I didn’t have to worry about being ignored all night.” When this trip happened, our friendship was already having some rough patches. One of these rough patches was that to her, it looked like I wasn’t trying hard enough to manage my anxiety, and this made her not want to hang out with me. I wasn’t even invited to our other friend’s birthday because it was at a club and my friend told me that they didn’t invite me because they didn’t want to have to worry about me being anxious when they wanted to have fun. Basically, I’d be a downer for everyone so it was better that I wasn’t there. I hated even more that I understood where they were coming from, even though it was really hurtful and I wouldn’t have done the same to them. My friendship with these 2 people slowly broke down for several reasons but my anxiety and how I was perceived as not dealing with it was a part of it. I reached my lowest point of that year beginning with that trip and now it is with that trip in mind that I think about how much the intersection of food and anxiety has affected my life. If I plan a dinner date, or I want to go out to eat with friends, or I want to travel and enjoy new foods–will it be as bad as that trip was?

I want so badly to just enjoy a meal with someone or multiple someones in a public restaurant for hours on end without thinking twice about it. I don’t want to carry protein bars in my purse, I don’t want to only go to establishments that serve takeout, I don’t want to worry about when, what, and how I am going to do something as basic as feed myself every time I face an anxiety-inducing situation. I don’t want to always be afraid that my anxiety is waiting for me in a dark corner, ready to pounce and sink its teeth into me, making me feel like a burden to people when I can’t manage it well enough. I worry about a lot of things but most of my anxiety is from social situations and learning how to be comfortable with people.

This is one of the reasons I’m afraid of dating. Nibbling on a cupcake at a party where you’re not the center of attention is different. When you’re on a date, your sole focus is on each other. When I got brave enough to try dating, I planned dates that didn’t involve food. I laughed at the fact that I was comfortable enough with someone to get physically intimate with them but still so nervous around them that I didn’t want to eat. But you can only go so long without having a dinner date. Things will start to get weird when I keep ignoring their suggestions for a restaurant or a meal at their place. What will happen when we’re seated across the table from one another, waiting for courses of food to come out? Will I have to put on my usual performance or will I short circuit and expose my neuroses to them? Having to explain this monster to someone new and hoping they won’t reject me for it is terrifying. I long for the moment I will feel comfortable to get dressed up and go out to dinner with someone, sharing kisses and bites over candlelight. I know to get comfortable with that, I’m going to have to survive the discomfort.

Whether it be a friend or romantic interest, sharing a meal with someone and being totally present and in the moment, not worried about getting sick or letting my anxiety affect my appetite, is one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced and will continue to face. I don’t know where I go from here, other than I have to keep trying. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. For some reason, my brain is wired this way and I have to work hard to rewire it just so I can enjoy simple things. It’s saved me a lot of money on restaurants, though.

LOVE MONTH ON MARY’S NEWSLETTER:

February 1st: “5 rom-coms I can’t live without”

February 8th: “I still can’t listen to harry styles”

February 15th: “the intimacy of sharing a meal”

February 22nd: “my experience of physical touch as told through Edward Scissorhands”

Thank you so much for reading! Do you view food as an intimate experience? Are there other normal human behaviors that are hard for you to do and make you feel disconnected from others?

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