restaurants / new goal

My wife and I went to a restaurant for lunch today, which didn't go quite as well as dinner the other night. I had a lot of anxiety ("nausea") in the time between finishing my meal and leaving the restaurant. Of course, the moment we walked out the door, I felt better, an experience I'm all too familiar with. It's always kind of infuriating, because part of me is thinking "this isn't anxiety, it really is something else this time" but that never turns out to be true. Being wrong is not the infuriating part. I'm happy to find out that the horrible thing I thought was happening to me is not real. What's infuriating is knowing that once again, I let anxiety bring down my enjoyment of an experience.

I used the same techniques I've been using: affirmations, deep breathing, mindfulness. In a public place it's not always possible to be completely focused on telling yourself "I am breathing in, I am breathing out" or something like that. Mindfulness in a situation like this involves focusing on your environment (instead of on your thoughts/feelings/internal state). It helps to think of the five senses (although smell and taste might be too much for an anxiety attack that is presenting itself as "nausea"). I focused on the music playing on the overhead speakers, the tennis match on the TV above the bar, the conversation I was having with my wife, the cold/wet feeling of the glass of water sitting in front of me.

In discussing my anxiety with my wife, she made me realize that I have a habit of trying to finish my meal as close to the time of us leaving as possible. Of course, this never really works out, because no waiter/waitress is going to bring the check while you still have food in front of you. But still, this is exactly the type of behavior that I am trying to eradicate from my life. I'm making a new goal to stop doing this, to eat at the pace that is normal for me and finish whenever I finish. If I have to sit in the restaurant for half an hour after I'm done, oh well. Nothing bad will happen. Emetophobia shmemetophobia!