mastering restaurants and other things

It's been way too long since I posted here. Last month I was working on another writing project and this month I've been preoccupied with Christmas, trying to think of what to get everyone. Other than that, not much has been happening.

I can only think of two emetophobia-related incidents that happened recently. One good, one not so good.

The not so good one was a couple nights ago when I went out to eat with my wife. I've got to say, I think I've generally been doing really well with eating out at restaurants. I finally figured out how to deal with the situation, because two things happen to me when I eat at a restaurant. One is that I switch over to my "restaurant stomach" or in other words, my stomach appears to shrink in size. I know it must not actually be shrinking, but because of anxiety, I can never eat the amount in a restaurant that I could eat at home. But I always used to anyway. Out of habit, I would eat the same amount of food I typically eat at a meal, and then end up feeling awful. Now I have caught on to this and am forcing myself to eat way less. It usually means I don't even come close to finishing my meal, but oh well. Then I have tasty leftovers to eat later at home when I have my normal stomach back.

The other thing that happens because of anxiety: my throat becomes tight, feels more closed up, and this is mainly where I am still running into problems. I don't tend to notice this sensation in my throat, because it's very subtle, and it's a symptom I'm not that anxious about. But then sometimes when I swallow a bite of food, it feels stuck or like it's going down the wrong way or like I'm choking. That combined with the worries in the back of my mind about throwing up leads to a giant spike of panic. Which is what happened the other night. I'm talking to my wife, everything is good, and then suddenly I get this terrified look on my face as I panic that I'm choking or am going to throw up. The panic was over within a few seconds (aside from my heart continuing to pound for a while) and then I just felt silly and embarrassed. I'm pretty sure no one but my wife saw that look on my face, but the fact that I could not control it made me think about how awful it would have been if someone else had seen it. And made me flash back to all the many, many embarrassing incidents in my past where someone else did see a look like that on my face, including people who had no clue what was happening to me.

I guess I just need to keep this in mind when I go out to eat. Chew more, be conscious of swallowing and such. Sometimes I wonder if it's a good idea to work around these sensations because it feels like I am working with my anxiety instead of against it. But I don't seem to have much of a choice. I regularly go out to eat and that anxiety (so far) is not going away. The level of anxiety varies, of course, based on a million factors from my mood to the weather to whether I watched a movie/show earlier that day that showed someone vomiting. But there is always some level there, so if I want to be able to go out to eat at all, I need to adjust to these two symptoms. And like I said before, I think my adjustments are working out and making it so I can actually enjoy going out to eat, and that's nice. Not something I'm used to being able to enjoy, ever. Even with the brief panic the other night, I feel like the meal was a success.

Now for the good emetophobia-related incident. A friend came to stay with us at the end of November. He visits us pretty frequently, and over the last few years, I have been having a difficult time with these visits. Just like with going to restaurants, having someone stay with us makes my base level anxiety go up, and what tends to happen is I start getting a lot of stomach aches, almost constant stomach aches, especially if we go out anywhere. And when your friend comes to stay with you, they don't want to just sit around your house the entire time. And to make things even worse, I find it almost impossible to hide the fact that I feel sick and miserable or to keep quiet about it. So this friend has had to hear about how I don't feel well a ridiculous amount of the time, and it's a wonder he still comes to visit.

I'm sure you know where this is going. This last visit was practically PERFECT. It was the best time I've had hanging out with him in so long. I can't even say for sure why it went so well. Probably because I expected it to. I was feeling really great physically before he showed up, and I just felt confident that I would continue to feel great, that I could keep up the momentum of feeling good, if that makes sense. I was determined to. I've been feeling very guilty about what a terrible friend / hostess I've been.

As soon as he arrived, we went out to eat, and I ate more than I think I have in several years while at a restaurant with someone other than my wife. After that, we went somewhere else before going back home, which would normally make me very anxious (I always want to go straight home to digest and recover from the experience), and I was fine. We also went to see the movie Catching Fire (second in the Hunger Games series), and it was opening weekend, which meant the theater was completely packed. I was sure I would end up panicking at least a little during the movie, but nope, didn't happen, and I even had some popcorn. Also, he takes a bus when he comes to visit, and the bus station where we pick him up is a long drive from our house, about two hours one-way. I got through all eight hours of driving without any high anxiety periods (seriously, a miracle)!

It was like I was a normal person for a whole weekend. He's coming to visit again in about two weeks, and I'm excited. Because now I know it's possible, that I'm capable of handling it without any problems. Maybe it won't be absolutely perfect again, but I'm at least positive that I won't be the complete downer I've grown so accustomed to being.