Scared to eat, Weakness, Depressed

[Daniel1993]

Hi everybody,
For the past 2 weeks I have been feeling nauseous and weak after I eat. Every time I eat I think to myself "Is this going to make me sick?" and I usually feel sick afterwards from thinking about it so much. This started 2 weeks ago when I got sick and woke up throwing up because of the food I ate. Ive already lost 4 pounds because I can't eat as much as I use to. It seems like it's worse when I go to restaurants and eat with other people. When I go out to eat I think to myself "What if I get sick, what if something happens to me and no one can help me". Every time I eat my food goes down real slow because i'm thinking about it getting stuck in my throat. I don't know what would cause the weakness so i'm worried about that the most. Could anxiety cause the weakness? It seems like it just hits me out of no where everyday. When this happens my heart starts beating real fast and I think somethings wrong. I know that probably makes it worse but it seems like I can't control it. When I wake up if my back hurts or something I start panicking because I think it's something bad. Most of the day if I feel a pain or something I get real scared because I think I have some kind of illness. All day i'm thinking somethings going to happen to me. I wan't this to stop and I want to feel normal again. Please reply and if you have any advice or ever been through this please share it. Thanks.

[erin626]

I was first prescribed xanax when I was 17 to help me with my agoraphobia. I don't think your age would be a problem.

[Daniel1993]

Erin - Thanks so much for your reply. It makes me feel relaxed knowing i'm not the only one dealing with this problem. I also have diarrhea sometimes after I eat but didn't know what caused it. Right now I am 5'9 and way 150 pounds. I'm trying to get back up to 154 so hopefully I wan't lose anymore weight.

A lot of people in my family take Xanax because they too suffer with anxiety. I was wondering if you have to be a certain age to take this? I just turned 17 3 months ago. Thanks for your advice and I will be sure to email you when I need help.



EO - I drink a lot of energy drinks and soft drinks to keep me awake when i'm at school. I'm going to try to go easy on them now that I know it can make it worse. I usually sit between 2 people in a booth which might make it worse because if I get sick I would have to tell them to move and cause a big scene. Thanks for the advice!





Sorry I made these short, I'm about to fall asleep as I type. All I can say is thanks to both of you for replying so quick. You really helped me a lot.

[EO_Time]

Not sure what caused your initial sickness, but the anxiety can be brought on by a few different things.  I would try eliminating all caffeine from your diet.  No coffee, tea, soft drinks, energy drinks, etc.  You will have to give yourself a couple days for all the caffeine to leave your system, but it is worth a try.  The next time you go out to eat, position yourself in the restaurant in a place you feel most secure, ie: near a door, window, aisle, whatever works for you.  Take a deep breath if you feel it coming on, then think of somewhere you have to go or something you have to do.  That will take your mind off of the feeling of helplessness.

[erin626]

I think you're probably weak from not eating and the anxiety. I went through something almost exactly the same and I'm still recovering from it. Everytime I ate I would have diarrhea (sorry to be so graphic) and so I became terrified to eat. I would go like 3 days at a time without eating. I would get incredibly nauseous after eating because I would think about getting sick and so I would feel sick. Even after I stopped having bathroom emergencies after eating I had already trained my mind to feel sick after eating. I started eating bland easy on the stomach food to start. It consisted of lots of saltines, white rice, ramen noodles, and bananas. After I started being ok with those foods I eventually branched out to more normal food. Its taken awhile but after dropping to 104lbs during the worst time of my anxiety I'm finally back up to 112lbs. Its been about 8 months since it started but now I'm eating pizza, lasagna, coffee...foods that I was terrified to eat before.

Seeing a therapist also helped with my anxiety about eating as well as xanax as needed for the horrible panic attacks I was getting that would make me nauseous.

Try keeping yourself busy while you eat and after you eat so you don't think about being sick. Sometimes ill read the paper while I'm eating to distract my mind from the food. I still have days where I'm afraid to eat but I finally realized that not eating was making me feel a lot worse than eating.

If you do a search I'm sure you can find some of my posts of mine about my fear of eating and the really great advice I received from some of the members on here.

If you need anymore help you can email me on here. Its difficult but it is possible to train your mind back to not thinking that you'll be sick after food.