Is husband right that I need psychological help? (Won’t eat outside of home)

You need CBT but it will only work if YOU see the problem with your restrictive eating and YOU want to change. That’s because there is no magic way to make you feel differently about food that doesn’t involve the very difficult job of facing up to the incident and challenging your feelings between therapy sessions by doing the thing that scares you. It is very possible to overcome but you need to be keen to get better and be willing to feel the fear and do it anyway- knowing that although you don’t feel safe, feelings are not facts, you are safe.

I wish you hadn't framed it in terms of reasonable/unreasonable. But, if you insist, it's "unreasonable" of you to limit your life like this.

I can certainly understand how icky the mouse experience was. But, given the way you mentioned it, you didn't get sick - and I imagined that if you had sued, you could have made a bundle of money off it.

Now, imagine if every time we had a creepy or frightening experience, we shied away permanently. What if everyone who was ever in a car accident refused to ever get in a car again, or even walk down the street? Very few experiences are flawless. There are problems with food, with medicine, with banks, with machinery. But you have to approach life with some minimal confidence in knowing that the odds are that something disastrous won't happen. A friend of mine was once walking and a window air conditioner crashed down a few feet away from her. She obviously would have been killed. But she didn't stay at home the rest of her life.

So I suggest you first sit down and apply a little logic. Remind yourself that no matter how disgusted you were, nothing bad happened to you. Then, find another psychologist - or two, until you find someone that can help. (I wonder if this is a situation where hypnosis might help, just to quiet irrational fears.) Maybe it's a matter of de-sensitization. Then start by buying some high-quality bread. And move up the food chain. Eventually, try a high-quality restaurant, starting with some simple foods.

And, crucially, keep in mind that food can be one of the great pleasures in life, and denying yourself on the basis of one mishap is as sad as staying housebound for your whole life because you were once in a small accident where you weren't hurt. Additionally, dining out is one of the great shared pleasures of society, going back centuries, and your husband is right in his impatience to have you join him.

I hope you tackle this, because it's a sad way to live.

That's not ill that's an understandable gag reaction. I had food poisoning after eating a takeaway. After several days of being very unwell I started to turn blue. I spent some time in hospital being treated for the huge pulmonary embolisms (both lungs) which were a direct result of being immobile due to the food poisoning. I nearly died. That was ill. As a result I no longer eat from that takeaway but I will eat in restaurants (I have owned several and worked in many), I meet friends and have lunches in cafes, I love food and the theatre of eating out and I can't imagine allowing my brush with death to affect my whole life. Please get the help others have suggested or you may drive your husband away.

Tbh your diet sounds pretty healthy. Non prepackaged or processed food, all cooked from scratch fresh produce. Washed and well prepared. I don't think there is anything wrong with your actual diet.
I would find it hard to live with you though, never going for a meal or grabbing a takeout.
Also the fact that it is anxiety and trauma driven rather than a concious choice just to eat healthy foods. And extreme to the point you can't enjoy a meal on holiday. Seems like you could try and get some help with this.

This contaminated supermarket food may not be as rare as we would hope. I’ve found a snail in a tin of peas - put me off tinned peas for a long time. I got food poisoning from a salad counter mexican rice. I haven’t been to a salad counter since, all bought salads have to be in a sealed tub. And I found a maggot in a baked potato once. I do eat baked potatoes again simply because they are easy and quick to do in a microwave if you get the oven cooked frozen ones which weren’t available in those days. I somehow persuade myself it won’t happen again if they’ve been frozen.

Finding a half mouse must have been horrific and would definitely put me off eating ready meals, if I didn’t already find them disappointing - I never buy them now.

Actually I find eating out isn’t all its cracked up to be, I’ve had some lousy meals out, no foreign bodies but just not to my taste. Very rarely eat out these days. You seem to be in the same position as someone with an allergy who can’t eat out in case their food is contaminated with the allergen, so not that unusual. I knew someone with this who had to start cooking everything from scratch, it’s not the end of the world. Or shouldn’t be.

Sounds like arfid in the context of trauma to me, and food chaining would be a helpful way forward if you can find a service/ professional who offers this!

Wether you realise or not you have a very serious eating disorder and need help your husband is correct . I hope you dont have kids because your issues would be seriously damaging for a child !

@Melessah it sounds like that was a horrendous experience and it is no wonder it left you traumatised. What was a good short-term coping response of avoiding anything that could have something untowards in it however has been more difficult long-term and appears to have expanded.

While it seems that in many ways you live your life quite happily, the fact that you would like to change suggest that there are aspects that don't work for you and it sounds like your husband is slowly appreciating the impact that this has.

I know you have tried psychological therapies but in my opinion (Clinical Psychologist) this does not sound as if it would be that hard to treat and something like CBT with graded exposure sounds like it would be helpful (I think a CBT therapist earlier said similar).

Finding someone who provides the right therapy, at the right cost, and who you gel with can be tricky but sometimes personal recommendations can be helpful to point you in the right direction.

Good luck! This can change!

Again, she's already had it. That information is in her updates.

She scrubs potatoes with vinegar before she can bear to eat then in her own house. So I can't imagine that she trusts a restaurant to give her a safe salad.

And of course it affects her husband. They can't even eat a normal meal together at home. The eating out bit is probably the least of the issues. He's having to watch her go through these OCD-like rituals with even the simplest and most basic types of produce every single day.

I don’t think the OP wants to hear it. She thinks her DH is being unreasonable and now we are. It makes me wonder why her therapy isn’t successful. You have to be open to it.

Kindly, and with uncanny personal background, you are being unreasonable to let this continue because you are the only person who can change it. The good news is I believe you have the power to change it within you.

When I was a kid, we had a mouse infestation in our newly built home. I saw mice in all food. I couldn't drink milk anymore because I was convinced dead baby mice were floating in it and would slide down my throat. I was a pubescent child and my weight dropped to dangerous levels. It was in the 70s so we weren't encouraged to share our problems with adults.

At one point, my mother noticed and was very worried, took me to a doctor who couldn't find anything wrong with me except I was low weight. He said very sternly to me and my mother, "This child needs to eat more calorie-rich food. Give her steaks, hamburgers, chicken, legumes, potatoes, anything. Hell, milkshakes" etc. I specifically remember him saying "hell, milkshakes."

It was verboten to say no to adults, so I pushed myself to clear my plate at dinner and absolutely dreaded every moment. Practice and forcing myself became like a muscle that hurt at first but eventually became strong. I eventually gained weight and after about a year, it became much easier to not think of dead mice in my food. The only food I still don't eat to this day (I'm in my 50s) is milk from a glass, which I think is a win. I have never had food issues since.

Pushing myself to eat even when I felt disgusted actually worked. Granted, I was a kid and was following the rules that I didn't believe I could break. Maybe you need a therapist to help you do this. Whether or not you seek therapy, you should know that it's not normal to live like this and it IS something you can change.

Because you’re the classic poster who says AIBU - majority say, yes, yes you are. Then you post arguments to disagree and seem to take nothing useful from the thread?

It’s not even about the eating out though - it’s the limitations on her diet and the amount of time she must spend cooking

only eating eggs as protein, only foods with a peel. Eating some foods from packets (lentils and flour) but not wanting to eat food from a can (sweetcorn? Can be fully rinsed). No cheese or milk.

it must be very difficult to see your wife doing all of that and then sitting to enjoy a meal on holiday and she has a plate of fruit and hard boiled eggs every meal.

her DH is also allowed to say if he doesn’t want to live like that - it’s ok to decide something isn’t working even if you have known the person a long time and they’ve had the issue the whole time. You are allowed to change your mind.

but maybe meet him halfway - no one’s expecting op to be eating kebab from the dodgy van after treatment but if she can have an easier relationship with food it will make her more relaxed and help her relationship

This sounds absolutely miserable. Of course you need psychological help. I have possibly the most devoted and supportive husband in the world, but I think even he would tire of this after a while.

I much prefer to cook from scratch, well actually what I would really prefer is someone else to cook from scratch for me 🙂 it must be sooo much work OP, I think you should try another therapist.

I didn't grow up eating out - it really wasn't so common then anyway. I also am not keen on eating out now. It seems very expensive, not very healthy and usually disappointing to me. However, I do it occasionally to be sociable and enjoy being with others who do like it. To never eat out would be very restrictive.

The op has had psychological help, she absolutely knows that’s what she’s needed, and lashes out at everyone who’s said this and said she’s fine… on the thread she started saying my husband says I need psychological help. Op, have a go at people if you like, but they were trying to help. Picture your life if your dh leaves you and meets someone else he wants to have kids with (I would not want to have kids with someone with as restrictive a condition as you) and think maybe it’s worth trying one of the therapies again. They worked for about 18m - go try it again. Maybe second time around they will work for 3 years. But I doubt it unless you really want them to work. Which you don’t, based on this thread. Think about how it would feel if you only managed to really want them to work after he left, if you could get healthy then but still have no dh and no babies, because that ship had sailed.

It underlines how RARE it is, that it garnered national attention. It's not going to happen again.

You need EMDR therapy. It's specifically for trauma. It will change your life and it's VERY quick.

To NEVER outside of her own home? That is pretty fucking weird

I once bit into a plum and maggots came out so that theory doesn't really work in reality.
Something like sliced bread you can literally see every part of the food before you eat it

Your future children are going to have very disordered eating.

They need to be able to go to birthday parties, eat school meals, eat birthday cake, go on play dates, have an ice cream at the park.

I’m a CBT therapist and CBT would definitely help with this problem.

Well, I didn't grow up eating out.
I only ever eat out if I'm catching up with university friends.
I cook daily but in no way do I have a clean diet.
Unfortunately I like crisps and chocolates too much.
Its just that eating out is not a habit for me. It's also very expensive!
And yes, I can't understand people who like eating out that much, 9 times out of 10 I come back disappointed, the food is hardly ever worth it. It's like give me my money back!