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

[Melessah]

When I was 19 I had a very traumatic experience. I found half a mouse in a ready meal I had bought from a supermarket. It was in a curry. I created a post on twitter and a couple of papers actually picked up the story.

if was obviously very upsetting. I was a university student at the time living off ready meals. After that experience I refused to eat from restaurants, takeaways or supermarkets. I won’t even eat crisps. Everything I eat needs to be 100% “safe”.

Everything I eat is home cooked. I would never buy a ready meal again. I don’t even buy bread from a supermarket. I eat potatoes as my main carb. I eat a lot of eggs (from my mum’s chickens).

Husband obviously knew what he was signing up for when he married me. I do not see myself ever letting my guard down.

Anyway, we were on holiday and he really lost his cool with me. I was eating fruit and boiled eggs and he told me I need help. And that he was getting tired by my the restrictions I place on myself and therefore him.

I have spoken to a psychologist but it didn’t help. I don’t want to be like this. Who is the one that is being unreasonable

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.

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.

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.

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 found half a beetle in a tin of ham . I still eat ham and food from tins . Please get help , I don't blame your H for getting annoyed . CBT should be helpful in getting over this .

She’s a clinic psychologist and you’ve given a lot of info! Why couldn’t OCD not be a possibility?! You’re very quick to shut it down!

Id hope that he's wording it with respect and care for you, but he is right. You have an unhealthy level of anxiety, which has a negative impact on your life and you need support to work through that. Sometimes you have to try a few therapists before you find the one that you can connect with.

This is really suggesting OP is not really wanting to change anything just yet. Often the individual is happy with their safety behaviours and it’s everyone around them at their wits end. The preference for a counselling ‘talking about it once a week’ approach is an avoidance.

It’s like reading all the marathon training books and listen to all the training podcasts can seem sensible and focused if you want to run a marathon…. but you’re still not going to be able to run a marathon until you actually start running. Sure maybe with a short 1/4 mile jog first and build it up

If you are reading the marathon training books because someone else has suggested you should run a marathon but you’re reluctant, then let’s be honest you’re unlikely to even get your trainers on.

Well there WILL come a time when you won’t be able to cook your selected food, in hospital or a nursing home or in an emergency. You will be somewhere and will have to eat something ‘unclean’ your husband will say ‘I can’t believe she gave in and ate that this time and wouldn’t eat out with me, (or much worse) all these years’ and will get resentful.

Don’t leave it any longer. Get help, you can definitely make things better. Good luck x

I have working experience of mental health disorders and agree this sounds like contamination OCD.

i wonder if she’s been as detailed to the psychiatrist as she has (anonymously) on here. Germs, hygiene, washing everything…

Although it sounds like the OP may have had medication for this, but hasn’t persisted due to side effects. And the SSRI doses for OCD often need to be higher than for generalised anxiety.

Hi OP, I went through a traumatic event that triggered OCD and I was really quite unwell by the time that I got medical help. One of the reasons was that I have children and didn’t want to expose them to it, but my quality of life also really reduced.

I know you think it might not help or even think that you need to change, but I would recommend a good therapist in a heartbeat. I’ve had both exposure therapy and CBT combined with medication and I’m so much better now. I won’t ever be the same as before, but life is so much more enjoyable. I really think getting some help would improve things for you.

You know you have an eating disorder

You know your reactions and precautions are extreme and make your life difficult

You want to change these extreme reactions.

Your DH isn’t wrong. You do need psychological help. That isn’t an insult, so perhaps he should and could have said it in a much kinder manner. Most people will need psychological help at one point or another, particularly after a traumatic event.

The problem here is that your want to change will include exposure therapy. You need to really put the work in and do the things you find so difficult and uncomfortable. You can’t say you want to change, and expect it just to be fixed, without taking those steps and doing the hard things. You can take your time but you need to put the work in.

If you do, You can get better from this. You can make improvements and change your thinking, fears and reaction around food.

I can understand that was horrific, I won’t eat KFC after a tabloid picture of a dead baby chick in someone’s meal but it might be time to get some help to move on. We found a beetle in our cereal box as kids and that was a bad day but I think we’d forgotten about it a year on. You’ll be fine.

You had a traumatic experience that’s caused ARFID.

There’s no shame in what you’re going through and you’re not a freak or anything else unkind anyone has to say.

You’re a human being who deserves to enjoy the nice things in life such as going out for dinner or a pre-made snack.

Therapy would probably help you enormously.

wishing you the best of luck.

No one has said OP is a freak. But she has some deeply entrenched coping mechanisms

the problem is with coping mechanisms is that there will come a point where they unravel. In ops case it may be when she has kids and they force feed her a cake they made at school…

for me I struggled with a bit of claustrophobia in theatres etc. once I had kids and they had school plays I couldn’t use my usual coping mechanisms so had to find a way - my desire to see my kids standing in the back with no lines was greater than the phobia in the end. I still struggle at times but I’m so much better

Op, I have a terrible fear of taking any new medication since I was injured permanently by an off label antipsychotic prescribed for severe insomnia and anxiety after a head injury and post concussion syndrome.

It gave me a permanent neurological involuntary movement disorder called tardive dyskinesia that I've had now for a decade. In dire straits, I will take medication, but it does rule my life in some ways, and I think i have some form of PTSD from my adverse reaction to the antipsychotic. It was so terrifying when my body reacted badly with the side effects, and I found it traumatised me not being able to control my body movements. So, I do truly understand what impact a scary and traumatic experience can have, especially from something that is meant to be safe or enjoyable.

But, as we all know, with everything in life, we can't control everything or avoid things we are scared of forever.

If I'd done that, I'd be dead for not having surgery after an ectopic pregnancy, and my two youngest children would probably not have been born, as I would've avoided the c-sections I needed.

So, I truly empathise and understand, but know it is restrictive in life to be someone who avoids the things that are scary. Please try therapy. It will help you hopefully and you can feel more comfortable and in control. Hugs 💜

You’re in the grip of an eating disorder. Please seek professional help.
I wish you well x

I think it might help. But do it for you not for someone else. Maybe look into a practitioner that does EMDR.

i would not like that if I were your DH. A big plus of a holiday is eating out IMHO. If I was him though I would eat out anyway and leave you at home if you didn’t want to come.

Tbf your SIL’s lasagne sounds grim.

I really don’t think it’s helpful that you have some posters that are telling you your behaviour isn’t that bad because it’s healthy. It clearly isn’t and I’m sure you can acknowledge that something isn’t right. However, I also think you’re getting a hard time. People with a mental illness often don’t have the insight or can’t get better without significant support. It’s not really down to whether you want it or not. It’s that in combination with whether you are getting the right treatment and support.

Kindly you are ruining pleasurable things between you and your husband. Eating out is a pleasure , he wants to have a nice time with you but that's impossible. You do definitely need to get support with this phobia. You know the chances of a mouse getting into your food is far greater in the home than in a ready meal! But far less likely in a restaurant with stringent rules

I have OCD and I do restrict my eating as a result of this. I can't touch raw chicken, I won't eat anything that is close to the use by date. If something has been opened (mayonnaise for example) I can't then use it again another day, I can't eat/drink the "last bit" of anything (such as milk, cereal, the last biscuit in a packet), I can't touch food unless I have washed my hands thoroughly and not touched anything else. There are other odd things I do around food too. My husband does get irritated with me sometimes and I completely understand why, I try to limit the effect it has on my family as much as I possibly can.

I do think your eating habits must have quite a big effect on your husband, but I can completely empathise with you, it's not as simple as people think to try and stop these sort of habits. I can't imagine I'll ever eat like a normal person and quite frankly I don't want to.

I can't imagine I'll ever eat like a normal person and quite frankly I don't want to.

I think that this is also the main issue with OP. She doesn't want to eat normally. She thinks she does, but it's only up to a point. Her brain very much does not want her to, because the effort and distressed of trying is too much.

She's explained that she had had a lot of therapy, and fair play to her for that. But if she wants to remain married and to have children, she's got to keep on the path.

Ultimately it's a fight between wanting a normal life, and wanting to be left alone with her vinegar scrubbed vegetables.

So then you must know you need psychological help and how selfish (albeit unintentionally) you are being