Anxiety sickness

[Whatintheworldgirl]

Okay, I've had two years of this and lost almost 4 stone now. (TW discussion of disordered eating and mental health)

I just need someone sane to answer this for me because I'm driving myself insane.
I get nausea all day everyday. When I eat I feel like I'm going to vomit and that's a huge phobia of mine so as the months have gone on my diet has become very restricted. Today I had a few biscuits with a coffee for breakfast at 8am and then a piece of brown bread and butter at 4pm. I feel so sick. Surely that isn't enough food for a 5'5 almost 30 year old? Is this genuinely anxiety making me feel like this? Can anxiety have THAT much of an impact on your body? Am I truly that insane that I make myself feel nauseous all day? Like I miss food! I loved food. Now I feel like I've somehow created some sort of phobia of it and I'm trying to rationalise that perhaps even know it feels like nausea to me maybe it's nausea hunger? I really don't know. Feel free to call me an idiot. I definitely feel like one. I'm on a constant train of fight or flight and the sickness from my anxiety is destroying me.

When my DH had anxiety, but we didn’t know yet, he lost so much weight that I thought he had cancer. He ate sloppy foods that slid down as he struggled to eat.

I think anxiety can certainly do this to you.

Ring your GP on Monday OP, because you need proper professional help to manage this, it’s a tricky area.

In the meantime liquid foods like high calorie smoothies are worth a go

Yes anxiety can make me feel very sick where I've no appetite and feel like I'll get sick when I eat. Then not eating makes my stomach very acid and so I don't feel like eating and its vicious circle. I have often gone through bouts of this when I was very stressed or after a stomach bug and after Covid. I find gaviscon advance and esomeprezole/ nexium get me out of the cycle. The nexium stops the nausea feeling in the morning and the gavicson helps to settle my stomach so that I get the feeling if hunger back. I also find Biokult probiotics have helped at times too because sugar really upsets my stomach giving me a horrible 'empty/cold' feeling if that makes any sense. I use the Biokult candida as the garlic helps somehow. The other thing that helps a lot is Silicolgel.
Obviously speak to your Dr as these are only the things that have worked for me.

Yes, anxiety and emetophobia (the fear of vomiting) can be debilitating. Have you spoken to your doctor about your weight loss and your mental health?

What happened two years ago - what triggered this?

You also need to be checked out medically just in case you have something physically wrong with you. I don’t want to be alarmist, but you need to get cancer ruled out given that weight loss.

The weight loss is because she is eating hardly anything!

I think this is partly because when you are really starved of food and calories, eating most food types can then do this to you, alongside anxiety. There are such stages in eating disorders when you would not be given a 'label', but this stage is a characteristic that can push people on to even more restrictions.

Do you drink enough?
Protein shakes to supplement solid food, even small amounts of them, might help to rebalance some of what is going into scarcity mode. I try to get bananas - usually in halves - down if I am in this situation, I don't like them but can tolerate them.