Nut allergy anxiety

[Motherof1and2dogs]

Hello,

I wanted to see if anyone else has a fear of eating nuts and if anyone had any advice on how I can overcome this.

I do have anxiety (mainly health anxiety) and I do also have panic disorder, every time I eat nuts I freak out which usually leads to an anxiety/ panic attack which feels so similar to how I could imagine an allergic reaction would feel. I know I am not allergic but I always fear that one day out of the blue I will become allergic. Is this even possible? I am 30, never had a problem with nuts before but is this possible? I avoid eating nuts for this reason but I love them so much! So annoying!

Hi OP, my son was allergic to peanuts and nuts and I developed real anxiety around him eating foods and getting an anaphylactic reaction to the point that I began to suffer panic attacks if I ate nuts.

I went for CBT as I was avoiding all nuts in case I had a bad reaction - even though like you I had no allergy and had been eating them for years with no problem.

The treatment unfortunately was to eat them regularly until I desensitized myself to the panic. The therapist described it like this to me :imagine you are scared of walking across a bridge, the way to deal with it it to force yourself to walk across the bridge over and over again until you are sick of walking across the bridge and it is giving you no anxiety whatsoever.

It was hard as for a while I thought I could feel my throat closing over but I just forced myself to keep at it.
Eventually it eased off but I will admit there are times when it still causes me anxiety.

I had the same problem but it extended to several other listed allergy foods too, despite my having no known allergies. It's a form of OCD, lots of people have it (I found this out when scouring the internet for help too). Basically an irrational fear of anaphylaxis.

Hypnotherapy was the only thing that's ever helped me with it and it really, really helped me.

@spiritgoat this is very interesting because I sometimes have panic attacks also after eating something cooked in coconut oil and avocados. I think it's anything in the nut family, if I eat it, I'll have a panic attack thinking it's an allergic reaction. I have always been unsure on hypnotherapy by going from what others have said but I suppose you don't know until you try! Different for everyone I suppose.

I've had similar, just as a manifestation of general anxiety I think. Making myself eat the thing I'm afraid of, sometimes in the company of someone who I've told about the problem, is what helps.

I thought hypnotherapy was a load of bollocks until I tried it. It was sort of a last straw attempt for me because I actually became quite unwell with my limiting of foods. It just helped me relax enough to think rationally I suppose, I dunno!
But in any case, you can definitely overcome it. X

@spiritgoat I definitely have to try this. After this evening I 100% have a fear of eating certain foods. I had seafood at a restaurant tonight, triggered a panic attack when I got home thinking I was having a bad reaction so it has put me off seafood completely. I need to nip it in the bud before it gets worse!

I have a huge fear of anaphylaxis after a boyfriend suffered from it but that was 22 years ago now 🤦‍♀️
I have a panic attack whenever I have to try new medication as I am allergic to a few. I also had a bad panic attack whenever stung by a wasp last year.
I don't eat nuts at all. I used to ask my hubby not to eat them but I'm ok with that now.
I have anxiety and any panic attack I have goes to feeling like my throat is closing over. Citalopram has helped lots but after 9 years it's starting to become less effective.
So no real help from me sorry but I wanted to let you know you're not alone. It's the first time I've heard of others struggling with this so thanks for sharing.

@Lemonmelon1 it's nice isn't it when you know you are not alone! I am glad this helped you and hope it helps others. I also have the same problem when I take meds, that's why I avoid them at all costs now unless 100% necessary! List of things that cause me anxiety and panic attacks:
Nuts
Avocados
Seafood/ shellfish
Antidepressants (sertraline)
Caffeine

I now avoid all of the above :( but the but one seems to hit me the hardest! X

@Motherof1and2dogs yep nice not to be alone.
Sertraline gave me awful anxiety but citalopram stopped my panic attacks until a great deal of stress this last year. Now I have a few a week on average.
My triggers are
Nuts
Any medication but especially antibiotics
Super spicy foods.
But just general anxiety can cause it to feel like my throat is closing too.
In my late teens my fear was so bad I lived on tomato soup and wotsits. I dropped to a size 6. I've come a long way since then but don't think it'll ever fully go.
I did have hypnotherapy in 2008 for anxiety. I didn't have a single panic attack from then until 2015 when my youngest was born 10 weeks early and I also developed sepsis. That all triggered my anxiety to return.

This…its officially called exposure therapy and is the gold standard for dealing with anxiety. But you can build up slowly if eating a nut is too much at first, so hold the nuts, then sniff the nuts, then lick the nuts (this is sounding a bit porn ish 🤣) then eat one nut then two etc

the trick is to do it every day or multiple times a day, as soon as you miss a session the anxiety gets its claws back in to you a little bit

@SeaToSki love that haha! It does seem a brilliant way to deal with it! The thing is I know I am not allergic, but I get this awful thought that "what if all of a sudden I get a nut allergy" so If I try this exposure therapy, will I still get the same thought even years down the line? Or will it change my mentality that I won't even think about that?

I'd class myself as recovered now and I still have the passing thought "what if I'm allergic to this?", but the thought doesn't fill me with anxiety anymore. It's more of a casual thought now, like every other thought I have through the day, and I think "meh, so what, we'll find out won't we" and then eat the thing anyway. I don't panic and cause psychosomatic symptoms after eating anything either any more. My brain now just thinks "ah well I've eaten it now, I can worry about it if something actually happens".

My therapist a while ago told me everyone has something like 60,000+ thoughts per day, and something like half of those are negative thoughts, and the difference between a healthy mind and an anxious mind is which thoughts we choose to give power to. I thought that was a really interesting way of looking at it!

If you persevere and do the exposure therapy everyday for 6 months ish, it will likely change your mind set, but big emotional events later in life can re trigger it as it is likely a lifelong susceptibility iyswim.

I'm
A cbt therapist and I've treated a surprising amount of people with a similar problem op 😁 treatment would work wonders for you

I can empathise. DS has been peanut allergic all his life and as per Allergy clinic advice back then we were told to avoid everything that may contain traces of any nut. So I just stopped buying anything with nut traces because I worried that he may eat the wrong product in error.

Now the guidance has changed and he’s been told that he can eat stuff with nut traces, and just continue to avoid peanut. After 26 years he’s thrilled and is happily munching away on all kinds of delicious things that he’d never experienced before. Meanwhile I’m bloody terrified to eat a nut again, because I’m worried that my body will react because I’m not used to them. I know that it makes no sense but I just can’t bring myself to do it!