UAE-based Clinical Psychologist explains what happens to a person with food phobia

Gulf News

‘What may begin as a fear of a particular food can generalize to anxiety about going to restaurants, attending social events, buying groceries, cooking, and more’

Transcript

00:00Fear of food, or also what we call cybo-phobia.

00:04What is it?

00:05So when we talk about fear of food,

00:08it's basically this intense fear in regards to food.

00:13And it could be multiple things that people are afraid of.

00:17It could be perishable food,

00:19or it could also be something that you've probably eaten before many, many times.

00:24It could be a spaghetti, it could be a noodle, it could be rice.

00:28And sometimes, because it started with one fear of food,

00:33it can go and expand into several types of food.

00:37And before you know it, you start to be very fearful of many, many things as well.

00:43So when we talk about fear of food,

00:45and it's actually quite common for some people to not like certain food, and that's okay.

00:51But when we talk about fear of food,

00:53it's this extreme feeling when you have extreme fear and anxiety

00:58when you want to even think about eating that food,

01:02or even being in the same proximity as that food.

01:06I've had cases where they've been fearful of rice,

01:10fearful of day-to-day food like spaghetti or noodles.

01:17And it doesn't stop there.

01:19The problem is that it starts to affect their functioning, their daily functioning,

01:24to a point where they start to avoid social events when they think that the food is going to be there.

01:30Or it could even be avoiding family functions,

01:34or even not doing daily routines such as buying groceries or cooking for the family.

01:41All of this is basically causing a lot of impairment in their daily functioning.

01:47So again, there's normal fear or avoiding some food, and that's okay.

01:53But once it starts causing this extreme fear and anxiety about the food,

02:00then it's what we call the fear of food or phobia for the food.

02:05So when we talk about fear of food, there could be multiple causes.

02:10It could be that you may have had a traumatic event regarding the food.

02:14It could also be culturally something that you've seen on social media,

02:18maybe the thing that you've seen in your family or the people around you.

02:23So it could be multiple causes.

02:25But what we know is that when we talk about cyberphobia,

02:29it causes these symptoms of anxiety such as heart palpitation, difficulty breathing,

02:38nauseous, butterflies in your stomach, even dizziness or even fainting to a certain point.

02:45All we know is that with the fear of phobia, it causes a lot of functioning issues, impairment.

02:53And it's causing a lot of deterioration in your quality of life.

02:57So do seek help. Fear of phobia is treatable.

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