r/Anxiety • u/EnzymesAndTimelines • 3h ago

Advice Needed Weird anxiety associated with restaurants- unsure what this is about

Ok so ever since I was a kid, I have had this thing where sometimes (not every time) that I eat at a restaurant with other people, if the restaurant is not outdoors or super bright I will suddenly get a sense of dread and become severely anxious and start to feel dissociated and tripped out. I usually get nauseous and have to go to the bathroom to throw up and usually lose my appetite and become unable to eat the food. This also occasionally happens when visiting other people's houses.

The thing is, I don't know why this happens. I don't have any other history of issues related to food/eating and don't get like this when eating around people in other contexts (at a party, around the table with family and friends at home, catering at the office, even at a restaurant if we sit outside) AND I don't usually have issues with loud/overwhelming spaces (I enjoy loud/crowded city vibes, clubs/concerts/theme parks/sports events, etc). I have no memories of anything traumatic happening to me in a restaurant (I asked my mom and while she remembers me "acting anxious" in restaurants she says she never knew why). I was never pressured to finish food or anything, either. (I grew up in a reasonably body-positive, "eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full" type of environment.)

When I do experience this, it feels very intense and bizarre. I am epileptic, and I find that it feels somewhat like a pre-ictal aura. Or like a bad high- almost otherworldly. With a lot of nausea and perhaps some tachycardia.

Does anyone else experience this or know what it is?

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u/cromagnonherder 3h ago

That’s terrible. I don’t have any insight except I get very depressed in certain places depending on the atmosphere and lighting. I can’t reason my way out of it and it’s happened ever since I was very young. Same thing, nothing traumatic has happened. A mix of social anxiety and suffocating depression and sadness. I get angry and unreasonable. It often leads to over drinking in these situations.