Restaurant Anxiety: Dining Out While Recovering from an Eating Disorder

By Mary Claire Schibelka, LPC

Going out to eat is supposed to be fun.  It’s a great way to get out of the house, socialize, try new cuisines, and eat without having to cook.  For people without eating disorders, restaurants are exciting and relaxing.  If you have an eating disorder, however, going to a restaurant can feel like torture.

Restaurants, because of their obvious focus on food, are full of triggers for people struggling with eating disorders.  Uncertainty about how a dish is prepared or how many calories are in it can cause anxiety symptoms like fear of weight gain or hyperfocus on body size and appearance.  Many restaurants do print the amount of calories per dish on the menu.  This too can cause anxiety and urges to engage in eating disorder behaviors.

Other aspects of dining out people with eating disorders may struggle with include large portion sizes, multiple courses, extensive menu choices, and lack of knowledge about ingredients.  Many also find it difficult to eat among others without comparing their appearance, body size, food choice, and amount of food eaten with those around them.

Dining out while in recovery from an eating disorder can be challenging.  Restaurants present a lot of stimuli, much of it triggering, and can feel very overwhelming.  While restaurant anxiety is uncomfortable, it’s important that those in recovery learn to cope with it and reclaim the luxury that dining out is intended to be.  To cope with the emotions that come up while dining out and introduce joy back into the experience, those in recovery can do the following things:

Plan Ahead*

If not knowing what’s on the menu is causing you anxiety, consider looking up the menu ahead of time.  Before doing this, take a few deep breaths.  Look at the menu and ask yourself, “What would I choose to eat if I were fully recovered?”  You may not know the answer to this question yet.  Just do the best you can.  Exit the menu and commit to order the choice you made while envisioning the healthiest version of yourself.

You may also want to make an escape plan.  In the event that you feel overwhelmed, it might be helpful to take a quick bathroom break or step outside for a breath of fresh air.  Plan ahead how you can excuse yourself from the table if you want to.

Eat Mindfully

It can be hard to focus on your meal when your thoughts are racing.  Eat at a moderate pace, taking sips of water every few bites.  Notice the flavor, texture, and smell of what you’re eating.  Take deep, intentional breaths into your belly, and see if you can pay attention to your breath, your food, and the conversation at the table at the same time.  Mindfulness can help you know when you’re full and also promote better enjoyment of the experience altogether!

Consider All Foods Equal

Creating a mental list of “good” and “bad” foods is sure to cause anxiety when dining out.  When looking at the menu, remember that your body knows how to balance itself out.  No matter what you order off the menu, your body will tell you when it’s still hungry and when it’s full.  It also knows how to balance out richness and density.  For example, if you eat a burger and fries for lunch, you will likely crave vegetables at dinnertime.  Give yourself permission to order what you want, eat mindfully, and trust your body to take care of the rest.

Eating at restaurants can be difficult for people with eating disorders.  Learning to manage anxiety and eat flexibly at restaurants is an important part of recovery.  To learn more about eating disorder recovery and its benefits, see the ELEVATED Life Counseling “Services” page or visit me on Instagram at @therapywithmaryclaire.

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Tending to Pain in Others and Yourself

By Mary Claire Schibelka, LPC

Emotional wounds, or deep-seated psychological and emotional pain, can develop in a number of ways.  Some wounds happen immediately, such as after witnessing the death of a friend.  Others develop over time as a result of repeated experiences like parental neglect, unhealthy relationships, and systemic racism.  

Emotional wounds impact the way we perceive and interact with the world around us, yet they can often go undetected, even by ourselves.  Internalizing and externalizing behaviors often show up as a result of emotional pain but to the untrained eye can often be excused as personality traits like shyness or aggression.  Instead of dismissing or shaming ourselves and others, we can learn to recognize the following four symptoms as alarm bells signaling the existence of pain and the need for healing.

Resentment

Imagine you have plans to meet a friend for coffee at 4pm.  It’s 3:45, and she texts you saying she’s going to be late because she’s stuck in traffic.  Immediately, the boiling feeling of anger washes over you and you find yourself thinking, “Wow, she really doesn’t know how to plan effectively, does she?  How immature.”  That’s resentment.

While resentment may easily be mistaken for a bad attitude, it could be a sign of pain below the surface.  When examined more closely, anger about a friend being late to a get-together might be related to feelings of loneliness caused by your mother being late to pick you up from school each day, or maybe you were repeatedly shamed for being late as a child, causing you a great deal of embarrassment.

Retreat

While alone-time can be a great way to recharge, especially for introverts, ongoing social withdrawal is a telltale sign of depression and can also be associated with anxiety, eating disorders, trauma, and addiction.  Next time you feel like cancelling plans or turning down an invite, ask yourself why.  If you notice friends beginning to retreat, get curious about their reasons.  They could be struggling emotionally.  Also, remember that it is often painful and possibly even retraumatizing for people from marginalized groups to be in spaces where nobody else shares a similar identity.

Lashing Out

When we experience trauma, our brains enter fight, flight, or freeze mode.  Repeated trauma can cause our brains and bodies to get “stuck” in fight mode, therefore causing verbal and physical combativeness as a form of self-protection.  What one might perceive as a relatively small or insignificant event can trigger a trauma response, therefore resulting in what can seem like a disproportionate reaction.  For instance, a person who lost a friend in a car accident might exhibit an explosive amount of road rage after being cut off by another driver on the highway.

Demands

To an emotionally wounded person, making demands can seem like the only way to achieve a desired outcome.  In certain situations, this is healthy and necessary, such as when an oppressed group of people demands justice and fair treatment.  At other times, making demands can be harmful.  For instance, if you were cheated on in a past relationship, demanding that your partner let you go through his or her phone will likely cause trouble without doing much to resolve past hurts.  Either way, demands are often responses to emotional pain and fear of further suffering.

Caring for Emotional Wounds

Like physical wounds, emotional wounds tend to heal over time when properly treated.  When left unrecognized, they can fester, resulting in broken relationships and continuation or deepening of pain.  Talking about emotional wounds can be difficult, and ignoring our pain can be a seductive alternative, but like physical wounds, the only way to heal an emotional wound is to notice it, ask for help, and clean it out.

Although it can feel scary, asking friends how they are doing if you’ve noticed the behaviors above might be exactly what they need.  Having someone see their struggles can feel like a huge relief and lift the burden of them having to come to you.  Like when you make yourself available for a friend, naming your own pain is a way to give yourself compassion and practice self-care.  If you are struggling with difficult emotions, get curious about them.  Ask yourself where they might be coming from and if there is an even deeper root to them.

Often, when someone is facing painful emotions, advice and reassurance are not as helpful as the simple act of listening.  If you are seeking to be an ally or support somebody going through a difficult time, refrain from giving your opinion or offering solutions.  Instead, listen with compassion and express a genuine interest in learning more about the other person’s experience.  If you are the person in pain, allow others to hear you, even if they don’t have all the right answers.  A burden feels lighter when you aren’t carrying it alone.

There are certain situations in which action is necessary.  Some examples include dismantling systemic racism and getting out of an abusive relationship.  After allowing friends to share their experiences with you, ask them what you are able to do to help.  When working to heal your own emotional wounds, ask yourself what action steps you need to take and what friends and other people you trust can do to support you.

The Power of Time

Many emotional wounds were not developed in a day, and likewise, they will take time to heal.  As you venture down the path of healing your own emotional wounds or supporting friends as they navigate their own, practice patience and compassion.  Manage your expectations of the healing process by acknowledging that healing is not linear.  Go easy on yourself and others when imperfections arise.  Most importantly, celebrate the small victories, believing that eventually, they will amount to progress much greater than you ever thought possible.