Anxiety Dining Out

Eating out socially is meant to be enjoyable yet so many people become anxious. They may even start to dread the very thought of eating out with others.

Maybe you feel anxious days, even weeks before a social meal.

Perhaps you feel self-conscious and embarrassed in front of others and feel too anxious to eat properly.

Anxiety does not go well with eating

Anxiety is meant to get us ready for the fight or flight response. When we become anxious everything that would not be useful when we are running from a predator switches off. You wouldn't need to be digesting whilst fleeing from a lion so digestion switches off, salivation diminishes making your mouth dry and blood is pumped away from the stomach into your major muscles for fighting or running.

This is great in a truly dangerous situation but if your fear instinct has wrongly associated social eating out with fear and anxiety then the adaptive response of shutting down digestion actually gets in the way of you relaxing and enjoying your food.

You may have noticed that when you feel anxious eating out then it feels like food just gets stuck in your mouth and you may even feel difficulty swallowing.

That's what fear does.

Making excuses

Some people make excuses saying they are just not hungry or they may order very little food even if they were hungry before they arrived to eat.

The more you avoid something the bigger the fear builds. This is because your fear learns by what you do as well as what you imagine. If you avoid eating out then you are literally teaching your fear instinct to become even more fearful of that situation. Your fear gets the wrong message that it is dangerous because you are avoiding it.

If you imagine eating out and then feel anxious you are training your fear instinct to fear that situation through a kind of natural negative self hypnosis. This misuse of the imagination also teaches your fear instinct to build around eating out.

This session does the opposite. It will prime your instincts to have a natural and calm association with eating out so you reclaim one of life's great pleasures-sharing nourishment with other human beings.

Imagine feeling confident and relaxed when eating out.

Download Relax Eating Out now and open your life up.