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Life With Food Allergies Took A Toll On My Mental Health: How I Recovered
I don’t remember life before allergies. My symptoms started even before I was eating food — I couldn’t keep breast milk down and had severe eczema. I was diagnosed with allergies around six months of age, and given a very long list of foods to avoid.
As a kid, I could never be fully carefree. Managing my allergies meant I was constantly monitoring for threats: which classmates were eating allergens? What were they touching? At home, I had trouble sleeping. Anaphylactic reactions introduced a whole new level of existential anxiety. I spent a lot of time wondering why I hadn’t died. That still comes up as an adult sometimes. I have to check: Am I still here? Am I okay?
By the time I was a teen, I wanted to hide my allergies altogether. I had maybe one or two friends I was comfortable eating at restaurants with. They were really supportive, but there was nobody who fully understood the mental health aspect of what I was going through.
Besides bringing up repeated near-death experiences, my allergies had a way of "othering" me. Once, at a birthday dinner where I knew the food wasn’t allergy-friendly, I decided I just wouldn’t eat anything. But the manager caught wind of my allergies and showed me the door. “There’s nothing for you here,” he said.
When I went to University, my hyper-vigilance evolved into an extreme sense of personal responsibility. Any time I had a reaction, I was overwhelmed with guilt and anger at myself. I thought: How could I let myself down? How could I do this to myself? I started mistrusting myself.
The mental health toll of allergies
It all came to a head in my mid-twenties when I had a severe reaction to a food I ate all the time. (There had been some cross-contamination.) That shook my world. I lost trust in everything. I was so angry and afraid and exhausted from the constant hyper-vigilance.
I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid to go to bed at night. I stopped going to social events. I was uncomfortable being in places where I couldn't get out quickly if I needed to. I would always think, "If I have a reaction, how will people get to me?" I hated being stuck in traffic. If I wasn’t near an exit, I would start hyperventilating.
I lost a lot of joy for things. Even at the height of my hyper-vigilance, I would get excited to try a new food or go out to eat. But after that reaction, I didn’t want to do any of that because I was so afraid.
I had to check my hands and face to make sure that I was fine, even if I hadn’t come into contact with anything. There were many days where I couldn’t convince myself to eat anything. All I could think was, "How do I know that this didn't touch any allergens in the grocery store? How do I know that this label is right?"
That really impacted my disordered eating habits. You can only carry on like that for so long until your body starts giving up. Luckily, when I was 28 I started seeing this doctor who called me on it. He said you need to get your mental health in check; you’re malnourished.
A turning point
After that, I started making big changes in my life to prioritize my mental health. I left my job and cut out relationships that didn’t serve me. I started meditating, which I’d previously thought was a hoax. I returned to things that had brought me joy as a kid — movement, gardening, things that helped me feel more down to earth again.
[Improv] helped me see how I would shrink whenever I made requests to accommodate my allergies.
I started improv, which shifted my whole perspective on how I interact with people. It was a big aha moment for me. Improv allowed me to see how my body language impacts my communication. It helped me see how I would shrink whenever I made requests to accommodate my allergies. It also helped me get over the fear of looking silly.
I'm grateful that my parents encouraged me to advocate for myself from a young age, whether it was ordering for myself at a restaurant or speaking up at the doctors. There was one time when I went in for an ultrasound and the providers handed me a cup of liquid to drink. I asked what was in it, and they kept saying “I don't know what’s in it but can you just drink it? We have all these people waiting.” I insisted I wouldn’t drink it unless they could give me an ingredient list, but they kept saying they didn’t have one. After a ton of back and forth, they ended up finding an ingredient list, and it was fine for me, so I drank it. But there was another liquid that was not fine for me. I just thought, I'm not going to go into anaphylaxis because we're on a time crunch here.
You would think that a hospital would be a safe place for someone with allergies. But everyone seems to forget about them once they’re added to your chart. There's no hospital food that I can eat. When I delivered my son, I had to make and freeze several days of meals so that I could eat while I was in the hospital. I’m always thinking about what would happen if I was there for an extended period of time.
But I’m in a good place now. When I was a teen, sometimes I was a bit reckless. I'm no longer reckless, but I'm also not so hyper-vigilant that I can't go out and socialize. I feel good, and I'm not overwhelmed by anxiety all the time.
The importance of community
When I was 24, I had a cookbook coming out, and my agent suggested I start a blog to promote it. At the time there were only a few other allergy bloggers who were adults with allergies themselves. I connected with them, and one of them is still one of my best friends. Having a person who you don’t have to explain yourself to, who has also gone through mental health challenges and anaphylactic reactions and hyper-vigilance, and who you can just be yourself around; it’s life-changing.
That's part of the reason I created the retreats I now run. It's one thing to just talk to people online. But it's another thing entirely to have a weekend together where your mind is on vacation. You don't have to explain yourself, everyone gets it. We can have all these shared experiences and learn strategies for improving our mental health in a place of understanding and fun. Had I had some kind of events to go to when I was a teenager where I could just meet other people like me, I think it would have been very freeing.
What I’d tell others in my shoes
Parents ask me all the time: My kid is struggling with anxiety, how do I get them out of it? And it's really hard to give one answer. I can't tell you to meditate and drink tea and that’s what's going to help. This is a long journey. But eventually, with the right support, you can figure out the things that make you feel better.
Find trusted resources, and stay away from the fear-mongering. Try to find some sense of community — you really can't overestimate its impact. Ultimately, the whole thing is a journey of self-acceptance.
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