Fear Itself

[maypirate]

I love unagi don. I love it.

But I'm terrified of it.

And I'm sitting next to some right now, eating it as if it were the last thing in the world I wanted to eat, because I'm nearly crippled by the fear that it hasn't been properly cooked, and I will get sick from it.

And this is the fear, the obsession that I've been living intensely with for the past two years.

It is driving me insane.

I can't believe that a bowl of rice with eel on it is enough to almost bring me to tears.



I hate throwing up. I hate it. I do it rarely, knock on wood, but I've never liked it. Books and movies have been ruined for me by the inclusion of it in the plot (although, strangelyl enough, I can put it in my own writing). Bob and I called these "scenes." We refer to them and tell each other to be wary.

I am afraid of throwing up. It is a phobia like spiders or tornados. It's paralyzing.

I have this belief that were I to get sick, everything prior to that moment in my life, everything good, every accomplishment, whatever, would be negated by that incident.

Which is irrational, and I know that, but I can't shake it.

I have a nervous stomach, it's irritable and loud, but it's generally very strong. And though I was once crippled by my fear of tornados, one day that fear was just...gone.

...and then, you know, seven years later a tornado hit my house.

So it's like that. If I get over it, will it come to get me years from now?

Or not?

It's this weight that I carry every day, that is never far from my thoughts, that holds me down and hurts. And it's so stupid, such a strange little thing.

But it's always there. And I want it to go away.

And that's why I'm sitting next to this eel, this terrible food that I fear but want to eat.

And I'm tired of this constant ache.

Someday I'd like to not be crazy anymore.

Comments

[cryogenia.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

Hang in there, hon. I know it probably won't make you feel any better, but if you want a rambling and kind of stupid story from my camp, well...maybe at least you won't feel quite so alone?

(Commence dumb possibly TMI story)

Truth be told, I don't much like meat/fish/eggs either. Had my own anxiety issues, and when I was younger, I did kind of have a phobia - if I was anywhere near a place where they were being prepared, I had to get a handkerchief and spit constantly into it, in case the germs had gotten in my mouth somehow and contaminated me. If I thought a surface had touched raw meat, I had to bleach it about three times to be able to deal with it. Containers that held raw meat or egg were washed, then burned. I felt that if I got sick, I would die of intestinal cramping - and half the time, made myself sick psychosomatically :(

But at the same time, I loved cookie dough.

So I would try to eat it, because I loved it, but at the same time it would petrify me. I would literally make myself think I was poisoned the minute it touched my tongue, then spit it out and run to gargle mouthwash. It was awful, and I felt like such a dumb fuck. (On the plus side, it made diets pretty easy to stick to.) Still...it was terrible.

How did I get over it? Sad to say, I'm not entirely over it - every now and again it'll hit and I'll freak out still. But for the most part? I'm not proud to admit it, but I deal with the irrational fear by adding more irrationality. Looking at statistics didn't help - adding a new thing to do helped. I wash the outside of my eggshells to get rid of any bacteria on them (salmonella gets inside when you crack them, but not if the shell is clean). And...I convinced myself that if I ate a chunk of cookie dough, then immediately ate something acidic or drank a lot of water, it would "flush" the badness out. And you know...it worked, eventually :-/ I'm not saying it's a solution for everybody. Most likely it's retarded and only works for me, cause I'm also retarded. But I guess...it's hard, but you can fight it. It just really sucks :(

Hang in there.

[monkeybobert.livejournal.com]

You know I share your fear. I have compulsions relating to it.

And I think that cryogenia's extra layer of irrationality isn't a bad idea. I know that adding a whack compulsion to my fears helps me. I guess that's the whole basis of OCD and it's just adding to the cycle...so um, maybe it doesn't help. But it's something I do, too!

You've mentioned it to your thearapist though right? And she just pretty much said it's a thing many people have? Sure it is.

[asidian.livejournal.com]

Ohh, May. I hope it gets better for you- I hop that one day it goes away like the tornado fear, and that it never comes back to bother you again. *hugs*

I fear foods that have specifically made me sick (or perhaps I just was sick and the food was what I happened to eat beforehand), and I hate that, even though I know rationally that there's little chance that it'll happen again, I avoid those foods. For one that I particularly like, though, I've been working on it and have found that trying a little bit at a time, and using the "See? Nothing bad happened because of it." excuse for my mind seems to help. I dunno if it'll work for you, but it doesn't hurt to give it a try. *hugs*

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Do you think it would help if you learned to cook it yourself, so you could oversee every part of the cooking process and know exactly where it's been?

[velvet-mace.livejournal.com]

I really dislike throwing up to the point where I hold off and make myself miserable.

Don't eat the eel if you don't want it. Never eat anything you don't want to. It's ok to have irrational fears, especially of things that don't happen very often and don't generally impact your daily life.

If you want to eat the eel, but are irrationally afraid of it, do the touch, smell, taste method. where first you touch it, and when you are comfortable with that, you pick a peice and smell it, and wait, once that is comfortable, you put your tongue to it. That's the method they were using to get my son willing to try new foods.

[decken.livejournal.com]

Unagi don unagi is pretty safe. I don't think anywhere makes it from fresh eels, but you buy it precooked and pre-sauced-up in vacuum-sealed packaging, then reheat it with the rice, so it gets cooked a couple times along the way. If that makes you feel any better...