@anxiety_fitness
Anxiety FitnessFor many years I dealt with the fear of swallowing (phagophobia) I was so afraid of the mechanism of swallowing that I made my body feel tense, as if I could not do it without choking. This wasn’t just about swallowing pills, it was pills, food and even water. At one point, I avoided food I found “difficult” to swallow, and would only eat soup to sustain myself. With every bite of solid food, I would need to chew 100 times and sip water to help it go down. Every bite was a terrifying experience, and I would be in fight or flight just thinking about eating. Here's what I didn't understand back then: swallowing is an automatic reflex that your body has performed flawlessly tens of thousands of times. Anxiety can't switch it off. What anxiety CAN do is tense the muscles around your throat, which creates that lump-in-the-throat feeling (doctors call it globus sensation). It's uncomfortable and completely harmless, but it feels like evidence that something is wrong, so you avoid more, and the fear grows. Every time I avoided a certain type of food I confirmed the danger to my brain. Every 'safe' food and sip of water taught it that normal eating wasn't survivable without help. That's how avoidance and safety behaviours keep a phobia alive long after the original scare. I wouldn’t dare eat outside or at a restaurant for example, because I was terrified that something would happen and I wouldn’t be able to get help But what helped way out was the opposite of what fear wanted: eating out anyway. Scared at first, with foods slightly outside the comfort zone, again and again, until my brain re-learned what it already knew - eating is safe. Graded exposure is the most evidence-backed treatment there is for specific phobias, and it works without a single trick or hack. I recommend finding a therapist qualified in CBT who can help you to build a plan for exposure. #phagophobia #fearofswallowing #foodanxiety #anxietyrecovery #exposuretherapy #globussensation
On the profile · Jun 12, 2026