I'm always afraid of getting food poisoning.

So I've never had real problems with nausea or anything. I mean, as a kid you'd get sick and just move on, you know? But one day after Christmas in about Sophomore year, I wasn't feeling good and got sick like four times. I ate some stuff the night before I shouldn't have, but ever since then I've had this extreme fear of getting sick. Just remembering the feeling of it makes me nervous. I'm always nauseous now. I have frequent problems with digestion and being backed up and all that. I don't know what to do. This morning for example- I woke up late and already I had that teeny little nauseous feeling in my throat. I mean, I ate later and was fine, but still. This fear is taking over my life. I've lost like 40 pounds due to medication PLUS this fear. I think... I don't know. All I know is that I'm very picky about food and now it feels like I'm sitting on bones. Can someone please help? I'm hopefully going to talk to my therapist about this today, but still... I'm afraid to go out to eat and stuff at most of all the good places I used to go out to eat from. Thanks.

I am glad you are talking to your therapist about this because it sounds like you hit a trigger. You need some concrete techniques to move on. Food is problematic for me as well, for other reasons, so I can empathize. But I can tell you that having a good therapist that helps come up with a workable plan to interrupt the negative thoughts really helps.

And I do not know if this will help or not because our brains latch on to strange things to obsess over but. I have lived in several countries and yes, I have gotten food poisoning and it sucked but I lived, and so did you and that is the part that maters. The what if's and could have's will drive you crazy.