The Somatic Reasons It's Terrifying to Eat With Friends and Family
Eating around other people can be filled with anxiety, overwhelm, and fear where you may find yourself binge eating afterward.
If you grew up constantly criticized for your food choices, how much you ate, and your appearance, it can feel terrifying to eat around others. Your body experiences fear of negative evaluation (FNE).
Fear of negative evaluation is defined as dread associated with being negatively judged in a social situation. In a 2023 study called “I don’t want them to judge me”: Separating out the role of fear of negative evaluation, neuroticism, and low self-esteem in eating disorders, the researchers found that fear of negative evaluation was "associated with probable ED status over and above low self-esteem and heightened neuroticism."
Your eating behaviors and appetite can change when eating with friends or in public to avoid the threat of being abandoned, diminished, and judged. You may eat less than your body needs to avoid any commentary on your eating and then find yourself stopping off wherever you can on your way home and binge eating on whatever you like.
This moment is not about a lack of willpower.
You just spent an entire meal in a survival response and food is coming in as a way to help ground yourself back in the present.
I've had experience of this myself as well, and it took a while to feel safe to eat around others. Being in relationship with food can already be an anxiety-provoking experience when you've experienced food trauma. When you throw other people into the mix, all of your relational wounds and insecure attachment can also show up.
What I experienced was that my food choices were not just about managing the dysregulation inside of myself, but also to ensure that how and what I ate didn't become a reason for someone else to leave me. My food decisions became a reflection of me and for a very long time, I had carefully tried to curate how others saw me so that I could feel safe.
After one particular meal where I was eating with people I didn't want to be eating with, and went home with severe digestive pain, I started to track what facilitated an experience of safety when eating around others. I would come to learn what environments, people, and foods supported my body in feeling grounded, stable, and connected that the fear that dominated eating with others disappeared.
If you have noticed feeling stressed eating with others, your body will need support before, during, and after to know it is safe and decrease the likelihood of binge eating afterward.
You might first get curious before you go out about what you need to facilitate some safety.
Beforehand, you might explore any form of physical movement that resonates with you. Sometimes I would go to a yoga class before eating with someone. You might look up pictures of the restaurant if you've never been there to orient yourself to the space you're about to be in. You might look at the menu ahead of time to feel into your sense of choice that you also get to decide what meal will feel most stabilizing and safety producing based on the state you know you're going to be eating in.
Next, during the meal, you might look out for cues of safety.
Fear of negative evaluation will show up and will move you into the sympathetic nervous system. So you can acknowledge it and validate it that it makes so much sense why eating around others would be scary past on your history with food, family, and friends. You can scan the room for cues of safety, which could be paying attention to the smile of the person happy to see you. You could find things around the restaurant atmosphere that you like. You could admire the way your food is plated. When you're going into a situation where your body easily picks up on cues of threat, it will need a lot of support to be shown that there is no danger. You can also do this through internal cues of shifting your attention to a body part that feels neutral, like the tip of your nose.
As you practice connecting with yourself before and during the meal, your body may continue to move more into a sympathetic nervous system response anyway. That is alright. You're not choosing this. Your body is doing this for you because it perceives that you're going through a threatening experience and wants to protect you by activating your fight or flee response. So after the meal, you might explore how you want to be with and move through the heightened energy present in your body. You might plan to go to a park where you can walk around or have a dance party with yourself.
Lastly, if you have an incessant inner voice worried about what you ate, you might spend some time with that fear. Have a conversation with it. This fear is often concerned about your future safety and how that food will affect your body or your relationships.
You don't have to fix the fear or reason with it or make it go away.
You can validate it. It WAS scary to eat those different foods around people. You get to show your body and parts of you that you will be there for it in its fear and will not abandon it like so many others have.
As you practice somatically moving through the experience of eating with others, you will be actively updating your body's memories that eating with others can be safe. You may notice with time that the stress, fear, and overwhelm you used to feel dissipates and is replaced with ease, comfort, and connection. As you show up for you in any situation that activates your sympathetic nervous system, you will be showing your body that no matter what you two can move through this together.
I hope this was supportive and if you try out some of these suggestions, email me at support@stephaniemara.com and let me know how it went. Here for you every step of the way on this food recovery adventure and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of your day. Bye!
References
Clague, C. A., Prnjak, K., & Mitchison, D. (2023). “I don’t want them to judge me”: Separating out the role of fear of negative evaluation, neuroticism, and low self-esteem in eating disorders. Eating Behaviors, 49, 101708. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eatbeh.2023.101708