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.

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?"

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. 

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.

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.