Struggling with Pseudodysphagia
Hello, new to this website and thought I'd try out talking to people about my problem and hopefully something good comes from this for myself or anyone else. Any advice or tips to deal with this is welcome. I am completely open to talk about this issue. I am only anxious when I actually go to drink or consume something.
I am 30 years old. About 1 month ago I choked for a brief second on my food. Ever since then I've developed a complete, irrational fear of choking whenever I try to eat anything. Since that day I have only consumed liquids. This is still a struggle for me and takes me several seconds or minutes to swallow a mouthful of liquids. I don't know why but the last 2 days has progressively got worse. I was drinking water or juices almost normally but today I am struggling with this also.
On the second day of stopping eating I immediate got an appointment with my doctor and saw him that day. I was given some liquid medicine to take in small doses for relaxation of my body to better help with the tension I had in my neck and jaw which was brought on by the anxiety I had developed.
I saw a therapist for this situation yesterday. It was basically a quick session to gauge the issues I have and how to better treat me moving forward. It was a pleasent experience but nothing in terms of techniques or advice on what to do. This will occur in my next session next week.
I've lived on liquids. Nutritional shakes, smoothies, yoghurts, tomato soups and chocolate puddings. I would say I consume between <edit> calories per day where as before, when I was eating normally as a completely non-fussy eater, I would easily eat over <edit> calories a day.
Today I've eaten nothing after failing to drink a mouthful of my nutritional shake. I've only drank about <edit> of liquids so far. My aim today is to continue trying and revisiting my shake later on.
So this is my situation. I would love to go back to eating anything and everything as it was a pleasure to do so. I am also realistic and understand that this won't be fixed over night so I am prepared to take it step by step. I was curious if anyone else suffers from this, has advice on how to combat my anxiety or if anyone has actually recovered from this issue. Feel free to ask me anything. Don't hold back. I'm very open to talking about this and it brings me no anxiety to do so.
Apologises for the long opening message, and thanks for reading or replying to me in advance.
K.
@Kityr2208
Thanks for sharing! This must have been a very frightening experience for you. I'm really glad that you've reached out for help. I do hope that they provide you with some tools to help you get back to eating.
There is no need to apologize for writing what you have shared. This is a very traumatic event that you went through.