Shakily biting into a small spoonful of paella, I silently prayed that my partner, Piyus, wasn’t watching.

Even though we’d been dating for a whole year, I hadn’t dared eat in front of him until now.

I was too scared of spilling something down myself or getting food on my face and that he’d point or laugh at me for making a mess. A fear that I’d held onto for years.

As a child, other kids at school had started teasing me for ‘walking like a robot’, and I became self-conscious about how I came across to others. So though I wasn’t a particularly messy eater, I became paranoid that it would become the next thing they’d pick on.

That’s when I decided to give up eating in front of anyone entirely – even those closest to me.

It was easy to get away with at first. My parents worked long hours in a shop, meaning we never ate together.

But big family gatherings became a nightmare: I’d either go hungry or only eat foods that wouldn’t make a mess – like crisps, which could be broken up into tiny pieces. Even then, I’d nibble them in my room, or in the corner where no-one could see.

I thought I was just self-conscious at the time, but years of training has helped me realise I was suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) estimates up to 12% of people in the UK are affected by social anxiety at some point in their lives and I was one of them.

It is described as a fear of doing everyday activities – like catching a bus, walking in public or filling the car with petrol – with those affected worrying they are being laughed at or judged by onlookers.

My fear came with all of those activities but eating was the worst. Yet I hid my problem so well from my parents that they had no idea what I was going through and probably never will.

Experts say that social anxiety often gets better with age, but by the time I was 18 and at university, things were getting bad.

If I had no choice but to eat in public, I’d hide away in the corner and only eat items that were impossible to make a mess with – like chopped fruit or pasta.

I received counselling through university, which helped a little bit, and the GP offered me antidepressants but never took them.

Things got so bad that I attempted suicide.

Around that same time, I met Piyus, who spotted my problem when I kept sending him away at lunchtimes. That’s when I confessed to him what was going on – the only person I’d told other than my best friend.

To my relief, he couldn’t have been more supportive and our connection continued to grow.

Eventually, after a year together, I finally let him take me on our first ‘proper’ date to a restaurant.

I chose paella, a meal with ingredients that would stick together so it wouldn’t go everywhere and Piyus casually carried on eating, which allowed my fears to quickly fade away.

It was a huge step and I knew then that Piyus was the one. However, it’d still be a long time before I’d ever feel truly comfortable eating in front of anyone.

At our wedding, four years later, my disordered eating was still crippling me and I had to get Piyus to distract our guests so nobody would notice that I was barely touching my food.

At my job as an optometrist, I felt forced to have lunch facing the wall at a nearby coffee shop as there was nowhere private I could eat.

One time at a pizza restaurant with friends, I picked at a yoghurt dessert instead of a main meal as I was so paranoid about eating slices in front of people.

Eventually, I decided enough was enough and paid for private Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) – a talking therapy that can help you manage your problems by changing the way you think and behave – in which I was set tasks to face my fears head-on.

It started with small things like going alone to a café to people watch. That exercise alone taught me that others were too wrapped up in their own lives to pay me any attention.

Gradually, my fears eased to the point where I was able to eat small meals in front of people, using a knife and fork to cut it into pieces first.

By the time Piyus and I had our girls – Sienna, in 2011 and Isla, in 2013 – I was able to eat family meals with them at home, but I still couldn’t eat normally at meals out or big family parties.

Worried about the impact my disordered eating could one day have on them, I became even more determined to do something about it. That’s why, in 2018, I decided to become a Rapid Transformation Therapy Practitioner.

Rapid Transformation Therapy allows you to understand where these beliefs came from, why they arose in someone’s life and then works on letting go of what no longer serves us and rewiring the neural pathways for better beliefs.

As part of my training, I had to have my own counselling and discovered my fears had stemmed from childhood – I never felt good enough and always wanted to fit in and belong.

I had to learn to accept that I didn’t need to be perfect and that we all embarrass ourselves occasionally. And it really helped to remind myself that, half the time, no-one is paying any attention anyway.

From that moment on, things got gradually easier and today, aged 41, I’m in a much better place.

I still have to push myself to eat things in a way that might make a mess – like eating a burger in a restaurant last year with my hands. But on the whole, I feel a lot better.

The biggest difference now is that I can go out to eat with Piyus and the girls and order what I really want to eat, not just what will make less of a mess.

Just recently, I even faced my biggest fear of all when I bit into a bagel in front of my boss and the cream cheese filling spilled out everywhere. He didn’t so much as bat an eyelid and I felt elated.

I spent years avoiding things and certain foods because I was scared of being embarrassed. But now I know I have nothing to fear.

Life can be messy, and for once, I’m OK with that.

As told to Carina Platt

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