Food Allergy Anxiety: 5 Top Tips

Video Transcript

Hi everyone, I’m Zoe from My Allergy Kitchen and today I’m going to share with you my 5 top tips for food allergy anxiety.  So, let’s get started.

Tip #1: Educate Yourself (But Not Too Much)

So, you need the right information in order to be able to manage your child’s food allergies, of course, but too much information can actually make you feel even more overwhelmed and confused than when you started.  So, if you have questions, find out what you need to know, but don’t read every website ever written about food allergies.  That’s a sure-fire way to drive yourself mad.

That’s why I wrote my book, The Busy Parents Guide To Food Allergies – available on Amazon! – because it gives you the key information you need to know in easy bite-size chapters.

Tip #2: Find Support

It’s great to connect with other people either online or in person.  It’s fantastic to find a group of people who just know what you’re going through, they just get it, and they understand the kind of challenges that you’re facing.  Nowadays there are of course loads of Facebook groups online, lots of social media accounts talking about food allergies, and there are also some face-to-face support groups as well.  There are details of all of these on my blog if you need it.

Tip #3: Food Allergy Advocacy

It can be really empowering to do some sort of food allergy awareness or fundraising activity.  It also helps to educate other people about food allergies.  So for example it could be as simple as sharing posts about food allergies on social media, or you might go and do a talk at your child’s school or brownie group or some other after school activity they do.  Or you might want to hold a cake sale to raise funds for a food allergy charity.  It’s up to you.  But that can actually give you a positive feeling that you’re doing something constructive to do with food allergies rather than just sitting at home feeling overwhelmed.

Tip #4: Acceptance

Unfortunately, we have to accept that living with food allergies does come with a certain amount of anxiety. This is good in a way, because if we didn’t have that anxiety, we wouldn’t be motivated to read food labels and we wouldn’t be bothered about asking questions in restaurants.  So we do need some amount of anxiety to help us deal with allergies.  However, we don’t want it to become overwhelming and take over your life.  So you need to accept that that anxiety is there, and take steps to reduce it.   And that means making sure you take plenty of time to relax and do things that you enjoy. 

Tip #5 Ask For Help When You Need It

So yes, we have to accept that living with allergies comes with a certain amount of anxiety.  But if you feel that it’s taking over your life, becoming overwhelming, and interfering with day to day activities, then ask for help.  In many areas of the UK, you can actually refer yourself for therapy for anxiety without even going to your GP.  You can do it on the NHS website.  So there’s absolutely no need to suffer in silence.  

Thanks for watching.  I hope you found this helpful.  If you would like more ideas for managing food allergy anxiety, I’ve written a free eBook with 26 Self-Help Strategies which you can download from my website MyAllergyKitchen.com.

Click here to download the eBook now