I need some serious help. I have a real phobia of vegetables. I'm pretty sure it's mental but nontheless I need help. I cannot eat veggies. I never have been able to. I think it's the texture of them that I can't stand. I used to not be able to eat any "veiny" fruits like watermelon or papaya, but I am eating those now. I still cannot eat any vegetable. No salads, onions, peas, green beans...nothing. I think it all started when I was a child. I remember when I was little I had a stomach virus of some sorts and my parents made me eat broccoli that night and the smell of it cooking was already making me sick but when i actually put it in my mouth I had to run to the bathroom to throw up. Ever since then my parents felt bad about making me eat vegetables and every time I put one in my mouth I would pretend to be sick and go to the bathroom and make myself throw up so I wouldn't have to eat it (horrible, I know) my parents aren't big veggies eaters thankfully, so I wasn't making myself sick every night but still...that was terrible. There are also a few vegetables my mother doesn't like and I remember at the dinner table for example, if she made peas that night she would take a spoonful and swallow them as if they were tylenol and make a horrible face afterwords. As an observing child I thought that my mother was the smartest woman in the whole world and if she didn't like peas then I sure wasn't going to eat them!
You can definately forget about eating salads! My parents and older siblings used to joke about there being bugs in the vegetables because they came from the ground and that's where all of the bugs live. Now as an adult, I know that there's not going to be bugs in the cobb salad at chili's, but I still remember as a child the crunch of the salad and the idea of the crunch being the shell of a roach (if that makes any sense).
Now....I have tried to make myself eat salads and vegetables for a month straight I ate either a salad or vegetables every day (which is a lot for me) but I always became sick to my stomach after a few bites. For example when sitting down to eat a salad it would take me about two hours to finish a side salad because in between bites I am trying to focus on not throwing it all up. I've thought about the possibilities of me being allergic to vegetales or maybe being intollerant to them BUT I can and do drink V8 in small amounts. But there's only a certain amount of V8 one person can take in a day and I would really like to be able to eat veggies like a normal person.
I really want to get over this unhealthy lifestyle but I need some serious help. I've thought about seeing some type of psychologist about it but I don't know if they can help me. It's really embarrasing at dinner when everyone else gets a salad to start out with and I'm eating bread or nothing, and at thanksgiving when everyone has greenbean casserole on their plates and I have turkey and mashed potatoes and that's it.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! Any advice you can give me will be helpful! I've tried roasting, dicing, disguising...all of that! nothing seems to work.
-M