Case History – Fear Of Food

Here's a brief history of how I (Steve Tromans) first became involved with resolving food phobias, sometimes known as 'food aversion', or 'restrictive eating'.
Many years ago I received a lot of national press coverage, TV, press and radio because I helped an eight year old boy get rid of his phobia of sauce. The press were interested because it was 'quirky', and in their eyes an 'unusual case'. His mother was at her wits end because her son would run screaming from the room at the sight of ketchup or any cold sauce, or else he would throw up everywhere.

The Boy’s Mother Was At Her Wits End

His mother has tried everything, from her GP to the Maudsley Institute to The Phobics Society. She had been informed on many occasions that he was 'too young to treat', or that 'no-one knew how to treat this phobia'. Well meaning psychologists had gingerly approached him from a distance with a small bottle of HP. He had attacked them.

Now its tempting to see this as highly amusing, and to be fair even his parents could see the funny side occasionally. But the lad was in genuine distress and terror.

In her zeal to find a cure for her son (she had even made a tentative arrangement to go on the Trisha Show), his mother had been brought to the attention of the local newspaper who gave the story front page coverage - which is when I got to hear about it.

I contacted the parents via the newspaper to offer them my services. I told his mother that I had sorted many phobias, but I had never had a client that young, and that I was prepared to do it for nothing if she was happy to involve the press again were I to be successful. She told me that she would speak to a packed Wembley Stadium or go on international TV if I could help. I got the point. There was a problem though, she said, he was now phobic of therapists and no-one could even mention sauce in his presence without an extreme reaction from him.

Working Indirectly

So I had to work totally indirectly and I initially visited their house and had a coffee with the family a couple of times so that the boy could begin to see me as a family friend. I told him my job was a storyteller and got him motivated to get me to tell him bedtime stories.

To cut a long story short I used hypnotic metaphors, embedded commands and a host of other hypnotic approaches inside the bedtime stories. I never mentioned sauce once and worked entirely indirectly using these Ericksonian hypnotherapeutic techniques.

I almost Gave Up Trying

After six 'sessions' which had absolutely no effect whatsoever I began to wonder if I was capable of helping him. But the seventh session worked perfectly. He had had a phobic episode during the day before I told him his 'bedtime story' but when he woke up the following morning he marched downstairs and demanded, from his astonished mother, brown sauce on toast for breakfast. In fact, she was so surprised and taken aback that she refused to give it to him.

When he came in that evening, however, he was totally relaxed about sauce, seeing it, smelling it and eating it.

There was loads of press coverage and I quickly became aware that my young client was not at all unusual.

The Fear Of Food Is A Very Common Problem

I began to see adults who had only eaten eight things their entire lives, often there were people who had reached the age of 40 without ever having eaten a vegetable or a piece of fruit.

The one food type that virtually every 'food phobic' eats is chips. Very often, people experience a gagging reflex when they try and eat something they haven't eaten before and this needs to be reconditioned.

Virtually everyone I have seen since the young lad has been easier and much faster to deal with than he was, and I get great success in helping people to expand their diets.