Making links in your mind | @caroline-cavanagh | Anxiety Specialist

30 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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1:09

Caroline Cavanagh describes a client whose brain linked restaurants with social anxiety around entertaining his girlfriend, making him avoid dining out entirely. Once he saw the real fear was about conversation, not food, the anxiety dissolved. His brain had made a faulty equation: restaurants plus girlfriend equals threat.

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One particular client was struggling with eating out in restaurants, and the mind isn't a powerful thing because he could eat at home, he could eat out with friends, but if he was in a situation with a female, um, especially a girlfriend— it was a long-time girlfriend— he would really struggle to eat, to the point that actually was avoiding going to restaurants. And what was amazing is how his mind had attached fear to restaurants. And actually, when we delved into his mind and what the link was, 2 and 2 had added up to 6. The fear was actually about having to control the conversation and being entertaining. It was nothing to do with the food. And when we made 2 and 2 equal 4, his attitude towards going and eating out now has completely changed. So something that seems really illogical suddenly became understandable when you unders— when you recognize that the brain can easily get 2 things and add them together and make the wrong link.