What is Kitchen Anxiety (and How to Cope)
Have you ever felt nervous using shared spaces because you don’t feel like dealing with people? Then you’ve probably experienced kitchen anxiety!
Kitchen anxiety is the reluctance to use your kitchen or common spaces to avoid interacting with or spending time with your roommates or other people in your home. This is a really common type of anxiety that a lot of people struggle with.
It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re living in a bad situation, sometimes it can show that you need a little more privacy. Other times it might be a reflection of your anxiety. If you’re struggling with kitchen anxiety and need some ways to cope, read on to get my best tips for overcoming it.
What are some common causes of kitchen anxiety?
One of the most common reasons you may experience kitchen anxiety is self-consciousness around small talk and not knowing what to say.
This can be considered a type of social anxiety, where a person is anxious in social situations, often because they're worried about how others perceive them.
So you might be avoiding your roommates because you don’t want to get stuck talking to them and feel awkward, or maybe you’re simply too busy to chat and don’t want to seem rude or standoffish.
Another common cause is tension or awkwardness when you and your roommates aren't getting along. This can be because of a personality clash or unspoken issues that aren’t being addressed properly. If you’ve been dealing with roommate drama or resentment, you’re much more likely to avoid them to not feel so anxious.
This kind of conflict avoidance is useful to some degree because you can’t always work out every little thing that bothers you. It only becomes an issue when you feel uncomfortable in your home most of the time because of those unaddressed issues.
Related: How to Deal with a Bad Roommate
Is kitchen Anxiety common?
The short answer is: yes!
It's fairly common, especially for those who already struggle with social anxiety or conflict avoidance.
Sharing a space with others can amplify these feelings because of the built-in social aspect of having roommates. You don’t have as much privacy or autonomy in a shared living space vs. living alone, so having some anxiety around this is totally normal.
Just know that it’s nothing to be ashamed of and is absolutely something you can overcome with consistent practice.
It’s not always easy or enjoyable, but it’s much less anxiety-provoking to know that you can freely exist in your space without worrying about how your roommates might judge you, rearranging your schedule around them, or isolating yourself.
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It is OK to avoid my roommates or take food back to my room?
It's your living space, so it's perfectly OK to do what you need to do as long as it's not costing you too much emotionally. Meaning, the short-term benefit of avoidance is that you temporarily feel less anxious, but the long-term cost is often more intense anxiety or other issues.
Quality solitude is actually very healthy and would be considered a healthy form of avoidance. Excessive solitude becomes isolation, and this is when you’ll likely see an increase in your anxiety in the long-term.
Check whether you're rearranging your entire routine to avoid feeling anxious and consider whether it's worth it. Occasionally avoiding your roommates isn't hugely detrimental, but consistently doing so can negatively impact your mental health.
For instance, if you’re studying or have a lot of work to do, you may be a little more isolated to stay focused until you’ve finished what you need to do. Or you may decide you want to eat alone during breakfast and be more social during dinner.
Both of these scenarios would be considered healthy avoidance because there’s an intention and purpose behind it. If you’re just choosing avoidance as the default, that’s not going to work as well long-term.
Start paying attention to how often you’re avoiding people and check whether there’s an underlying intention behind it (needing quiet time to study) vs. feelings of anxiety.
Skills for Overcoming Kitchen Anxiety
If you’d like to get better at managing your kitchen anxiety, here are a few skills to help you feel more confident.
Skill #1: Self-Reflection
Get curious about what your anxiety is telling you by asking yourself a few simple questions:
What are you most worried about when you’re outside your room?
Is there something specific you can point to or is your anxiety more undefined and nebulous?
If you can’t find a specific reason for your anxiety and you’re unsure why it’s happening, it’s likely some old feelings that aren’t related to your current living situation. Anxiety is like a smoke alarm: sometimes it signals there’s a fire, other times it’s just smoke from burned toast.
If you can stay curious and investigate using these questions, you’ll be able to tell when your anxiety is signaling actual danger versus discomfort.
Skill #2: Practice Self-Compassion
Practice giving yourself self-compassion for the struggle you're experiencing. You might feel weird doing so, but there’s an abundance of research that shows when you judge or criticize yourself, your brain can go into fight-or-flight mode. This can shut down your prefrontal cortex and frontal lobes: the parts of your brain that allow you to see the bigger picture and encourage yourself.
Self-compassion can help calm your nervous system and help you stay grounded in reality instead of letting your anxiety spiral. It doesn’t mean you have to be soft or let yourself off the hook. You can still take accountability for any behavior that’s unhelpful and commit to changing it.
It’s as simple as talking to yourself the way you’d talk to a friend. Take a moment to think about the way you support your friends and how that might differ from how you talk to yourself. You’d likely offer some support, perspective, and be an accountability partner.
For more guidance on self-compassion check out my related post: How to Practice Self-Compassion
Skill #3: Start Small to build confidence
If you’re struggling to even use your kitchen because of your anxiety, start with something small: make coffee, toast, or something quick that wouldn't be rude to drink or eat in your room if you need to. Challenge yourself to say hi and ask your roommates how they're doing.
If you’re feeling really anxious beforehand, take a deep breath and remind yourself that it’s OK to feel anxious and still do what you need to do. Do a little bit more each day and you’ll notice your confidence will build, which will then in turn motivate you to keep going.
Each time you practice something small like this, you'll see that your anxiety is likely disproportionate to reality, which makes it less scary each time. Take some time to notice whenever your anxiety didn’t match what actually happened. This can be a helpful reminder the next time your anxiety is overwhelming or going straight to worst-case scenario.
Remember that if your anxiety seems disproportionate to what’s actually happening, then your best bet is to consistently practice skills to manage your symptoms. Take small steps to remind yourself that everything is OK and to give you more autonomy at home, rather than being at the mercy of everyone else’s schedule.
Check out my post on managing your anxiety or panic symptoms for more tips and tools.
On the other hand, if you’re avoiding your roommates because of actual tension or issues, check out my related post: How to Deal with a Bad Roommate for helpful tips.
