The curse of the modern cook

Modern life is hard. Everything is getting bigger, faster, and harder—and yet supposedly easier. Some people are getting really worked up, so much so that there is now a plethora of psychological conditions to describe the situation. Kay Brennan considers the causes of the sudden emergence in phobias and anxiety syndromes

From the kitchen window you see the guests arriving. Your eyes follow them towards the front door. Stay calm, you tell yourself, there is nothing to fear. Suddenly the oven beeps: panic squeezes the breath from your lungs and turns your knees to jelly. “The apple pie,” you cry grabbing the dish of smouldering black pastry from the top shelf with shaking sweaty hands. The doorbell chimes and your heart sinks: this is the start of another dinner party disaster. How will you survive?

Sound familiar? If so, you may be one of millions who, according to researchers, are affected by kitchen performance anxiety syndrome (KPAS), a modern phobia that is seriously challenging our mental health. Psychologists believe that the increase in chefs on television has resulted in many less capable cooks with symptoms commonly associated with an anxiety neurosis. These include “butterflies” in the stomach, sweating, palpitations, and an overwhelming feeling of impending doom. KPAS feelings develop when you fear that the food you have painstakingly prepared will not resemble the creation seen on the small screen.

KPAS is one of a long list of phobias that frequently grab media attention and are blamed on our hectic modern lifestyles. Have you heard of Vorderman’s syndrome by proxy? Affecting women only, this phobia is the fear that you will never be as fit, slim, rich, or clever as Carol Vorderman, the mathematician celebrity who looks equally good in a little black dress or with a calculator in hand.

Mortgage anxiety disorder is a condition occurring in middle aged homeowners. They spend many sleepless nights worrying that they have not got the best mortgage advice from their bank manager. Individuals typically spend hours scouring the financial pages of every daily newspaper making sure they have the best deal and cannot get words like “fixed rate” and “savings” out of their heads.

Recently, reports of a perfect parent syndrome have hit the covers of parenting magazines. Parents experience huge disappointment and anxiety—in the quest to raise the perfect child—when their infant is not the first to potty train or prefers the adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine over a Shakespeare sonnet at bedtime.

These “syndromes” are cluttering the anxiety area of the mental and behavioural disorders in the international classification of diseases (ICD 10). Specific or simple phobias (F40.2) are persistent and irrational fears in the presence or anticipation of an isolated stimulus. This dread commonly results in avoidance of the unpleasant stimulus, hence the growing popularity of ready made meals for one in those fearful of a kitchen crisis.

At medical school, we learn formally about traditional simple phobias. These include claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces) and pterygophobia (fear of flying). These are accepted as debilitating conditions, but it is unlikely that newer phobias such as arachibutyrophobia (the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth) will ever appear in your pocket book of psychiatry.

All phobias can cause significant disruption to people’s lives. It is common for a businessperson, who must travel frequently, to be afraid of flying, or an elderly lady to be confined to her 12th floor home because she is frightened of enclosed spaces and cannot use the lift. KPAS may cause a student to accumulate huge debts with their local takeaway because he or she feels inadequate at cooking.

The good news is that most anxiety related disorders respond well to treatment from psychologists and psychiatrists. Graded exposure is a common first approach where a hierarchy of feared situations from the least feared to the most is established. In arachnophobia (fear of spiders) this may include looking at a picture of a spider, provoking a mild degree of agitation, through to holding a spider in your hand. The patient practises the least fearful event, riding out the anxiety until the symptoms subside. Once they feel comfortable with the situation they can progress to the next step in the hierarchy.

Other recognised methods include hypnosis and progressive relaxation training, where the patient is taught to tense and relax particular groups of muscles in a specific order. This takes the focus off the scary stimulus and reduces the anxiety.

No one knows how phobias develop and there is often no explanation for the fear. In many cases a person can readily identify an event or trauma that triggered the phobia. In KPAS this may have been a burnt apple pie or a failure for that special soufflé to rise.

What puzzles experts is why some people who experience such an event develop a phobia and others do not. It is rare to be afraid of cars, even though almost everyone has been in or seen someone injured in a car accident. Some believe in an intraphysic theory that suggests the high anxiety levels are caused by excess psychic energy in particular people or that the phobia is a manifestation of repressed hostility or conflicting drives. Many psychologists believe the cause lies, however, in a combination of genetic predisposition mixed with environmental and social causes.

So what is causing the apparent recent growth in phobias? Is it modern day social pressures creating new syndromes or are people simply being weighed down by their own expectations of excellence?

Kay Brennan, final year medical student, University of Leeds,
Email: kaybrennan@hotmail.com


studentBMJ 2002;10:171-214 June ISSN 0966-6494