Long before online grocery shopping was a thing, I paid a person to shop for my groceries and deliver them to my house. I had to once I began hyperventilating in the checkout line at Kroger.
I didn’t know back then that what I was experiencing in the store was a panic attack. I just described it as feeling like the aisles were closing in on me.
It would happen about halfway through the store when I was shopping for a full-cart grocery order. I would start to sweat. The music would seem to get louder. I grew impatient and irritated with shoppers who weren’t moving fast enough. Then the aisles seemed to sort of cave in on me. I’d feel trapped.
Jimmy was with me for the Kroger trip that would be my last one. I was feeling like I was going to lose it in the bottled water section. By the time we got to the dairy aisle, I was lightheaded. Suddenly there wasn’t enough room between the kiosks in the middle of the aisle and the freezer cases and refrigerated section. “I need to get out of here,” I told him.
By the time we made our way to the checkout, I was starting to hyperventilate. I kept breathing out, not breathing enough in. I couldn’t get the groceries out of the cart and onto the band fast enough. “It’s okay," Jimmy assured me. "Let me help.” He calmly put the canned goods on the band while I tried to stop breathing so hard. “God, I’ve got to get out of here,” I said under my screwed up breath.
I swiped my credit card, and it seemed to take forever to approve. In reality it hadn’t taken any longer than it ever had. I just couldn’t be there anymore.
After that experience, I hired a startup errand-running service to shop for me. It was a blessing.
I’ve since heard that panic attacks in grocery stores are not that uncommon. It would come up in conversations. No one ever labeled it a “panic attack,” but they would tell me that they had experienced the feeling of the aisles closing in on them.
I didn’t talk about my “grocery store issue” with my doctor until a couple of years later after I had been diagnosed with panic disorder. I told him that I still had problems with grocery shopping but didn’t know what caused it. He told me that if you don’t know why you’re having the panic attack, then you have a problem. Well, clearly I had a problem.
To this day, I don’t know why I am still bothered by grocery stores. I can generally handle picking up one or two things. But I do not shop for large orders of groceries anymore.
For the most part, I have solved my problem in these three ways:
1. Walmart online grocery. I never liked Walmart...until they started solving this problem for me. Then I had to like them. I needed them. And, by God, they did good job of fixing this thing that was broken in my life. When they began offering online ordering with parking lot pickup in my area, I was an early adopter and an online evangelist for the service.
Busy people who still shop for their own groceries ask me, “But don’t you want to pick your own produce?” No. They get it right 90% of the time, and I’ll risk a head of too-ripe broccoli or a cucumber that’s too small to avoid hyperventilating in the checkout. Besides, if they do get it wrong, their online customer service makes it right quickly.
2. Let go of the cart and leave. I’ve learned that my body and mind will send me signals when enough is just about enough. I’ve learned to listen to them. When I feel disproportionate anxiety stirring or I feel claustrophobic in a store, I leave. If I have to leave a cart with five items in the aisle, so be it.
3. Let someone else do it. This is a work in progress for me, but I am learning that I don’t have to do everything. I can ask Jimmy to help. He will often volunteer, and I can let him do it.
We put so much pressure on ourselves to accomplish—even if it’s accomplishing something as seemingly simple as a grocery list. I’ve learned that my life will not fall apart if I don’t make it out of the store with a quart of half and half and four cans of diced tomatoes. I can adjust. I can put them on the next online order. I can wait. I can try again tomorrow.
A panic attack probably happens in the grocery store because I am ascribing oversized importance to the task. I need to remember to right size it. What matters in this moment is that I am whole and that there is enough of me left for the next thing that truly does matter.
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