Emetophobia: My story

Hi! This is a little bonus extra blog post this week. I've had a couple of requests now to write a post detailing my own story of emetophobia and recovery, so I thought I'd do it! This is a pretty long post, but I've split it into sections with subheadings so that you can scan it easily to pick out the bits you want.

Here is a brief bullet point list of the post, in case you don't have time/don't want to read the whole thing:

> The beginning - how my phobia started.

> The early years - being a kid and dealing with emetophobia, before I even knew what it was (spoiler alert: they were not fun years).

> Discovering emetophobia & the beginning of recovery - I finally found out that emetophobia existed (after 5 years of having it!), and things started to get a little bit better in very small steps.

> Instagram, & making strides - when I was 15, I made my Instagram account, and writing about my thoughts and feelings (as well as being in a supportive community of people who knew how I felt!) helped me to make more significant steps in recovery.

> Doing exposures - a real turning point in my recovery, when I was 16/17.

> "It" happened... - I was s*ck for the first time in 9 years.

> Where I am now - does what it says on the tin, + a little motivational speech!

If anyone manages to read the whole thing, well done (it's quite long!) - and I hope that it brings you some hope!

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The beginning

My phobia began when I was 9 years old. I can pinpoint it to an exact event - I won't go into it in too much detail to avoid triggering anyone, but basically 3 people in my class at school were s*ck within the same hour (for totally non-illness reasons, as I later found out!), and I went into a complete meltdown. I now know that this was a panic attack, but at the time I had no idea what panic attacks were or that they even existed, so I guess I just thought I was dying. To this day, I've never had a panic attack worse than that one - I had the full symptoms, including tunnel vision (something that I've never experienced since), and it lasted for much, much longer than any attack I've had since. I just remember sitting on a chair outside the classroom with a few of my friends, crying uncontrollably and asking for my mum over and over again. I didn't manage to stop crying until she arrived.

It's impossible to know, but I do wonder if we hadn't gone to America a few days later that my phobia wouldn't have been quite as severe. It was my first time ever on a plane, and the first international holiday I'd had that wasn't France! I was super excited, and the journey over was smooth. However, when we landed, the time difference threw off my inner "time to eat" clock. I ended up feeling weird at times when I should've been eating according to American time, and of course, I interpreted this as meaning that I was going to be s*ck. To solve this problem, 9 year old me just refused to eat. It was a problem that continued through the 2 week holiday, with a few events reinforcing my fear, and by the time we arrived home I was worryingly small.

The first few years

I think I assumed that when I arrived home from America, things would be normal. Unfortunately, that was not the case - for one thing, my stomach had physically shrunk, and for another, my phobia was very much present. It took the rest of the summer to get me eating normal portion sizes again, and by the time I went back to school I was feeling more anxious than ever. I don't really remember much of those years (from year 5 to year 8), but I do remember being sent home several times a year because I would feel s*ck and be adamant that I was ill.

What I do remember well though is how I felt every day. I often get messages from people who are severely emetophobic, and when I say that I understand how you feel I really do! I know all too well the feeling of waking up every morning, already feeling s*ck from anxiety, choking down as much breakfast as you can manage before trying to face the day. I remember standing at the bus stop before secondary school, trying not to cry as my stomach churned. I remember small changes in my routine throwing me off for days, I remember lessons spent trying to control panic attacks, and I remember the rituals that I had to perform each day to keep myself and others "safe" from being ill. It's strange, really - for a period of my life that I have very little event recollection for, the feelings are still very real and very raw.

Going to secondary school made everything so much worse. The last few years of primary school were just about manageable, but moving schools pretty much broke me. In retrospect, I know that it's all because of the massive change in routine and the huge surge in anxiety that came with moving out of my comfort zone, but at the time I just felt pathetic.

After two years of being in secondary school, things started to settle down. I started to become slightly more comfortable in my day to day life, and things were more manageable. I even did my own exposure therapy one day (without realising that exposure therapy even existed!) when I decided that I'd had enough of feeling s*ck with anxiety every time I heard the word s*ck. However, things weren't really getting any better.

Discovering emetophobia & the beginning of recovery

It wasn't until I reached the age of 14 that I finally discovered the word "emetophobia". After a session of googling things like "how to stop feeling s*ck" and "I am scared of being s*ck", my eye was drawn to a forum page. It was an emetophobia support forum, and I spent the next hour browsing it, clicking from page to page and scanning each message, feeling every single word resonate in my chest. There were all these people who felt exactly the same way that I did! Even the "stupid" things that I did or felt - they were all there, written down by other people.

This was honestly the biggest turning point for me. Suddenly, I wasn't just "weird", or "pathetic" - I had an actual thing, with an actual name, that I could fight against!

As soon as I knew that I had emetophobia, it became more of an enemy to pit myself against. I tried to push myself more and more each day, and any time that I felt anxious or stressed I could tell myself "it's just your phobia, you can do this" which helped a lot.

Instagram, & making strides

Then, when I was 15, I stumbled upon an emetophobia support account on Instagram (there weren't very many of them around in 2017!). However, the account appeared to have been dead for a few months, and it had little interaction between the actual account owner and the people commenting on their posts. To me, it felt a little bit cold, like there was no real connection - so I decided to make my own account!

As soon as I made the account, my emetophobia started to improve. I think that writing about things that happened to me each day, and talking to others who felt the same, really helped me to properly acknowledge and think through my thoughts. Because of that, I felt a bit more removed from my phobia - suddenly, it wasn't just a part of me, it was this separate entity that I could discuss without entanglement! Slowly, I started chatting to more people, and I tackled more and more significant challenges.

Doing exposures

By the time I was in Sixth Form (age 16/17), I knew about exposure therapy and I knew that it was something I needed to do. However, I didn't earn enough money at my Saturday job to pay for more than a few sessions, and I was determined not to cost my parents any money! As a result, I began devising my own exposure therapy, drawing on the principles and tactics that I'd learned in my A level psychology class. I wrote an entire blog post on exposure therapy and how I did it myself (click here to read it!), so I won't go into detail here, but I focused mostly on using parties (which were a massive source of anxiety for me) and the inevitable over-consumption of alcohol by my friends as "safe" exposures (as I knew that anyone who was s*ck at a party was highly unlikely to be ill because of anything contagious!). Seeing that written out, it sounds very weird and a bit heartless, but really I just tried to change my mindset to seeing people being ill from alcohol as a trigger to avoid to a challenge to conquer - and of course I'm very grateful to the friends that used to have these parties for inadvertently helping my recovery by being the perfect exposures! ;-)

"It" happened...

Then, one day in 2019, it happened. I was s*ck, for the first time in 9 years. It was entirely my own fault (I went from being the observer of people overindulging in alcohol to overindulging myself..!), and at the time it was a pretty stressful experience. I handled it really well when I was with my friends (who were absolutely lovely, and so supportive - I honestly can't thank them enough for how brilliant they've all been over the years!), but as soon as I got home and it happened again I broke down and had my first panic attack in a long time.

However - looking back, I am SO thankful that it happened when it did! For one thing, it broke my silly "streak" of not being s*ck that I was keeping with myself, and for another, it proved to me that I could deal with being s*ck by myself (because although I did have that panic attack, I calmed myself down and didn't seek reassurance from anyone). I went off to uni a month later, with a small feeling of confidence - now I could remember what it actually felt like to be s*ck, and I knew that if it happened at uni I would be okay.

Where I am now

In the last year since that fateful party, I have been s*ck a few different times. And every time it gets easier! Each incident has been alcohol-related (with the exception of one instance of potential food intolerance), and I know that if I were back to my 16 year old self, I'd simply have stopped myself from being s*ck - it's never been uncontrollable. But now I'm at that incredible point where, instead of suffering for hours and hours feeling too nauseated to sleep, I can choose to just take off those "I can't ever be s*ck!" brakes and go with what makes my body feel most comfortable. In this past year, I've come farther than I ever have before with my phobia. Just the other week, a friend was very ill in front of me (after drinking!), and although I had to look away and felt myself shudder, I stopped any anxiety in its tracks. A year ago, I'd never have been able to do that!

Although I'm still not fully recovered (unfortunately, my fear of being s*ck from an illness (e.g. a stomach bug) is still very much a problem), I'm so much better off than where I was a few years ago. Now, if I get a twinge in my stomach, I don't instantly spiral into a pit of anxiety. If a friend invites me on a meal out, I can enjoy it - even if I get a stomach ache or feel a bit s*ck! And, most importantly, I have the motivation and confidence in my own recovery method to keep driving at getting better every day. Triggering situations aren't terrifyingly uncontrollable ordeals any more, they're challenges. Anxiety doesn't mean that I'm 'failing', it means that I'm pushing myself to endure the things that scare me for longer. And that's a really empowering thing to feel.

I'm still not 100% there, but I'm still going. And there's no way that I'm heading back now that I've had a taste of a life that isn't ruled by emetophobia!

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Sorry that this post was so long - I'll be very impressed if anyone reads the whole thing! I thought that I might as well write a comprehensive and in-depth account, and then if that's what someone wants to read the choice is there.

The most important takeaway from this post is that if I can do it, you can do it too! Trust me when I say that only a few years ago, I could never have imagined being as recovered from emetophobia as I am today. I thought that it was impossible. So if you feel that way too, know that it isn't! And there's a whole community of emetophobes to support you on the way to living a happier, freer life.

~ Alice x