Hi all,

I've been undergoing CBT therapy for emetophobia for about 2 months now on a weekly basis. I've had to work through looking at pictures of vomit to listening to sounds of people vomitting and have had no real problems so far. I got to the stage this week where I have had to watch a video of people vomitting and it has had a really bad affect on me. The second my therapist started the tape I went into a huge panic attack and it made me feel right back at square one. I asked her if I could borrow the tape and brought it home to try and watch. I watched about 2 minutes of it today and ended up shaking like a leaf and I have the feeling as if I've just witnessed a fatal accident, the feeling of horror is "that" bad. The horrible thing now is that I can't get this bit of video out of my mind of this woman making herself vomit into a washing up bowl and I keep running it over and over again in my with sound, it's horrible.
Surely this can't be healthy? I feel as if this is doing me way more harm than good. I wouldn't have classed my phobia as being majorly dibilitating but the more I watch this stuff the more it seems to be drumming it into me that I do hate it and am petrified of it, not making it feel better for facing my demons! My dad has also been an emetophobe for 40 years now and he's lived with it ok, I just thought facing this once and for all would be a good thing but all I see happening is that it's reminding me and strengthening how much I actually fear seeing it being done.

The thing that dug my phobia back up was a huge amount of stress last year at work and a panic attack made me feel like my throat was closing and sent me into a heaving bout, obviously I was petrified at the fact that I hadn't got control over my throat let alone the fact that I could have vomitted. So my current fear is linked with emetophobia but it isn't the being sick that I'm fearing. It's the fact that I can get my throat into a state of distress that could cause heaving and THEN lead onto vomitting so it's sort of now a double baralled phobia. The phobia is more "what if I gag, start heaving and have no control over it" followed by "and what if this makes me sick", rather than "what if I'm sick".

If I hadn't have had this throat bout I probably wouldn't have even been thinking about my emetophobia right now as I hadn't been for some years.

I'm not too sure what to do but at the minute I am completely distracted by the sound and vision of people vomitting in my mind because it's all I seem to be concentrating on at the minute... horrible...

Any suggestions of what I could or should do?

I look forward to hearing your suggestions,

Mark