CBT for emetophobia my experiences...

[Girlspendlow]

Hi i only found this site last night due to my five year old son being ill he was sick in his bed and came in to tell me , i could feel the fear hit me in a huge wave but i just went into autopilot and got cleaning him up , but not before opening all the windows and holding my breath around him and in his room so as you can see i freaked out yet again and came down stairs and cried for 30 minutes ( mainly to be far away from the germs )andto find something to help . This fear is totally unreasonable , irrational and dibilitating but its something i have had since for as long as i remember Im 26 now and i have tay whos 5 and brodi a 2 year old girl i was not ill while pregnant which i feel quite smug about but the last 3 times i have been sick ( Jan 2001- nov 2005- jun 2009) have been on wednesdays which make me have a mid week panic attack i try my best to hide my fear and have done pretty well for years until i had the kids and realised kids a little germ disciminator's and i had to find some way to help this i tried therapy but she had never heard of this phobia so i haven't been back this fear is so bad that ( i don't live with the kids dad ) i have often thought when the fear is at a height of sending the kids to live with their dad :( i've found just writing this has cleared my mind a little please get intouch with me if anything i've wrote relates to you i have my boyfriend living with me but i think he finds it hard to understand and tells me i should just be sick but thats the scariest thing anyone could say to me thank you for reading my essay and if you have any ideas on things that may help me please hit me back

X Toni X

[dave94]

I too have had CBT. Although not of the form you had. In mine we just talked about how i can feel better, she never even considered showing me videos of people vomiting. I personally find the act of others vomiting relatively insignificant, which may seem a little selfish in that if i feel sick or feel like i'm going to vomit on an un-manageable level, i become a totally different person who is wracked by my phobia. It was really bad for me the last 3 years, but in the last 8 months I've been massively better and find i can manage nausea fine 99.9% of the time, apart from tonight. After I felt really bad tonight (and I cannot describe how i feel or act when i'm nauseous to this level), i found this thread on the internet and thought i would share my thoughts. I understand the problem about your throat feeling like its blocked/swelling or somehow feeling like its forcing its way up your neck. I had a number of problems and this was one of them. Luckily for me what made me get over this (by terming it: getting over it, I basically mean I can attend college like normal now, where as in year 10 and 11 my school lesson attendance was about 10 lessons collectively per year) was the fact that my school education ended, and in the summer break I had some odd kind of closure and CBT. I am almost entirely fine now in that i can deal with my now not so frequent bouts of nausea, but the idea of being sick i am still phobic about to the same amount I always was in the last 2-3 years.

dave

[Gale2509]

im not even able to sleep or think about anything else after only reading the post, that vid would scare the living hell out of me. Of all the therapy i've had - i thank god no one has ever suggested i watch video's. I was taught that although i think it a vomit phobia its actually a fear of the fear issue and it would not be possible or natural to remove a dislike of vomit its inbuilt in us only to disaacociate fear and vomit? maybe my therapist was the crazy one lol. i hope this post syops haunting me v soon!

[rainbowOne]

I had CBT for my emetophobia and now it's pretty much gone.
Mine didn't focus on 'exposing' myself to throwing up, but on combatting the behaviours I had developed because of emetophobia.

For instance, I used to take a bottle of hand sanitizer everywhere I went and wouldn't eat without sanitizing my hands. So I had to throw out the sanitizer and not use it, ever. I had to go into random food places, even dodgy looking ones, and eat with my hands, without washing them.


Basically - write a list of everything you do that a normal person doesn't do. And then stop doing them. One at a time, small steps at first, but make sure you ARE taking steps not just staying in one place. Don't say 'Ohh but I need to wash my hands because of hygeine' -NO. You do NOT. If you find yourself making excuses, you have to be hard on yourself. Don't listen to the excuses. The excuses are saying that you WANT to be scared. So don't do what the excuses tell you to.