Why am I so afraid of throwing up??

As I mentioned in a previous blog, a major part of my anxiety is a phobia. My phobia probably sounds weird to a lot of people but I have a phobia of throwing up. The official term for this is emetophobia with emet coming from the Greek (I think?) for vomiting. In this blog I hope to explain more about this phobia and hopefully help people understand it and maybe even help someone out there who is struggling with a similar situation.

After that introduction, you are probably wondering why I use the term phobia so much instead of just saying a fear. This is because I want to distinguish the difference between the two terms. A fear is something that if you saw it you would feel mild stress e.g. being freaked out if you saw a spider in the room or feeling stressed when you are very high up. Most people have a fear but it rarely manifests itself into a phobia. A phobia is when a fear is so great that it debilitates your life in some way- if you had a phobia of horses, you may completely avoid going to the forest in case there is a horse there.

My phobia stems from a childhood memory, where the last time that I saw my late brother he was being sick. The sickness was not related to what caused him to pass away but therapists in the past have explained how in my brain, I probably relate being sick with dying, although sometimes it may not seem like this. However, any person could develop emetophobia, even if they have not had an experience like this contributing to the phobia.

In the past, a coping mechanism for this phobia has involved many extreme control measures that I would use to try and avoid me getting ill. This would include not touching door handles, washing my hands and using hand sanitizer before eating and in some extreme cases, avoiding leaving the house in fear of getting sick and many others. When my phobia was at its worse, I was still in education which definitely did not help matters as schools and colleges are like a breeding ground for germs.

Now I know at this point you are probably asking many questions like what happens if you do throw up? Unfortunately, being sick is just a part of life. Most mammals vomit, and those that don’t have a lot of problems due to the fact they don’t. Throwing up is actually useful for us- it helps to get rid of the toxins in our body. So yes I have thrown up before. When I throw up, well… I’m fine! I don’t feel particularly great for obvious reasons, but my brain doesn’t go into overdrive or anything. When it does happen, I am usually a lot more concerned about trying to get myself better rather than worrying about something that has already happened. It is the thought of being sick and the fact that it could any happen at any moment that is more scary than the actual act of being sick.

For obvious reasons, a lot of people don’t understand this phobia. When I talk about it with people, their usual response is something along the lines of “well I don’t like being sick either”, or “everybody gets sick”. I usually try to explain to these people what it is actually like-both of these statements are pretty obvious. A phobia is completely irrational- that is what makes it a phobia, but it is very hard to break the phobia.

There are two main treatments for a phobia. One is exposure therapy. This is where you would go along to therapy and start of by looking at pictures of people being sick, then you would work up to watching videos and eventually would end in something like somebody faking being sick. I decided to go against this method of therapy. I have been sick whilst having my phobia and have also seen other people be sick. People being sick from alcohol will affect me a lot less than people being sick out of nowhere, as I do not drink, and I know that there is not an illness I can catch. It will still stress me out but nowhere near as bad as if somebody has a stomach bug. This form of treatment would just make me uncomfortable and would not benefit me (especially as my phobia stems from a large family tragedy). This is not to say that exposure therapy can’t work for some people, it was just not the treatment plan for me.
The therapy that I did have was CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). This focuses more on the underlying causes and ways of managing the stress and anxiety of the phobia (as well as helping with my other mental illnesses). Although CBT was not a long term solution for me, it did help in the short term to improve my state to get through education. My CBT was used for more than just my phobia as this is just a component of my anxiety, but I think it can be a very effective treatment for people suffering with a phobia or any other mental illness. During this therapy, you learn mechanisms to help cope with your thoughts, such as breathing techniques to help calm you down. It is probably the most widely used route of therapy and this is for a reason.

Currently my phobia is not as bad as it has been in the past. I still do get afraid of getting ill and this shows itself in being very strict with the dates on food and still avoiding people who have been ill recently and maintaining a decent level of personal hygiene. I hope in the future, I will be in a place where I am just as uncomfortable being sick as the average person. With hopes of having children when I am older, this would be a major point for me to reach and I will keep working to hit that point.

If you have any questions about emetophobia or anything else to do with mental illness please feel free to direct message me on instagram @zoe_farrant or use the contact page on this site. I am not a medical professional by any means but I can hopefully give insight based on my own experiences.

Thanks guys!
Zoe x