This text was written by Dagmar and is copyright to her.
My experience with emetophobia, and the road towards recovery...
It seems I have been afraid of vomiting as long as I live, other people doing it as well as myself.
My little sister always got carsick and that terrified me, I hated going away for the weekend or anywhere else.
The experience which probably fixed the phobia for good was a salmonella infection from an easter egg when I was 8.
The whole family was so sick that we had to call a doctor. After that, I remember always avoiding any situation at school and outside where I could come in contact with a) spoiled food and b) people who could be sick (busses, partiesÖ).
But for many years the fear actually was on the "back burner", even during several years where I was very sick with Crohn's disease which affects the gastro-intestinal tract, but I never vomited from it.
A new highlight was another food poisoning in 1995 which started two years of absolute panic and terror.
I only got better after a theraphy with Paxil (60mg/day for several months..). Slowly I recovered enough to go outside again and do "normal" things. In 1999 I stopped taking meds because I felt that they altered who I was, making me much more relaxed but also indifferent towards others and their needs and feelings.
I didn't have panic attacks any more but the phobia was still there, though a lot less strong. Encouraged by my then s.o. I started a program of physical activity, which I had never done before, being sick and scared and generally not very mobile. I moved up from trying to walk fast for 5 minutes (and nearly blacking out) steadily and am now able to jog for an hour, though at a rather comfortable pace.
This has changed my body chemistry enormously, I feel a lot less apathic and crave much less carbohydrates, AND my general anxiety level is much lower.
And that encouraged me to try out a therapy method called EMDR from which I had never heard before reading about Ricky Buchanan recovering from her phobia with it. Through Internet I found a therapist near the place I live who practices this method, and I started therapy with her. We worked for about a year on it, and while it certainly helped me to cope with a lot of traumatic events from my past (among which sexual violence by a family member) it did not help me overcome the phobia.
At a certain point the therapist told me she didn't think more EMDR would have much sense, since everybody reacts different to it and the part of my brain where the phobia had put up residence was not receptive to this kind of treatment.
She then gave me the option of finishing the therapy or continuing with another method, specifically desensibilisation. Meaning that you expose yourself to what you fear during the therapy and with the help of the therapist, in order to change your reactions to the event that triggers the fear.
I had always been afraid of this method but I am now really adamant that I will have to overcome this phobia, and so over the last weeks we have been looking at pictures of people vomiting.
And I am seeing the first results, while before this kind of pictures left in my mind obsessive thoughts for hours, now I can push them aside without thinking much about it. And that is only the beginning.
I want to overcome the dread I always feel when I have to do anything together with other people which could possibly involve vomiting, like going out in the evening, going anywhere by car or bus or other public transport, spending time together with my sister and her four kids..
I am able to function, even to eat out in public places, but it costs me still a lot of energy and even if I try hard to keep the obsessive thoughts at bay, they still do intrude much too often.
What helped me until now was first of all taking off the worst anxiety during a period of total "carefreeness" due to the medication. Then physical activity and now the therapy.
But most of all you need the decision and determination to get better. Until then, no medicines nor therapy will be of any use. I simply refuse to be determined by the fear of what I eat or who could have given me a virus or if somebody will feel sick on the plane.
-- Dagmar
