How to Overcome Fear of Vomiting Using These 4 Steps
Some of you may have never heard of it before or maybe it sounds extraordinary, but emetophobia is actually very common.
I am talking about the fear of vomiting, also known as emetophobia. Although you might not know anyone who is suffering from emetophobia personally, it is estimated that about 7% of women and 3% of men worldwide are experiencing this disruptive phobia in their lives.
Fear of vomiting affects individuals usually very severely to the point that they develop coping strategies such as avoidance or new behaviors in order not to experience vomiting. For example, avoiding eating food, avoiding public places, or checking the quality of the food they are eating constantly are just a few common examples.
Scarily enough, multiple research articles show that about 44% of women who are experiencing emetophobia are avoiding becoming pregnant because they don’t want to go through morning sickness.
How does emetophobia start and develop?
Emetophobia usually starts in childhood and develops through the years as it is reinforced subconsciously over and over again. It usually starts with a disturbing or uncomfortable event of vomiting. Starting from that point on, every vomiting experience or expectation of vomiting creates an anxiety response.
Some children grow out of emetophobia in time. However, for some, each encounter becomes a reinforcement and the phobia gets stronger.
Some of the symptoms of emetophobia are fear of vomiting, generalized fear of seeing vomit, seeing another person vomit, or anticipation of any situation that may lead to nausea such as stomach viruses, food poisoning, or excessive alcohol consumption.
Emetophobia still lacks enough scientific data and it is still very under-studied. So, the spectrum of information and research about emetophobia is very narrow. However, it is concluded that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Hypnotherapy, and Exposure Therapy are the most effective approaches so far.
Regardless, there is still a big part of the population that doesn’t benefit from any of these methods for an unknown reason. Working on this issue with different cases helped me determine the main shifting points.
If you are one of those people who is still struggling with emetophobia, these might be helpful tools for you to add to your daily life.
1. Understand what Emetophobia is
The first step for change is always understanding the issue thoroughly and accepting the facts about it. Remember, we cannot change something while stuck in a stage of denial.
Do you have a fear or a phobia of vomiting?
Identify the problem correctly. Is it a fear or a phobia? The difference is; fear is a product of the fight-flight-freeze response usually as a reaction to a threatening experience. On the other hand, a phobia is merely anticipation or “imagination” of the possibility of the event. A phobia can also be described as an irrational fear.
Why is this important?
If you find that you have a phobia when you review the factual evidence -such as you cannot really die from choking on your vomit unless you have damage in your brain functions due to overconsumption of alcohol and/or narcotics– it’s easier to see outside of your perspective.
If you have a fear, it is usually more helpful to break the initial event into its components to see how everything progressed and why you might be experiencing this fear even now.
2. Identify your negative self-talk
Every belief system is created with only one purpose: to protect the entire mind and the body. After the belief system is adopted, everyday experiences revolve around this belief system. It’s almost like putting on the belief “goggles”.
These belief goggles make us see events and experiences from the point of our own belief system. These belief goggles also increase the likelihood of experiences in accordance with the belief system.
Try to identify your unhealthy beliefs associated with yourself. What does your inner voice say to you in the back of your mind? What kind of self-talk are you having on a daily basis? Especially during an anxiety rush due to fear, what are some of the thoughts crossing your mind?
Why is this important?
Our thoughts are directly linked to emotions and anxiety. By monitoring your thinking system, you can find out what creates anxiety and how your mind is contributing to negative imagination.
Also, most of the time, emetophobia may act as a symptom of an underlying cause. Identifying the belief systems can help to distinguish the symptom from the cause.
Hypnotherapy can help overcoming fear of vomiting by changing the subconscious thinking.
3. Understand the fear of vomiting more…
Development and related causes
Like many other phobias, usually, emetophobia is developed during the early years of one’s childhood. After a distressing event of vomiting, the child attaches negative feelings to vomiting unconsciously. This information gets stored in the subconscious mind.
Although many parents would expect improvements in the symptomatic conditions, sometimes the symptoms can get worse and eventually result in emetophobia. After the first incident, the following urges of nausea and vomiting become a reinforcement. Just like any other conditioned response, the child learns to create anxiety-like symptoms unconsciously every time they feel or anticipate vomiting.
There are 2 types of anxiety: Real-time anxiety and anticipatory anxiety.
Real-time anxiety is what we experience during the onset of the event. It has been very useful for humans to survive throughout nature with other animals. For example, anxiety that is felt during a car accident would be real-time anxiety. Later on, humans also developed “anticipatory anxiety”.
Anticipatory anxiety develops when picturing and imagining the feared event in a very negative way with heightened levels of imagination. It is usually present in all types of fears and phobias. It is also what leads people to avoid certain behaviors or develop some other behaviors.
This negative anticipation has absolutely no benefit to us but it increases the severity of the symptoms. Therefore, it is really important to recognize the negative anticipations and their evolution timeline. For example, the earlier negative anticipation is caught, the easier it is to break the anxiety into its components which eventually leads to the dissolving of the anxiety altogether.
Emetophobia symptoms can be as light as low anxiety and as intense as full panic attacks. Some of the symptoms of emetophobia are also found to be over-lapsing with panic disorders, self-esteem problems, OCD, and social anxiety. Mostly, individuals complaining about emetophobia are usually diagnosed as sufferers of “Specific Phobia”. However, with a close look at the symptoms described by the clients, it’s discovered that symptoms are especially very similar to OCD. Some of these common examples include obsessive thinking, safety-seeking, avoidance rituals, high anxiety, and hyper-awareness.
4. Look for these professional treatments
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most common treatments for emetophobia. Possible underlying dysfunctional thinking patterns are explored during CBT. If there is an uncomfortable event in the past leading to the phobia, it will be discussed in CBT as well. Usually, CBT is followed by situational exposure therapy.
CBT has been helping with not only diminishing the symptoms of emetophobia but also increasing the tolerance levels of the sufferers.
Exposure Therapy
During exposure therapy, key triggers are identified and individuals are exposed to these anxiety triggers with acceleration. Triggers don’t have to rely on actual events such as vomiting or feeling nausea. The word “vomit”, public transportation, seasons, photos, or social events can be part of the triggers as well.
During exposure therapy, individuals are exposed to situational exposures gradually leading to other stimuli. Individuals learn about their stressors and they eventually become comfortable around them.
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy has been helpful in a variety of phobias and fears depending on the subject’s suggestibility to hypnosis. There are a couple of approaches to emetophobia with hypnotherapy.
One of them is exposure to perceived stressors during hypnosis. Walking the subject through the perceived triggers of vomiting in a safe place, helps individuals differentiate anticipating anxiety from real-time anxiety.
Another approach is exploring the main distressing event that eventually created the phobia. During hypnosis, understanding the causes of the phobia will help to relieve some of the symptoms. Or simply finding the root or origins of the phobia.
One other approach is desensitizing the subject to the perceived stressors so that they are not leading to anxiety attacks anymore. After successful desensitization of the stressors, anticipatory anxiety diminishes or reduces significantly.
Self-Hypnosis
Self-hypnosis is a self-help tool that can be helpful with a variety of issues. It is very similar to meditation. Not only it’s very relaxing but also it helps to change subconscious associations.
You can learn self-hypnosis from a hypnotherapist, Youtube videos, or other online resources. To overcome the fear of vomiting with self-hypnosis you will need to practice it daily and consistently. But in turn, you can manage the triggers successfully and learn to break the avoidance cycle.
Final words…
When a phobia or fear is disturbing your daily life significantly, it’s important to ask for outside help. Excessive behavioral changes may lead to important personality disorders in time or they already may be signaling a significant problem that has been going on. Regardless of what phobia or fear you might be dealing with -even if it’s a rare one! - there are always professionals available to help you!
References
Journal of Anxiety Disorders - pdfs.semanticscholar.org. (0AD). Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/165b/ea0cbf42d87b9c93d6ad803a37661366ace6.pdf.
Faye, A. D., Gawande, S., Tadke, R., Kirpekar, V. C., & Bhave, S. H. (2013, October). Emetophobia: A fear of vomiting. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3890925/.
Emetophobia: Fear of Vomiting as an Expression of OCD. (0AD). Retrieved from https://iocdf.org/expert-opinions/emetophobia-fear-of-vomiting-as-an-expression-of-ocd/.
Kelly, R., & Allen, C. (2013). Cure your emetophobia & thrive: The researched-backed self-help programme to overcome your fear of being sick. Cambridge: Rob Kelly Publishing.
(PDF) The Psychopathology of Vomit Phobia - ResearchGate. (0AD). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228619598_The_Psychopathology_of_Vomit_Phobia.