It is rare that The Anxious Morning and The Anxious Truth podcast match perfectly on any given day. Today they do, and the topic for both is the fear of vomiting. This is known in clinical circles as emetophobia. Emetophobia is more common than you might think in our community.
Many anxious people harbor a fear - sometimes a very intense fear - of vomiting. In some cases, the avoidance driven by emetophobia can be the key factor in developing agoraphobia. Ken Goodman, LCSW (Goodman, n.d.) wrote on the ADAA website:
People who suffer with this phobia often experience significant social and occupational impairment, going to great lengths to make sure they don’t vomit (similar to someone who fears elevators and walks up 10 flights of stairs). Kids refuse to go to school or visit a friend’s house, and adults miss work and stop eating at restaurants. Much of life is avoided all due to a fear of vomiting. This means missing out on much of life and a great deal of worrying and strategic planning — all to avoid something uncomfortable that seldom happens. The uncertainty of not knowing when it will happen is what causes so much distress.
And because you don’t know when it will happen, you are constantly on guard, rearranging your life to ward off any possibility of puking.
An emetophobic person may try to do exposures to overcome the fear of panic and anxiety itself, but when the base fear is that one might vomit when anxious or in a state of panic, these exposures can become far less productive, or even counter-productive in some cases. This is why for an emetophobe that suffers with panic attacks or has become agoraphobic, often it is VERY important to look beyond the idea of “floating, accepting, and surrendering” to panic. When there is a steadfast insistence that exposures are literal torture chambers based on the possibility that anxiety may trigger nausea or vomiting, that fear really needs to be addressed directly.
This is both good news and bad news for our emetophobic friends.
The good news is that there is a good explanation for why your exposures feel like torture that never help you. You’re not broken or beyond help. You’re just afraid of something more specific, which can be addressed.
The bad news is that … you’ll have to address it.
This is something that many emetophobia sufferers steadfastly insist is impossible because vomiting is in fact the very worst thing that can happen to a sentient being in the known universe. This may sound like an exaggeration. It is not. Trust me. I have been chastised by many of our emetophobic friends for daring to suggest that even that fear can be faced. But even when you insist that there is no possible way to overcome the fear of vomiting, you would be wrong. Many people overcome emetophobia. It’s treated successfully every day using the basic premises of cognitive behavioral therapy. That treatment can certainly be difficult. Nobody is denying this. But in the end the treatment can be quite effective and if you are willing to drive yourself to the supermarket and panic to get better, consider that working on your emetophobia is just another form of difficulty that you can also tolerate in order to get better.
I can’t give you a step by step cure for emetophobia in a morning newsletter, but I can at least point out that this specific fear could be the biggest obstacle standing in the way of your anxiety recovery, and I can give you hope that you can address this obstacle and move forward toward the life you want.
I suggest you check out the ADAA article linked below, and also check out two episodes of The Anxious Truth Podcast that address emetophobia:
Episode 132 - Christia’s Emetophobia Success Story
Episode 211 - More On Emetophobia (includes emetophobia resources in show notes)
References:
Goodman, K. (n.d.). Fear of vomiting, or emetophobia. Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/specific-phobias/fear-of-vomiting
113. Addressing Emetophobia (Fear Of Vomiting) In Recovery