What is Emetophobia and how can therapy help?
What is Emetophobia?
Emetophobia is an extreme fear of vomiting which can cause you to spend excessive time trying to prevent becoming sick. It can be a truly disabling condition that effects every area of your life. The risk of vomiting feels very real and unescapable. This fear normally come with a constant feeling of nausea.
Common symptoms include:
Anxiety.
Fear.
Nausea.
Panic attacks.
Being on edge.
You may try and cope by:
Avoiding triggers.
Excessively worrying.
Overplanning.
Body scanning for signs of illness.
Excessively cleaning or disinfecting.
Reassurance seeking.
Avoiding certain foods, cooking methods or places.
Is Emetophobia treatable?
100%.
It is very treatable.
The only good thing about Emetophobia is that we know exactly what you need to do to get rid of it. It only takes some bravery and willingness to try something new in therapy.
What is the best treatment?
The best treatment is known as CBT, which stands for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Everybody's Emetophobia is fed by a series of common psychological processes which keep you trapped in your anxiety. CBT aims to help you understand which processes are at work your you in particular. Once you and the therapist understand these processes, you have a roadmap to easily escape the Emetophobia trap.
I see Emetophobia is like a house of cards. Remove just a few of the cards at the bottom and the whole thing falls down.
What is the best treatment?
The best treatment is known as CBT, which stands for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Everybody's Emetophobia is fed by a series of common psychological processes which keep you trapped in your anxiety. CBT aims to help you understand which processes are at work your you in particular. Once you and the therapist understand these processes, you have a roadmap to easily escape the Emetophobia trap.
I see Emetophobia is like a house of cards. Remove just a few of the cards at the bottom and the whole thing falls down.
Why CBT?
1) It works: CBT for Emetophobia has a strong scientific basis and has been shown to be effective.
2) It’s flexible: Treatment focuses on you and is flexible to your specific needs.
3) It takes into account you and your past, as well as focus on your current situation: CBT aims to get a balance between treating what lead you to develop Emetophobia in the first place as well as fixing it in the here and now.
4) It’s validating: CBT helps you understand why you have such an intense fear of vomiting.
But I was told I need Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), not CBT to get better!
ERP therapy is known as one of the “gold standard” treatments. However, what most people don’t realise is that ERP is just a tool within CBT. Your therapy will involve ERP but it will also have so much more. There will be a wide range of tools and techniques to aid you in a step by step approach to overcoming your phobia at your own pace.
Why with me?
One of the biggest complains that those with Emetophobia have is that when they have tried to reach out for support in the past, they find that their struggles are not fully understood, their experiences are not validated, and that the standard treatments often fall short of what they needed. Sadly this is all to common. Many therapist don’t know how to treat Emetophobia.
However, I have spent my career trying to change this. Emetophobia is something I specialise in. I have written a textbook and run training sessions for therapists on how to successfully treat it.
If you decide to speak to me, you will get someone who really understands what you are going through. You will feel heard and understood. Together we will go through treatment as a team to get you better. Recovery is possible.
I am highly rated and recommended by the clients I see - client reviews can be found on my google business page → Click here.
Let’s do this together.
Why not book in a free no obligation consultation to see if I am the right therapist for you.
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What therapy with me looks like:
Therapy with my self is individualised and will be based around you as a person and your emetophobia. However, it usually follows a six stage process for recovery.
Stage 1 - Understanding thoughts
The first stage of treating Emetophobia is to first understand what anxiety is and to understand the thought processes that are driving it. Once we understand your thought processes, therapy can move from seeing anxiety as being the problem, to starting to see our thoughts as the driving factor behind anxiety.
Stage 2 - Understanding behaviours
The second stage in treating Emetophobia is to understand the maintenance of the anxiety. This is about understanding how the actions you take to feel safer and less anxious might actually be a big part of the problem.
Stage 3 - Reframing “the problem”
The third stage in treating Emetophobia is to redefine the problem. Those with Emetophobia come into therapy viewing vomiting as the problem. When vomiting is seen as the problem, the only solution is to avoid, prevent or tolerate it. This does not work and only feeds your fear. Stage three is about changing the focus from vomiting and into the fact that Emetophobia is an “interpretation” problem. Those with Emetophobia interpret vomiting as much worse than it is. This allows therapy to progress by changing your interpretation of vomiting, rather than having to avoid vomiting.
Stage 4 - Dropping unhelpful behaviours
The fourth stage in recovering from Emetophobia is to break out of those behaviours which are maintaining anxiety. We need to understand the reason you use each one of these unhelpful behaviours. Once that it is understood it becomes possible to test out how needed (or not) these behaviours are. Once these behaviours are stopped, anxiety and the intrusive thoughts about vomiting massively decrease.
Stage 5 - Dropping avoidance
The fifth stage of overcoming Emetophobia is to start to face your fears. This is often the step many clients worry about. This fear is the reason the internet is full of sites and therapists promising recovery without exposure therapy. Exposure feels hard and people would rather avoid it. But on some level, we all know that facing fears is the best way to build confidence. For example, if you had a friend who feared driving, you would say they needed to drive more and build their confidence.
Exposure therapy for Emetophobia is a little different. No one wants you to face actual vomiting, but you need to face the situations and places you avoid out of fear of it happening. This helps you learn that vomiting is not that likely and that you don’t have to be afraid all the time.
Stage 6 - Dropping the struggle
The sixth stage of recovering from Emetophobia is learning the drop the struggle against anxiety and learn some acceptance. Acceptance is a bit of a misunderstood term and often incorrectly used. In this context, it refers to the fact that the attempts to stop vomiting are often causing more impact on your life than being sick. It is about recognising that it might not be a cost worth paying and that there might be an alternative way.
