Fear Of Throwing Up
To many people, the fear of throwing up sounds like a strange thing at first. However, it’s ranked as one of the most common phobias in the United States and known among medical experts as emetophobia. Millions of people are suffering from this condition, that can have a serious negative impact on a person’s life.
Click Here To Overcome Your Fear Of Throwing Up
Nonetheless, many people search in vain for an effective emetophobia treatment.
Different people are afraid of different things: some are afraid of throwing up themselves, some are afraid that others might throw up.
Even the sound of hearing another person throw up might cause panic-like states of fear in them.
Psychologists believe that emetophobia is often caused by very negative past experiences, where an individual has gone through intense states of fear and nausea, and thus the brain formed an unconscious connection between these two states.
To people who aren’t familiar with this phobia, it might seem like a rather harmless and curious fear. But it can have a debilitating effect on people’s lives. Some people do everything to avoid any situation that could lead to nausea. They avoid bus rides, flights, getting on a boat, parties, foods that might cause an upset stomach. Women sometimes avoid getting pregnant because they are afraid of morning sickness, and sometimes take (harmful) medication to suppress their period.
Some patients are also obsessively worried about bacteria, germs and the possibility of catching an infection or getting sick. For the same reason, some people don’t eat out at all – they have to prepare all their foods by themselves. Others avoid being around children, because they’re afraid that the children might throw up.
Treatments
There are now different treatment approaches to help people get over emetophobia:
The classical approach is psychotherapists refer to as exposure treatment. It’s basically a form of desensitization, where a person with a phobia of vomiting is repeatedly exposed to pictures and videos of vomiting people in order to gradually make them feel more at easy with the situation.
However, the effectiveness of this kind of therapy as it pertains to the fear of throwing up is disputed, and some experiences seem to indicate that it might actually worsen the fear for some patients.
Although some patients won’t take drugs because they are afraid that they can make them feel sick and nauseous, others might resort to taking anxiety medication and antidepressants. However, there is no particular emetophobia medication, and the side-effects of taking these kinds of drugs include such things as blurred thinking, depression, confusion, slowing down or reflexes (clumsiness), forgetfulness, lack of energy, and in some cases mania, hallucinations, hostility and rage.
Hypnosis is still one of the most effective ways to overcome the fear of throwing up, because you can use it to directly communicate with your subconscious mind. It’s in your subconscious mind where the connection between intense fear and vomiting has been established. Instead of fear, you can thus tell your subconscious mind that vomiting is an unpleasant, but not threatening experience.
You won’t be afraid of vomit anymore and be able to comfortably do all the things that you might dread or avoid right now because they could lead to nausea.
