"I remember lying on the couch feeling like I was going to be sick and I couldn't breathe..."

Funny you say that, I've had emetophobia most of my life, which overlaps greatly with panic disorder (I only got those official diagnoses recently, but I think I've had them since I was little, and I've just been repeatedly misguided by medical professionals/therapists etc...)

When I was 8 I was diagnosed with GAD and put on Zoloft (half an adult starting dose, I believe 12.5mg?) I'm pretty sure this was also not long after I told the social worker (whom my parents had me start seeing in school when I was about 6 or 7) that I was "terrified of vomiting."

Guess I should've been more direct...

Anyway, just as I cannot remember when I developed such an intense fear of vomiting - I remember distinct episodes very well...as in for many of them I can even tell you how old I was and what colour I vomited and what I had eaten... LOL. But yet I can't recall a specific instance in which I went from not being so scared to being paralysed with terror... but I think it was sometime around when I was 4-5-ish.

And same thing with panic attacks. I don't know if they coincided with the onset of the phobia and that's why I can't recall a clear first...or if I was just too young to identify it or remember thinking to myself "I'm freaking out..." lol, I think it's a bit of both. But I definitely started getting worse panic/anxiety/phobic preoccupation around 7-8.... (strangely I also went through a period of a year or two of really bad headaches between 7-8 ish and 9 years old... they always made me really nauseous and in two specific cases I recall definite full-blown panic attacks because I was so close to puking.... haha and as far as getting headaches b/w 7-9 y/o and whether that is at all related to getting that GAD Dx.... may never know...