i don't think anyone knows how to treat emetophobia

so i wrote recently that i was going to a new doctor who was a "specialist" in short term cognitive therapy. i went there (over 100 miles away) in hopes that he would be the answer to my problems and give me hope and help.

but no, just like ALL the others he basically just spat out the normal spiel that all the doctors do..... identifying the erroneous thoughts and change them to alternatives. well i've heard that from about 8 differnt Ts and 3 Pdocs now and guess what, IT DOESN"T work unless they help me to come up with alternative thoughts, which NO ONE WILL DO.

I AM SO ANGRY.

he was like, you already know about this?
me: yeah, it's in EVERY self help book in the bookstore, how could i not. not to mention i've been to about 10000 doctors who all have said the same thing
him: well, i guess we're done here. you can't get better unless you figure out on you OWN how to fix your problems AND take LOTS of drugs which i'm going to call your doctor in your hometown about now so he can try to get you to take them.

what a waste. i feel like such a fool.

no doctor seems to fully understand the scope of the problem or what it is like to be afraid of your own body.

i need serious help, but i have NO idea where to get it. insurance doesn't cover this, so i can't afford to go to every single doc in town looking for an answer.

someone help me please!

Rubylizard, there's an interesting phohia site that I love, Panphobia and it has all sorts of resources. See if it can give you any comfort? It has book and Webpage references, etc.

http://www.panphobia.com/disease/emetophobia.htm

I had a girlfriend with your fear but not quite so serious I don't think. But it ended up being part of an OCD package which got better after she changed her life around a bit, found her future husband and changed her outlook and interests, etc. I'm sorry you are having such a hard time and running into people you don't feel can help. I hope you come up with some way to get help.

Sorry to hear you didn't get help after such effort to find someone who was a real expert. This may be a stupid idea, but what about trying someone who uses an alternative approach. I'm not talking about anything out there in left field (unless you're into that stuff), but maybe not a CBT specialist or a pdoc. Maybe a therapist with a different orientation or even one who doesn't have "standard" credentials. It would probably be easier to find someone like that if you are in or near a larger city. Just a thought. Sometimes trying something totally unexpected can make a difference. Or maybe not. Good luck...

So sorry about your experience with unhelpful therapists.
Sometimes my T utilizes a CBT intervention, and I've explained to her why I dislike such treatment and do not find it helpful at all. She said most of her clients like it and respond very well to a cognitive-behavioral approach. She now seldom utilizes it; instead we go with the psychodynamic stuff. She has good training and has the letter PsyD following her name...... We have done some excellent work using this approach.

Best of luck!
Keep us posted.

Unfortunately thats how any form of therapy works - the therapist cant fix us we have to do all the work ourselves - come up with what help and what doesn't help and do what does help. I used to have a fear of getting sick from mayonaise. I got past it by using it in extremely small amounts at a time and slowly as it didn't make me sick I would increase it. and telling myself that I was now an adult with an adult stomach that if I can handle other foods I can handle a minute amount of mayo. Instead of mayo I also bought mricle whip that has a tangy sweet taste to it instead of the mayo taste. Now I can eat mayo but not very often but atleast it is now based on taste not my fear of getting sick from it.

Hang in there.

Hey.

CBT is better suited to some people than others...

I agree that overly focusing on thoughts can be counter-productive for some people. I know it is counter-productive for me.

Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions so I can better understand what is up?

(With the intention of suggesting something other than cognitive restructuring).

A phobia for your own body?

How does that manifest? I mean usually the object of the phobia is something fairly specific that can be avoided. But... Well... You can't really avoid your own body. It kind of follows you around (so to speak).

Um... Do you have a panic attack if you overly focus on a part of it? Is it about a particular part? All of it?

Or does it manifest as a more generalised anxiety given that your body follows you around all the time and all?

special k.... a phobia of my own body as in the emetophobia (fear of vomiting) i'm scared of something my body might do, something in me....not something outside of me that i could avoid (people, crowds, elevators, planes, spiders, etc...) i'm scared of something that could be within me.
makes it really hard to "desensitize" myself to stuff the way that is recommended for most phobias.
like, i'm going to decide to feel *just a little* bit nauseated today, then the next day do it a little bit more..... nope, can't do that. if my body feels nauseated it feels nauseated, then i go into full blown panic.
also, i've read on other forums dedicated to this very phobia, that making yourself sick is a VERY bad idea and all those brave enough to try end up worse in the end.
so the "flooding" method of exposure is out too.

i really wish i could find a therapist like you guys have mentioned above that would be willing (or KNOW HOW) to do some other kind of therapy other than CBT)
but i live in a small city and people don't seem to know stuff like that.
i am getting acupuncture, which is helping my body out so much, but it doesn't change the way i think about it.

Rubylizard, your head is afraid of your body. There's a connection there! You've heard of cancer victims visualizing little monsters to eat their cancers and how that can work; your mind has all of the influence there is over your body when there's nothing physically wrong with your body. Your body isn't a separate entity that ultijmately somone (therapist) outside is going to make obey; only your own head can do that. Your head "invented" the symptom in the first place. Have you tried dialoging with your body, seeing what it "wants" or is getting from the phobia? Is there a progression of what makes you naseous so you could "practice" on something that you probably can eat but which makes you not feel very well. I can differentiate in my body between when my nausea is going to make me sick and when it is eventually just going to go away.

I imagine you have regular "talk" therapists in town? Go to one and work with them on cobbling together a therapy you both would like to try with you. Therapists give suggestions on how to treat someone based on what has worked with their many clients with illnesses similar to yours in the past but it's possible they're not set in concrete how they're willing to treat you. You can talk to them about why you don't think their way will work for you and work hard to try it rather than just have your head reject it and when it does or doesn't work after a good trial on your part, then you and a therapist adjust the therapy, knowing more about what does and doesn't work by experience together instead of you coming in off the street, all control and quite sure nothing works and unwilling to get to know a therapist and try to work with them to get to know you better. Get out of your own way; you're not the first or last person with this symptom.

What is real is that phobias are all... phobias, irrational fears. CBT works well with them, but like another stated, you must be willing to do the work. If you don't think you can, or don't believe CBT will work for you, then it won't. BUT it can work for you, imo.

I'm sorry you have a phobia. I had this same fear for a short time, so I know how horrible it can be. (I had jaw surgery where I could not open my mouth, and was nauseated from the surgery...)

Thought changing is what you need. Exposure therapy probably isn't the best course of action. When you begin to fear, then try remembering to change your thinking to: I don't usually vomit. If I do vomit, what is the worst thing that could happen? (Usually a T will help you realize that things aren't so horrible IF.) You also need to focus on your breath, as holding your breath makes the fear worse.

You can run through the CBT common distortions of thought, and find many of them that you are doing I think. Black and white thinking? Catastrophizing?

IMO you can go back to a CBT therapist and have them explain it to you better, so you realize that IS the tool you can use to heal. Good wishes.

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((((((((( Rubylizard ))))))))

I'm sorry, but I don't even know what emetophobia is!

(It's the fear of vomiting.)

Believe in Him or not --- GOD LOVES YOU!

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Oh, thanks Sky!

tanyagrave - emetophobia is the fear of vomiting

Are you afraid of vomit more generally, or is it fear of you throwing up more in particular?

Do you restrict your eating?

So if you feel nauseous you panic about vomiting?

> i've read on other forums dedicated to this very phobia, that making yourself sick is a VERY bad idea and all those brave enough to try end up worse in the end.

Perhaps... It is probably useful to bear in mind that people on internet boards for the phobia are likely to be the ones with the phobia rather than the ones who have been successfully treated. It might be that most people ARE successfully treated with flooding, it is just that you are talking to the people who haven't been successfully treated (by any means).

Is it a fear of vomiting in public, or vomiting more generally?

Do you know when it started?

i'm afraid of myself vomiting. and i know i got a LOT worse when i actually did do the deed 2 years ago. it was all downhill since then.
yes, i panic if i feel nauseated for outside reasons and i also feel nauseated if i panic in general. i can't win.
out of the thousands of people who go to the other forums, most are being treated and keep everyone updated on things, if someone finds something that even remotely works, they talk about it. this is why i'm convinced that no one knows enough to fix it.
and i don't care if i am sick in public, alone or with close friends, it is all equally terrible.
i know when it started, but the 8 or 9 therapists and myself cannot figure out a reason it started then, so we tend to disregard that at this point.

so you are okay with other people vomiting, just not you? how come? is it something about the way it feels or tastes or... what?

do you remember what made you vomit 2 years ago?

> i'm convinced that no one knows enough to fix it.

so you have an incurable illness?
quite a lot is known about the treatment of anxiety...
treatments can be fairly effective too...

> i know when it started, but the 8 or 9 therapists and myself cannot figure out a reason it started then, so we tend to disregard that at this point.

because it makes no sense and is incurable?

is this view of yours... do you feel hopeless... or determined?

What about if you are all alone and nobody sees you or knows that you vomit? Is that as bad as with a few close friends around or in public?

What is it that you are afraid will happen if you vomit?

Would you be willing to tell us about how it started?

Hi Special K,
When you vomited two years ago, do you remember what it was that scared you?

My mother feared vomiting, not to a panic point, but she really got scared if she thought she was going to vomit. She said this fear occurred when she vomited many years ago and she had false teeth, I am not sure what happen, I think this caused her have trouble breathing when she was vomiting.

Hello I hope you are doing well at this time. My pERSONAL feeling on your disorder is not that you are afraid of vomiting. You are scared, or had an episode of vomiting and panicked because you felt helpless, and sick. Thephobia I feel is not the vomiting but the deathly scared feeling of getting sick and death. If that makes sense and you relate the vomiting to death and it becomes a very traumatic incident to get sick because of the relation to vomiting and dying. It is generally turned into panic and fear of death and causes POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER from trying to control not becoming sick, even to the point of OCD and not wanting to be around germs, and so forth. If the OCD< and the POST TRAUMATUC STRESS is not dealt with the disorder becomes harder to control stresswise, because the panic is always there around condiditons that make disease possible, so you try to control your environment so that you wont get sick but many times the stress makes you sick from wanting to comtrol the environment, so you wont get sick. It just becomes a never ending cycle of sickness and confusion and exhaustion from the overconcern over sickness from the OCD. The post traumatic stress that comes from sll of this is just worse because of the stress factors as well and in time all you feel is burned out and burned up. maybe you should leave an email for the Dr here on this site so that he can maybe help you find a therapist that deals with Post Traumatic Stress that is sometimes the root of the problem and the OCD, and the constant obsession of germs, and getting sick. If you can find a therapist to help you figure out why you have the PTSD then the OCD can be helped it is not just forget about it, it is a disorder and a very serious disorder at that, and I hope you find help soon for your problems, so that you can get better with the right therapy for the OCD and the PTSD that has caused this obsession that you fear death and dying. Take care I hope the best for you in your journey, to find the help you need. Sincerely Soidhonia