My Emetophobia story

This is going to be tough to type out, I'll give it my best effort!

First and foremost, I am going to give you the Wikipedia definition of Emetophobia, for those who may not be familiar with this.

From Wikipedia:
Emetophobia is an intense, irrational fear or anxiety pertaining to vomiting. This specific phobia can also include subcategories of what causes the anxiety, including a fear of vomiting in public, a fear of seeing vomit, a fear of watching the action of vomiting or fear of being nauseated. Emetophobia is clinically considered an “elusive predicament” because limited research has been done pertaining to it. The fear of vomiting receives little attention compared with other irrational fears.
 
People with emetophobia frequently report a vomit related traumatic event, such as a long bout of stomach flu, accidentally vomiting in public, or having to witness someone else vomit, as the start of the emetophobia. This typically occurs in the teenage years and affects predominately females.

I cannot say the technical term for throwing up mentioned in the Wiki definition. Usually I will shorten it to just V* or simply V when speaking. I can barely say "throw up" or "sick". I have left it there just so its easier for everyone to understand though.

I believe part of this was mentioned in an earlier post, but if I remember it was a general overview, so I am revisiting it specifically.

It is pretty safe to assume that I formed OCD as early as 5 years old. Sometimes, they say, OCD and other contributing factors can cluster and form into a specific phobia such as Emetophobia. It depends on the person though, and that persons level of disgust/type of OCD. I have a very high level of disgust with situations. I formed Emetophobia in between 6-7 years old, so we will start there.

Basically the beginning of the story is that I was in second grade at the time, a new boy was in my class, and he had some sort of condition that caused him to throw up a lot. He was not actually sick, it would just randomly happen. I remember some years ago looking it up and trying to find answers, and I found something to that effect, but my memory is vague on it. I tend to block that stuff out. Anyway, he would throw up several times a day, and I don't remember what I did at first, or when the reaction started.... But I remember eventually having bad panic attacks and always worrying when the next time was going to be. When he would do it, I would run out of the classroom and have a panic attack. I got in trouble for that, so it was very negatively reinforced. The people in charge at the school just said I was rebelling early, even though I told them I was scared of the boy who was throwing up.

I had this boy in classes with me from 2nd grade, up until I dropped out in 9th grade. In middle school and the week I spent in high school he wasn't in every class, but he was still very present. This continued. The exact same cycle, except for one thing: I quit talking about it after I got laughed off by the principal in 2nd grade. I hid my phobia.

I felt I was forced to hide it. There was no one like me and when I spoke about it to my parents or the school, everyone laughed like I was telling a lie just to get out of school. Every day I lived in terror, everything around me became a risk. And I had no one there to hold my hand or to help me, because people refused to understand or even listen. I had been trying to drop out of school since 3rd grade, faking sick, and eventually living up to the "rebellious" label everyone had given me, just so I would have an excuse. Also because I gave up, I was tired of fighting.

In my life, as far back as I can remember, I have had 3 instances where I've thrown up. 2 were stomach viruses, and the other was an isolated event when I was very young. I have not thrown up in 13 years. I dry heaved once last year due to a reaction to some medicine, but I don't count that since nothing happened.

Through life, I told mostly no one of this phobia, because I felt ashamed, alone, like a freak with some freak illness. I told a few of those in my close circle the basics, but that was it. Like "yeah, I don't like throw up, so please keep me away from it and don't tell me if it happens". I feared that if people knew about it, that would give them power to use it against me, trigger me on purpose, for "fun". My friends back then were sick assholes. Teenagers usually are.

A pivotal moment in my life happened at age 21. I had confided in an ex boyfriend of mine what was really going on with me, I told him everything about my Emetophobia and how it affected me. But I also told him I was alone in this and that it didn't have a name. That night after we finished talking and I went to bed, he stayed up all night looking it up on google. The next day he told me he found out it has a name and that other people have it too, and he gave me all kinds of resources regarding it. I cannot convey in words how that made me feel, to FINALLY have a name to go along with this. Knowledge is power, my friends.

I researched it extensively, and nearly everything I read, felt like I personally wrote it about myself. I felt.... happy in a way. After feeling alone and defective for so, so many years... I could finally say, "I suffer from Emetophobia" instead of "I just um, I have anxiety. It's complicated".



Over the years the Emetophobia has become worse and worse, no medications have helped it, aside from sedatives for the panic attacks and panic waves. This condition rules my life. Everything I do in life is to avoid anything even remotely related to throw up. It doesn't matter if its me, or someone else. The OCD plays into that in a big way, they feed off of each other. 

Every day I feel nauseated constantly, and I think it is imagined nausea. When I feel that way I cannot express it because then I feel like I will doom myself into being sick, if I say something about it. I just erupt in serious panic attacks that almost look like seizures and no one really knows whats going on.

Since this started at school, I have always had problems returning to school. I have tried 8 separate times to go back to school specially to get my GED, in hopes that I can one day go to college and get trained in a career. I have failed all 8 times. I also tried to go to Cosmetology school last year, and dropped out 4 months into it. For Cosmetology school, I was even sedated by my psychiatrist. It wasn't enough. I want nothing more than to go to school, I love learning. I can't help but feel like it was robbed from me though. I robbed it from me.

I dropped out of 9th grade 4 days into it. Well, not formally. I just quit going, and then I had to wait until I was 16 to go get the papers signed. So I failed 9th grade twice because I wasn't there at all. Before 9th grade I was in and out of a homebound program for disabled people unable to go to school temporarily.



If this blog is somehow reaching someone else out there suffering with something they feel they are going through alone, I just want to tell you something. You are not alone. I am not speaking to you in a "recovered" way, because I am by no means recovered. This gets worse for me every day lately. But I can say, after 21-22 years of suffering with this, I still have not given up completely on life(Despite many moments where I WANT to). Please don't give up. Death is the end, and it will not solve anything. I know the thoughts seem nice in the moment, but sleep on it for a few nights....

As a sufferer myself it is very hard to see the positive in life but, I remember the "good days" I have. Where I can see the beauty and wonder in the world. Despite the seemingly eternal suffering of so many people, there are people out there that are trying to make a difference in the world. To help feed people, give them clean water, shelter. The curiosity about our planet, how it will be in 10-15 or more years..... How life will change throughout my lifetime. What advancements will our species make in the next 50 years. Don't you ever wonder that? It's a gift to stay around to see how things play out through our lifetimes.

In our jaded society, overexposed to violence,massacres and suffering, its hard to see that beauty and to have that wonder. But trust me, its worth it. I am a natural pessimist, maybe you are too. But that doesn't mean I'm 100% negative about everything. Find something you love and cling to it. Hold onto it for dear life, because I can assure you, on those bad days where you just want to die, that thing will save your life. Literally.

Stigma, skepticism

Do people believe I'm blind in one eye? No one has ever told me that they can tell I'm blind in one eye, because there is no physical way to tell when looking at me. I can physically see that I am blind in that eye, if I cover my right eye I can clearly determine that I have no vision in my left eye. No one has ever asked me to prove that I am blind in one eye, so why do you ask me to prove that I have anxiety problems? Just because you cannot physically see it does not mean it isn't there. People constantly question it and whisper, even though both my anxiety problems and eye disease are well documented in patient history files(I know everyday people can't see my records, besides the point). It seems people can easily take my word that I am blind in one eye with no physical evidence, but for some reason when I mention I have anxiety problems they suddenly need strong evidence to support that. Break the fucking stigma. I have PTSD(age 19), Agoraphobia, Emetophobia(6 years old), GAD(childhood onward), Social phobia, Panic disorder, OCD(5 years old*). I've also been blind in one eye(age 15) due to Multifocal Chorioretinitis with possible Retinal Vasculitis that started at age 13. In fact, my prognosis at 14 included a seeing eye dog and a cane because I was supposed to be 100% blind by 18 years old.
(This was a post on facebook, below is a continuation)

So yeah, I know what it feels like to go nearly blind, I've been there. I have this disease in BOTH eyes. I almost went blind in my right eye, then it switched eyes and attacked my left eye too fast for my specialist to save it. At the time there was no surgery to bring my left eye back, the scar tissue reached the nerves, which deemed it as permanent damage. They had experimental surgeries but for one reason or another I couldn't participate. They have a surgery now, if the disease should ever attack that rapidly again. As for my blind eye(left).... There is no surgery. It requires something along the lines of an optic nerve transplant, which hasn't been invented yet(Luckily science is making advances)....

I lived my teen years hopeless, taking dangerous medications to try and save my eyesight, injections into my eye(not the eyeball, right below it) to make the treatment more potent, wondering how this even happened... And when I beat that prognosis I knew there was hope. Getting pregnant saved my eyesight, soon after I got pregnant my disease went into remission. My body had given me a second chance to do things differently. My disease flares up during times of extreme stress, in fact I have gone temporarily blind due to stress.

So I have an adventurous attitude about things, I like to read things, I like to put makeup on, I like to get dressed. I like to stare at things. I like to look at the wonders of the world. I like to feel pretty.

Because I know that one day I could easily be stripped of my vision, if my body decides its time. It could literally be any day.

Imagine how that would feel for you to be in that situation.

I've lead most aspects of my life with the attitude that I could go blind tomorrow, so I better do things I enjoy doing today. So I put on that fucking makeup, do my hair, and dress myself until I'm satisfied with it.

This ties in with anxiety because I have been limited in most things due to the anxiety and they are both invisible illnesses to YOU.

As for my eyes, you can't see: The lines, dots, flashes and all kinds of tracers I see in my visual field every day. Light being extremely brighter, the tunnel vision, the loss of depth perception and having to guess in almost every daily activity about distances, the mild pain that leads to migraines, the blindness in my left eye, the 20/150 vision in my GOOD eye.

And my anxiety, you can't see/feel: The thought processes that cluster, the neurons firing in my brain alerting my body of imagined danger, the body working up into panic, the imagined nausea, the obsessive thoughts that nag me endlessly, and so much more that I could list if you really want me to.

All you see with my eyes is: Nothing.
All you see with my anxiety is: Next to nothing. You might see a panic attack(I usually run away and hide to have my panic attacks), or me suddenly having to leave with little to no explanation.


You assume: I have good vision, and I'm a rude bitch.
I can assure you, neither assumption is true.

You can see more of my anxiety than you can regarding my vision. Yet people easily believe I am blind in one eye with little to no explanation, however with anxiety, they become skeptical.