Huge win for my recovery (trigger warning)
TRIGGER WARNING ahead, for the words I will use and the situations I'll describe. Don't read if you are triggered by certain emetophobia-related words. Just know the tl:dr is that it happened and I came out stronger, which I hope gives people hope for their own recovery.
So. Big win for me over the last couple weeks. I want to share because I used to read posts like these and think, how? So I want to share my learning.
2 weeks ago I had a stomach bug. It started with a couple episodes of diarrhoea and loss of appetite. I tried to stay calm, but my emetophobia extends to diarrhoea too, so I felt stressed about what might be happening. I got through the rest of the day before starting to feel stomach pains that felt like bad stomach acid. Antacid didn't help. I then started to feel fever and chills and realised I had some kind of illness/virus and I went to lie down.
I was so anxious that I was even a bit delusional. I then did something I've never allowed myself to do before. I asked my partner to come and be with me. Usually, the idea of being sick in front of him was too scary for me to accept any support. But I let him lie next to me as I tried to sleep, and let him comfort me as I moaned about my fears.
Eventually, he left to go make himself dinner, and I fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later and realised I would be sick. I'd brought a bowl in with me and after a few minutes I vomited.
The thing is, I realised what was happening, that I had a stomach bug, and I felt relieved. I knew what it was, and the thing is, like everyone always says, vomiting wasn't scary. I felt shaky and tired, but I felt a lot better after I was sick. The stomach pains stopped. I went back to sleep and then vomited twice more in the night, sleeping in between.
I handled it. I was fine. I was safe.
And I realised why vomiting seems so scary to me. It's about everyone else! My main memory of vomiting is of my toxic family gathering around me to watch when I was ill, my parents yelling me about how itbwas my fault, my brother panicking and amping up the stress. What a horrible situation it was. But this time? I was in my room, by myself, comfortable in bed, and no one needed to know. No one needed to be reassured, I didn't have to explain myself, I could just take the bowl to the bathroom, wash my hands, and go back to sleep. It was such a RELIEF to know I could create an environment where I felt safe.
Since then, I have had a weird stomach because it's been recovering, but also I had other big stressors going on. But I haven't feared vomiting, not once. I can now feel confident that if I'm vomiting, it's because my body needs to, and it will recover. I am still anxious about diarrhoea, because in my mind, that seems to happen much more often than vomiting, but that is also really linked to my anxiety so it's a cyclical thing that will just flare up occasionally and in the meantime, I can break the cycle by working on my anxiety.
I'm here to tell you, recovery is possible. And i wouldn't have figured out the root of my phobia without vomiting, so I got something out of it.
So my advice would be: think about the root of your phobia. What original vomiting anxieties exist in your psyche? As an adult who has autonomy, what can you do differently to soothe those anxieties? And most of all, your brain IS lying to you. It's not that unpleasant. It doesn't last forever. It's not a horrendous nausea. I'm sure sometimes it is, but even then, you have the power to get through it. When I was vomiting, I remembered when I last had a bug, pre-phobia, about 9 years ago. I had vomited 6 times over about 2 hours in the night, and then it was done. So this time round, whenever I vomited, I knew I was one step closer to it being over. Remind yourself that vomiting is something temporary and brief and you can deal with it however you want. Lying in bed by myself felt so safe. When I vomited, I sat there afterwards and thought 'woah, I just threw up. And now I'm done. I'm a badass!' Cringe I know, but I felt oddly elated with pride. And I was so tired that I got relief in between by being asleep.
I'm sure I'll get past the anxiety about diarrhoea too (that is also linked to a worry that people will overhear what I'm doing and will shame me for it). But for now, I'm still experiencing anxiety about that, and I'm just gonna remind myself whatever my body does is okay. And I needed a win, so I'm grateful I had it.