u/hzyshadeofwinter

I'm not even really... feeling nauseous? I can't tell what's going on with me but whatever it is it's not real nausea. But I've had stomach pain for a while and last night randomly I got this sense of impending doom and have been extremely anxious, trembling and weirdly dissociated ever since. I managed to sleep for a few hours but now I'm awake again and it's come right back. I haven't had a dissociation like this in a really long time.

I can tell my brain is trying to do all these traps of "Don't panic because then you'll raise your blood pressure and be more likely to puke, don't take any meds to feel better because then you'll raise your chances of puking too" etc. but it's all magical thinking crap and I need to stop avoiding the possibility.

I'm trying not to get in the cycle of being angry at myself for being scared, but man, I used to be so good until earlier this year. And in general I AM good unless it's happening to me, but my brain likes to make random exceptions I guess. It's humiliating to me for myself to be this scared over something this silly. Though I'd never say that about someone else obviously.

The actual dream itself wasn't too important, in it I was in some kind of maze attraction with themed rooms where I had to collect a substance/item from each room and mix them together to create some kind of potion. What I remember is: yellow dried plant fibers (I recognized these as an ingredient in my rabbit's foraging mix in real life), blue flower petals, sand, something called "angel's blood" which was a pure black grainy sludge that would collect slowly on an artificial shoreline, and a metal chain necklace. The first time I did this, I put all the ingredients together at once and it pretty much exploded and burned through the cup I had it in. So I did it a second time, this time getting a heavier duty cup and a wagon to pull it around in, and putting in each ingredient as I went. I remember the order I went was the wilderness room (yellow fibers) first, prairie room second (blue flower petals) and then had a conversation with someone for what felt like a long time with only those two things in the cup. Then desert room (sand), then the room with the angel's blood (I don't know how to describe this room without being disrespectful. It seemed like a replica of an indigenous community's living area, and there were people in there who were upset at me for taking more of the angel's blood than originally planned as it was sacred for them and running low) and then the party room (metal chain). In the dream I questioned whether the chain was actually the item from the room I was supposed to collect, since the other rooms had substances and this was one object. In my cup all the other substances were just sitting together but when I added the chain to the cup last, it reacted instantaneously with the angel's blood and melted both the cup and burned a hole straight through the wagon I had it in, and also emitted THE SMELL.

I can't describe it accurately. It's the worst metallic smell/taste in the air that I could imagine, and it's definitely not something I have ever smelled in real life. There was nothing in my bedroom that would ever smell like that, so it was truly created by my mind, not an actual smell working it's way into my brain as I slept. And now nearly a week later it's still haunting me. The necklace chain from the dream is actually part of a necklace I have in real life, which I now can't even look at without being nauseated. If I think of the dream, I can smell it just as strong as in the dream. Has anyone ever experienced this? It's repulsive, I want to forget about it.

In my other thread, where I asked about posting this kind of thing, the consensus was that it was appropriate to post here. But I do feel weird about it and if I am mistaken and this is inappropriate, please tell me and then I will take it down.

The movie ends with >!Bear dying which ends the wish, so Nikki switches out of the brainwash effects of the wish and back to her normal consciousness, finding Bear's dead body in her lap and every aspect of her life completely destroyed with zero memory of anything that happened !< That's a poor description but if you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about and how emotionally gutting it is as an ending.

My last alter died earlier this year, before this movie came out. We had an unhealthy relationship that was not similar to the movie but we were very toxic to each other. But the moment he died I instantly had that moment, where it was all over and I snapped back to the consciousness I had a decade ago before becoming plural. That exact feeling of waking up in unimaginable terror with his "body" and a life I don't recognize and no memory of how it got that way, and realizing my years of dissociation have ruined any semblance of a future I could have had. Sometimes I worry that I grieve the life I missed out on (and will miss out on due to decisions I made while dissociated) more so then I miss him as an individual. But then sometimes I realize I miss the way he smelled and when I see pictures of his face (he was a fictive, I avoid the media but sometimes encounter a random reaction/meme image or something in unrelated spaces) I still feel like he's the most perfect and beautiful thing I've ever seen, but I have to remember that that's the same feeling that made me fawn to him when he was hurting me.

Every aspect of my plural experience has been like something out of extreme horror, including the recovery from it that I'm still going through and will be for a long time, and I feel so alone because it feels like no one else has an experience like this, and no therapist would ever believe it.

Hope this is appropriate to post here.

Leaving out all identifying information, I used to have a dissociative disorder, but over the course of the last four years all of the alters have "passed" (fused) with the last one occuring fairly recently. It's been progressively difficult to adjust to each loss and I'm wondering if there's a place to discuss the really complicated feelings that come from this (stages of grief, relief, survivor's guilt, etc.) and also how to approach this with a therapist (if at all) I havent really been able to get therapy before due to the dissociation symptoms, and I have no idea if I should just leave that era of my life in the past and never bring it up, or if it's relevant information to tell a therapist but at the risk of them not believing me and dropping me as a client, etc.

Again, sorry if this isn't the place but I appreciate anyone who looked.

Will be a long read but I am posting around kinda struggling to find what help I should get for whatever is going on with me. I posted on the main emetophobia sub about a week ago and I don't think it was the right place.

I used to think I had emetophobia, because when I was young I had very severe and destructive panic responses to vomiting (as a note, I have been told that these are NOT panic attacks so I will not call them that). However I am not actually afraid of vomiting, I don't mind it in fiction or seeing other people do it at all, I don't have anything I do in daily life to avoid getting sick (literally ate a piece of pretzel out of my coworker's unwashed hand the other day lol, and will go out with people who have been sick, eat expired/nasty food because I can't bring myself to care). I was reading a "recovered emetophobe AMA" on the other sub and thinking their exposure process doesn't sound like me since I have no anxiety response to any of the exposures they listed doing. I pretty much never think about vomiting and when I do see it or think about it I'm just kinda like "eh, lol" but therein lies the problem I think. I'm perfectly okay and welcoming to the idea that I'll vomit again someday, I think it would be fun to puke after being on a roller coaster or being drunk at an event because I'd still probably be having a good time, or even being sick and getting to call out of work and watch TV all day, it doesn't bother me to think about. I have even joked about putting on a cosplay or a scary costume before the next time I vomit so I can make a cursed video. The point is, I'm cool with it. What I'm not cool with is the panic responses I have when I actually do vomit or get close. They are very severe panic responses that result in harm to myself and others, and vomiting (or getting close) is the ONLY thing that triggers this.

I brought this up with therapists over the years and they pretty much just said that since I'm older now and have learned a lot of great coping skills, I'm very unlikely to have a panic response like I used to if I got sick again. So I lived my life fully confident that whenever I did get sick, I would not have a panic response. During this time I had two incidents where I thought I would vomit (one was alcohol and one was some mild illness) but I didn't, and I didn't have a panic response, so this solidified my confidence.

Then one night two months ago I was nauseous and close to vomiting, it felt like the nausea was in my bones and was a lot more severe than the last two close calls, and I had an absolutely devastating panic response. It was the worst panic response I've ever had in my life and I'm still recovering from it. I was in a very ideal situation (at home, alone, with access to all my coping stuff) and was using all my coping skills, but they weren't enough. They WERE working but even with each of them taking the edge off 1%, the panic was still so severe. I was not afraid that I was going to die, I was not even afraid that I was going to vomit, my nervous system was just absolutely losing it for about 5 hours straight. It only ended when the nausea went away.

I am now very afraid to go back to the reckless way I was living before because I realized how it was PURELY luck that I'm not currently in jail or worse because I didn't vomit and subsequently panic in public or around other people in all these years. This panic response was safe because it happened at home alone. But if this happens ANYWHERE else, I hesitate to think how bad it could be. This won't be the last time I get close to vomiting or do vomit, nor do I want it to be! But it MUST be the last time I have a panic response like this, for the sake of myself and everyone else.

Does this still sound like emetophobia? Should I seek phobia therapy, or something else? Thanks in advance to anyone who reads this and can consider pointing me in a direction.

I hope this is the right place to post this, it's probably a long read but I am posting around kinda struggling to find what help I should get for whatever is going on with me.

I used to think I had emetophobia, because when I was young I had very severe and destructive panic responses to vomiting (as a note, I have been told that these are NOT panic attacks so I will not call them that). However I am not actually afraid of vomiting, I don't mind it in fiction or seeing other people do it at all, I don't have anything I do in daily life to avoid getting sick (literally ate a piece of pretzel out of my coworker's unwashed hand the other day lol, and will go out with people who have been sick, eat expired/nasty food because I can't bring myself to care). I was reading the "recovered emetophobe AMA" today and thinking it doesn't sound like me since I have no anxiety response to any of the exposures they listed doing. I pretty much never think about vomiting and when I do see it or think about it I'm just kinda like "eh, lol" but therein lies the problem I think. I'm perfectly okay and welcoming to the idea that I'll vomit again someday, I think it would be fun to puke after being on a roller coaster or being drunk at an event because I'd still probably be having a good time. I have even joked about putting on a cosplay or a scary costume before the next time I vomit so I can make a cursed video. The point is, I'm cool with it. What I'm not cool with is the panic responses I have when I actually do vomit or get close. They are very severe panic responses that result in harm to myself and others, and vomiting (or getting close) is the ONLY thing that triggers this.

I brought this up with therapists over the years and they pretty much just said that since I'm older now and have learned a lot of great coping skills, I'm very unlikely to have a panic response like I used to if I got sick again. So I lived my life fully confident that whenever I did get sick, I would not have a panic response. During this time I had two incidents where I thought I would vomit (one was alcohol and one was some mild illness) but I didn't, and I didn't have a panic response, so this solidified my confidence.

Then one night two months ago I was nauseous and close to vomiting, it felt like the nausea was in my bones and was a lot more severe than the last two close calls, and I had an absolutely devastating panic response. It was the worst panic response I've ever had in my life and I'm still recovering from it two months later. I was in a very ideal situation (at home, alone, with access to all my coping stuff) and was using all my coping skills, but they weren't enough. They WERE working but even with each of them taking the edge off 1%, the panic was still so severe. I was not afraid that I was going to die, I was not even afraid that I was going to vomit, my nervous system was just absolutely losing it for about 5 hours straight. It only ended when the nausea went away.

I am now very afraid to go back to the reckless way I was living before because I realized how it was PURELY luck that I'm not currently in jail or worse because I didn't vomit in public or around other people in all these years. This panic response was safe because it happened at home alone. But if this happens ANYWHERE else I hesitate to think how bad it could be. This won't be the last time I get close to vomiting or do vomit, nor do I want it to be! But it MUST be the last time I have a panic response like this, for the sake of myself and everyone else.

Does this still sound like emetophobia? Should I seek phobia therapy, or something else? Thanks in advance to anyone who reads this and can consider pointing me in a direction.

Might be a long post.

Basically, I used to think I had a phobia, because when i was younger I had severe panic attacks in response to a specific thing happening to me. The last time it happened was in 2013 , I was 14 and the panic attack was very, very bad. But when I sought phobia therapy, they said I didn't meet the criteria for a phobia because I'm not afraid of the thing in concept, actually quite the opposite, nor do I do anything to avoid the possibility of it happening. It's not on my mind during my daily life almost ever, not even in the context of my regular generalized anxiety which is about other things. I can do any of the exposure therapy resources readily available online and have zero reaction.

So I sought generalized anxiety therapy. I learned a lot of skills there, though not related to that specific situation since it never came up. But I did learn how to work through ANXIETY attacks (which are totally different to me, I have one of those every couple of months, usually about social situations). I expressed being worried I'd have a panic attack like that if the other trigger thing happened again, and pretty much every therapist reassured me that I'm much older now, have learned a lot of coping skills and methods, and I was very unlikely to have that reaction again. So I believed them and went through life with such a hubris that I didn't care if that happened because I knew I wouldn't have a panic attack. I even had a few close calls where I did not have a panic attack so that just boosted my confidence that it would never happen again.

Well, 13 years went by and my luck ran out. The actual thing didn't even truly happen, just got close, but I had another panic attack and it was BAD. Yes I'm older and stronger, but that means I'm also physically able to do more damage than when I was young. It lasted over five hours and only ended when the situation itself ended. I don't want to go into detail of how bad it was because it's humiliating, but think convulsions, ripping off clothing, uncontrollable screaming, complete incontinence, and worse for several hours straight with no reprieve.

It happened under absolutely ideal circumstances (I was at home, alone, with the ability to access and use every one of my coping skills) which I'm very grateful for, but it also worries me because if it was still THAT bad WHILE home alone utilizing every coping skill I know simultaneously, how bad would it be if it happened anywhere else. I know this won't be the last time this trigger happens to me, and I'm completely okay with that, again, I'm not afraid of it nor do I want to avoid it. I'm afraid of the panic attack and the idea that the only thing that stood between me and devastating harm/criminal charges/absolute destruction in a public place was pure luck that this didn't happen to me in public at any point in those 13 years.

I clearly need to seek another form of therapy because I cannot live in fear of having a panic attack again. Working on my anxiety is secondary, I want to work on the REACTION first. What type of therapy is best for this?? Any help is appreciated, thank you for reading if you did.