Emetophobia

Inferior_Force wrote:What my lecturer meant was that "everything revolves around the patient". Significant others of the patient have to perform all kinds of reassuring tasks in order to accommodate his/her needs (like checking newspapers for pictures of spiders before the patient can read them). Now I would never deny that a phobia also negatively affects those who live with the phobic, but my lecturer made it sound as if the patient sub-consciously uses his anxiety to make others do things for him. Like: When I start to feel sick on a party and I ask my SO to leave, I sub-consciously just try control her social life. That is so nutty it would make me laugh if it didn´t upset me so much. Knowing that I will spoil her evening if I get an anxiety attack just makes me more anxious, I don´t "profit" from my phobia. Well. Psychoanalysts, huh?

OK. That is a bit of a narcissistic view of phobias. I have not thought for one second it is about me controlling OTHER people and making them do stuff, and no one has ever dared say that to me before because I think I would bite their heads off.

When I am feeling nauseous and phobic, part of my coping mechanism is to not tell ANYONE that is near by me. I don't want people fussing over me and asking if we need to go home and asking me if it's nausea or if I'm going to be sick, and asking me if I want a drink or whatever because that makes it real and that makes the nausea AND the anxiety worse. When I am genuinely feeling ill I isolate myself. A part of my phoia is that I can't have people around me when I feel ill. I can't have people touch me. A slight touch of my skin will make my stomach lurch.

So it is not about controlling what other people do, AT ALL.

Inferior_Force wrote:My lecturer said one thing that was useful: He said that many phobics are at a loss to describe what happens inside of them when they have an anxiety attack because they are so focused on what they fear. I second that, so the next time I started to feel nauseous/anxious I just asked to the inside: "Okay, I know I´m not feeling sick for physical reasons. What is wrong? Something must have made me feel bad, what was it?" It led to some interesting internal conversations, and the pressure on my stomach just vanished. Unfortunately, though, this only works sometimes. I feel like each time I make some progress with how to handle my phobia and decrease my anxiety, there comes a real vicious setback. I already know it will happen now as I write this post. I sometimes feel like I am not supposed to fight the nausea/anxiety, but understand what it is trying to tell me. Each time I´ve successfully battled the fear, someone inside me seems to decide to punish me for it. Does that sound familiar to any of you?

Going back on what I just said lol I have told 2 therapists on one occassion that I feel quite nauseous today and both of their responses were: "Well, what is it you are worried about bringing up". As in, what emotionally, am I hiding from them. Interestingly, I respond with something about how I am feeling inside and the nausea goes away.

I think anxiety/nausea for me are extremely related to my general feeling and whether something is going on underneath that I am not acknowledging.

When I feel nauseous, which is on a daily basis, I too will tell myself that this isn't REAL nausea, it is anxiety nausea and something is going on underneath that I need to work out. I don't always have time to sit and think about it right then and there if I am am work or something, but it does help to keep repeating that the nausea isn't real.

Bourbon