Helping the fear of sick / emetophobia at 1066 Therapy
covering East Sussex, Battle, Hastings, Bexhill, Rye, Heathfield, Hailsham, Eastbourne, Crowborough, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, Ashford and Kent.
The fear of sick, vomit, vomiting, being sick, or of others being sick is known as emetophobia. Emetophobia is the seventh most common phobia generally. Alongside social phobia, it is the one people most commonly consult me for help with. These two fears or phobias seem to have the most debilitating effects on people’s lives.
I have helped a variety of clients with a fear of sick at my practice near Battle, East Sussex. Both men and women, of all ages and all backgrounds can develop this fear. However, it seems to be more common with women although this might be due to levels of reporting. Another commonly associated phobia is phagophobia or pnigophobia ~ the fear of choking.
Typical behaviours
Emetophobia can cause us to limit or control our life to avoid situations where we might feel or be sick. Or where we might see / smell / hear others being sick. Some of us may sometimes feel barely able to leave the relative safety of our own home. Others may not feel quite so limited but worry about sick a lot. As a result, we feel uncomfortable a lot of the time. Sadly, some women avoid becoming pregnant and having children because they are too anxious of having morning sickness and/or helping their children if they were unwell.
Emetophobia is very often accompanied by other problems such as social anxiety depression or low self-esteem, which only makes things worse.
What Causes Emetophobia?
Neuroscientific research over recent decades has found that strong fears or phobias have their origin in many past experiences which have been overwhelming, distressing. These dysregulate our nervous system. Crucially, if we do not get appropriate help at the time to resolve the overwhelm/distress, our system stores the memories of the experiences ‘implicity’, (meaning without pictures and words). The events can then traumatise our system. A part of our brain called the limbic system stores the emotional memory of the events. As a result of having little or no support / help with the overwhelm / distress, our nervous system remains dysregulated – often for many years – until we can resolve the emotional impact(s) of the difficult experiences. The vast majority of people do not consciously connect the actual causes to the phobia.
In my experience of working with this phobia, it is rare that the distressing experiences are directly connected to vomit. In fact, it has yet to be the case in my practice. So why the phobia? What tends to happen is that our system creates the phobia as a ‘frame of reference’. As a way of ‘making sense of’ the inner discomfort – that sense of ‘something bad about to happen’ – caused by our dysregulated nervous system. Most of us are not aware that we have any inner discomfort though. The way we feel inside is our ‘normal’ and we will have been this way for many years.
Emotions are not contained
Importantly, if we have this phobia we will tend to lack the ability to contain and self-soothe our emotions – any emotions – so all of our emotions tend to be BIG! For instance, we won’t just feel happy about….whatever….we will probably feel euphoric. We won’t just feel a bit irritated by an everyday setback to our plans, we could be really angry. And a difficult (non-life theatening) situation which would ordinarily need a mild response of concern with a low level of adrenaline for us to get through, tends to be experienced as high anxiety or even panic. This is because we have difficulty containing/soothing our emotions. This lack of ability to contain our emotions also has its origins in our very early experiences. It usually has its roots in Childhood Emotional Neglect. On occasion, people with this phobia can be relatively ‘shut down’ when it comes to their emotions. That is, apart from anxiety / panic about this issue. This is another (unconscious) behaviour dating from our early years.
What about panic?
Intense feelings of panic are caused when we are fully ‘triggered’ into our survival response and are flooded with survival hormones. We go into a fight / flight response when faced with, or anticipating, the object of our fear. Triggers are usually ‘sensory experiences’ (i.e. a sight, sound, smell, taste, action, or bodily sensation) in the present, which somehow reminds our limbic system of the past unresolved event(s). Triggers can also be anticipatory thoughts of our fear – self-triggers. These anxious thoughts arise as a result of our upset nervous system. Triggers can be diverse, so it can be difficult to pinpoint them. However, they often become clearer as therapy progresses.
It is fair to say that the vast majority of situations involving sick are not directly life-threatening. So we don’t need a full survival response. However once triggered, our limbic system will still ‘sound the alarm’ AS IF we are in danger now. We are vulnerable to all sorts of triggers until we properly process the emotional conflict or trauma .
What can I do to help?
Emetophobia is a complex phobia and seems to have many different ‘strands’ underlying the main symptoms. In addition, it is usually part of an array of other problems such as anxiety, ‘stress’, and so on. As such, there is no ‘quick fix’ for this issue. I offer different therapy approaches but I have found that Lifespan Integration therapy tends to produce the most effective results when working to resolve and heal the underlying causes.
Read what some of my clients have to say about resolving their fear of sick…
Call me now on 07722783490 or 01424 772392 to book your free 30 minute initial consultation.
