Hypnotherapy for emetophobia is help with a phobia no one enjoys - sufferers or non-sufferers
Let’s be honest – no one enjoys throwing up, the thought of throwing up, walking past a pile of vomit on a street, or seeing someone else be sick.
What exactly is emetophobia?
Emetophobia is a fear of vomiting or seeing others being sick. Its a phobia. And the word comes from the Greek word ’emeto’ meaning vomit and ‘phobos’ meaning fear.
What triggers emetophobia?
For a lot of people it starts in childhood.
Here are a few familiar scenarios.
(a). On a long car journey on a hot summer’s day your brother/sister was sick on you in the car
(b). At school someone was sick near you in assembly. Maybe some splashed on you.
(c). You’re obsessed with cleanliness and when you go out you’re scared to see sick on the pavement
(d). You’re obsessed with cleanliness and when you hear, “There’s a sickness bug going around” you worry like mad.
(e). Going to see a friend who’s just had a baby. The thought of the new born being sick scares you.
(f). You’ve no idea where your emetophobia has come from, but over the years it gets worse and worse.
(g). You’ve OCD and you need to always feel in control. You can’t stop others in public vomiting, so the fear of a lack of control grows and grows.
Emetophobia. What it stops you doing.
Emetophobia can shrink your world. For example, you stay at home for fear of catching germs in public, which you think will later lead to you being sick.
It can feed into your OCD. For example, you get an underlying psychological fear of feeling out of control. Why? You can’t stop people vomiting in public. In turn you don’t go out and socialise.
Or if you do out out it, has to be carefully managed. You might open doors using your sleeves, tissues, gloved hands etc, flush toilets using your feet and anything that has to be eaten using their fingers – for instance, sandwiches – you might eat down to where your fingers have touched. You become hyper-vigilant.
Vomiting is generally hard to control, so for those who fear sickness, the anxiety around the unknown intensifies.
You find travel really hard. The thought of flying. You, or others, being travel sick. New countries, new food, new hygiene standards so the thought of food poisoning leads to thoughts of bing sick. And on holiday thrill like rollercoasters and speed boats trigger thoughts of vomit. And as vomiting is generally hard to control the anxiety around the unknown intensifies.
Emetophbia can stand in the way of having a family. There’s the though of morning sickness - and your child being sick, then parties where other children come to the house and might be ill.
Socialising becomes difficult. You think if you have a night on the town you might be sick. Or those around you being sick in pubs, bars, at the taxi rank, pools of sick on the street. The thought dominates.
Is emetophobia all in the mind?
In one way, yes. Like other phobias, emetophobia is primarily rooted in the mind—it’s an anxiety disorder. And the fear response is disproportionate to the actual risk, but it feels very real if you’re person experiencing it.
So in that respect it is “in the mind” in the sense of being a mental health condition, but the suffering is genuine. It can throw all of your life out of sorts.
How can hypnotherapy help?
Hypnotherapy is a way of calmly looking at emetophobia and dialling down - or even removing - the impact totally that the phobia has on your life.
What is hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy literally means using hypnosis as therapy. It’s basically a relaxing way to re-programme your thoughts and behaviours so you’re kinder to yourself and less bothered by outside events and the internal negative thoughts you have.
So, on a practical level, hypnotherapy for emetophobia is a way of being deeply relaxed so it’s easier for the hypnotherapist to talk to your sub-conscious and land a new message. Think of it as being like a software upgrade to a 2.0. Your thinking is having the glitches removed.
How effective is hypnotherapy for emetophobia?
It can be very effective, especially when combined with other treatments like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - this is a combination of exposure therapy and challenging your existing thinking.
Put together it means you can re-learn your behaviours and begin to remove the negative associations attached to your fear of sickness.
What’s my experience of hypnotherapy for emetophobia?
As a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist my experience is two fold:
Firstly, using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to challenge emetophobics thinking and use exposure therapy.
Secondly, to use hypnotherapy as way of dialling down (or even taking away) all thoughts of vomit:
. Someone being sick
. Seeing vomit, say on a city street after the pubs close
. Stopping thoughts of vomit standing in the way of your life. For example, going on holiday, or getting pregnant.
Ready to try hypnotherapy for emetophobia? Come and see me in York, Leeds or Harrogate. Feel free to email me at jamesthomas@thegentlemind.co.uk or call me on 07787563099.
