Question of the day.

   What genuinely disgusts you? 

   My answer: 

   Well, while generally I’d say I’m not a super easily disgusted person, when things do disgust me, they disgust me quite strongly, and the main such thing, since I’m emetophobic, is vomit, so for me the answer is very easy really. That means the sound of someone vomiting, very graphic descriptions of vomit or vomiting, the feel of vomit (luckily I don’t have to deal with human vomit directly like that but Misha’s vomit is something I do come in contact with once in a while and it really grosses me out), as well as sounds very similar or kind of related to vomiting like choking or belching, and textures that remind me of vomit like semolina or most mashy foods really or a lot of drinks that have bits of something like fruit floating in them. Also to a much lesser degree now but also words for vomit in all the languages I know and any sort of synonyms or related words like puke. I no longer find them as disgusting as I. used to, but they still do seem weirdly graphic to me and when I have a particularly difficult time with the emetophobia they can feel quite triggery. I particularly hate the Swedish word for it and the English word throw up feels way too descriptive for my liking so I don’t even get why apparently people consider it better than vomit. 

   How about you? 

Question of the day.

   What have you never done? 

   My answer: 

   Probably more things than I have. 😀 But one that comes to my mind that a lot people do at least once in their lifetime that I’ve never done and have no desire to do is I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I have smoked weed  with Olek and my Mum on their birthday this year (yep, their birthdays are on the same day), because my Aquarian curiosity was stronger than my fears and other aversions, but I’ve never smoked tobacco. Weed was a very interesting experience, but because of several things I don’t think I’m likely to do that again either, or at least I wouldn’t like to do that regularly. As you guys probably know by now, I have emetophobia=fear of vomit, and when I was a kid, I heard someone say that smoking cigarettes  caused her to vomit. So that instantly became a future no-no for me, and even though I now don’t think it’s a very common thing and rationally doubt it would happen to me (plus it didn’t happen when I was smoking cannabis, which I suppose is generally more emetogenic and can apparently even give you something called chronic hyperemesis syndrome so basically constant vomit if you use cannabis regularly) the idea of smoking cigs still puts me off. Other than that, probably as a result of my allergies and asthma (which is episodic and very mild but still is there nonetheless) I seem to be quite sensitive to cigarette smoke, so I’m really glad that no one in my family smokes regularly and if they do, it’s hardly ever at home. Because when people smoke around me, or even if I go into a room where someone was smoking not long ago, I get congested and wheezy quite quickly. It’s just mild, but still rather unpleasant to deal with, and it was very similar when I tried weed as well. My Mum also has asthma and whenever she smokes, she coughs and wheezes so much as if she’s been smoking loads all her life. So that isn’t very encouraging either. And then there’s that weird thing with me and smells, because I cannot feel most smells, I can only feel some very intense and chemical ones and even then it’s more just like a sensation of a yucky, bitter taste in the back of my throat rather than a proper smell I guess. So I hate any sort of perfumes, sprays and yeah, smoke is something I can feel too. Which is probably good, as unlike most anosmics, I’d sure know if something around me was on fire. But that’s just another reason why smoking anything just isn’t fun enough for me to want to do it regularly and to be able to like it. Weed is slightly more fun because you can actually get something out of it, it makes peopling a lot easier and you can have a lot of laughs and weird deep convos like we did (before that I don’t remember when was the last time I talked with my brother properly), it makes you more creative and I really liked the way I was thinking on it, but it’s still not enough for me to risk chronic vomit and make myself feel wheezy voluntarily, and I don’t know if the second time I’d try it, it won’t actually result in me feeling more anxious or sluggish-brained as is the case for some people. But with cigs, there’s absolutely nothing in it for me. 

   What’s such a thing for you? 🙂 

Question of the day.

   What will you never ever do under any circumstances? 

   My answer: 

   Have chemo! A lot of people in my Mum’s family, particularly on my grandad’s side, have had cancer, and some of them decided to have chemo and/or radiation, and from what I was observing or hearing from other family members about them made me feel like it hardly made them any better, or even if it did get rid of cancer successfully, they ended up having nasty long-term complications from the treatment which didn’t sound like they were a lot better than what they were originally treated for, like some weird blood-related conditions or heart issues or constant disabling fatigue. This has always made me feel like someone must be really in love with their life or desperate to live/not die if they decide on such radical treatment, and I’ve never been extremely attached to life as such, so on some level it’s a bit difficult for me to understand. Oddly enough, when my grandad had colon cancer many years ago, despite everything looked really bad for him, with it already being quite advanced, he flat out refused to have either chemo or radiation. Many people in our family were really frustrated, thinking that he was foolishly depriving himself of a chance to live and that his refusal of these particular treatments meant he was practically going to kill himself on his own wish, some apparently even said he was selfish. But my grandad very rarely changes his mind when people want him to, and my grandma and all immediate family supported his decision. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to live or anything like that, he simply said that he didn’t want to damage the still healthy organs of his body trying to get rid of the cancer, and that if he’s meant to die soon, he likely will anyway, whether from cancer/metastases or the toll that chemo/radiation would take on his body. He only had surgery from what I remember, I don’t think he had any other treatment than that though I may be missing something since I was only about eight at that time I guess and was at the boarding school for most of the time anyway. You’d think that if his siblings fared so poorly despite being treated much more extensively, he’d have even less chances for survival, but actually, despite recovering after the surgery took him a long time, he eventually did recover fully, with no remissions so far or anything like that, and has been in very good health and he’s now in his 70’s. I think it’s quite a miracle regardless of whether he was on chemo/radiation or not, because his cancer was advanced and prior to getting sick he didn’t have the best lifestyle. I’m definitely not saying this to try to prove how chemo/radiation is always bad and no one needs it, obviously each case is different and thankfully we all get to decide for ourselves how we want to be treated when we fall ill, perhaps for someone the possible benefits are worth all the hassle. It simply shows that it’s definitely not something that will work for everyone. But as for me personally, as I suppose many of you who are regulars here will be able to figure out, or maybe you even already know it from me, my reason for never ever wanting to undergo chemotherapy if I ever end up having cancer is that it makes you vomit. If you’re a newbie here, I’m emetophobic and vomit is one of the things that scare me most. I really cannot imagine what sort of extreme circumstances I would have to be in, what would have to be happening to me to cause me to undergo a treatment with such high risk of vomit. Even if I were so extremely sick that I’d figure out that what I’m sick with is a lot worse than vomit, I’d probably first try out any other treatment options that would be available to me which wouldn’t carry the risk of that side effect with them or in which it would be lower. 

   What’s such a thing for you? 🙂 

Question of the day.

   What food do you consider disgusting? 

   My answer: 

   Semolina, hands down! I hate, hate, hate the texture, it has always reminded me of yucky vomit, even before my emetophobia has exacerbated properly. Also it’s so insanely bland. You can add what you want to it, and it’ll always taste the same, semolin-y way, aka not taste at all. I remember when Olek was little and we still lived in our first house so all of our family shared one, huge room, and Olek wouldn’t fall asleep without a bottle of semolina with milk, and then he needed another one very early in the morning to keep him asleep for a couple more hours or otherwise he’d threaten that he’s gonna be “died of hunger” (I don’t know how to best put it in English to capture it but he said it in a very funny way grammatically and we laugh at it to this day whenever he’s hungry 😀 ). Once he’d have his bottle, he’d suck at it and guzzle clearly very happily. Sometimes, or especially when he was older, and occasionally even now though he’s 23 and having his own business and all that, Mum would make him semolina with milk and berries for breakfast, just like people have cereal or noodles with milk. I rarely hear about people, or babies, for that matter, in Anglophone countries eating semolina but in case it’s not a common or normal thing where you are, it definitely is here. Sofi also guzzled her semolina as a baby, and I loved feeding her with her bottle, but I hated whenever any of the semolina would accidentally spill out, I just have such strong aversion to it now that even just feeling it, without tasting it, is gross. As a kid I often had a problem going to sleep at the time when my parents would normally expect me to, and I’d keep Olek awake and make him laugh and do all sorts of mischief with him or argue with him, and sometimes Mum would threaten me, more jokingly than for real, that she’ll make me a bottle of semolina too to keep me quiet. 😀 Then I went to school and it turned out that semolina was a fairly regular thing there. I still vividly remember the first time I got chicken soup with semolina for lunch at nursery, which was a total novelty for me, I’d never have thought you could make chicken soup with semolina. I really like chicken soup, but that stuff was just… ewww! It didn’t even really taste all that much like chicken soup, just pretty flavourless broth full of this vomit thing and bits of vegetables that were so small that you could just think they didn’t get enough time to get digested properly. 😀 And I just couldn’t eat it, and the sister who was on a shift in our nursery group then had a very hard time understanding it. Probably because there were no other children, at least as far as I’m aware, who’d have a problem with foods like that. If anything, some were the opposite and preferred liquid or semi-liquid or very soft foods to anything more chewy or crispy because their parents hadn’t previously introduced solid foods to them, fearing that they won’t be able to teach a blind child, especially if with coexisting disabilities, how to bite and they might choke. So she insisted that I have to eat it all, no matter how long it takes me. I did sit with that bowl of vomit for hours, but eventually she just gave up, seeing that it wasn’t very likely that I’d ever eat it whole, and probably figured out that it’s really beyond the scope of my possibilities and she finally let me move on to the main course instead. When I later told my Mum about our amazing lunch on the phone, she was surprised too, to hear about chicken soup with semolina, and although she has no problem with semolina herself, she said that this combination really must have been yuck, so I felt kind of validated. This sister never forced me to eat semolina again, but this soup was a recurrent item in our menu throughout the nursery, and then later when I moved on to the actual school, because it was the girls’ boarding school kitchen that also cooked for the nursery so our lunch food stayed the same. And of course we had to do with a lot of different staff, and none of them could understand that I just had a problem with semolina. While they of course preferred if we ate everything, most were flexible enough to understand that some people might not like such controversial things like some specific vegetables, or liver, or a type of sausage that’s like a Polish version of black pudding, which would also sometimes appear and which many people didn’t like. But semolina?! In some cases, you could just say that you feel awful after eating something, but you can’t do that with semolina, after all, it’s given to people who have tummy problems, are after a stomach surgery or a stomach bug or whatever. Speaking of tummy problems, I had a stomach bug at school a couple times and ended up in the infirmary, or as they literally called it “little hospital”. ANd the first day or two they’d always give me semolina for lunch, except it wasn’t even a broth, just a watery sort of soup, and all the nurses were very upset that I wouldn’t eat it at all and wondered why I was still so sick. Finally at some point I asked them if I could have something, anything, other than that, but they said unfortunately not at this point. Also, one of the staff in my boarding school group introduced to us a cake made of digestive biscuits layered with semolina. She liked it because according to her it was tasty, plus very easy and quick to make and low budget, so we could often make it for our birthdays. I couldn’t understand why would someone want to have semolina even in a cake. Semolina tastes even worse when it’s cold. I did have to make it a few times for my birthday though, which felt a little weird since I guess normally you’re supposed to make what you like on your birthday, but I’ve never was one to make a big deal of birthdays anyway, so I didn’t care overly and just made it for others and didn’t eat it myself. My Mum was also surprised when I told her about it and said it must be quite bland. So yeah, I really like all the other grains that I’ve tried, but semolina’s absolutely disgusting. 

   What’s such a thing for you? 🙂 

Question of the day.

What is something that sounds safe but actually isn’t?

My answer:

Registering somewhere online. ANYWHERE! Creating an account. Especially when they want your email! 😱 It’s like opening yourself to evil because you let all them companies and big tech people invigilate and track you and eavesdrop on you and read your most important emails (even the ones you didn’t send ’cause they were too cringey but still keep in drafts) and probably even your thoughts because they always show you the ads of things you’ve been thinking about recently! It’s not just Facebook and Google (although of course Google is the worst and responsible for all the catastrophes in the world) but everything, even small businesses which want you to log in on their website, they actually sell your data to China and God knows what else they do with it. 😀

That’s what my Dad recently shared with me. My Dad is slightly, well, perhaps more than slightly, backwards when it comes to technology, but he has no shame about it, and he doesn’t have to because he has Bibiel to deal with that when it comes to his work stuff, and other than work stuff, he only uses his computer to watch YouTube (I don’t think he realises it’s actually Google), go on Marine Traffic, which is also kind of to do with his job as he delivers fuel to ships among others, browse the Internet (using Bing), “travel” (with Google Maps, which he’s perfectly aware of, but oh well), go on OLX (which is like a Polish equivalent of eBay (logging in from Mum’s account, or rather not logging out), and sometimes watching some regional online TV and stuff like that. He also has an (Android) smartphone (from China) and to his credit he had a smartphone LOOONG before I did, but the only smart functionality of it that he uses is (paradoxically) Google Assistant, when he needs to look something up on the phone on the web, because asking Google is faster than typing. Oh and he also uses some app for translating in real time when he interacts with people at work who speak other languages, which I’m sure also uses Google Translate and Google speech recognition system, so… Somehow when it comes to the phone it doesn’t bother him so much that he uses Google as the search engine, and although I tell him that repeatedly, he still doesn’t seem to fully grasp or accept or something that his phone’s system is actually from Google.

He does NOT have an email address, well, to be exact he has several and with different providers, probably even more than I do, which either Mum or me or Sofi or Olek helped him create, but he doesn’t use any of them because (a) he doesn’t know how and doesn’t have the patience to learn, and (b) he doesn’t remember his passwords, or he doesn’t remember where he put the piece of paper where he wrote the password down. Back when he was still somewhat motivated to learn to use an email address, he’d ask me what his password was, as if I could have any idea about that, and then he’d be mad at the whole world. 😀

Anyways, quite recently he was sharing with me some of his tech woes and how he was trying to buy something online from somewhere else other than OLX, but they wouldn’t let him, because they wanted him to log in, to even see the seller’s phone number. I said that it seems pretty reasonable to me, it’s easier to shop when you create an account, and why would the seller want their phone number to be visible to all the random peeps in the world? I also began to wonder why it’s such a problem for him to register somewhere. I mean yeah, it can be a hassle, I myself don’t like registering somewhere where I don’t really feel the need to simply because it’s waste of time and sometimes you can still come across surprises like visual captchas which are very annoying and discouraging, some bigger websites can also be pretty intrusive with all their nagging, but generally I don’t see much of a problem with registrations alone. He doesn’t have an email address but Mum lets him use hers for stuff like OLX shopping so he could use it for registrations. So I asked him what his problem with registering was, was it too difficult or something, and that was when he told me all that amazing stuff about how it’s unsafe and evil. Well yeah I exaggerated it a bit for satirical purposes, but even knowing his paranoid tendencies it was a surprise for me how skewed his idea of Internet privacy is.

And don’t get me wrong here, I don’t like big tech either, I hate Facebook, wouldn’t use Google if there were better alternatives for some of their services and I value my online privacy very dearly and some people would probably also call me a freak in this regard. I totally get people’s concerns over their privacy online, but the extent to which my Dad takes it is quite hilarious, especially given that he doesn’t really understand how Internet works and really enjoys invigilating all those ships, looking up where people live etc. and it’s funny how he uses so much stuff from Google without even realising it, while at the same time hating it so much.

So that was the first answer that came to my mind when thinking of such unsafe things that sound safe. Being more serious, food is an excellent example, it can make you vomit. And can make loads of other things to you. Allergies, poison, choking, cancer, diabetes, what fun!

Also amusement parks and similar, all the rides in them. They always say they’re safe, but accidents seem to happen regularly. Oh yeah and you could also vomit from it and make your vestibular system go nuts.

Your turn. 🙂

How do I calm down my emetophobia? (part 2) Coping strategies.

See part 1 here.

This is the part 2 of my mini series about emetophobia. In this part, I want to put together some tips, tricks and ideas that work for me or that I know of for people who also struggle with this phobia. For the sake of people who have a strong fear around the associated words, unlike in the first part, I will be replacing any trigger words with only their first letters. The section dealing with exposure may be more or less triggering for some.

   Mindset

One thing, perhaps not the healthiest out there, that has helped me a lot ever since I’ve become aware of this mechanism is the understanding that, seriously, people with emetophobia are less likely, at least on average, to v* than people who don’t have this fear. Part of this may be all sorts of things we do to prevent it, and that many of us simply aren’t all that prone to it, but what I think plays a greater role is that we’re often too stressed and blocked for v* to occur. I think this is a good thing to keep in mind, and very comforting, even though there’s always some chance of it happening. On a similar note, there are people, emetophobic and not, who only v* once in their lifetime, or maybe never at all. Now, imagine you’re one of these people, that you never v*ed for your entire life since the last time you actually did, and imagine that you’re nearing the end of your life, and you’ve been given some crystal ball or a mind superpower, thanks to which you can, reflecting back on your life, see it from different angles, what would happen if you did X or didn’t do Y. And one thing you learn about your life is that, with or without all your efforts, you weren’t meant to v* anymore in your life anyway. Wouldn’t you feel pity for missing out on all the yummy foods you never ate, all the journeys you didn’t take etc. despite deep down you really wanted to, just to avoid something that would never happen regardless of your actions, and that your efforts were essentially meaningless? Of course, we know that most people do v*, so looking at things this way won’t make anyone with emetophobia stop avoiding v*, but I think it’s an interesting perspective to put it in.

   Coping with crisis

   Evaluating how you’re feeling

Something that helps me not to panic right away when something triggers my emetophobia is to focus on how exactly I am actually feeling, to determine whether what I’m feeling is truly physical, or is it just my anxiety. N* is my primary anxiety symptom so sometimes it’s difficult, but I’m getting better at it every time. Basically, when I start feeling n*, or anything else that I think could potentially lead to v* and feel distressed about it, I try to establish how bad it is. You can try asking yourself questions like the ones below and see if you can answer them at all, which I guess won’t necessarily be easy at every severity stage of emetophobia, and if you can answer them, perhaps the answers will help to reassure you. For me, that’s most often the case.

• Are you able to function normally the way you’re feeling now, or would you rather just lay in bed?
• How about things that you normally enjoy, are you able to do them now with the way you’re feeling or are you feeling too s*? I think it’s important to differentiate here between feeling too * and not being focused on anything else than the way you’re feeling and that it might lead to v*, which also can make it difficult to enjoy anything.
• What exactly makes you think it may end up with v*? For me personally, n* alone, unless it’s really intense, isn’t a valid argument, because like I said I experience it a lot due to anxiety and n* itself never made me v*.
• Totally hypothetically, would you be able to eat something, and what could it be? By being able I mean physically, not whether your emetophobic brain thinks it’s safe to do it or not, but, like, what’s your reaction when you think about food? If you had it guaranteed that, regardless how bad you’re feeling and what you’ll choose to eat, you will not v* after eating, would there be something you’d actually like to eat right now? Or does thinking about any food make you feel worse and eating is the last thing you want to do? Or maybe you’re actually hungry but your brain doesn’t want you to know? People could have n* when they’re very hungry or have low blood sugar, maybe it’s the case with you?

Distraction

Then the next key thing in my opinion is effective distraction. I know, it’s fiendishly difficult when you’re feeling anxious, so it’s good to have some sort of distraction toolbox prepared beforehand, so that you don’t have to frantically come up with ways to calm yourself down and distract while already in the grip of emetophobia. Read something interesting. Watch your favourite series. Go for a walk if you’re feeling well enough, play a game. Talk to someone, preferably not about your fears as that won’t really distract you, unless you clearly feel that that’s what you need to talk about. Personally I don’t like talking to people about my emetophobia too much at the time when it’s really bad, because it only makes me feel worse and sort of like that if it’s so bad that I need to talk about it to someone, it must be really bad. I only talk to people about it when I absolutely can’t cope. Otherwise, I think it’s a lot better to just chat about something as far from it as possible that will engage your brain or make you laugh, just shift your emotions from hyperfocusing on all things n* and v*. Listen to music. Or engage in any other activity that you find interesting, but also sufficiently emotionally involving, so that there’s no space left for the anxiety. I find that what works best for me specifically is some intellectual activity that requires focusing a lot, or sometimes listening to other people and whatever problems they might be having, unless things are too rubbish and I just can’t focus. Lite and rather passive activities like reading hardly ever work.

Breathing

That’s quite crucially important imo. I’m shitty with it, it’s really difficult, but breathing properly really makes a difference with anxiety, it’s not just a cliche. Breathing also comes in very handy when things totally spiral out of control and you’re about to v*. When you breathe deeply through your nose, chances are you can make the feeling go away. It’s also definitely a good thing to find some relaxation technique that you like and that works for you. I find mindfulness not very helpful with this specific kind of fear because, really, focusing on your sensations is the last thing you want to do when your emetophobia gets triggered. 😀 What I like a lot is some kind of imageries, visualisations, and, even more so, grounding exercises. I don’t know if grounding can work for everyone, probably part of why it works for me is because it can sometimes help me more or less with dizziness, and dizziness triggers my emetophobia. Have something, or someone, that you find comforting close to you, like your pet or your favourite fluffy blanket, or your safe person, or some object you have a strong connection to, whatever works. I like to have Misha around in such situations, listen to his breath and heartbeat, feel his fur, it’s really calming.

Exposure and trying to overcome your fear

When you have managed to get through the crisis safely and are no longer triggered, you might think about how to reduce or completely get rid of this fear. I think this is very comforting news that it so often seems to diminish over time as people age. That does seem to be the case with me, although other things have come into play. Exposure therapy can be a great thing, if you’re brave enough. I know a couple people who have managed to overcome emetophobia with great success largely thanks to it. I perfectly realise though that it sounds very scary to many people and it takes guts (hehe) to make such a decision, and many of us don’t have enough of them for that. I, for one, did not. I had some experience with it with my first therapist, who was mostly CBT but also used other modalities a lot, and she encouraged me that we could try it with one of my anxieties, not emetophobia-related). After some initial fears and hesitation and with a lot of reassurance on her part I courageously decided I’ll give it a go, as I was actually very curious what’s at the core of it and why that thing scared me as badly as it did, and still does. But unfortunately we didn’t even go through it fully because there was just one mini thing that didn’t go quite the way it was supposed to, which resulted in my fear getting worse and me not wanting to hear about exposure therapy ever again, and I still feel the same way about it.

Still, even those of us who don’t like the idea of exposure therapy can do some mini exposure by ourselves as much as it’s possible, and slowly, gradually go out of our comfort zone. Can you think of something that you CAN handle about v*? It may be still scary and/or uncomfortable, but doesn’t scare you quite as badly as other aspects of v*. For example such thing for me is the words relating to the v*. Yes, they ARE scary, they are gross, and when I’m feeling very unwell mentally they can trigger me, but usually I can handle hearing them quite well with minor or sometimes no distress at all, unlike v*ing myself or hearing someone do it or reading some graphic descriptions or eating something that is very very risky.

So, if you’re like me, you could try and expose yourself at least to these words a bit more, so that they feel even less scary. Say them out loud, think about them, or write them on a piece of paper, or read in a book, as long as they don’t appear in any graphic scene, unless you feel brave enough for this then sure, why not. I remember once reading an article somewhere about emetophobia and there was a suggestion, mostly geared at children, I think, that I really liked, about how you can try to deal with fear of the words. Take some well-known song, or even just its title, or a book title, or a film title, a nursery rhyme, a saying, whatever simple thing like that, and replace one word in it with v*, so that it’ll sound funny or weird or just silly and meaningless, or gross. Like: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of v*”. I believe this technique is called reciprocal inhibition, where you try to replace one feeling with another. And so while it might still scare you at first, at some point humour will likely win and you’ll be less scared. Also it’s just meant to show you that these are just words and can’t harm you as such, and it’s a way of familiarising yourself with them and desensitising your brain to them. I have done things like that and, while I still consider these words grosser and more unpleasant than an average person, and still they can mess things up if I’m not feeling well, but generally they are nowhere near such a big deal as they used to be.

Or if you are scared of v*ing yourself, but less so of other people doing so, you could watch a movie where someone does it. Or if human v* is too scary, do what I did and get yourself a cat, they have such sensitive digestive systems that most of them v* very regularly and at this point I don’t find it as extremely disturbing as I did at the beginning, especially that Misha takes great care to always do it in my room and makes sure that I get my dose of exposure.

When you’re feeling relatively stable overall, you could try and eat something that you particularly liked and miss from your unsafe food items list, even just a very small amount. And then, if you feel okay afterwards, try to eat more of it. And then another product. And so on and so forth. It’s an extremely gratifying feeling whenever you manage to succeed at that and realise this product no longer needs to be considered unsafe. Especially that a lot of things that we cross out, we actually like to eat. My most recent achievement in this field is from about half a year ago when I started to eat waffles again. I don’t even remember now how they ended up on my no-no list. You could also try eating out if you struggle with this, even just a very small meal at first.

Daily life coping strategies

But exposing ourselves to things won’t always eliminate the fear entirely, therefore I feel it’s important to have your strategies as for how to deal with things on a daily basis, to make life easier and less scary.

I recently had a thought that it’s a bit of a pity that we have all those no-no foods, but not many emetophobics put quite as much thought in making something like a mental oh-yeah food list, so basically a list of things that we consider safe and like to eat. Maybe that doesn’t make sense since you usually know what you like and what you can eat pretty automatically, but I feel like it’s still good to acknowledge this somehow, because having all those unsafe foods it’s easy to subconsciously jump to the conclusion that food in general is unsafe, when I think most of us do have some food items that are safe, even if for some people they are rather few.

And speaking of safe foods, I believe it’s also a good idea to have some kind of edible things that you find to be helpful for you with things like n*, for when you actually feel bad and like you may v*, whether it’s caused by anxiety or a tummy bug or illness. My best friend in this department is ginger, I really really really love it, just plain because of its taste as well as for its antiemetic properties. I like to suck on it when I’m feeling n* or add it to my tea. Speaking of teas, I think chamomile is the most trustworthy when it comes to emetophobia, although It also has loads of other properties. Another one I drink when I’m worried I might v* is… sheesh, I don’t even know the English name for this plant! 😀 We literally call it wild rose in Polish and apparently it’s rosa canina in Latin. But chamomile is always my first choice. Peppermint is a good substitute for ginger. I know people who find sucking on ice cubes helpful. I think this idea probably comes from that it’s often recommended for people who actually DO v*, like after chemo, and ice is given to them to help with hydration, but I don’t really see how it could help with preventing potential v*. Still, since a lot of what we experience is psychosomatic, there’s nothing wrong with having your own little strategies that work even if they aren’t proven or anything, because they work for you and that’s what matters, as long as your entire quality of life isn’t dependent on it, regardless whether it’s a placebo or not. As some of you may know, I have a weird affinity with ice so I like sucking on it sometimes regardless. 😀 Eating more protein-rich meals (as opposed to more rich in carbs or fats) also may potentially help with n* or queasiness a bit.

Also, find scents that help you, if you haven’t already. Scents that help you both with n* and feeling s* as well as scents that you find generally relaxing. Can’t say much more on this as I myself can’t really feel most scents.

Have some strategy for a crisis situation like when someone in your family is s*. This will be different for everyone, what things you want to use to keep yourself healthy and how you will want to deal with the situation and make it bearable. My safe bet is apple cider vinegar, although it’s not wise to go over the top with it or use it long-term, as then it can actually make your gut worse, and different people have different opinions on its effectiveness. While it’s not a very healthy way to cope, if you really have no other way of coping at the moment and you’re very scared, there are antiemetic drugs that you can get over the counter for the time being like Hydroxyzine which is also anxiolytic. Probiotics may also be helpful, or foods/drinks that have such properties, my fav here is kefir.

And last, but not least, whether you do decide to go the exposure therapy route, I think it’s important, or at least really beneficial to have someone who understands those things. Find a talk therapist who has some experience with this, some fellow human being with this phobia, or tell your friend about it if you feel they will be able to empathise, so that you aren’t alone with this. As I said earlier, talking and analysing it all through isn’t always the best way to go, at least not for me, but there are times when you just need to put it all off your chest and in such case of course it’s important that the other person understands what you’re talking about. Having someone like this is also helpful for making progress, as they can motivate you and be there for you while you’re trying to overcome your v* fears.

That’s all I’ve come up with. Do you have any other ways in which you calm down your emetophobia? Or if you have any other kind of phobia, how do you cope with it? 🙂

How do I calm down my emetophobia? (part 1) My story.

 

If you’ve been around on my blog for some time, you know that I like being possibly engaging with my readers. Part of what that means for me personally is ensuring, as much as I can, and as much as that actually goes in line with what I want my blog to be, that people can find here what has brought them to my blog. So I like to go through the search terms that bring people to my blog, either on WordPress or on Google Console, about once a month. And lately, I’ve noticed a surprising amount of my visitors and people whom Google has displayed my blog in the results have been asking it “how to calm down emetophobia?” and similar things.

While I am emetophobic and have written a bit about this, I don’t think they were able to find the direct answer to this question, hence I thought I would write about what I do, or what helps me specifically, to deal with *my* emetophobia, and maybe that will also help some other people who are dealing with this.

This post is going to be divided into two separate parts – one talking in detail but not overly graphically about my experience with emetophobia, so that perhaps if this is something you’re struggling with you might relate to it to some extend, and for those who don’t have the condition I hope I’ll be able to show people a bit of what it’s like, at least from one person’s perspective. The other one will be all about things that have helped me, or still do, or that I know help other people effectively, in dealing with this phobia.

This first part will be a rather rambly and free-flowing post, so if you’re in a full-blown panic attack or crisis caused by emetophobia and need some concrete tips on how to deal with the thing here and now, you might want to skip this part. If you are emetophobic, I want to put a little trigger warning first, just in case, mostly for those who are in a particularly bad place with their phobia. I’ll try my best to keep this post as minimally graphic as possible, but if words relating to the topic are very highly triggering for you, please note that they will be present here. I’ll also be discussing my triggers and telling my emetophobia story overall, mentioning various specific situations from my life or contexts in which it occurred, so some things may potentially feel uncomfortable. Even if you start reading this and feel distressed or triggered at some point, of course there’s no obligation to continue. Just be gentle with yourself.

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For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, emetophobia is a specific phobia, which causes intense fear of vomiting. What I mean by intense here is, I guess no one likes to vomit or see someone vomit or have anything to do with vomiting, and I guess a lot of people may have some degree of fear around it, but the degree to which it is present in emetophobia is a lot higher and affecting, more or less strongly, the quality of life of an affected person, so that in some cases it might impact their daily life functioning. The experience of this phobia may vary a lot from person to person, and so one individual with it might be anxious about vomiting themself, whereas for another it’s about other people in their surroundings or in movies or animals etc. doing so, or it may be even more specific like only pertain to vomiting in public. For me, and most people with this disorder I’ve heard about, it’s a combination of more than one thing. The weird thing is, most people who know something about emetophobia or learn what it is, seem to assume that emetophobic people must be somehow very prone to vomiting. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite for a lot of us, including myself. From what I’ve noticed, most of us tend to have pretty resilient digestive systems to begin with, and a lot has to be going on for them to give up and make us vomit, and on top of that I’ve heard that people with emetophobia are just too blocked emotionally for vomiting to occur, which makes sense and is comforting in a way. 😀 A lot of emetophobics also have their own strategies, like a special way of breathing, which help them prevent vomiting when it’s about to happen. Yet, typically, we tend to remember when was the last time we vomitted, and the last time before that, how long ago it was and why exactly (in our opinion, at least) it happened, along with such details like what was in the news that day or what we were wearing, depending on a specific case of course, not to mention what food we ate beforehand. It’s a bit strange the way it works. I’ve also come across people thinking that emetophobics are afraid of vomiting because they’re afraid they will die while it’s happening to them. Maybe some do, I don’t know. I only know that I don’t. I mean, it would be a horrible kind of death, probably the worst I could wish for myself, but it’s not what I fear the most. Like my Mum still seems to think that I must be afraid of choking on it or something, which I have no idea where she got it from. I mean, sure, this is just another valid reason for why vomit is evil, but it’s not a primary one, not for me anyway, and I don’t think for most emetophobics either. It’s just scary because it’s vomit.

I am scared of vomiting myself, as well as of other people – both because it’s scary in itself and because they may be sick with something contagious and I might get it too, or we may have been food poisoned with the same thing. – I hate the sound of vomiting, gagging, choking etc. and the feeling I get when either I or someone else is vomiting, that everything is out of control. I hate things whose texture reminds me of vomit. I’m afraid when Misha is vomiting, even though he always does it very quietly and it’s very much unlike it sounds in people. It happens to him quite often though so over time it has become a lot less of a deal but it still is a big deal, even though it never is for him. While like I mentioned above, the possibility of vomiting in public seems to be particularly scary for many people, and I do think it is terrifying, I don’t think I’m a lot more scared of it than vomiting anywhere else, whether alone or in company. Sometimes when I have really difficult days emet-wise and am just absolutely sure that I’ll vomit I can’t decide whether it’s better to be alone when it’s happening, so that you can do it discreetly and no one sees it, or with someone around so that you are – well – not all alone with it. I can just never decide on that, either is equally horrid. Also like a lot of emetophobics, I have that weird fear even of the words relating to vomit. These days, my emetophobia is a lot better most of the time than it used to be (or else I wouldn’t be writing this post) but on my worse days, just hearing or thinking about one of these words makes me feel sick-ish. But seriously, what’s up with all languages that their words for vomit, throw up and puke are so creepy? The English vomit is by far the best, although a lot of people seem to prefer throw up. Throw up is WAY too picturesque for my liking! It’s not just all about vomit. The words for gag are scary too. When I was learning about various British dialects and accents, I remember being absolutely mortified at the fact that gaggin’ means thirsty in Mancunian. Who would even still be thirsty after talking about gagging? Also nausea, even though I don’t have a fear of nausea directly. The English word isn’t so bad, I mean it sounds awful but it’s not so triggery. The Polish word is though. My radars always go off more or less whenever I hear someone say in Polish that they’re nauseated, or their tummy is hurting, even before I know if it’s a sick kind of hurting or more a period kind of hurting or maybe something else entirely. Even the word faint in Polish is kind of scary too because for some people it seems to mean the same as nauseated.

When you have a look around emetophobic communities and stuff, people talk about v* (for vomit), n* (for nausea) or d* (for diarrhoea) and, if it helps someone, that’s okay, but I feel like for me personally, such tiptoeing only contributes to creating the tension around the topic. What I prefer to do myself, when writing in my journal or something like that, is, I use a totally different, unrelated word to replace the scary v* with, when I actually feel the need to do so. Same as with my sleep paralysis “friend” whose name I’m too scared to say or even write so I always call him “Ian”. When I write in English, this word for vomit is Moomin. And no, so far this hasn’t given me a Moomin phobia. 😀

I don’t know how this whole thing has started for me. It feels like I’ve been more or less emetophobic ever since. A theory I have though is that it could have started when I was at around preschool age. I don’t know if I was already going to nursery or not. There was some kind of ball organised for young children somewhere near where I lived, and I was supposed to go there and was really happy for it. Yes, there were such times when Bibiel was happy to go to a ball. As a little kid,I was fairly shy but mostly like “normal” shy, and a lot more outgoing, if not more extroverted, and then at some point things just magically changed. 😀 That’s what people tell me anyway. My grandma, who really liked to sew at the time, made a special Little Red Riding Hood costume for me, just for that occasion, as that was my favourite fairytale back then. However, on the day of the ball, I was feeling quite funny. I remember that I came downstairs and was about to have breakfast but just as I went into the kitchen, the floor started moving very ominously, I suddenly started feeling utterly terrified, I guess that’s literally what people call a feeling of impending doom, and then I was sick. I felt a bit better afterwards I guess and I think I didn’t want to miss out on the ball, so we did end up going there but, from what I remember, I was still feeling rather miserable and was clinging to my Dad all the time. I don’t remember that, but my Mum says that I also got sick there. Since I can’t even remember that, and generally don’t have any particular feelings around the whole event, you’d think that it would be rather insignificant, but what makes me think that it might be that incident which caused my emetophobia is that I also have an absolutely weird, inexplicable fear of all things like proms, balls, discos, dancing parties, wedding receptions etc. Yes, I’m a socially anxious introvert with AVPD who doesn’t love dancing and has some feet issues, though I don’t particularly hate dancing either as such, but there’s something a lot more to my fear of things like these than any other people gatherings and I always avoid these more desperately and can’t even explain what scares me about them so much. So maybe there’s some link here on a subconscious level or something.

Whether it was that event which started my emetophobia or not, I certainly had some emetophobic tendencies as a kid, though for the first 8 years or so of my life they were quite easily manageable for me. I only remember feeling stressed about it whenever I was seriously feeling sick or about to vomit or when someone was vomiting I would feel as if I were about to faint, but I never actually did, even though I think I wanted to ’cause then I wouldn’t have to witness it. When I was 8 things started to change and gradually I was feeling worse and worse mentally, with both depression and a lot of anxieties, including health anxiety.

At the age of 10 I had a lot of stress to deal with due to various life situations but mostly having an Achilles tendons lengthening surgery, about which I wrote on here many times before, that I found the long recovery process extremely difficult emotionally. I was normally confined to my room during my recovery period most of the time out of necessity as I couldn’t move about easily, but there was one day when I went to school – I was at the so called integration school at the time – because they were doing some kind of theatrical performance. I can’t remember whether I was playing in it too, or just watching it. Anyway, this was the only day during the whole six weeks that I went somewhere for longer and mingled with people, so my autoimmune system probably wasn’t ready for it to happen all of a sudden, and I got some respiratory infection soon after that. I had to take an antibiotic, but it definitely didn’t agree with me, as it always made me feel super sick and weak whenever I would take it, and one beautiful day… Moomin! That was on Halloween! And it is then, I think, that my emetophobia started properly.

I knew that it was probably the antibiotic, but my small Bibiel brain at the time was thinking that if it seriously was the antibiotic, it would make me vomit right away, after taking it for the first time, rather than after a couple days. So clearly it must have been the orange juice that I drank ann hour or so before the Moomins came, because it made me feel very queasy straight after I drank it. So, with all my love for the orange juice, I decided to throw it out of my life permanently. And that’s how I started building my ever-growing no-no foods (and activities) list. Actually I already had some things on it – scrambled eggs (which had made me vomit at the gym in the nursery), bigos (a Polish stew made of chopped meat and sauerkraut), liver, and blood sausage), but that was different, because I didn’t like any of these dishes to begin with, so I was actually quite happy having an excuse that they make me feel awful so I didn’t have to eat them and no one would make me. But after that Halloween, things started evolving a lot more dynamically. After the orange juice, loads of items quickly followed, so that I think theoretically everything was soon included on it, because – let’s be honest and accept the brutal truth – everything CAN make you Moomin! Practically, I did have to eat something, so I broke my own rules, even if I ate very little and only when I really had to, and then felt sick and was convinced that I’m going to Moomin, the matter was only when that was going to happen. Then I learned that you can also kinda Moomin on an empty stomach, so I did start to eat a bit more ’cause I figured that if either way is bad I may just as well eat a little bit more, but it was still just a little bit more, and my no-no list didn’t get any shorter. Back then, things were also complicated by the fact that I had more general health anxiety and a lot of other anxieties, I was just a bundle of nerves. I kept washing my hands all the time, but on the other hand had a problem cleaning my teeth because I was afraid it would make me gag, regardless whether it would make me vomit too. I still have a problem with having things in my mouth that aren’t edible. If someone was sick, no matter how I loved them, I wouldn’t go near them. Which made me feel super selfish. Medications were of course a problem too. If I ever was prescribed something at that time, I would look up side effects and see if Moomin was a possibility. If it was (which it was typically), I would be stalking my poor therapist (whom I started seeing shortly after recovering from that surgery as my Mum concluded that she doesn’t know how to help me anymore) telling her that it makes people Moomin, I’m afraid it will make me Moomin, I know it will make me Moomin, asking her what to do so I don’t Moomin, and hoping that she’ll tell me “No, of course you won’t Moomin, you will never, ever Moomin, it’s impossible!”, but even then I’d still lose my sleep over the fact that there is 0,0005% chance that I will.

I’ve also always had some issues with balance and it’s easy for me to feel dizzy, and of course dizziness was something I’d avoid as much as possible too. Same about unnecessary travelling, especially on roads I weren’t familiar with, as I had motion sickness. I still have motion sickness but I never Moomined due to it so I don’t care about it now really. Forget things like amusement parks, which I despised anyway because of the balance problem but to which I still was forced to go from time to time with schools ’cause all children like it and people like to make children happy because it feels good. Even stress itself was a trigger, and still is to an extend, because my main symptom when I’m really stressed or anxious is nausea. So it’s a bit of a vicious circle as you can imagine and sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between anxiety nausea vs sickness nausea.

Soon after my 11th birthday, something weird happened to me, probably to my brain, that I started feeling really, really ill physically. Mostly, it was just very bad nausea, but I also had a coming and going sore throat and other aches and pains, was very tired, weak and lethargic, and I don’t remember what else, I guess a lot of coming and going stuff, but mostly just overwhelming nausea, so bad that I wasn’t able to get out of bed or even eat anything, let alone things like go to school. Then after a day or a few I would have a break from that, or feel at least good enough to be able to do everything as normal, whatever normal was for me back then, and then again the nausea & co. would come back, and so on and so forth. At the beginning of this mysterious illness, obviously my family couldn’t accept the state of things and that I almost wasn’t eating at all, and that wasn’t even because I was scared of Moomin but I just felt it was physically impossible. I guess my grandma was particularly worried so one day she decided to make Silesian dumplings especially for me. Silesian dumplings are one of my favourite dishes, so, I think if it would be just about my fear, I’d eat at least some anyway, but as it was, I could only take a little bite after which my nausea got a lot worse, so I felt like a proper bitch for not eating them even though she made them especially for me. But it was just physically not doable, no way. My Mum in turn kept going with me from one doctor to another, doing blood tests (which all came back normal) and what not, which I remember I found quite exhausting as I was so tired all the time I could sometimes barely sit upright. Finally I ended up dehydrated so then I was seriously freaked out about Moomin because I could remember being dehydrated once as a small child and then I moomined so I was sure that now I would too. We found a paediatrician about whom my Mum already knew that he was extremely thorough any time he examined a child. Never mind that he said that Sofi was probably going to have psychomotor delay because she still had some neurological reflex that according to the textbooks she shouldn’t have at her age, and scared my aunt in some other way about my cousin not developing quite right. Well turned out that he probably had a knack for finding rare, dramatic diagnoses for children, because when we came to him and he examined me, thoroughly as always, he decided that what I have must be LCHAD (don’t ask me what it is, some genetic illness that apparently is noticeably prevalent among Kashubians, which is where we live and my Dad is Kashubian). That got everyone properly scared, including myself. Having health anxiety, I was already wondering what I may be ill with to feel so awful, and was rather stoically thinking that I’m probably going to die, which didn’t scare me as that was a lot better than the dreaded Moomin, of course, or some illness that would involve Moomin or even a treatment which would have such a side effect. As long as it was just nausea, or even death, I thought I could deal with it. But now with this LCHAD thing, I had no clue what that was, and his explanation was rather enigmatic as well, at least to me as a child, but my Mum didn’t seem to understand a lot more than I did. For the time being, he sent me to the emergency where another doctor started laughing heartily as soon as my shocked Mum told him about my newly acquired diagnosis, said that I of course do not have LCHAD but just need a drip, and probably I was just having a tummy bug, in which case a light diet for the next few days should surely help. As I was sitting there with that drip, thinking what’s better, LCHAD or a tummy bug, a mum with a baby came into the room, the baby had a high fever and was given paracetamol, which it moomined right away.

After the drip I felt a lot better, also emotionally despite that baby incident, because I wanted to believe this drip doctor was right, and so did my Mum, so we went back home. The next day my Mum called the endocrinologist who was treating me at the time for the hypopituitarism, and told her about the LCHAD doctor, but she also reassured her that I surely can’t have it because if it went undiagnosed for so long I wouldn’t be alive anymore. My Mum was immensely relieved. The day after that I felt awful all over again, and so the cycle continued, I honestly have no idea until when. People tried to give my Mum good advice, of course, my class teacher kept calling and asking how I’m feeling, saying that, if I can’t eat, it must be something gastric so I should have a gastroscopy, my grandma was saying that it must be anaemia and I need more drips or something if I can’t eat anything, while my therapist was saying that it’s a psychological thing, which my Mum found offensive. My Mum herself tried her best to force Nutridrinks into me at least and constantly asked me how I was feeling, and if I said that I wasn’t feeling well, she would pause whatever she was doing and be like: “Hmmm…” as if she was deeply thinking about something. I grew to hate it so much when she did it with that specific intonation, it still makes me feel weird when people say “Hmm” like that, ’cause it immediately makes me feel a bit stressed. 😀

About a month after that LCHAD scare, my worst dream came true and I actually did Moomin. I don’t even know why. My best guess is it must have been somehow stressogenic. It happened exactly at 3 AM and scared the heebiejeebies out of me, of course. I felt dreadful the whole day but it didn’t happen anymore. Neither on that same day, nor the day later, nor any time in the 13 years since then, yay! I associated the incident with cocoa that I drank for supper the day before, and so cocoa was promptly added on the no-no list, and spent a loooong time there. I had become even more crazy with regards to all things food and Moomin after that. And I still kept having these coming and going times when I felt ill.

At some point things got back to normal in that I no longer felt so ill, although I had another bout of it some time in the summer of that same year which was all the worse that we were away on holidays. When I went back to the boarding school after the integration school experiment didn’t work out, I no longer had these bouts of sickness but my emetophobia was still just as bad. However, my school had a bit of a different take on eating than my Mum, who claims that there’s nothing worse than forcing a child to eat, because no child has ever died of hunger when there is free access to food. At school, we were at the very least strongly encouraged to eat all we got without fussing or anything. So I had to start eating more, as it just wouldn’t work out any other way, which then made me endlessly ruminate about Moomin. Still, I tried to eat as little as possible at the same time, and avoid the products that were especially high on my no-no list. At some point, one of the group staff came into my room when I happened to be alone in there and was like: “We need to talk… I know you have a problem… with food. Don’t you?” “Ummmm, why’d you think so?” – I asked, feeling a bit scared and a bit genuinely surprised because I was sure no one would figure that out. – “Well, I once had such a girl in my group. She would also eat very little at meals and then would sometimes eat by herself and only certain foods, I wasn’t born yesterday, I know what anorexia looks like…” Phew! I was so relieved I could have laughed. She wanted me to talk to her or something, I can’t remember, I also don’t really remember what I told her actually, I think I must have made up some story that wouldn’t make her too alarmed but that also wouldn’t deny her assumption, but somehow no one ever talked about that anorexia thing with me again and when I was telling my Mum the story years later she had no idea that anyone had such suspicions.

Over the next few years, my more general health anxiety had quietened down a lot naturally, so that the only health-related fears I would have were either emet-related, or something to do with the brain, ’cause you regular people here know I’m freaked out by even the idea of neurodegenerative diseases and other such things to this day. It has also become less irrational and easier to function with. Having to live in such a fairly structured institution like a boarding school meant that I had to adapt somehow with things like eating, and while I still had my no-no list and my fear was very strong, I somehow managed to eat almost like normal and do other things as normally as I could, even if they caused me a lot of stress. Fortunately, this way, I was also quietly forced to tick off some of the less “dangerous” things from my no-no list. Sometimes for some reason, like a tummy bug being spread around, my anxiety would get insanely high again to the point where, again, I would eat as little as possible and avoid everything I could that I thought had something to do with Moomin, and then over time managed to go back to the apparently near-normal but constantly scared lifestyle, and so on and so forth. Because my way of eating was very irregular as you can imagine, I would often feel a bit queasy after every single thing I ate, I guess kind of as if my body wasn’t used to dealing with food. I would feel very full after even a very small meal, and that would instantly make me panic that surely I’m going to be sick and that something is wrong if I can’t even eat a small meal without feeling off.

I believe that part of why things were changing, even though very slowly, for the better, was simply that I was growing older and from what I know this phobia has a tendency to get better with age.

Things got a chance to gradually improve even more when I got to leave the blind school. By that time my Mum knew a little bit more aboutmy emetophobia, even if she didn’t understand it and still doesn’t really. I think in a way just the fact that I didn’t have to hide with it so much helped me to let go of it a little bit. Since then, I still have times when the only thing I’m able to think about is vomit because someone was sick at night and I heard it because my room is next to the toilet, and I still have times when I eat very little or nothing and restrict very severely what I eat but they are less and less often, and less and less intense. I am less freaked now whenever I just happen to have nausea that is anxiety-related or just not serious, whatever was its cause, and I can differentiate better between serious and not serious nausea. I could gradually and very carefully start to eat some of my more difficult no-no foods that really scared me but at the same time I liked them, and actually enjoy their taste, and then ruminate less and less about what’s going to happen afterwards. I was able to eat out again with less difficulty. It’s still a problem for multiple reasons, not just emetophobia, and I still prefer to stick to safe meals at restaurants, but there were times when eating out was a lot more anxiety-provoking. I’ve become less sensitive to all the vomit words. Of course I still have very bad days sometimes, but things are improving. I also worked a bit on my emetophobia and my thinking processes around it with my therapist, which helped a little.

And by now, I can say that my emetophobia is a lot less severe than like five years ago. It’s still a challenge, sometimes a huge one, but it doesn’t affect my life quite as strongly. I can function with it normally most of the time. There are still foods that I have very mixed feelings about and I still freak out at the thought of eating something expired and have no way of knowing whether it’s expired, I still hate the sound of vomit and can’t stand the thought of vomiting myself or hear someone doing so or be close to them when I know they are sick. But I can sort of deal with a sick Misha in the same room as me. It will always give me a bit of a scare but not bad enough that I’d freak out completely.

Tummy bugs are the worst. They can still really freak me out. When I know that someone in my surroundings is contagiously sick and is vomiting, I still tend to regress and stop eating for the time being until things calm down or will be eating very little and only the safest things in my opinion, and wash my hands and everything around me as often as I can.

I’ve had a tummy bug several times ever since my emetophobia has properly begun, and, while it never made me vomit, the experience was absolutely horrifying each time and recovering from it emotionally always takes me ages.

While like I said before, most of the time I’m now pretty immune to the words related to this fear, I still find them extremely descriptive in a gross way, and when I’m having a worse time anxiety-wise, even not specifically in terms of emetophobia but generally am not doing well, I can still sometimes feel affected by such words.

I absolutely cannot stand hearing the sound of people vomiting in things like movies or anywhere. It still makes me freak out very much. But I’m happy to say that I hardly ever struggle with books anymore, unless they have really graphic descriptions of the thing and very frequent, and at the time I’m also not doing the best, then I may need to give up on the book or at least skip a few pages. The last book I needed to stop reading altogether because of too much vomit scenes was “Tim” by Colleen McCullough, can’t even remember how long ago. I also can’t remember much of the plot line, except that my impression was that someone – usually Tim – vomited in it every few pages and it was really exhausting. I wonder if I would have the same impression now too, or was it just something that I focused on very much then, but I don’t feel courageous enough to try.

There are still foods I’d rather not eat and some that I won’t eat at all because of the emetophobia, but most of them I don’t regret because I don’t care for them very much. I still have problems with meds like antibiotics. I have a very hard time starting on a new antibiotic that I’ve never ever tried before, and I would never ever take the one that made me vomit when my emetophobia started out. And I have no freakin’ idea what I would do if, for example, it turned out one day that I had cancer and the only treatment available is chemo or something else vomit-inducing. Dizziness is also something I struggle with a lot in regards to emetophobia, and it sucks because dizziness or some other kind of floaty feelings and the like are very much my daily reality. There’s still always a strong niggling feeling somewhere in the background of my mind whenever I feel unsteady or dizzy or floaty: “Gosh, what if I’ll Moomin?!”

Going to the dentist is a huge trigger for me ’cause I’m scared of gagging.

I used to drink some alcohol quite regularly, but I stopped because it often made me very nauseous, even small amount. I don’t smoke either, because I’ve known someone since early childhood who claims that smoking causes her to vomit, so I never even wanted to try cigs, but also for other reasons.

I really don’t like public toilets because of the amount of germs and, like… how do you know if someone hasn’t Moomined in there? Maybe the person before you had a norovirus?

Panic attacks is not the most common type of anxiety I experience – my anxiety is more of the chronic and constantly present variety rather than sudden and gripping – but when I do have a panic attack, while most people are scared they’re gonna have a heart attack or can’t breathe, I’m sure you can figure out what Bibiel is most scared of in a panic without me telling you. 😀

My relationship with food still isn’t the healthiest. I’ve only recently been forced by circumstances to look at this topic more closely and it’s not just emetophobia which is responsible for this, but this is definitely the main thing. My way of eating can still be quite dysregulated and stress definitely plays a big role in how much/little I eat. I’ve been slightly underweight or bordering on underweight for many years, and while I suppose it’s mostly a genetic and hormonal thing, I guess my erratic way of eating/not eating contributes to it too.

So, there you have it. This is my emetophobia story.

If you have emetophobia, what does it look like for you? If you don’t have it, do you have any other specific phobia(s)? What has your experience been with them.

See part 2.

Question of the day.

How are you today? Is there anything you need to do, or are you taking it easy?

My answer:

Meh. Nothing exciting in Bibielland. Instead it’s going to be a rather ranty post, because honestly, this whole month has been pretty shitty for me mental health-wise, with bad depression, a lot of AVPD yuckiness, messed up sleep and a fair bit of anxiety of all sorts. And yesterday Jack the Ripper/Butcher has come for a visit (period), absolutely unusually timely for his standards. He’s also in a real ripper mood this time as it seems. I’m hoping that once he calms down, so will my brain, as much as it’s realistically possible. We’ll see. Anyways, today isn’t terrible brain-wise compared with the average over the last few weeks, and taking into account that I have only slept two hours last night I guess it’s actually pretty decent. I’ve been very Jack-achy, which is part of why I had trouble sleeping despite the painkillers, but partly it’s simply that, like I said, my sleep is generally all over the place right now and I haven’t been able to hard reset it. So I’m quite tired and my thinking is a bit sluggish, but thankfully I don’t have anything pressing to do today so I can do nothing, just chill with Misha. The Jack did me actually a bit of a favour, ’cause it was my cousin’s baby’s christening yesterday (Sofi’s the Godmother) and we originally weren’t supposed to go because my cousin and her hubby wanted to keep the amount of people invited to the minimum I think due to the pandemic, but then changed their mind the night before the event and decided that there won’t be just the Godparents and the grandparents but invited the rest of my family too. Now that was way too short notice for me for such a huge peopling situation, but then I’d feel awful if I wouldn’t go, so I am sincerely thankful for Jack that he extricated me out of this and gave me a more than good enough reason not to go, even though as a result I spent most of the day in bed, but I can handle physical pain better than people pain.

Like I said I have nothing super important to do that would necessarily need to be done today, although I’ve been working on some longer, two-part post about emetophobia as I see on Google Console a lot of people come to my blog looking for some tips about it, which I haven’t ever shared, but I like when people can find what they’re looking for when they happen to stumble upon my blog, and I have quite an extensive experience with emetophobia so thought I could do this. I am writing something that I want to both show my experience of it fully so that people can perhaps relate if they need it, and then I want to write about strategies that work or have worked for me, so that hopefully they’ll be useful. I’ve been writing this for over a month because I’ve had to take a lot of breaks throughout the process as I didn’t want to trigger myself too badly in the meantime which would be easy to do now that I haven’t been doing too well. So, today I’m having a lot of free time and I’m a bit miffed that I could theoretically do it and maybe even finish the whole thing today, but I have too little cognitive energy, and I have a feeling that it would be taking the word self-destructive to the next level – digging in your own phobias on two hours of sleep while having a period. – 😀 Probably wouldn’t be the best quality either, even if I have a big chunk written already.

How about you? How is your day going? 🙂

Question of the day.

Do you prefer pizza or spaghetti?

My answer:

Definitely spaghetti. I like most pasta dishes actually. Pizza, on the other hand, has been on my emetophobic so called no-no foods list for a long time. It never made me vomit, but I often feel awful after it. I have no general problem with gluten or anything like that, I don’t have a weak or easily upset digestive system by any means,either, but pizza I guess just doesn’t agree with me and I suppose it depends what kind of dough it has and how good it is in terms of quality or something like that. These days it’s not like I won’t eat pizza at all, I will if I have to or am very hungry or something, but usually I’d rather avoid it. It’s also not that I don’t like pizza, but I’m not very crazy about it either. The only exception I make is whenever I get to eat home-made pizza somewhere or at a place that I know has good quality pizza. But I still prefer spaghetti.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

What is a scary or horrifying fact that shouldn’t be true, but is?

My answer:

That people vomit! Most of them once a year or more often, and almost everyone at least once in their lifetime. Cats also vomit twice as often as people I guess, insanely frequently anyway! Even Misha, as special as he is, throws up like once a month, he even did last week. For me, this is all scary.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

How do you like your eggs? 🙂

My answer:

I like them both soft-boiled and hard-boiled. They’re not my favourite thing in the world but I do like them and have them for breakfast sometimes. I really dislike fried eggs though, and scrambled as well, plus scrambled eggs are on my emetophobic no-no food list so even if I theoretically liked them, I wouldn’t eat them anyway. I used to eat scrambled eggs years ago before they made it on to my no-no list even though I didn’t really like them, because it’s a deeply ingrained habit of my Dad’s to eat scrambled eggs every Sunday and we all used to do that, also I had them sometimes at nursery. But then I got sick from them once at nursery and since then I don’t even pretend I like them and I don’t know what you’d have to do to make me eat scrambled eggs. 😀 For some time, as a teenager, when my emetophobia was at its worst, I had a huge problem with eggs and almost anything containing eggs because of salmonella and the like, and it was one of the products with which it really took me quite some time to get back to eating them normally, and I still feel wary in places like restaurants, but what helps is that my grandparents sell eggs – they used to have hens of their own for years but now they get their eggs from somewhere – and we also buy from them, they get them from one source and neither I nor anyone else in my family ever got sick from them. Then again, I’ve never had salmonellosis or a similar thing at all, except from that one short episode with scrambled eggs which I don’t think was due to any bacteria, but that might be just because I’m emetophobic so I’m always cautious. 😀

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

What is your favourite type of sweet drink?

My answer:

For a long time I’d say something like either Pepsi or Cola, but I think lately it’s been orange juice. I’ve always loved orange juice –
though I’ve had quite a long time where it was a no-no because of my emetophobia as I once felt very awful and threw up after it and no matter how much I liked it, I would not have it, but over time my emetophobia has lessened enough that I can drink it with little to no emotional problem and I’ve figured it couldn’t be the orange juice that had caused it because there were many more factors involved – but recently I’ve been drinking a lot of it and I really love it. Another sweet drink I love but had a similar emetophobia-related association with is cocoa, and since I started drinking it again, I love it even more. So actually I don’t know which one I like more, cocoa or orange juice, but I have orange juice much more often. And when I drink cocoa it has to be strong so it isn’t all that very sweet.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

When was the last time you did something you were afraid to do?

My answer:

Hm, I’m afraid of quite a few things, and also such things that are quite common to do so you sometimes just have to do them and it’s hard to avoid doing them. Don’t remember when exactly was the last such situation but what first came to my mind when I think about it happened about a week or so ago. As you may recall, despite all my desperate trials of avoiding it earlier this season, I finally got struck with a stomach flu, out of the blue. Now if you don’t know it yet, I’m emetophobic (fear of vomiting and pretty much everything to do with vomit), so it’s a drama in itself, even though the chance of me vomiting was rationally probably really slim considering how extremely rarely it happens to me, these days. I’ve once read an article on a website about emetophobia and I’m not perfectly sure if I understood it right, but the way I understood it, it said that many people with emetophobia are actually so anxious of vomiting that they are sort of blocked and often just can’t do it. If so then it’s possible I’m one of such individuals, though as you may imagine when emetophobia really strikes me, it’s only a little help to know it. So usually if despite all my efforts I do get some tummy bug or anything like that, it seems to be milder for me, like less violent, with no throwing up, but often lingers for a bit longer than for normal people. ANyway, the first day I got that flippin bug, was of course the scariest for me and I felt completely out of control and just overwhelmed by anxiety as much as I rarely am these days, I almost couldn’t think properly, and add all the physical symptoms to it like nausea and fatigue and stomach cramps, it was a nightmare I tell you. And finally Mum told me that whatever is the case of my sickness, I should drink apple cider vinegar – she believes it’s an almost perfect cure for almost all kinds of gastric problems. – And yes practically I do agree with her, apple cider vinegar is my good friend and helped me through many threatening situations where I had to be around sick people or feeling like I might be sick. But this time it was a bit different. A week before I got sick, my brother came home one evening and it turned out he ate something that was poisonous. He also drank apple cider vinegar and straight after that, he threw up. Never mind that it of course helped him to speedily get better, what’s important for me is that he threw up. I’d rather feel sick for days than throw up once. So I was sitting for what felt like eternity with that glass of apple cider vinegar, with my rational mind and anxiety having an incredibly dynamic battle while my brain felt like it’s going to go crazy any minute of all that. Finally, my logical mind won, because I was feeling really bad and because it had Mum on its side , so I drank it but man was it scary. I didn’t throw up, I didn’t feel much better either, until much later the next day after drinking a few more glasses of apple cider vinegar, but hey I do now, and I didn’t throw up yaaaay! That’s what counts. 😀 Some people are adrenalin junkies and overcome their fears of bungee jumping or skydiving, while I get over a stomach bug and feel like a superhero. 🙃

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

And today I have the following question for you:

What’s the worst thing that’s happened this week?

My answer:

Rant ahead! If you happen to also have emetophobia, or simply are not in the mindset for reading lots of pessimistic stuff loaded with anxiety, I’d recommend proceeding with caution.

For me, ugh, quite tough thing. My Dad got stomach flu, or whatever else it is, with similar symptoms anyway, and for me it means something quite close to end of the world. ‘Cause, for those who don’t know yet, I have emetophobia so such things scare the shit out of me and it’s incredibly hard to settle down after such a thing.

THe ironical part of all this is that he got sick yesterday very early in the morning, and yesterday was his birthday. Also ironically, although I usually keep the door to my room closed at night that night it was open because I left it for Misha, having seen him a couple nights before curled up at my door, waiting for someone to show mercy and open it so that he could go to bed… And I woke up startled and horrified, just had no idea why and then realised there are some very strange sounds downstairs, then I heard Dad going back upstairs to his room so I asked him what’s up and what he’s doing and he said he’s “pooping and puking” so I was absolutely horrified. Then I couldn’t fall asleep for quite a while but was reluctant to get up with so much anxiety and feeling depressed ’cause why should I and as a result I slipped into sleep paralysis for good 30 minutes or so, and there were also some stuff involving vomiting, I was just shattered waking up again so then it seemed even more pointless to get up and I just felt like a piece of bloody shit so stayed in bed until well after noon, which even with my messed up sleep cycle is not much like me, I try to be normally a bit more disciplined but yesterday it just didn’t make any sense. Finally, when I thought that lying in bed actually doesn’t make much sense either and can be even worse because I might get into sleep paralysis again I decided I might as well get up because it’s equally pointless and equally risky and I did. It looked like Mum went out somewhere so I called her to check what the situation actually is and maybe it’s not that bad as I thought. I asked her where she was and what’s with Dad and she said he got poisoned, probably with mushrooms he ate for supper which were probably just undercooked. That still wasn’t a good news, but as long as the poisoning wasn’t serious and the mushrooms weren’t toxic themselves I could breathe a huge sigh of relief because at least it wasn’t contagious, ’cause while pretty much anything related to vomit is more or less scary to me, the thing that is most triggering to me in this regard is being sick myself. I did feel greatly relieved even though I still had my guard on. I really can love someone to pieces but when they are sick and vomiting, especially when infecting, I’d rather be as far away from them as possible. But since it looked like my poor Dad’s illness isn’t contagious and he didn’t vomit any longer, I actually felt a bit guilty because I was vegetating in bed for no apparent reason and he was suffering in loneliness on his birthday and maybe needed some help or whatever. So now as I felt almost sure that being around him is relatively safe, I could play a sister of Mercy. Even though even looking at him being just sick overall made me feel shaky and sick myself. He didn’t want anything from me only to keep him company for a while, which I did, but still tried to keep a safe distance between us, as much as it is possible without being rude when you for example wish someone happy birthday – you won’t do it from a mile away and with your head turned in the opposite direction, right? But I tried to comfort myself that all my altruism and dedication won’t be for nothing and he’s not infecting for sure.

Unfortunately, looks like he does. ‘Cause despite him going to the loo a lot for various purposes and thus getting rid of all the possible mushrooms he could eat, he was still sick and having some flu-like symptoms like muscle aches and such so for my Mum, and with time for me too, it was clear that he got a tummy bug. So, yeah scary.

And it was his birthday, mind you, so, it was a shattering day for me. My Dad being sick, having to be around him, guests, socialising, loads and loads of food, and during the party, when Dad was already feeling better I was sitting next to him, and he was making us drinks, gosh I would most happily just run away screaming as far and fast as I could and hide somewhere in the ices of Lapland until the new year, and it still feels very tempting. And my uncle came before the rest of the guests, just for a short while, and said he was “feeling kind of sick”.

I think I didn’t have such a strong hit of emetophobia since a good couple of years, I think this is one area in which I made a lot of progress for sure, but now it feels like a relapse, I don’t really get why it’s so bad this time, maybe it’s because in general I’ve been overthinking a lot and just an anxious mess overall. I’d never had any particularly compulsive/obsessive behaviours, not even at school when my emetophobia could be really hard to live with at times especially if I didn’t want anyone to realise I was struggling with it, and now I do feel a bit “OCD-like”, feeling like I absolutely need to wash my hands after pretty much anything that I consider even slightly “risky” or before eating whatever. I wasn’t like that and I just hope things get back to normal when the Christmas season ends. 😱 By the way what is with this Christmas season?! It’s not the first one when someone in our house has stomach flu. And because there’s so much food and socialising I definitely feel like it’s the worst possible time for this stuff. If there’s ever a good time I mean.

Dad is feeling OK today and doesn’t have any symptoms, but I definitely don’t, and it’ll be probably be a while until I settle down even if no one else follows, I’m really tired of feeling so intensely anxious already but can’t stop it, still feeling compulsive, eating fairly restrictively and drinking apple cider vinegar despite I actually hate it, but I’d rather drink a sea of it than got sick even without throwing up. It may not help me to keep away from the viruses but at least if I’ll get sick maybe it’ll be milder or in the worst case my overall health might somewhat improve and my metabolism will speed up thanks to it, well I can’t complain about that anyway, but it won’t do me any harm and people are so crazy about its natural properties. My Mum as a true natural health geek drinks it every day or mostly every day and so will I at least until Christmas is over.

So I think that’s the worst thing, I can’t say this week is particularly good in general, but that’s definitely the worst.

And how about you? Feel free to rant if you wish. 🙂

Update on Misha and me.

First of all I wanted to thank all of you once again for all the support and kind thoughts for Misha. It’s way more appreciated than I can express at the moment and means a lot for us. 💙
So as you may know from my yesterday post Misha is sick and that’s for sure now.
I went to sleep almost straight away after writing this post though couldn’t fall asleep for ages, had that awful feeling when you’re just too exhausted emotionally and physically to actually fall asleep. Misha spent some part of the night under my bed, then he threw up again, which messed up with my absolutely fabulously overactive emetophobic brain even more and I felt so sorry for him as he looked so scared and devastated and I was just helpless and scared as well, maybe more than him. 😀 Poor child. So I finally gave up and had to take my sleep meds which I always try to avoid as much as possible but sometimes they can be really saving.
Before I fell asleep Sasha came to me and laid down on me purring so blissfully and loudly, even without me stroking him. He is really such a nice little furball, so very cuddly and joyous. As he lied on me, I felt more grounded and calm under his little, warm body and finally we both fell asleep, although I can’t say I was sleeping well because I was waking like every two hours or so which was really irritating.
Mum gave Misha the antibiotic in the morning, the one he was prescribed yesterday, but he was looking very very poorly. He didn’t eat anything, only drank some water, had diarrhea and fever, although he felt very cold and was shivering just like yesterday. He laid down in his bed – the basket on my bed – and lied there so silently, literally the only way you could actually see he’s alive is to feel his chest moving while breathing, other than that he was so still that it felt utterly scary to me and Zofijka and even to Mum, although she says she isn’t emotionally attached to Misha.
So finally we decided we should go to our local vet to check on him, maybe he would know what’s wrong exactly.
Mum and Sofi ended up packing Misha and driving there twice because the first time they went it was closed so poor thing was quite stressed out, no wonder as he hardly ever leaves the house. Luckily though the vet was indeed able to tell us what’s wrong.
He was actually laughing openly at the thoughtlessness of the vet who vaccinated Misha for cat flu, knowing that Sasha is sick, the more that he was sick with just the same thing. Who on Earth would vaccinate their child if another one is contagiously sick, and why should it be otherwise with pets? That was just what we thought, but obviously you don’t want to come across as a know-all, after all the vet should know better what she does…
Actually, before Misha was vaccinated on Monday, my Mum had one of those inklings she has – the first time they told us to come with Misha for the vaccination and Mum went with him it turned out that they actually didn’t have the vaccine at the moment, then the second time they went was just the same, and my Mum started to wonder out of the blue that maybe it means Misha shouldn’t be vaccinated. Then they planned to go for the third time, but Mum had to collect Dad so they didn’t.
As I said my Mum has such inklings or impulses quite often, she really seems to have a good intuition. It might look a bit like some superstitiality or something like this, but she really acts as if she had some sixth sense sometimes, and generally she’s not superstitious at all, quite the opposite. Oh gosh what a long digression!
So our local vet to whom Misha went today laughed at that vet quite honestly, and told Mum that Misha most probably has caught cat flu from Sasha and this is its very beginning. But because Misha was also vaccinated, plus has been very stressed lately, and not coming out of the house much, it might be a bit more severe than Sasha’s, as his autoimmune system is probably weaker due to all that.
He gave Misha two injections with no problem – although the emergency vet to whom they went yesterday couldn’t manage to do it and Misha broke the needle – and he told Mum to come with Misha again on Saturday to see how things are going. So it’s probably much less serious than it looks.
Mum mentioned to him that Misha is so very stressed out lately and so very fearful, that he’s always been rather prone to anxiety, but since Sasha is with us he seems much more stressed, and he prescribed him something mildly sedative that he can take ad hoc when he’s more stressed, like at such times as now, when he has a lot to cope with emotionally. When I heard all that, I felt somewhat relieved and so did Zofijka and Mum.
I can’t say though that Misha is doing better. What’s for sure though, is that he’s not worse and he’s even eaten a little, so we’re very hopeful.
Sasha is so very caring of him. He’s really such a kind-hearted baby. I went to Misha about an hour ago to check how he’s doing and I found Sasha sitting by his side and purring. Misha was indifferent and rather not encouraging to make any closer relationships with him, but Sasha didn’t care. He really likes Misha. He always purrs and hhrrrus when he sees him, though Misha usually runs away. It’s not like Misha doesn’t like him – he’s not hostile or anything anymore – he just seems like he still needs time to adapt to the situation.
When it comes to me, as I said I feel significantly relieved after all those news and that Misha is relatively stable even if still poorly, though I feel like it hasn’t sunk in in my brain yet. I can’t say I’m feeling well emotionally today.
I’m kinda agitated all day and very anxious in general, don’t know if it’s actually about Misha or for no particular reason. I’m just feeling sort of wired and antsy and jittery and my thoughts are racing quicker than horses and I feel like all the sounds and smells and everything was way more intense than normally and sort of overwhelming, – that thing happens to me quite often but today it’s really pretty distracting – but at the same time I feel exhausted. I don’t even know how to exactly describe it. My anxiety is pretty bad but as I said I’m not really sure of the reason so the more it’s hard for me to get rid of it. I guess I just have to get through this and can’t do much about it at the moment. I rarely feel that way, I mean agitated and like I can’t sit still for too long, usually my anxiety doesn’t look that way, so it feels rather awkward and annoying and maybe there’s something deeper to it that I can’t figure out, but honestly I’m not quite in the mood for figuring out anything at the moment, don’t think it would be actually productive. I think I’ll try my luck and go to sleep, who knows maybe I’ll succeed. Sleep well too guys. 🙂

Question of the day.

How do you like your eggs? Do you put any condiments on them?

My answer:

I’m not a big fan of eggs in general, I mean I can eat them but it’s nothing I would love or even particularly like. If I eat them, they’re hard or soft boiled, but I absolutely hate fried eggs, and I hate scrambled eggs even more, I wouldn’t eat them even for a million dollars, I just have such nasty emetophobic memories with them that even a single thought can make me feel nauseous, ew, yuck! As for the condiments, for me it’s usually salt, well, always salt, usually some mayo, and sometimes chilli, or other spicy stuff, but rather rarely, I don’t think it goes that well with eggs.

How about you? 🙂

Scared.

Long rant and unbossoming ahead, so be careful. Also TW for talking about emetophobia and all the obvious related yucky stuff. And about surgeries, and other related, possibly triggering, yucky topics. I will love you if you’ll get through all this, however it’s definitely not something I expect you to do, I just wanted to get things off my brain.

I’m having an absolutely shitty day, with lots of anxiety. I woke up very anxious because I had some gross nightmares for a second night in a row, but hey, that’s not the first time, so I thought I will get out of that murky place in a while. And I probably would, but then other things started happening. Particularly one thing a while ago.

Zofijka’s friend came over. She is, I dunno actually what’s with her, I guess she has some cold or something, anyway she is coughing a lot, but she seemed to be OK besides and they played lively as always and with lots of scream, as always. I was writing an exhaustive email to my pen pal, because I wanted to do it much earlier but haven’t been very well organised so didn’t manage, plus I wanted to distract from my other anxieties doing it. It wasn’t something very private or that I’d have to concentrate a lot on doing so I had the door open, the more that Misha was going in and out all the time.

And suddenly I heard someone running to the bathroom, the one that we have upstairs and that is beside my room. It was Zofijka’s friend. She was choking and then it sounded like she was gagging. So, well, I just froze. I couldn’t do anything, even just turn on the music or close that stupid door or do whatever. This is usually my reaction when I hear someone vomiting. Then Zofijka came to her and they talked silently and after a while they walked out. I don’t know what happened to her, I guess her cough was just so intensive. I know she had a brain tumour and isn’t fully recovered from it and Zofijka was mentioning that she had different things happenign to her as a result of it, but still objectively it didn’t look like something major. But I don’t want to know what it was… Or actually, I want, but I don’t want. That’s the best way I can describe it. But I think I don’t want more than I want. She looked like besides the cough she’s just OK, she played with Zofijka they were running and stuff, but now they just are sitting in Zofijka’s room and watching something. Obviously I wonder whether she has some flu or something and whether it’s contagious. I hate overthinking about such details. I wonder whether she’ll sleep with Zofijka. I generally like when other kids come to Zofijka for night, which may be surprising for you if you know me even just a little bit and how socially freaked I am, but everyone of us likes it, because then we don’t have to pay so much attention to her, she can be really really absorbing and exhausting long term, so it’s nice when another child comes to her for a weekend and she has something to do without either Mum or me having to constantly watch her, keep her company or endure her moodswings. BUt if she’s sick… and Zofijka will catch it too? And these scary bacteria and all will be all around our house… Grrrr!!! Scary!!! But I can’t stop thinking about it. Even if it isn’t anything contagious, I’m still scared, and I feel absolutely helpless about it at the moment.

I’m trying to distract, listening to music, I snuggled with Misha for a while when he wanted, went down to my Mum to smalltalk with her, but realised my Dad came back and they’re arguing so… well, ugh, I was reading blogs, tried to finish that email I started to write which didn’t go that well so I’d have to rewrite it, and now I’m writing here in hopes that if I’ll get it out it won’t feel so scary. More than an hour has passed since that little incident and I still can settle, and it scares me too, because I feel like it’s way too much time to process such a little thing, I don’t even know whether she actually vomited. But I just still feel so shitty, shaky and nauseated and cold and hot and dizzy and my thoughts are racing. Before that happened I planned to eat something soon but now I can’t think about eating anything without getting more nausious. Actually I’m rather surprised it affected me so much because I was doing better with my emetophobia recently. My family were sick in March and I had a lot of stress with it and other stuff combined together and although it WAS very tough, they were sick for a long time, I got through it more smoothly than this thing now. And I also feel like some major mood dip is starting for me, or maybe it’s just my anxiety trying to convince me that just everything is pointless. I took my extra anti-anxiety med but it doesn’t seem to do much.

And that other thing that scared me, not as much as the previous one, but now it all just combined into one scary monster in my brain, was something we talked about with Mum earlier today. Mum woke up having awful muscle cramps in her neck – she has issues with her spine so it’s like normal when she sleeps long in one position, and last night she slept very heavily. ANyway she wanted to make an appointment with her massagist as soon as possible. Then it reminded her that she also wanted to talk to him about me. Because of my feet and my muscle contractions that came up again when I started doing those five Tibetan rites with her. I agreed that she could talk with him about me and that it perhaps would be good if he saw me. Well I actually don’t remember if I had ever told you that I had a surgery for my Achilles tendons when I was 10. The orthopaedist I saw said that the source of the issues with my feet are the Achilles tendons which are to short so they’d have to lengthen them. They told me I would be in plaster for six weeks and how the surgery would look like. But it was all very brief and I didn’t really know what is going to happen, how I imagined it to be was completely different, and it seemed a very distant future. And when it finally happened it happened very suddenly, just the doctor told us out of the blue he can operate me in a week so we can come soon and that was it. So I had this operation, in pretty awful circumstances which I won’t go into now, and then I woke up hearing my Dad and nurses complimenting my new white high boots and how fashionable they are, and then I realised I had plasters allover my legs. Like, the surgery area was my Achilles tendons and maybe some part of my calves, while the plaster was all the way from my tighs to my toes so that I couldn’t even bend my legs. I think it had to shock me. I saw people in plaster before, like my Dad had his leg broken a few times, but I never thought you can be like this – I just though people who have something in plaster walk with crutches and do everything normally, like my Dad did. While I was actually bed bound. I think my parents weren’t prepared for such a big thing either, which only contributed to my insecurity around this. I actually felt much more like I was after some major accident than a minor surgery. Mum asked them to discharge me after the surgery and so they did, but I didn’t feel any better emotionally when I was at home. My existence started to be absolutely monotonous and depressive. This was the same year when I started integration school for a while in hopes it will work out for me, and Zofijka was born, so a lot of changes in other fields as well. I was overwhelmed that all the independence I had to the day of surgery was actually taken from me and I had to ask people for help with literally anything, like my Dad had to carry me to the loo and all that felt incredibly humiliating. I spent most of the time alone with not much to do since I couldn’t even change my position a lot. Mum was very occupied with Zofijka who was a very screamy baby and also we were moving houses and there was a lot of hustle with it so that she was mostly out of the house and then coming back in the evenings. I remember that I felt then that I was never going to recover or things will even get worse, that it will turn out I will have some weird complications or something. I think apart from all the boarding school shit etc. it was one of the things that screwed me up the most. That year many of my worst anxieties were brought to life or exacerbated, and I think then it was exactly when my first full episode of depression started, but it was diagnosed much later. It was then when I first was actively suicidal, and lots of other rubbish happened. When they finally took off the plasters of me I was very unsettled. In fact, when I was going hme after the surgery I was rather numb, but when they took the plasters off I felt like everything suddenly bursted out of me and I was a sobbing mess and noone, including me, could actually figure out why. It wasn’t the end though and the recovery afterwards and all the physio was even more traumatising and scary for me. When I finally recovered, after some time it turned out that the whole thing was actually waste of time and didn’t help much, and also that the plasters didn’t necessarily have to be that huge. I couldn’t recover emotionally for much longer, like even the songs I heard on the radio that I heard back then in the hospital or that were often played when I was after the surgery could bring me back to those feelings and experiences, and I could just feel situations as if they were now, or I had dreams in which it all was starting allover again, or a deep conviction it’s going to happen again, also that depression in which I slipped after the surgery has stayed with me for a long time. But I hardly ever talked with anyone about it and if so, very briefly and not going into my feelings. The only thing I am happy about with that surgery is that at that time I was luckily at home, not at the boarding school, otherwise I would have to go through that hell there, my Mum even told me once that she actually regretted I didn’t have the surgery there because it would be all easier logistically, so well, I should be thankful. Then Mum also brought me to another orthopaedist after a few years, and he told us that actually all that could be done with my feet, should be done when I was a baby and then everything would be OK, but what we could do at that moment was a surgery called Grice-Green’s surgery. I was just frightened, the more that this guy in turn described it all to me with lots of details and it seemed dreadful to me. However, somehow the thing was soon brushed under the carpet and of course I didn’t want to be the one uncovering it. My feet deffects aren’t so serious that they would affect my every day functioning significantly, or be very troublesome to live with, so I didn’t care and still don’t care much about it.

But where I’m going to, is that this massagist my Mum goes to is also a doctor. And it just scares the shit out of me that he could tell me I need another surgery or even anything similar. Of course I’d refuse, I won’t put myself into such things again now when I have the choice, but it all just… I think it triggered me. Because since we talked about it my brain is just flooded with memories. I feel so damn frustrated that I still haven’t got over with it. Like maybe I have a bit, but it still feels scary. I haven’t thought more about all that stuff for a long time now, I didn’t want to, and now it just all goes through my brain without me actually controlling it, like eveb the very details of that time and it makes me wanna scream. My Mum says he won’t do it, that he will just work on my muscles, because in recent years I’ve been getting a lot of contractions and stuff in many of my muscles, but particularly in my legs, and it actually is a bit disturbing for example with my horse riding or now with the Tibetan exercises. But some catastrophising parts of my freaky brain don’t want to believe in it.

Finally she called him and asked him if she could come, and then she went to him, and talked about me. She told me he said that these muscle contractions can also be neurotic, and that he’ll see me tomorrow at 12. I feel soo anxious about it.

Another thing I feel anxious about with this appointment is that I hate strangers touching me, even more if I’m just in my underwear. Mum says he wouldn’t care about it and how I look and stuff, that she was anxious about it too, but he has seen too many people to care about it, and she is sure I will like him. But for me it’s not about him. I don’t care if he’ll think I’m pretty or ugly or if he’ll care about how I look at all. It’s about me. I really really hate when people pay so much close attention to me, yuck.

So yeah, am very anxious today, but will have to get over it somehow. My emetophobia has calmed down a little bit as I’ve been writing and this girl isn’t sleeping with Zofijka, and also nothing very bad couldn’t happen to her, Zofijka would already tell me for sure.

I feel exhausted by all that anxiety, it’s been a while since the last time I can remember it being so intense, so I think the best thing I can do is to just shut off my brain and go to sleep, if I’ll manage, and hope tomorrow will maybe be better. Mum says she feels like having period and actually I would be glad if she would. It isn’t a Christian behaviour to wish someone a period, but then I know Mum would be stranded at home for the first day and we won’t go anywhere. I know I will have to see him and I know it could help me but I feel like right now I’m definitely not prepared. All that anxiety is, I guess, not adequate to the situation, and I would like some more time to digest it. I definitely wouldn’t like to come to him and freak out completely and lose the control over my anxiety, have a panic attack or something, which, in my current state of mind, would be very possible. Or I just hope this appointment will go better than I think it may. I just hope I’m only catastrophising with all this.

OK, sleep well, world. .

Question of the day.

It really upsets me when I hear people…

My answer:

…vomiting. 😀 That was the first what came to my mind. I’m laughing while writing this, but the problem is real and serious. Anything about vomiting scares me and it is this way since as long as I can remember, although it wasn’t always to such an extent that you could call it phobic. Even the word vomit in all the languages in which I know how to say it sounds quite… not scary, but… don’t know, disgusting and… and maybe yes, maybe a bit scary. I can’t define a specific situation though that has caused this fear in me, however when I was in my early teens, lots of fears that I had before started to exacerbate and I got a bunch of speciffic phobias during relatively short time. At that time I was very neurotic and had lots of weird psychosomatic issues, well now we know they were psychosomatic but they were rather enigmatic then. I’ve never struggled with any serious digestive issues at all, but then I had overwhelming nausea most of the time and had just a single episode during that time when I vomited simply because of emotional overlload, as I know now. And as I can remember that was the moment when my fear really exacerbated.

I couldn’t hear people vomiting without feeling like my knees weere of jelly, nauseated, dizzy and about to faint, even people who were about to vomit scared me and it was very hard for me to hide. I could love you to pieces, but if you were sick, I wouldn’t come closer than a metre to you if I had the choice, and most willingly wouldn’t even be in the same room as you, even for a very short while. If I had to be with you, I’d then wash my hands for 5 minutes afterwards. It was just way stronger than me. I couldn’t watch movies where people vomited, gagged or even choked, it freaked me out immediately. Even books were hard to get through without making me shaky. And I think I don’t have to mention that I was scared of the possibility that I could vomit or even be close to it. At that time I had a whole lot of restrictions and if I had to break them, I was freaking out, oh, I was freaking out even not doing it, ’cause everything is possible. It was developing very quickly to the point that one of the staff at the boarding school was convinced I’m anorectic. My list of forbidden foods quickly evolved from a few speciffic dishes to most foods and I was very ingenious in making up ways to not alarm anyone with the fact I’m barely eating anything nutritious. It was scary. So many things were scary. Eating, drinking, travelling, tummybugs – which are often guests when so many people live together, periods, meds – well they could also be helpful at times – various scary diseases…………………

And it lasted for quite long, but I got somewhat better gradually after I left the boarding school. I am still emetophobic and it is a significant issue for me – I’m eaten up by anxiety whenever someone in my surroundings gets sick, no matter whether it’s contagious or not – I still have some foods I’ll NEVER EVER eat, even some which I actually liked, and theoretically still like, but, ugh, nooo. I still have times when it becomes worse out of nowhere and I can barely function like a normal human being. I still can’t watch movies with people vomiting, but talking about the topic as you can see isn’t so very scary now for me as it used to be, unless we don’t go too much in details. I can read books with people vomiting with almost no problem, or I just skip it and go on, although there were some books which I had to stop reading, like I remember there was one book by Colleen MCCullough I wanted to read, I started and enjoyed it, but there were people vomiting at least three times and I just couldn’t move on. Hearing people around me vomiting is hell.

But you know what’s most ridiculous about it? Since that time in my teens when I vomited, it has NEVER EVER happened to me again. I’ve read on the forum for emetophobics something that if I got it right, said that people who suffer from emetophobia are so blocked from vomiting that they can’t do it physically. Don’t know whether it’s true, and whether it changes anything, but it makes some sense. I’ve had one or two norovirus infection during all those years, I got also rather severely dehydrated once, and although I did feel like I’m just about to vomit then and my fear was indescribable, I just didn’t and it felt like I had some sort of blockade inside. People say vomiting it’s not pleasant, but it’s good because then you feel better, but I’d rather live with extreme nausea and other stuff all the time than vomit once.

OK, over. Yuck, what a fascinating topic.

How would you end this sentence and why? 🙂

A shitty, Zombie day.

Yeah, today I have another Zombie day, which means, if you’re unfamiliar, that I’m after a night of completely no sleep. I think the reason of my sleep being so poor recently is that I’m significantly anxious over many things. A bit more than a week ago my term exam session started, which is always some stress – almost none in comparison to final exams that I’ll have in May, but still, makes me quite tense. Besides, almost at the same time my brother picked up some tummy bug or something and was sick, with vomiting and all the attractions, which obviously triggered my emetophobia. It lasted for very long for him and then Dad got infected too and it lasted very long too, so I was freaking out literally, because they were sick and because I could get sick and anyone else could. I didn’t get it luckily, but still don’t fully know if it’s actually over for them. Moreover, my Mum had gastroscopy and colonoscopy on Tuesday before Easter. Well it didn’t regard me directly, but still it made me feel anxious for some reason, I almost felt like I myself was going to have gastroscopy, which would be just traumatic for me I guess and I was stressed for Mum. Don’t know why I reacted so strongly for it. And then Mum had also some not serious complications after that which contributed to my anxiety. It’s crazy. and my final exams are in a month now, which is the thing I’m most anxious about currently. It’s not only about the exams themselves and whether I’ll pass them, but also about the circumstances in which I’ll be writing them. I’m not sure whether I finally told you or not, I guess I did, but I won’t take them at my own school that I formally go to. My school is a normal, mainstream school and my Mum was kind of afraid I might not get all the adjustments I could get if I’d write at a special school for the blind, especially as for math, as this is the subject I particularly suck at and is very difficult for me. I agree with it and so my Mum came up with the idea she’ll ask the headmistress of one of the schools for the blind – not the one I was going to as a child, a completely different one – if it would be possible for me to write there. There was a lot of paperwork and other stuff involved, but it was possible and I got the permission finally. But this school, although is much closer than the one I was going to, is still quite far from where I live, in a different region. So we would have to stay in the boarding school. I know, I won’t be there on my own, there will be Mum and maybe Zofijka with me, I will live with them and the circumstances will be completely different, we’ll be out of there most of the time, I desperately try to think rationally about it, but the anxiety is still there. I know it’s so irrational and stupid and all, but it doesn’t seem like I could do much about it now. I’ll probably just have to face it and see if it was worth all that anxiety or not. Also, I’m having lots of nasty dreams recently, with sleep paralysis and without and they scare me so so much. Just last week I had sleep paralysis twice. It’s knackering and makes me feel just helpless. Often such dreams leave me anxious for hours after they pass away. So yeah plenty of issues that may contribute to that lack of sleep.

Luckily I didn’t have to do anything important today, apart from preparing to my History exam which I’ll have on Monday, but it wasn’t hard to do and I actually could do it tomorrow as well if I really needed. I feel absolutely crappy today, with no energy (despite three strong coffees), lots of anxiety and depression, but that’s normal I guess for everyone who didn’t sleep for an entire night, or at least it’s my normal when I don’t sleep properly, the more tat other things get in the way.

Recently I was writing that I plan on buying a new Braille-Sense, and it turned out that it’s time now for applying for funding, so I did some of that endless paperwork with Mum. Well I guess don’t have much more to say now. Just had to rant a bit.

How are you guys doing? 🙂