For any of you who don’t know, emetophobia is the fear of vomiting. I’ve been a moderate to severe emetophobic since I was 5 years old. My lovely daughter is now seven years old and I love her more than anything. My problem is that my emetophobia is always lurking in the back of my mind, making me a little bit terrified all the time. I’m terrified of myself throwing up, and I’m also terrified of anyone else throwing up- including my daughter. I’m scared to take her for long car trips, plane trips or even on amusement park rides. I hate myself for this fear, but I can’t just shake it off. I’ve come a long way over the past few years, but still not far enough to be in the same room as someone who might vomit or who is vomiting.
I guess I want to know if there are any other emetophobe parents out there, and if they have any advice for me? How do you deal with it? Have you recieved phobia therapy or desensitization? Thanks in advance.
Could you cope if your daughter got ill and was sick every day for a week? If you feel you can cope with that, then perhapse you don’t need to do anything else about the phobia. If on the other hand you feel you couldn’t cope, then perhapse see a psychiatrist for advice on what you could do?
I am in the care of a psychiatrist, and I feel that it’s made a difference. I can tolerate a lot more now than I could a few years ago, but I’m not “cured”. As for my daughter, I’m not sure that I could cope very well in the event of her being ill for an extended period of time, and that’s what scares me.
Have you a nearby friend, relative, or good neighbour who would knows about your condition, and could help were your daughter to get gastroenteritis or some similar bug?
If you are out in the cold in such respects, you could get the number of a nurse you could call in for help (if you could afford such a thing). Or maybe talk to our psychiatrist about more drastic cures. There are several ways of fighting phobias through increased contact with the phobic thing. Could you touch a joke shop plastic pool of sick for instance. Could you acclimatize yourself to the smell a little at a time.
When you have come into contact with sick, does it make you yourself sick. (I am not phobic, but I do feel very queezy if someone else is sick). If this is true for you, you might ask your doctor about anti-vomiting medicine, which you could take whilst dealing with a poorly daughter.I should state I am not a doctor, but I have some knowledge of phobias through my own, and casual research of other phobias.
If you don’t mind my asking, what is your phobia?
I’m not on my own in this. I didn’t mean to make it sound that way. Harborwolf and I have been together for eight years now and this is our daughter. He is there for me if puking is an issue, but I don’t want to always rely on that, you know? I’d like to be free of this phobia forever.
As for its severity, I’m not as bad as some people. I can deal with joke vomit- even touch it!!! When I was a child, I could barely watch television or movies for fear of someone throwing up. Now I can deal with it pretty well, even though I don’t like to see it. Also as a child, I would run out of the room if the dog or cat started to get sick. Now it just irritates me that I have to clean it. When my daughter was a baby, I had no issue with spitting up, and I even laughed once when she puked inside my shirt while I was nursing her! The thought of her throwing up now though makes me terrified!!! As I said before, I’ve come so far, it’s just getting over that last little bit of residual fear. Recently I was in the car with my mother. I was driving and my mother choked on water and started coughing and sputtering. She didn’t throw up, but I nearly had to pull over out of fear. I can do everything except deal with the actual act.
The really strange part is that I’m not exactly sure what specifically sets me off about sickness, and what I need to work on. There’s no one thing, I think it’s the combination of the sight of someone heaving, the sound AND the smell. I’ve had therapy about this for years, and even experimented with the controversial EMDR therapy for awhile to try and overcome this. Sometimes I try to psych myself up for it. The last time my daughter was sick, Harborwolf was in the bathroom taking care of her, and I was trying to MAKE myself go in there to check on her. I hate to admit this, but I couldn’t do it. I was standing in the living room trying to make my feet walk to the bathroom, but they wouldn’t obey. This makes me feel like such an awful mother.
I’m sorry about the rambling nature of this thread, I’ve just got a lot on my mind. 
Even though I don’t share your phobia at all, I must say, I feel my least maternal when the little darlings are puking. I deal with it, but not exactly with lightning speed.
At this moment, my 2-year-old is in bed coughing a very liquidy cough. He frequently barfs when this happens, and did so yesterday.
I am definitely an emetophobe, but I found that the first few times my son threw up, it didn’t bother me much. I think the reason was that he (like many small children) can empty his stomach bazooka-style and five seconds later go running off to play like nothing happened. Perhaps this is nature’s way of easing parents into it. I am starting to regard vomit as merely chewed food, rather than radioactive waste.
Still not at peace with the prospect of vomiting myself, mind you.
I suspect that the reason you couldn’t make yourself do it was because three wasn’t really any need: your husband was there. You daughter was fine. You were just torturing yourself on principle, and your brain knew it. Chances are that had your daughter been alone in the bathroom and really needed help, then you could have moved your feet because the need would have been real.
This is one of those coincidences that just blows me away. Last night at about 4am, my daughter came rushing into our room and announced she was going to throw up. What are the odds? I had JUST started this thread the previous day! I woke up Harborwolf and went out into the living room for a minute. When I came back in, she had hosed the bed, the floor next to the bed, the floor in front of the bed and our dog’s bed on the floor. Not pretty.
Though I wasn’t able to deal with the ACTUAL puking, I was able to strip the bed and clean what needed cleaning with Harborwolf. A few years ago, there is no way in hell I would have been able to get that close to vomit.
By the way, in case anyone is worried, my daughter is okay. I think she has a mild stomach bug that she picked up at school. She’s thrown up one other time since last night, but aside from the vomiting, she’s just like normal- laughing and joking around and wanting to play. Kids are funny.
Well done Alias, I also bet that you could and would cope if you had too if your husband wasn’t arround (or was sick too, Og forbid). My phobia is sociaphobia (sp?) but I don’t believe it is really a phobia in the classic sense (it is nothing like my best friend’s arachnophobia, or your phobia), I just get extremely anxious in some social contexts, to the extent of avoiding them whenever possible.
Again I say well done, and I bet $100 virtual dollars that you would cope well if you had no other option. I bet you will hardly notice when you do cope, only notice a short time after when you realize what you did (emergency and adrenaline have that sort of effect on people).