Hi all, I justread this site last night and just wanted to give a little(read:very long and probably boring) introduction, to hopefully gain a little perspective, support and any advice as to what I can do to start to get over this horrible affliction.
I have been afraid of vomiting all my life, or at least as long as I can remember. I have a pretty good idea as to why this is, and it has to do with abuse that I went through as a child from my father.
**Graphic warning** One of my many other problems that I have is being stubborn, a trait shared by my father as well. Like most children I didn't like the taste of vegitables, i didn't want to eat them at all. Now my father, instead of letting me gradually learn to eat them over time would force me to eat them. Most of the time this would just be me sitting at the table for hours after meals had ended, with my head in my arms crying wishing I was back home(my parents had gotten divorced when I was 4). Eventually when I wouldn't eat though my father would come back in and start to physically force me to eat.
This started the assosiation of nausea to vegitables, and only made it worse having him jab a fork filled with these horrible tasting(to me) foods into my mouth. Many nights I would end up gagging on it as it was forced down, and a number of times I did actually throw up a bit. If this wasn't bad enough a number of times that I did throw up, my dad would barley scrape away some of the vomit, mixing some of it with the rest of the food and continue to force feed me what I had just spit up.(Sometimes he was drunk, as he was an alcoholic)**End graphic warning**
This i believe is the major cause of my phobia, as well as the cause for me not eatinga fruit or vegitable since the last time I was at his house(about 10-12 years ago), since most likley I relate the food with nausea/vomiting. I am an extremly picky eater, basically living off of bland chicken for dinner every night and a turkey sandwhich for lunch(I have been forced todrink ensure nutirional drinks for thesepast 10-12years and am sure that these are the main reason why I am still alive today, even thoughunderstandibly I am not in the best of health...I have little to no energy, horrible sleeping patterns, and even without my phobia I'm sure I'd still have alot of nausea and diareah in my day to day life).
As I grew up the fear of vomiting sort ofwent into the background as other diagnosis started to pile up. The continual abuse(and there was just as much mental as physical)from my father allowed me to grow up being withdrawn and shy, a perfect target for bullies that just continued to push the belief of how worthless I was into my mind, andthere were bouts of depression I dealt with over the years(though to this day I still doubt I was as depressed as I was diagnosed). Besides that my anxiety level gradually roseyear by year, and I would spendthe two weeks at home worrying about going to my father's house for the weekend.
Eventually this grew to where I couldn't stand being at school or around people, and eventually I became agoraphobic, only leaving the house to go to doctors appointments for about 4-5 years. My apathy grew as medication was piled on and only continued to make things worse for my numerous diagnosis, therapy didn't help at all as I really had nothing to talk about(or at least i thought), and never really connected anyway with anyone I saw. But at least I wasn't nautious anymore.
I stayed in my house semi-addicted toonline role playing games where I could be someone else, someone who could do things and be respected. I had friends who liked this fake me, and basicalyl spent all my waking hours on the game, neglecting personal hygine and basically everything else. My mother eventually got sick of this and sent me away tosort of residentialcenter(which looking back seemed more like aplace they sent kids who were too young to go to prison) where I first g
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