EDIT AGAIN: I've noticed that some words seem to be censored around the forum; I haven't done any of this. I'm not sure what would constitute "graphic" (I don't think this post is) but it could be considered descriptive in places. Hopefully I haven't done anything horrible.
EDIT: Wow. This is positively huge! I have no idea how it got so big [img]smileys/smilies_10.gif[/img]. Despite this, I hope that someone reads it and responds, even if they only skim it.
I'm sixteen and I'm not really sure if I'm a true emetophobe, but I certainly have an exceptionally severe and irrational fear of throwing up. I've thrown up only twice in my memory, and I'm pretty certain that I've got complete or nearly complete control over whether I vomit or not. The only reason why I question whether I qualify as actually having emetphobia is that it doesn't consume a great deal of my life. If I feel like I'm going to vomit, it's intensly terrifying, but otherwise I don't lend it too much thought.
When I was six, I vomitted up some red kool-aid and I remember wondering if it was blood, but as far as I remember, I was strangely unafraid. I doubt this had much impact on anything, though. Aside from that, until I was ten, vomitting was something that only happened to other people.
I vomitted when I was ten (the only time I remember throwing up actual food), waking up in the middle of the night with intense stomach pains. The pain was quite horrible, but the overwhelming sensation was that whatever was in my stomach needed to get out of me in some way. I figured that vomitting was inevitable at that point, but in the end I realized that the final step was completely voluntary. Overall, though, there was nothing frightening about the experience of actually throwing up. I threw up quickly, and, in some ways, it actually felt "good." After that, I just felt better overall, and, most importantly, my stomach didn't hurt at all. Despite all of this, I'm reasonably certain that this is a large, if not the largest or only, contributing factor to my irrational fear (and it is clearly irrational given that vomitting was not a bad experience for me at all).
I was aware of a cousing of mine (I'm not sure how distant; this person died before I was born, and, as I said, I was only aware of this person) who died at age ten from vomitting in his sleep (This is, I suspect, relevant, because, aside from the fact that I woke up and didn't die, the one time I remember throwing up coincides quite well). So, of course, I'd never consider going to sleep if I felt nauseated, but I don't think that any of it is really a fear of dying; I'm actually unusually unafraid of death (most of the "traditional" irrational fears, such as spiders and public speaking, range for me from less frightening than average to attractive. Instead, I'm stuck with some other weird fears that, whether common or not, are entirely ignored by popular culture).
So, since I threw up when I was ten, I've tried not to recreate any of the conditions that surrounded (despite the fact that most of them are almost positively unrelated to actually throwing up). For a few years after that, every time my stomach hurt, I panicked that I was going to vomit, but slowly I just got used to having an upset stomach and not throwing up, and figured that I might not ever throw up again, particularly if I didn't want to.
Anyway, I'm finally starting to get to the second point of this topic. Two years ago, I got strep throat and it wouldn't go away (I ended up getting my tonsils removed, which, at 14, was exceptionally painfull. Since then, for reasons that no one is entirely sure of, I've been sick on and off. This post is getting to be too long, though, so that's for another time.) Naturally, with strep throat, particularly strep throat that stays there after it's supposed to be gone, I had to get lo
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Originally Posted by rayvin400
