“CURED OF EMETOPHOBIA”
© 2003 A. S. Christie
(please do not reproduce without permission)


I have been successfully treated for emetophobia, which I suffered from to an extremely serious degree for 40 years. For twenty of those years, I searched for help and was willing to do anything to be rid of this gripping terror in my life. Finally, I succeeded. Here is my story.

I'm 45 years old. My childhood was quite traumatic. At age two, I swallowed a penny when my mom wasn'thome, and14-year old sister got a nurse neighbour to help. She stuck her fingers down my throat to make me vomit and apparently I screamed and cried. (Finally I was taken to hospital to have it removed from my throat). My brotherthen diedin an accident when I was 3, and my dad died of cancer (literally throwing up to death, it seemed) when I was 9. My mother suffered from mental illness, and was always sick and expected me to look after her. Once she went into the hospital "for a rest" when I was only 10 and left me home alone for 3 days, even though I was sick myself. Most of the rest of my childhood was spent in horror and terror every moment. Obviously I associated vomiting with dying - even if I only saw (or thought I would see) someone else do it.

As time went on I avoided things more and more. In my teens I went to university, and stopped eating almost everything but bananas and digestive cookies (you all know this routine). My fear of others vomiting was so intense that I started avoiding people altogether at one point. I remember sitting on the bed in my room, curled up in fetal position, crying and feeling so terrified that I wanted to die. I thought it would be better to die than to ever be anywhere near someone who vomited, or to ever be sick myself. I thought if I got some sickness that involved vomiting, I would rather kill myself quickly. As soon as that thought entered my head, I knew I needed professional help. I was only 18.

I got a referral to a psychiatrist from my doctor, and the shame of just telling him my disorder (the first person on the face of this earth that I ever told) sent me into a deep depression. I wallowed in grief for weeks. I had some limited success with this psychiatri