My CBT journey

[Avath]

You said you JUST had "food poisoning". I point this out only because thinking of that makes me horrified and I feel so bad for you that you had to go through that. How did you handle it? I am going through treatment of my own right now and I have made MUCH progress but I am very intrigued by what you told yourself to make you "okay" with being that ill. Everyone always tells me their FP* stories (I DO NOT KNOW WHY PEOPLE DO THIS, Haha!) but they do...and they make is sound like death. In fact that even say "i thought i was dying". lol this is NOT good. so back to the point. How did you cope? Just curious. Congrats on the treatments by the way. You are strong and can do this. One day at a time. God Bless!

You know what I think it is? People feel like they are dying because of the anxiety they feel when they feel very sick and have stomach pains - and emetophobes that's like our normal state of mind so really it felt like nothing to me. We are used to the anxiety and we learn to handle it better and we can identify it and learn to seperate it from actual symptoms of sickness. So I could say "Ah. I am anxious. But I also don't feel well. I can make this easier by relieving the anxiety with the techniques I've learned over the years of living with anxiety. I'm going to be just fine." while perhaps a 'normal' person would mix all of it together and feel awful and bring themselves to an anxiety attack which they aren't used to feeling or know how to handle. I think the anxiety is the part that made them feel like they were dying. We can handle anxiety better than them!

Also; People are drama queens! How many times a day do we absolutely HATE things that we just dislike a bit? How many times a day do we LOVE things and forget about it a few minutes later? How many times a day do we "LITERALLY!" feel something? "My heart literally broke" etcetcetc It's natural to be dramatic about illnesses then aswell. We can take all the hate and love and literally's with a grain of salt because we know it's not LITERALLY so =P but because we are emetophobics it's hard to do that with the topic of vomitting. People exaggerate for dramatic effect. And then we emetophobes embellish a bit ourselves, I am sure.

When I get ill and know I'm going to throw up I go to a very strange calm place in my mind. It's inevitable what's going to happen and it doesn't bother me one bit. The worst bit is the waiting bit. The actual vomitting isn't bad at all. It happens in a couple seconds, and afterwards you feel so much better. I've carried over the worst bit into my daily life and it's what I do all the time. Waiting. Waiting. Trying to avoid things to make me not have to wait so intensely. Ridiculous!

I'm not all that afraid of getting food poisoning anymore because I've had it a few times now and I know it's over and done with quite quickly. I've had them at the worst possible times - by myself, at a stranger's house the night before we left to go to their wedding, the day before my brother's birthday, waking up in the middle of the night to be sick - and I was FINE! I'm still afraid of the noro-virus the same reason you're afraid of food poisoning - people's dramatic tellings. But my friend recently had it and he was like "Man that sucked, I didn't feel great for a while there. Now where's my soup? I am starving." and I was a wreck for days and couldn't eat. I live in Sweden. He lives in Canada. And he was eating just fine. I find this very comforting.

I think the worst thing about stomach viruses and throwing up in general is the anxiety part. People get worked up and it's awful because their minds make it awful. My friend is really quite relaxed and he had an easy time of it even though he had the same sickness that newspapers like to print the most terrifying things about like it's the worst thing that could ever happen to you. It's not. Quite a freeing thought.

To me, the worst thing that could ever happen to me is that I live with this mind-fucking anxiety every day for another year. For another day!

With that said; I am going to go to the shops now and I am going to touch stuff with my bare hands.

[Siskysophie]

You're totally right, I used to fear going out just incase I vomited but now I seem to be more scared of getting a panic attack if i'm not near home and this makes me anxious!
Anxiety is a real bitch!

Thankyou so much for posting this diary though, Im hoping to get CBT soon and its made me feel very positive about it. From my point of view you're doing really well I really admire your determanation!
Good luck, I look forward to reading more posts!
xx