My CBT treatment is all but finished now (I wouldn't say I'm fully recovered yet but have taken it about as far as it can and it's now up to me to keep it going by myself), but I thought I'd share an exercise I did for this week's session.

I was asked to write about feeling sick and decided, rather than make it up, to write about a very near miss I had last August, going into as much detail as I could, although with two crucial differences. Firstly and perhaps surprisingly, I pretended that I was actually sick that night (although in truth it was such a close call it's neither here nor there) while the second change is that I've edited out all the phobic "oh my god, oh my god" reactions that I actually had on the night and have replaced them with the various ways I should have reacted. (No, committing to paper how I reacted when I was still fully phobic would not be a terribly good idea, for me or anyone else... ).

Anyway, I hope it helps someone else to see it as I guess this is the culmination of all my treatment so far. Just one last thing, though - one point that my therapist made this morning was to ask if the part I've highlighted in italics was real or an edit. Although it sounds like an edit 15 months on it was actually real on the night and I guess represented my very first glimmer of hope that maybe I could make headway against this horrible phobia after all.

August 2010
Hmmm. How do I feel? I feel a bit funny. I’ve got a strange ache in my stomach. What’s causing it? I don’t know. Perhaps I pulled a muscle in my stomach while I was out running. Then again, I felt a bit funny while finishing my dinner earlier on and found it hard to concentrate on the programme I was watching. Still, can’t think about that now as I’ve got to go out and play football tonight. I have felt a bit strange here and there in the past but I’ve always gone out to play anyway and I suppose the same thing will happen tonight.
Driven to the Sports Centre okay but I still feel queasy. I usually spray anti-bug stuff on my arms and legs at this time of year to stop getting bitten but it doesn’t smell great at the best of times (like air freshener for a toilet!) and I’ve got a sense that it would make me feel even queasier if I smelt it right now, so I don’t bother.

Continue to feel strange warming up and when I start to play, which is difficult as I feel ill and don’t want to move too much. I’m also getting sharp feelings in my cheeks, like when you’re about to be sick. They are subsiding, but they keep coming and they’re making me feel worse.
Everyone has to take a turn in goal and I volunteer quickly, in need of the breather, but it doesn’t do me any good as I can barely raise myself to make a move for the ball. And that’s when I decide that I’m going to have to pull out and go home as I can’t play at all and just feel too sick, too ill. I feel like something’s about to happen from one end or the other or maybe both.

I go and sit in the car to get my breath but I feel worse now, dizzy and sweating. I take a few deep breaths and after about 10 minutes feel ready to drive home. Every bump in the road is making me feel queasy again and all I can think about it is how sick I feel. I nearly am in the car, twice, while driving home, the second time as I pull into the drive.

I don’t seem to be in control of this, but that makes me no different from everyone else, as no one can ever control this. If you’re going to be sick, you’re going to be sick and that’s that. All I can do is try my best to keep calm, go to bed and see what happens. Even if it does, I’ll still get up tomorrow morning and will be back to normal in a day or two. This would be no more than a blip in my life and nothing significant at all. Even if I am sick, I will cope with it and in the wider scheme of things it won’t matter, it won’t matter at all.

I look in the mirror and I can see that I look pale, which tells me that I probably am ill. I go straight to bed and retch a couple of times, but nothing comes up. That isn’t actually a good thing, as I think that if it happened I’d feel better. I almost want to be sick now. The third time I feel a really powerful “surge” of saliva in my cheeks and know that this time it will happen. I rush to the bathroom and it does and for the first time in many years I’m physically sick. I’m aware of the hot feeling and the horrible taste in my mouth and then it’s all out and all over. I turn the taps on to wash it away and reach for the mouthwash to swill my mouth out. It seemed to be over quite quickly.

I remember being sick from childhood and the last time I kept relatively calm it didn’t seem so bad as the last time I actually was sick, and panicked. I think my calmness here was part of that, of why it seemed to be over so quickly. I wasn’t trying to fight it, not really. It’s never a nice experience, but it seems to me with hindsight that you can make it worse by feeling scared and fearful.

I go back to bed and after about 15 minutes realise that I’m feeling better. I’m thirsty now but don’t want to risk drinking some water in case it just makes me sick again. I drift off to sleep and wake again about 3am, feeling almost uncomfortably thirsty. I try and get back to sleep but I can’t as my mouth feels too dry. After about half an hour I decide to take the gamble to take a few sips of water, as I have a strong sense from my own body that it will be okay. I feel better for the drink and soon fall asleep again.

Next thing I know it’s the following morning and I wasn’t sick again during the night. It was an uncomfortable evening but it’s all over now. So strange with hindsight – I started to feel queasy around 8pm and was sick probably around 10.45pm. Start to finish, the whole thing was no more than 3 hours. In other words, it wasn’t even a complete evening, just part of one. That was all.

Does it mean anything? No. Does it make me a lesser person, an “imperfect” person because I was sick? No. Was last night a significant event in my life? No. Some of my old thinking still persists and I almost want to tell myself it was big event, but I know that’s wrong. People without this phobia do not regard being sick as some huge event so there’s my answer. It was a few uncomfortable hours and then life picks up again exactly as it was before. It’s only significant if I allow it be so and I choose not to allow it.

So my “streak” is now over? Looks like it! Good riddance I say, as it was part of the problem, having this “perfect record” dating back to the early ‘80s that I always had to maintain, no matter what. I actually think now that it was part of the problem and has to take its share of the blame for creating the phobia in the first place. So the streak is snapped at 27 years and 6 weeks and I guess I’ll never go that long ever again, as it would mean I’d be pushing 65 the next time I was sick! So what, I’m going to wish my life away simply for an “achievement” which is meaningless to anyone who isn’t phobic and is actually counter-productive anyway? Don’t be silly! So, because chances are I’ll never match the 27 year “record” again that means paradoxically that I’m free of it now. I won’t surpass it, so there’s no reason ever to think about it again, still less to attempt to create a new one. No, it’s a relic of the past and is best left there, barred from exercising its damaging influence over my thinking.

So yes, I was sick last night.
So what?