Introducing Myself and Questions!

[tjwbeauty]

Hi everyone! My name is Taylor and I'm just starting out here today... And let me just say I'm SO THANKFUL I found a site like this! So I'm 17 years old and I started my fear of v* last year on Thanksgiving day. But the thing is in my situation, NOTHING happened that day! No one got sick, nothing was out of the ordinary, I just all of a sudden (while my entire family was at my house), put into this hardcore panic attack. I didn't even know what was happening. I ran into the bedroom and started pacing until my mom quickly came in. I just remember pacing saying "I'm gonna throw up, I don't want to, I'm gonna throw up, I don't want to!" And I never did. To this very day, I have never done it! Maybe it's the fear of the "unknown"? I've lost a lot of friends, a lot of events, a lot of memories I can't replace. I just want this whole thing to be done. I've taken meds, been to a therapist (well a few), received Reiki treatments, been hypnotized... but it stays the same. Well, I just wanted to share my story, and I would love any feed-back or any conversation at all Have a great day everyone!

[pretendworld_]

Hey and welcome to the site!
What you described sounds like an anxiety/panic attack to me. I often get overwhelmed when there is a lot of people around..like last Christmas, I spent the entire day thinking over and over again ''I'm going to get s*, I'm going to get s*'' - and I never was, nor did I even feel s*. This phobia is weird. But do you really have an actual fear of v*? like perhaps a past experience when you were younger that you can recall?

[spilled_milk]

I think fear of loss of control and feeling like you don't know what's coming and you cant control it really fuels this fear. Not everybody has a trigger event, v* is just something that you can't control and that scares the s*** out of lots of people!

Anyway, welcome! Feel free to ask any questions you need to

[Paisley]

Hello and welcome. Your story sounds like how my emetophobia started - with a crazy panic attack that I maybe misinterpreted as "I'm going to throw up and I don't want to" because nausea and other stomach issues are so common with panic attacks. I think what happens is our brains link what we zero in and focus on (nausea in this case) during that very first panic attack with vomiting and a phobia is born. The panic attack and the vomiting become one and the same in our mind. That's what I think happens.

[tjwbeauty]

That is what a lot of people have said/therapists. They say that I don't actually have a fear of v*, I just have anxiety which comes out as that fear, focusing on it. I have this "fear of the unknown because there's so much in my life that I can not control that all happened at once. My mom got cancer, my brother became a drug addict, my best-friend moved, i lost friends... and then all of a sudden I was randomly afraid of v*. Hopefully I can work through it soon though because it's a daily struggle to go to work, and especially, my senior year of high school.