A little support please... Bad anxiety right now.

[frankieanime]

Hey guys, i'm having some terrible stomach issues right now. I'm very N* and am obviously making a post
to keep my mind busy... My name's Frankie, i've had pretty bad emetophobia since I was maybe 5 years old.
I'm now 19, and only recently stumbled across this website googling my fear hoping I wasn't the only one...
I had a terrible hypochondria phase in my life that went from about January '11 to about May'11. It was a
terrible time and i've grown passed it, it took a lot of strength. But I was with this girl for a year and a half
she was the first I shared my fear with... Luckily she didn't judge me and did whatever she could to help me out.
Sadly she broke up with me in August Last year, so it's been a long time. But just before we broke up, I had made
some huge leaps and bounds, I managed to get over my anxiety and only felt real N* maybe once every few months.
But only from legitimate reasons (Expired food, colds and all that). But it hasn't been bad at all. But lately my anxiety
has slowly been coming back and now I think I came down with some sort of cold/flu.. So here I am sitting here real
N* and turned to the website for the first time in a while to get support. So if you took the time to read this, thank you.
I know it's just rambling, but anything to keep my mind calm right? Well anyways, any advice? And if not, feel free to
share your stories with me, I would love to take the time to read all about you
Maybe even make some friends.

[silent]

Hi Frankie! I'm sorry to hear you're feeling this way right now. I do stuff like going on the internet and looking up funny junk to pass time and distract myself when I need to. For feeling n* I don't think of tried those methods though. I think going to sleep may help get rid of it. Can't be feeling anxiety when you're asleep right? Seeing as you did make those advances you should feel proud of yourself knowing that you are capable of making those leaps and bounds. Have you tried going to therapy yet? They can help you through something called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). I have yet to try it myself but I've heard about it.


"...(CBT) is an empirically supported treatment that focuses on patterns of thinking that are maladaptive and the beliefs that underlie such thinking. For example, a person who is depressed may have the belief, "I’m worthless," and a person with a phobia may have the belief, "I am in danger." While the person in distress likely holds such beliefs with great conviction, with a therapist’s help, the individual is encouraged to view such beliefs as hypotheses rather than facts and to test out such beliefs by running experiments..."

A brief excerpt from NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I don't like using that label for phobias such as this (mental illness), to me it doesn't fit well. Well I mean I fit into that category for other reasons but... (I'm trying to make you feel better in case you felt bad about that label, was it working? Lol.

Here's the link to that page from NAMI:
http://goo.gl/f5B2m

Hope I helped.