Childhood trauma:
When I was just 4 years old at school, a little boy in my class would cry and make himself ill after having to leave his mum at the door every morning.
This went on for quite a few months, until our head mistress came in one day and really shouted at him to stop doing it. I think she was hoping to scare him out of it. Anyway, our teacher tried to calm the situation by making us all to sit on the floor whilst she read us a story.
She sat over us on a radiator with this little boy on her lap. I was sitting directly beneath him. After a few minutes the little boy was ill all over me and I was covered from head to toe. I remember it so clearly, like it was yesterday. I just froze, I was in shock, I couldn't cry or speak or do anything.
In the 1960's, one was not sent home for such things and I had nothing to change into, so I was wiped down and had to endure it all day from the morning until the afternoon.
I remember my mother being very angry when she came to collect me, and how she could not get the smell out of my hair even after several washes. Consequently this started my emetophobia and right back from an very early age I would get panic attacks every time I would see someone being ill or I smelt it.
I cannot have any dealings at all with anyone who is ill, not even my own children. The feeling is overwhelming and I am as frozen as the day it first started. In most cases I feel much, much worse than the person who is being ill.
Most people are scared that they will be ill themselves and although I haven't myself for years (mind over matter) and would never want to be, I am more afraid of others being ill.
I have tried everything from acupuncture to the most obscure methods of phobia treatments. I have even tried to expose myself to it, as I once read it is the only way to get rid of this phobia is exposure, but I was even more traumatised by having done that.
Being scared that you might be ill is one thing, but being scared that others will be is really debilitating as it happens all the time even on tv!