A thread on smoking cause a bit of a ruckus on here with quite a few people disagreeing and one person even saying they were leaving the forums. I posted on the thread and was involved with the disagreement. I stand by what I said, but just wanted to clear up something. When one poster said that "they continue to get angry and try to be supportive, but sometimes this board is just a bunch of handholding and feeding of fears and addictions and oversensitive people" I told them that if they felt that way, then perhaps this wasn't the place for them. They in return responded that this obviously isnt the place and was leaving.

Some people responded to their leaving by saying that they shouldn't let something like this scare them away. Now, if this site helps that person in dealing with their Emet, I would hate to see them leave too. However, the reason I told this person to leave is for this reason....

We here on this forum all suffer from a phobia, that almost all of us keep secret, and/or people don't understand. We DO NOT like having this phobia and just want to learn how to manage it or overcome it.

If a person has a fear of heights, they can avoid high places, or if they are claustrophobic, they can avoid tight spaces. Someone with Emet cannot avoid themselves! However, The basic underlying issues of these fears along with emet are the same. But there is also a BIG different from this phobias and others. THE UNDERSTANDING of non sufferers. A person who is afraid of heights can TELL this to other people, and other people understand it, same with claustrophobia. However, you tell someone you are an Emet, they don't get it. They either think you are crazy or tell you to "just get over it". They don't understand the affect it has on someone's life!

So, it is a BLESSING to me to have somewhere to come to where people ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND what I am going through, and where I don't have to be embarassed or ashamed. So, when the rest of the world is telling me to "just deal" or I have to keep my fears a secret, it is really UPSETTING that when you come to the one place where you feel you can understanding and support, you have someone telling us we are all oversensitive and there is too much hand holding! Of COURSE there is a lot of hand holding on here... why? Because we CAN'T get it from anywhere else. Sometimes people really need to hear "It is going to be OK. You are not alone, you are not crazy!"

We are all struggling with something that is misunderstood by the rest of society, and I really feel it is detrimental if one of our fellow "sufferers" who SHOULD understand our struggles responds with the same unsupportive comments that we get every where else.