I am new to this forum and it is the first time that I realise that I am not the onlyperson suffering from this complaint. While this is reassuring, it is also depressing that there is no quick-fix answer.


I have never thrown up much. I have never been able to tolerate being in a room with someone else who feels sick. But my general behaviour was never governed by this. I didn't worry about being sick in any general way. But now I have areal phobia that has its origins in my pregnancy. I had a horrible pregnancy - although most women would have found it quite normal. I felt very sick for three months (no vomitting just nausea). I couldn't cope with it at all. I just stayed in bed and more or less refused to eat or drink. Once my baby was born, I started getting diahorrea quite regularly, coupled with extreme nausea. I still don't know what caused it, but I still have real digestive problems 2.5 years later. I have struggled on a daily basis with my own nausea. However, I have also developed little by little a social phobia, including sometimes avoidance of my little girl. She goes to the creche and I am terrified everyday that she will catch something nasty from another child. The "What if?" syndrome kicks in and it seems ineviable that she will get sick. My husband will get sick and won't be able to look after herand I'll have to look after her. Then I'll get sick. The panic builds and builds.


Most days, I manage to control it and my husband is very good and takes care of our little girl if I am in a real panic. Sometimes she really is sick and then I just run and hide. I manage to make myself feel ill at the same time, and have to take to my bed, clutching my anti-emetics,for hours trying to calm myself down.


Little by little I have descended into a state where I often don't eat if I feel a little unwell, or if my daughter seems unwell. I have the feeling that if I don't eat anything then nothing can come up. I am getting obsessive about hand-washing, about not wanting to go on the train with all those people. I find it difficult to go to work because there is always someone who is ill or whose child is ill ...


I am amazed, reading back what I have written, that I can have got into such a state. My doctor wants to give me anti-depressants. I tried a therapist who thinks that something happened to me when I was a baby to make me so terrified. I can't think of anything. My father once told me off for throwing up in bed, rather than in a bowl. Can this have triggered all this??? I can't think of anything else. The problem with that therapist is that I end up feeling like a failure. There is something wrong with me. I find that just too depressing and not constructive at all. She is probably right in that the fear must have an origin somewhere, but right now what I need is constructive help on how to manage the fear on a day-to-day level. Does anyone have any experience of therapy helping through the identification of forgotten events or behaviour?


I am now trying a therapist who is working more on the conditions of my life now - trying to combine work and baby whilst suffering from digestive problems.


And you know what is the most stupid thing? I almost threw up once when I was pregnant - really heaving, and managed to bring up some liquid. And it wasn't frightening at all. I felt quite calm and did what I needed to do. So why-oh-why do I have to be so frightened of it???