Hi.
I hope this is an okay place to post this; I didn't notice an introduction section...
For some reason I still feel kind of silly posting like this, but I'll go ahead and post and hope y'all don't laugh too hard.
I've had emetophobia for about 5 years now. At first I didn't understand my problem. It took me over a year, perhaps longer, to find out about this. I thought I had a physical malady of some sort! I figured a doctor could do a scan of me and say, "That right there in your chest - that's the problem. Let's go ahead and get that taken care of."
Of course, it's not quite that simple. The highlight / lowlight some years ago saw me travel to the ER in the middle of the night because my fear prevented me from sleeping. I had recently had a sonar scan of some sort, and I guess I thought I could find out what problem they'd found. Of course, they didn't find any problem. I felt somewhat disappointed, I think, because it left me without any answers.
At 20 years old (I think) and in my second year of college, this phobia almost led to me dropping out of school. At the last moment I changed courses; I only enrolled for classes on the day before the new semester or thereabout. I had only taken 2 classes the previous semester because of my phobia and failed one of them because I stopped attending.
The new semester saw similar results, as I attended 2 classes and elected to skip 2 others. To make it worse, I was attending one of the classes only for the sole purpose of proving that I could actually attend the class. (I had to attend the same room I had a class in the previous semester and didn't really like this idea.) As such, I really accomplished nothing and, as you might imagine, received a failing mark in the course.
Fortunately, I had meanwhile convinced myself to resume attending of one of the other 2 classes. At the midpoint of the semester I realized I had to make a decision: to take a little control back and attend this class, or ... I don't know what. It was hard to go back not only because of my phobia but also because of the fear of how the professor would react. Happily, I could not have had a more helpful, wonderful professor. I did not tell her of my phobia (I have not told many at all), but she accepted me back into the class and even let me make up some of the assignments I had missed.
After that I got back on track and resumed taking a full load of classes (even during summers!). This obviously represented a great step forward. I definitely had times of struggling with my phobia along the way, but I managed to cope well enough to continue forward and graduate with high marks, even! (I had the opportunity to retake the classes I failed and overwrite the failing grades.)
In the couple of years since I graduated, I have been doing pretty well. However, I am certainly stuck in a bit of a holding pattern. I managed to make it through school, but at this point I have a hard time making it through a full day of work. I had a very hard time finding a job in the first place, but I finally landed a mailing room position a couple of months ago. Unfortunately, I resigned after only a couple of weeks because of my phobia.
I feel like I am in a fairly good position right now, but I know I definitely have a lot of room for improvement ahead of me. I have a desire to part with this phobia, and I know that is important. However, I am not in an unnecessary rush. I don't mean to imply that I think I should remain like I am for years to come; I simply remind myself that I am not in any kind of race with anybody. I am 23 years old and have not started any kind of career yet, but that's okay. It doesn't make me a bad person or anything like that. I feel that I am fortunate to have the perspective to look at things that way; it would be bad to cope with this phobia and feel pressured to "race" my age at the same time!
I hope I haven't
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