Hello!!!

I came to check in =) and to tell you things concerning my emetophobia are great!

In the past three weeks I have thrown up twice - and you know what? It was not a big deal at all. In fact, it wasn't a deal at all. It was just an occurrence. After the first time I was HIGH on the experience. WOW! It happened, I did it, I wasn't scared. It was fine! The second time was yesterday - I hit my head and got a concussion. Again - I knew it was going to happen and... I didn't get as much as an increased heart rate.

It's amazing. It's so amazing. Sometimes I can't believe this is me now. I was SO sick with emetophobia. I was so ruled, so held back, so.... it was like how people describe an eating disorder: the eating disorder is a whole other person inside you that rules you and you are so small and weak and you follow, and you follow gladly because you are so scared. My emetophobia was king of my universe. Now I am king, queen, princess, court jester... I promise all of you who are struggling with it: IT IS WORTH IT. IT IS WORTH IT. Don't give up. It is truly an irrational fear. I know how deadly even the thought of it feels when you are deep in the emetophobia - but there is nothing worse than the panic, the constant anxiety, the stiff routines, the joyless existence. It is so much better on this side. You all can do it.

I now treat my emetophobia like a chronic disorder - I check myself before I wreck myself haha. I sometimes still catch myself with little emetophobia tics, and I stop myself and do the opposite. But it's just little habits, things I did for so many years that they just happen. Just chipping away the last remnants, really.

I started nursing school last fall, and one of my biggest fears when I started was that I would have to do the 5 weeks of work experience we had in term 2 in a different city where I would have to travel on the bus everyday. I cried in terror when I saw where I had been placed. A 40 minute bus ride away. Every single day for 5 weeks. In February/March. And I know all of you know the significance of those months. You know what? I don't know what I worried about now. Every morning at 6 am I would get on the bus with my travel cup of tea and nap the whole way there, and at 5pm I would nap on the way home. Not once that whole period did I ever have anxiety or panic at night over the possibility that I may have picked up something at work. I didn't even have anxiety at a practical lesson in school when the teacher used me as her example for how to brush someone else's teeth and put her fingers in my mouth without using gloves.

I would do CBT a thousand times over to live this life. I wish I could find the right words to stress to you that any discomfort experienced when facing the emetophobia is worth it a million times. Emetophobics are so strong. Living with such a deep fear and not going completely crazy is a showing of incredible strength. Direct that strength toward beating the emetophobia! Just a month of hard work at it makes such a huge, huge difference. I don't know if I ever posted this video, but this video I credit so much of my recovery to. It taught me to be "in the moment" and not rush in to the future of the what ifs and maybes. One time I was listening and I was at the part where he says "everything is okay right now." I GOT IT and tears just started falling because it was such a relief. I mean, I logically understood the value of being in the moment, but it was as if something clicked in me that allowed me to emotionally get there as well. At first I could be in the moment for maybe a minute before the anxiety came back... then increasingly longer and longer times. I listened to it every time I would have a panic attack, as many times as it took for me to calm down (I would get several panic attacks a day! Once it took three hours of listening to truly calm down haha, but I felt that was sort of a breaking point. A show down. After that I improved a lot because I wouldn't back down). Then, before I could really wrap my mind around it, I could say to myself "everything is okay right now" when I felt anxious and it would calm me. Go on, give it a listen! http://www.kewego.it/video/iLyROoafM687.html

I hope I don't sound grossly, annoyingly enthusiastic but the joy I feel when I think about what emetophobia was to me then and what it is now is kind of hard for me to contain.