WHAT ARE WE ACTUALLY THINKING (WILL HAPPEN)?WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON IN OUR BRAINS?


For me, I finally figured out that my thought was "if they vomit, then I will too, and then I will die". And when I say thought, I mean that quite loosely. Not even a thought...more of an instantaneous association inmy brain.


One of the problems with cbt people who are big on the "c" (cognitive) is that they think that if you think differently that it will change your fear response. And while that is an important part of it, and works very well with milder phobias, it can be pretty useless information to an extreme phobia. I have said this to a psych theorist: "you're telling this information to my neocortex (the "thinking"/logic part of the brain), but now figure out a way to tell it to my amygdala (the fear centre)."


You see, they are quite separate and distinct in the brain. And yes, the neocortex can send a message to the amygdala, but the problem is that the amygdala works faster sending the info the other way. So by the time the "logic" message gets to the amygdala, it has already fired off another "oh my God I'm in terrible danger and I'm going to die" message to the neocortex. I really think this is the problem with emetophobia and other very severe phobias.


For me, I worked away with the 'b' part of cbt - "behavior" - gradual exposure - until I was able to slow down that fear response enough to insert a cognition. The cognition was "I'm not in any danger". Also things like "nothing is happening to me; I'm fine. I'm perfectly safe; I'm afraid, but I'm ok; This is just a body response; It doesn't matter. This is not a big deal." ..........these worked quite well for me over time.