So You’re Terrified Of Vomiting. Don’t Worry. It’s A Thing.
by Katie Pace
I’m writing this from the trenches. The place where some of us sit with a racing pulse as we sweat, hold our breath, and panic. The place we actually envision and dread almost every single day of the year. I have entered the realm of hell that is my child vomiting. For most of us, vomiting (or watching your sick child vomit) is terrible. But for a specific group of us, it’s actually a dark, painful place that we live - both in our house and in our head - for what seems like an eternity. And that’s because we have emetophobia – a fear of vomiting.
Yes. That’s a thing. And I know what you’re going to say. “No one likes puke!” Yes. I realize this. It is gross. Disgusting, really. It’s difficult to watch. But no no no. You don’t understand. For some of us, we think about puke all. the damn. time. A very unhealthy amount of time. We fixate on the possibility that our take-out may be bad. Or that the food we made has been sitting out too long. We wonder if we should reconsider getting pregnant because we’re petrified of morning sickness. We seek out an alternate route to that hilly area because we don’t want to get carsick. We look for vomit germs on every slide at the park or handrail in the subway. And we constantly think about what it will be like if we do, God forbid, catch it.
“throwing up in public or somewhere inconvenient can haunt us.”
So we have to be prepared. For a lot of us, part of the fear is about being unprepared. Throwing up in public or somewhere inconvenient can haunt us. Therefore, we *may* stash barf bags in our beds, purses or cars. Latex gloves on hand at home for clean-up and disinfecting wipes wherever necessary. And if a friend says someone in their home threw up, then they are dead to us for at least two weeks. Because they are contaminated, and we know how these viruses spread.
That’s another thing. The fear can also be an obsession. We research everything we can about stomach viruses. Gastroenteritis, rotovirus, norovirus…we know what makes them all different. How they spread. What the specific ailments are. And of course, how to prevent them. We aren’t just Google doctors – we have specialized and graduated to Google Gastroenterologists. As a parent, it’s even more difficult because kids get SICK. All. The. Time. And when I hear that vile news come from my spouse or child that someone has thrown up, I go into complete emergency, panic/insane mode.
My poor sick child is immediately quarantined to their bed. They are given hospital emesis bags that they can put practically their entire face into while they spew, and then when finished I can twist and dispose of without washing any vomit because that makes me vulnerable to more exposure. Things are bleached. Kids are washed like they’ve been contaminated with radiation. And I wear gloves and masks and take charcoal to protect myself and stop the spread. While some may flee the scene instead, I choose to control it all down to the last detail. Because that’s exactly the root of the problem. We are completely and totally fear-stricken. Because if we “get” throw up, whether it’s due to carsickness or the stomach flu, we have lost control. And on an even deeper level, we’ve lost control of our bodies.
“because if we throw up, we have lost control.”
There is a wide spectrum of severity for emetophobes. I know that I sound totally insane right now sitting here talking about barf bags being my safe place. Is this all completely irrational? OF COURSE! But when I’m in it, I’m IN it. And there are other people who can barely live their lives. This phobia is often coupled and complicated with the fear of flying, agoraphobia (an anxiety of one’s environment being unsafe, usually outside of their home), and social anxieties. In fact, my own emetophobia’s best friend is my fear of flying. (Last Christmas, I had to fly on a plane with a woman in front of me upchucking the entire flight and I’m honestly astonished that I’m still here to talk about it.) Some people avoid pregnancy, boats, flying (due to air sickness, not the actual fear of being in a flying piece of metal in the sky and plummeting to the earth where you burn to death), restaurants, cars, handshakes and even children themselves. And some have disordered eating and many health issues because the anxiety is so intense that they can’t even eat.
While there is no specific cause of the puke panic, experts agree that this often links back to an angst around losing control. Sometimes it’s related to a trauma one couldn’t control in the past, which could be anything from vomiting in public to sexual or physical abuse. And sometimes, it’s just because we are born control freaks. Regardless of the cause, we aren’t COMPLETE freaks all together. Because one study showed that up to seven percent of women and 1.8 percent of men have emetophobia. It’s way more common than you think, and shows up both in adults and children – with children’s emetophobia usually closely linked to obsessive compulsive disorder. But it often creeps up on you. One day it seems like a little “ew” anxiety and the next you’re reading an article about why there’s a barf bag in your bed.
So how do we fix this hurling hell we are living in? There are a few possible treatments. Some that are used for general anxieties can also be used to treat emetophobia, such as breathing techniques and yoga, which helps people get back in tune with their bodies, and mindfulness and meditation, which can help calm the thoughts. But there are also a few therapies that can be incredibly beneficial. One is cognitive behavioral therapy, which is an attempt to replace the negative thinking associated with vomiting. Therapists work with patients to try to change the thoughts and then give them coping skills around the thoughts. For instance, my therapist would say things like, “Let’s focus on things you actually KNOW and not things you think COULD happen.” I like this sentence and I use it in a lot of areas in my life, the purpose being that I should be saying, “I’ve only been sick once when I ate that. I will not definitely get sick if I eat it again.” However, I will be honest and say that with my phobias, I tend to keep spiraling and say things like “I KNOW that rotovirus is crazy contagious and someone I was with had it.” It’s a process, but I digress. CBT can be very effective for people – healing the fear as well as other obsessive thoughts.
Exposure response therapy is also used to treat emetophobia. It’s a way to literally expose people to their fears and help them to create a less anxious response. For instance, one might take an emetophobe into a bathroom that they swear is riddled with puke germs. Then they’d be asked to use the bathroom and not wash their hands. (Dear god, the horror.) Will they get sick as a result? Maybe! But preventing the behaviors surrounding the fear is supposed to allow them to face the fear, rather than have compulsions (like hand washing and barf bag holding), which just perpetuate the disorder. Real world scenarios, using real world responses instead of obsessive ones, can help people focus on the result based in reality (not getting sick) and not the one in our head – which for us always comes back to ralphing.
So. Maybe you are reading this because the title sounded like something you could relate to or something that just sparked your interest, and then you started reading it and you started to hyperventilate a little bit. Maybe you’ve started breathing differently and gotten a little light-headed, and perhaps your stomach has started churning and you’re wondering, “Oh god is this it?? Am I going to puke? Can you catch it via reading about it?” If thinking about tossing your cookies or watching it on TV or even READING THE WORDS make you sweat, then you are probably one of us. And I am sorry. But you can read more about how to get help for it here. Because we don’t have to live with it forever.
Right now, I’m going to go back to my child who is green with illness. And I will wear the masks and gloves and clean the toilet and wash my hands until they crack. But I will remember that this is not forever. That she will get well and she will thrive and I can too. It’s just going to take a lot of work to get there.
Enough to probably make me vomit.
Katie Pace is an LA based ex-ad creative who is now a writer by day and everything-elser by night. You can find more of her articles here.
