Former emetophobes - what worked for you?

[DJKatnip]

I feel like my emetophobia is my biggest weakness as a parent. I can deal with everything else, but any sign of one of my children being sick and I can’t cope. If I had the choice I would run away. My 4 year old is sick tonight and my husband is having to look after her as I’m just useless.

My older child is now developing her own phobia as a result of a nasty norovirus bout a while ago and I can’t help feeling responsible. I don’t want her to grow up feeling the way I did and still do now.

For anyone who used to be an emetophobe but now isn’t, what worked for you? I had hoped that becoming a parent would force me to face my fears and get over it, but I’m still useless when someone gets sick and I’m fed up of feeling like this and not being able to comfort my children

I think for me it was having three children, one of whom seems to get every sickness bug going and gets car sickness. And catching norovirus a couple of times myself. So I suppose exposure is what worked and the experience of getting through it and I managed to cope and nothing bad happened.

I still feel uncomfortable and have a mild panic when one of the kids is ill, but not nearly to the extent that I used to where I couldn't function.

It is awful, so I hope you manage to overcome it soon.

Having kids and hypnotherapy. I had the hypo therapy after having my first, she was a very sicky baby and toddler and the anxiety was getting too much. It was very helpful, I didn't see at the time how it could work as I've been an emetophobe since childhood. But as the kids have got older and brought stomach bugs back I've been calm, and I've caught 2 in the last year despite not being sick myself for over 10 years, which was hard but I didn't have a total breakdown like I would've before therapy.

Although I manage the kids being sick, I'm still anxious if anyone else is sick. Like if I was in a car and someone was sick and I couldn't escape I'd have a panic attack. But I think it's more the thought of the mess, germs, catching it, the smell and the trapped feeling that I don't do well with!

Good luck OP, it truly is an awful phobia especially when you feel you can't comfort your kids when they're ill

Having to deal with it when I had kids. Just literally having to do it as I had no one else to and now I feel I can cope with it, still anxious but I could survive it if it was to happen 😁

Thank you all for your supportive replies, at the very least it’s nice to not feel quite so alone in this. Strangely I’m very practical when it comes to the clean up after one of the kids has been sick, but I just can’t deal with a person being sick. It’s like my fight or flight response kicks in before I even realise what’s happening. I know I’ll never be relaxed about it, but would love to find a way to reduce the panic and anxiety

Exposure. My children want me when they’re ill. One of my children is very prone to vomiting so I’ve had to get used to it unfortunately.