to wonder why 'emetophobes' are everywhere on MN

[OuchLegoHurts]

Why does every second person on Mumsnet seem to declare themselves an emetophobe? Does anyone actually enjoy vomiting? I would have thought that everyone hates getting sick, but to label oneself emetophobic is overly dramatic in most cases?

Emetophobia is definitely real. I have a friend who can't eat normal meals because the slightest indigestion that causes the smallest sensation in her stomach makes her actually suicidal and i have had to talk her down from real self-harm because she would rather die than vomit. It cripples her and she doesn't want to be this way but honestly can't help it. She has sometimes had to be admitted to psychiatric care if the terror can't be tamed any other way.

I have no idea whether everyone who claims emetophobia has this level of symptoms. It could be like everyone who like as tidy house claiming to have OCD.

I don't particularly like vomiting but I wouldn't actually try to avoid it, in fact if I feel sick I'd rather have it happen so that I'll feel better. I defo don't go out of my way to avoid sickness bugs/food poisoning (beyond normal levels of hygiene, I am probably on the lax side with food safety) or alcohol etc although I do think it's a bit juvenile and embarrassing to throw up from drinking too much, so it wouldn't be an aim or anything! And I wouldn't particularly like to see/hear somebody else being sick but it wouldn't bother me that much if I did.

From that I would deduce that I'm definitely not an emetophobe.

OTOH I go to silly lengths to avoid contact with needles including getting sucked into antivax stuff when DS was younger (I'm over that now but still planning to make DH take the new baby for his jabs because I feel like I can't) and needing to close the page or look away if I come across a picture/video of somebody having an injection. I wouldn't travel to a country I needed vaccinations for and I've put off having treatment (e.g. dental treatment) that I needed, and avoided vaccination for myself which would be beneficial because I was scared of the needle part. I've even chosen a particular hospital to give birth at based on the difference between their and other hospitals' policies on needle procedures.

I have an immediate and fear-type gut reaction to reading the words "needle", "injection", "vaccine" which just isn't present for words like "sick" "vomit" "chuck up" etc.

I would class that as a needle phobia. It's probably a mild one compared to some people's level of phobia (I can handle blood tests now if they are done from the crook of the arm and I look away and somebody talks to me) - a phobia is really an irrational level of fear towards something and going out of your way, sometimes to an again irrational or self-damaging level to avoid it.

I do think most people have some kind of irrational fear possibly to a phobia sort of level about something - don't they? If it's not needles or vomiting it's the dentist or gynecological stuff or exams or public speaking or spiders or mice or whatever.

I have it. It affects my life. I compulsively hand wash. I avoid eating out. I severely restrict what I eat, to eat ‘safe’ foods. I avoid going out over sick bug season - basically September to March. I cannot plan anything over winter and look forward to it. I am always catastrophising and assuming we will have a sick bug. I can’t look forward to things. If I hear the word ‘sick’ or one of the dc say they feel sick, I have diarrhoea. It’s no fun at all.

I agree that some people on MN seem easily triggered, and people are anxious about different things. I don’t mind holes, answering the door, the phone, etc.

I am an emetophobe, it is not just not liking being sick. I actually suffer more with panic around people who may be sick e.g I avoid public transport, when the annual norovirus outbreak takes place I struggle to go anywhere public, I hate being around drunk people ect. I can have a panic attack because someone coughs to hard. I have also not been sick in over ten years, believe me I wish I could it’d have made me feel a lot better
It essentially controls my life.
I do agree that suddenly it seems a thing people like to say they suffer from which actually makes life harder for me.

I'm better than I was but I still struggle at times. I do my best not to touch handrails or door handles out in public. Which makes balancing on the Tube tricky. When flying I constantly check that the people around me don't look queasy. I won't eat street food, hate walking past pubs when they are crowded just in case. If anyone tells me they've not been well I question them until they tell me the exact nature.
I think my phobia is pretty mild now, but it's still life controlling.

Agree with the OCD comparison, so many people joke they have OCD when what they really mean is they may have tendencies but not OCD proper which is life limiting and all encompassing.

I have actual emeophobia. I have tried so many different therapies and it impacts on so many acpects of my life. I hate having it and would do anything not to live and think like this but it’s notoriously difficult to treat. I was once practically housebound as I was so scared to leave should I catch a vomiting bug.

I don’t tell many people as if I’m honest I’m ashamed and embarrassed. I thought for years pre internet I was the only person to feel like this and was so embarrassed I was seeking therapy for something else that was related to emeophobia but I couldn’t admit to the therapist what was causing the issue as I thought she’d laugh at me and that I was a freak.

When dd has been sick dh has had to stay home from work, I literally live in daily fear dd will be sick whilst I’m looking after her. It’s a horrible horrible condition that if you don’t have experience of you have no idea how much it controls you and every aspect of your life.

It might be that people are using the term a bit like OCD but it may also be it’s more common than you think OP and people just don’t admit to it readily and feel confident to say it on a forum where they are anonymous.

God sometimes a good vomit is what’s needed - especially if, as a PP says, you suffer from migraines. It’s pretty much the only way to release the pressure in your head

I didn’t eat except for a Ryvita a day for an entire year as a teenager to avoid throwing up. I never went to restaurants or travelled and constantly felt nauseous because of the panic about throwing up. I used to say I’d rather shoot myself than throw up and wholeheartedly meant it. That’s emetophobia, not just disliking being sick

I'm a HCP, and frankly, we all quietly cheer when we get a 15-29 year old female patient who doesn't arrive (if she arrives at all), announcing some phobia or other, anxiety, panic attacks, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, needle phobia, etc. 'Getting on with it' is now quite a rare response in this age group.

If you ask about allergies, they will reel off the foodstuffs they don't like.

It is a modern thing. 20-25 years ago you didn't get this. Before social media.

I hate vomit (and hacked up sputum), it makes me retch. But that doesn't make me 'phobic'.

I left the hairdressers before she could dry my hair because the receptionist said she felt queasy, I just manage to sit still as she finished the cut but I didn't wait for her to check through it like they do, but I was up out and flinging the money at the receptionist and left my coat behind, I got so bad I didn't leave the house for years, and would dettol wipe the shopping when it was delivered, I did CBT and it had no effect, but hypnosis has helped and I can just about cope with normal life, but the burning hot fear and freezing cold shiver of panic still wash over me if someone mentions illness/sickness, I still struggle to touch things when out and about for fear of germs and won't eat out, it is truly crippling for sufferers but as some one upthread said it is easily latched onto like 'a little bit ocd'

I missed my beloved Nan's funeral as I couldn't leave the house and I didn't see my FIL for the last few months of his life due to him having oesophageal cancer and that he would vomit and spit constantly and I couldn't overcome my stupid selfish phobia to see him.

My son has it and it is awful. His started when some person informed him when he was 10 years old that if he sick around his dad during chemo he would kill him. Then when his dad died bang came the phobia.

A lot of people will claim they have it, some will have it, some just mean they hate being sick. People are stupid sometimes and have to pathologise (is that spelling correct?) any dislike.

Grey- sorry to hear, but again, I've been a HCP for 38 years (had to use my fingers, there!) and I can promise you that these phobias weren't even heard of back then.

Why have they emerged?

People with true emetophobia are actually really good at not being sick. My whole family had a D&V bug many years ago I had the diarrhoea but didn’t vomit. I was so close to, most people would have, DH was telling me to just let it happen because I’d feel better but I couldn’t because I was too scared.

I suffer terribly with migraines and the nausea is terrible, so much so that I can’t move. My GP has given me two anti sickness drugs to get me through it.

I think I know where my emetophobia comes from. I was on a ferry coming back from a school trip. It was a force 8 gale and practically everyone was being sick. The boat was covered in it. The waves were crashing over the deck and I was scared shitless. I need to understand it was the weather that caused the fear and circumstance not the vomit, but I’m not sure how to.

My best friend also has it and it is a pain at times. If my children so much as have a stomach pain or a temperature she won't see me for ages in case they have a sickness bug. When they did have a sickness bug once I think it took her two weeks to have us round and even then she was panicking a little.

It's an awful way for her to live.

There are millions of posters on MN and you're likely seeing confirmation bias to some extent. 20 people on a thread seems like a lot of people to all have emetophobia for example, but they will all have been drawn in by the topic. I don't know anybody in rl with my name. Never met another one in 37 years. There are 4 of us on MN that I know of. Bigger pool of people than my rl experience. I know nobody in rl who is emetophobic.

I am emetophobic btw. I think about being sick or about other people doing so multiple times a day. Every time I eat or cook or touch a public hand rail or collect the DC from school or use a bathroom or touch a door handle. I lie awake and struggle not to hyperventilate when I hear about any incidence of vomiting in our county in case we come into contact with it. I panic if the dc arent hungry in case they're ill, I'm teetotal and always have been and on and on and on... Believe me, it's not merely disliking vomiting.

It is a modern thing. 20-25 years ago you didn't get this. Before social media.

No it’s not. I’ve had it for over 30 years.

I have it and it rules my life. It's not just a dislike of being sick. Maybe you'd like to educate yourself before dismissing a condition.

To be fair, (to the comment about 15-29yo females) I was told all my life that I had an allergy to cheese because cheese has always made me vomit. When I was growing up that's what people thought "allergic" meant. I had a friend who was "allergic" to oranges because they made her sneeze. We thought this was a perfectly normal use of the word.

It's only since spending more time online learning more about serious allergies that I've stopped telling people I'm allergic to cheese and instead say I have an intolerance or simply that it makes me ill. I don't think it's even an intolerance because I can tolerate other forms of dairy perfectly fine.

@Blushah 20 years ago I didn't know I had it, was only my boyfriend when I was 16 printed me some info out on his works computer and I realised it was actually I thing. I really hope if you do encounter someone with it through your work that you show some sympathy to what's a very real phobia, luckily all medical staff I have encountered through multiple surgery's, hospital stays and pregnancy have been amazing and taken steps to help me deal with my phobia in hospital and the increased risk of possible exposure to it

It’s one of the most common phobias.

I had it really severely in my teens and early twenties. I stopped eating because of it. I was so terrified of getting food poisoning or eating something that would make me sick. I was basically anorexic, but not for the ‘usual’ reasons.

I also would skip school/uni/days at work if I felt remotely nauseous, or if I knew that anyone I had even remotely come into contact with had had a stomach bug recently, just in case I started feeling sick while I was at work.

I was completely tee total for years because I thought that alcohol=vomiting. If I ever saw someone else vomiting, or even just saw some vomit in the street, I would have a proper panic attack that would last for at least an hour.

It was awful. So, so limiting. Such an intrusive phobia.

I had A LOT of therapy to get over it and I would say I’m 95% cured of it now. So I can really understand the difference between finding being sick unpleasant and not something I especially want to happen and having a morbid, utter fear and dread of it.

Panic seems to be the way so many people (young and young-ish) women seem to live their lives. Is this a Western, 20-21st century thing?

A genuine question.

I, as a HCP, am genuinely non-plussed at the escalation of these phobias that I've seen in my 38 years in the job.

Is everything now pathologised in order to validate it?

I genuinely don't know, but, as I said upthread, it's a miracle when a 15-29 year old woman arrives for a test without any such 'issues'.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say, once we're running really late, foregoing breaks (again), if someone looks through the rest of the day's appointments, we can, with a sigh of relief (for us, not them) spot that 'young person' , 15-29, who will DNA by their condition and (sorry) their address. A chance to catch up.

I think emetophobia is sometimes used (not just on here, but generally) as just 'does not like being sick' where I would think its fairly rare to like it as such. Though DH swears he enjoys it sometimes, but I assume he means in a 'it makes me feel loads better' kind of way rather than being something to look forward to when well

I am emetophobic to the point where I have in the past fought it for hours and hours, even when I knew I woulf eel better if I just let it go. Migraines were a parcicularly terrible time for me, awful awful pain that I knew would disappear if I just let myself vomit but instead I would just fight and fight it, keeping myself in much more pain, and feeling crappier for ages.

As soon as someone says they feel ill, I cannot stay near them. If my children say they have a bad stomach, DH is on duty, or if he is not here, I will call my parents, siblings, anyone who could deal with it if it happened. I have in the past ran into dangerous situations by quite literally running away from adults who retched. Even typing this post right now is making me feel wrong.

I have felt this way as long as I can remember.

I have not vomitted in 14 years now, and counting.

Thank you ScreamingValenta for your accurate description. I have been an emetophobe all my life. For those of you saying it "seems like a MN thing" , please don't be so dismissive. I can assure you it is real and very debilitating.

Ha. I was wondering how long it'd be before I got the 'You're not fit to do your job!' posts.

I am. I'm very good at it. I recognise the reality of phobia. But I also recognise the concept that 'I don't like such and such- not being 'a phobia'.

Most of our young female DNAs are because they've either decided, or have been persuaded via wherever the get their information from- that whatever test isn't 'nice' that they just won't show (never phone and cancel, just don't show).

It's not "a modern thing". I'm in my 50s and suffered from emetophobia from childhood.