To feel this shaken up by my daughter being sick?

[emetophobicmum]

I am severely emetophobic. This is embedded in awful trauma memories for me from childhood.

My toddler DD has just vomited all over the kitchen floor - I froze and DH sprung into action and helped her, then lay kitchen towel over it and told me to go upstairs and he would bath her and clean the floor. I'm currently sitting in my bedroom shaking and crying. I'm a fucking useless mother. If I'd been alone with her I'd have had to cope somehow, so what the fuck is wrong with me?! I literally froze and couldn't get my breath, just started shaking and sobbing, whilst my poor baby vomited everywhere. 😭

Please someone tell me I'm not alone with this awful phobia. How can I be a good mum like this? 😓

Thanks everyone for your responses, helps me to feel less alone with this debilitating illness x

m.youtube.com/watch?v=4-tcKYx24aA

@Marvellousmadness

This is an excellent resource for explaining how and why I cannot control my body's physiological response to trauma memories being activated. Please watch it and educate yourself so that you don't continue to minimise people's very real and frightening responses to trauma.

Phobias are really physical and psychological reactions. Freeze reactions raised heart beats. However sometimes something else is stronger and can override them in that moment eg the love and fierce protection of our child. On your own faced with your child suffering it's highly likely you ll get through it. However afterwards you ll have a come down and a bigger reaction when it's safe to do so. So when your husband is there he should support just as he did as the cost of overriding phobias is huge. However you ll likely find on your own love will overcome your fear for enough time to come out the other side x

I had severe trauma-related emetophobia, which I cured through a mix of CBT and exposure.

It was important for me not to carry it with me through motherhood. My own childhood was overshadowed by my mother's issues, and I was determined not to foist that onto my children.

Have you looked into EMDR treatment OP?

OP, you know you can ignore crap like this from clueless people, don't you?

Otherwise some good advice in this thread. I hope you find something to help you. Try not to beat yourself up.

Another one here who thinks you should try EMDR @emetophobicmum . It can help with both trauma and phobias.
It should be available on the NHS via your local IAPT service.
And no, you are not a bad mum.

You do however need to resolve this before you pass the phobia on to your child.

Absolutely yes to this. Please don't let your children see your anxiety as they will grow up the same.

One thing that helped me a little was to create a written plan;

If dc is ill in bed then the plan is XYZ
If they are ill in the living room then the plan is ABC...

Then I knew that if dh was away I'd know what to do even in a state of panic.
The main thing is, is to ensure your dc is safe as soon as your reaction allows. There's no need to rush into clean up.

Im glad you know that your reaction is a physiological one. The fact that you have this doesn't make you useless, or a bad Mum or any of those negative thoughts about yourself that might creep in.

Don't you think she already knows and worries about this?

What a lovely understanding post.
Thank you x

I know how you feel.
I'm currently working through the Thrive Programme with a consultant.
It's honestly life changing. It's not cheap having a consultant but it's the only thing that's ever worked and I'm confident it will this time.
You can work through the book yourself.
Have a look at the website - Google 'cure emetophobia and thrive' - watch some of the testimonials as well.

Did you miss the past where I said I'd tried cbt in the past?

*part not past

Thanks to those who've suggested EMDR. I honestly think that's the route I need to go down. I have friends who've been helped immensely by it.

Some very ignorant posts here as well. Emetophobia is based on deep-routed beliefs. You can't just switch it off. If only! It's about challenging unhelpful beliefs. It takes time to do this and change thinking habits.

@Disneyblueeyes

Exactly. Ignorance about mental health conditions and trauma infuriates me. In this day and age surely people have a basic level of understanding that this is not something a person chooses to live with nor can easily control and just "switch off". 🙄

Thank you for the website recommendation, i think I've heard of that before actually. I will have a look.

And I can't do graded exposure - when the therapist suggested watching videos of people vomiting as part of the therapy I burst into tears and said no way.

Unfortunately, exposure therapy is the most effective part of it and if you won’t do it, it won’t help properly. You have to cope with being triggered but know that it will ultimately remove the power from the cause of the anxiety. It really is worth preserving with.

One of the things Rob Kelly says on the Thrive programme is that there is evidence exposure therapy IS supposed to help, but not many emetophobes want to do it. His approach is changing the beliefs around sickness, rather than exposing yourself to it.
I wouldn't want to do it either OP

You aren't alone but you need to work on it, it won't be the last (I have adult DD's!). It's overcomable

You throw away wet socks?

You do have to remember that for an emetophobe, exposing yourself to vomit is ten times harder than someone without it, so it's almost an impossible therapy for me, as emetophobes simply will refuse to do it and would rather have the phobia !! Not as effective in my eyes.

I didn’t want to do it for my anxiety cause (not emetophobia), no one wants to knowingly ruin their day by triggering themselves, but it does work. You build up. You practice your strategies and it begins to weaken the trigger as it reroutes the neural pathways in your brain because you teach yourself to respond differently.

Another poster here said she screamed and ran away when her granddaughter vomited. That is not a way to live. And I wonder how that granddaughter perceived that situation and how they feel about vomiting now.

Oh yea there's plenty of research that suggests exposure therapy works, and if you can actually get yourself to do it then yes, absolutely do it.
I couldn't though, hence why I'm going for another, just as effective, method.

That's not what my therapist said. She said there are other treatment options (such as EMDR to address the trauma), as well as CBT without the "B", if you like. So where I can just work on challenging my negative assumptions about vomit and the meaning I attach to it when someone vomits, because of my trauma history. In other words, an adapted version of "classic" CBT for phobias. There's more than one way to tackle the issue, essentially.