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Body Phobias

The Fear of Vomiting – Emetophobia

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Emetophobia Explained

Are you afraid of eating in a restaurant because you’re afraid you might throw up?

Do you tremble when you see someone on TV vomit?

Do you feel a sense of panic when your stomach turns queasy?

If so, you may suffer from the fear of vomiting, or Emetophobia.

The thought of vomiting is not something anyone enjoys, however, if the fear is so strong it is interfering with your life, you may need to learn more about emetophobia. Learning more about your phobia and ways to manage the fear—or at least cope with the symptoms—can lead to a more normal and productive life.

For many people, vomiting is frightening, beyond uncomfortable and one of the last acts some will allow; it’s not hard to understand why. First of all, the bodily experience is jarring, somewhat violent and disgusting. The nausea before vomiting is one of the worst symptoms a human body produces, it is uncomfortable; the physical act of throwing up may be forceful, painful and downright scary. Your body is basically rejecting something, hence losing control can be really terrifying.

There is then its unpredictable nature. In many cases striking quickly and without notice, vomiting can occur anywhere—at home, at work, or in public. Because no one likes to get sick in an area where they cannot quickly access a bathroom or clean-up, this uncertainty can cause great worry.

For many, there is also a social component to weigh. Many people find vomiting embarrassing, and the anxiety of being watched over or judged by others can add still another layer of worry. Nobody wants to be the one who spoils a celebration or gets ill on a packed bus.

Finally, vomiting may indicate there is something more severe happening with your body, such food poisoning, stomach infection or as many know drinking too much alcohol. The possibility of vomiting can be much more frightening if one is very sick. For many people, these elements taken together cause vomiting to be a somewhat terrifying event. In summary there are very few people that take vomiting or the aspect with anything less than pure disdain.

What Is Emetophobia?

Emetophobia is an irrational, intense fear of vomiting.

Emetophobia comes originally from the Greek words emetikos meaning “vomiting” and phobos meaning “fear.”

The fear of vomiting can be so severe that even the mention of the word can bring on symptoms of the fear. The fear can also include fear of others vomiting as well as fear of nausea.

Those that suffer from the fear of vomiting are not just put off by vomiting, but actually have an intense fear of vomiting that slowly develops into a phobia which impacts the person’s enjoyment of life.

A Proven Self-Help Program for How to get over emetophobia fast.
In many cases, if you have emetophobia you may also have related fears as well. These include the inability to stop vomiting, not being able to reach a bathroom in time, choking on vomit, being embarrassed by vomiting in front of others, and being admitted to the hospital.

 

Emetophobia Causes?

In the majority of cases, the fear begins in childhood. A traumatic event such as vomiting as a child or watching another person vomiting can set the seeds for the phobia to develop.

Initially, you may avoid foods and other things that you associate with vomiting. As the fear increases, you may begin constantly checking your temperature to ensure you are not getting sick. You may start staying away from others in case they are sick.

The fear of vomiting can grow so strong you may be unable to leave your home for work or to visit family. The idea is that you never know when you may vomit, so you want to be close to home in order to avoid things that make you feel nauseous.

Emetophobia Symptoms

The physical symptoms associated with the fear of vomiting include:

  • Avoiding foods that you think will make you vomit
  • Eating slowly
  • Eating small portions
  • Eating only at home
  • Checking food constantly to ensure it is still good
  • Avoiding touching things that could have germs including doorknobs, countertops, or toilet levers
  • Washing hands excessively
  • Washing food excessively
  • Washing dishes and cooking utensils excessively
  • Avoiding medicines that might make you throw up
  • Avoiding alcohol that might cause you to vomit
  • Avoiding crowded public areas
  • Avoiding all things that trigger your fear including foods that made someone else vomit
  • Difficulty breathing
  • Chest pain
  • Fast heartbeat

The psychological symptoms of vomiting include:

  • Anxiety
  • Inability to cope with anxiety
  • Feeling vulnerable
  • Panic attacks
  • Intense fear of seeing someone vomit
  • A tremendous fear of having to vomit and no bathroom close by
  • Severe fear of not being able to stop vomiting
  • Panic at the thought of being in a crowd with no way out if some vomits
  • Constant, irrational thoughts linking things to a vomiting experience such as a certain shirt or place

Overcoming fear of Vomiting

Self-help Options: What Can I Do to Help Myself with Emetophobia

A Proven Self-Help Program for How to get over emetophobia fast.
The best self-help for emetophobia is to learn your triggers such as a certain foods or places. From there, have a close friend or your partner rank the triggers that you avoid out of fear. Once you have the list, you start with the one that is the lowest trigger and expose yourself to it until you can handle it without experiencing a gag reflex or fear of vomiting.

Try saying the words: vomit, throw up, puke.

Watch videos of others vomiting.

Of course, if the fear is so strong that you are having issues maintaining a healthy lifestyle, it would be in your best interest to seek professional help.

Hypnosis for Emetophobia

Professional Help Options

There are different therapies a counselor can use to help you with your fear of vomiting. One of the most common is exposure therapy. The therapist will slowly introduce you to the foods or items that trigger your fear. You may be presented with photos of vomit or even videos. Your therapist will do this in a manner that is comfortable to you, so you do not have added stress.

Another form of therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, helps you learn why you have the fear and aids in changing your thought processes. Your therapist will help you learn how to change negative thoughts into positive ones.

Medications Used for Emetophobia

Medications may be prescribed by your therapist, however, medications can only help relieve symptoms. The medications often prescribed include beta blockers. These work to reduce heart rate and blood pressure. The idea is to take these before you are going to be around a trigger, so it can help to keep you calm and lessen the gag reflex.

Benzodiazepines are used to help with anxiety disorders, but they may also provide relief from symptoms such as shaking and panic. These can include lorazepam or Xanax. Bear in mind, these are sedatives that can help you feel less anxious, but they can be addictive and aren’t recommended for long-term use.

Simple Tips to Avoid Your Fear of Vomiting

The best and easiest tip to avoid emetophobia is to eliminate safety measures you carry with you for “just in case” situations. These can include a change of clothing, something to vomit in, or even an umbrella during a hot summer day without a chance of rain.

Worry can be your major hurdle. If you are constantly worrying about vomiting, you cannot enjoy your day. Train your brain to remember that you are not sick, therefore, you are not going to vomit.

The fear of vomiting does not have to control your life. You can enjoy a life that is full of fun once you learn how to cope with your phobia.

FearAZ.com is looking for personal stories of any 'fear of' or phobia. If you have an interesting story you'd like to share, we welcome your submission. If the story fits with our content and guidelines, we'll add it to our site.
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Your Fear Goes Up and Down

Are you someone who would rather climb the stairs than take the elevator? You call it squeezing in a workout after being sedentary the whole morning. Or perhaps you claim it's a faster route. These are both typical, normal, and acceptable reasons. But what if you need to be in the conference room on the eleventh floor in five minutes, and you're wearing your business suit and wingtips? Would you still prefer to take the stairs? If your answer is yes, then maybe it's time to take a closer look at your reasons for avoiding elevators. Elevators stir all sorts of emotions in passengers. From the discomfort of closeness to strangers to the sensations in our gut, elevators can be a source of the heebie-jeebies for many, but for some, they can also be a source of terror. Let's dig a little deeper into the latter, and see what this terror is all about and what can be done to manage it. To begin with, does being inside an elevator give you chills or the sweats? Or does it trigger an unpleasant memory? Perhaps you remember movies you've watched where something terrible happens inside an elevator. From Silence of the Lambs, The Shining, Final Destination 2, or the king of all elevator horror films, 2010’s Devil, the elevator becomes witness to something sinister and horrible. And you want nothing to do with any of it. You know that you're not claustrophobic. You can deal with heights just fine, too. And you know that you're not going to be trapped inside. All of these contribute to a fear of elevators—but they don't apply to you. Yet being inside one does something to you. It's hard to explain.

What is the Fear of Elevators Called?

What you have is a fear of elevators, which is called elevatophobia. It is most commonly triggered by an experience of getting stuck inside either due to a power outage or technical maintenance. Hearing about other people's experiences or watching a movie about similar circumstances can prompt a fear of elevators getting stuck with you inside. Usually, claustrophobics and agoraphobics may also develop elevatophobia because the triggers and objects of these fears are related. Claustrophobia is the fear of closed and cramped spaces, while agoraphobia is the fear of being trapped without any means of escape. Put the two together, and the elevator becomes the perfect combination of both phobias. The space is limited and closed, with only one means of entry and exit. You can add another point of access if you consider climbing the cables like they do in the movies, but that certainly isn't ideal.

Symptoms of Elevatophobia

If for some reason an elevator stops due to an outage or some technical difficulty, passengers with elevatophobia may go into full panic mode. Even if the maintenance team advises that it will just be a matter of minutes, by then, the person's mind has become irrational with the fear of the elevator falling, being stuck for hours, or other unpleasant thoughts. You would expect a person to exhibit the following physical symptoms: Additionally, you would be filled with that overwhelming anxiety where you feel that you have zero control over the situation. You start fearing the unknown and are filled with negative thoughts about death and imminent doom. You become irrational and unresponsive.

Possible Complications of Elevatophobia

When the panic sets in, the possibility of emergencies related to pre-existing conditions may make themselves known. This might include serious health crises like heart attacks or asthma attacks. When this happens, fear becomes a medical emergency. Elevator rides do not last long; it's just a matter of minutes or even less. But the fact that a person can escalate from panic to a near fatal medical situation classifies the fear of elevators as a 'hard phobia.'

Trying Some Self-Help Methods

Your fear of elevators can likely interfere with your social and work life and relationships. Not everyone understands that elevatophobia, like most phobias, can be crippling. But don't be disheartened. Depending on the level of your fear and level of control, you can gradually face and manage your phobia. Here are some recommendations you can try:
  1. Make a List of Everything that Entails Riding in an Elevator This is a systematic approach to getting over your anxiety. By following a step-by-step process, you can identify where the fear kicks in at its strongest. You can write a list of steps like pressing the topmost button and waiting to arrive on that floor, watching as the door closes and opens, being alone inside the elevator, or having delays with the doors opening. Now try doing the opposite. For example, face away from the door or occupy yourself with your phone so that you are distracted.
  2. Create Your Fear Ladder Although the name says fear of elevators, it is not the whole process that scares you. There are just phases and parts of the elevator riding experience that cause you to panic. So go back to the list you initially created and label the fear level you feel. You can do it numerically, too, like ten being 'really scary,' six, 'manageable scary,' and one, 'not scary at all.' You can put the corresponding fear levels so you can focus more time and effort into activities that are more scary to you.
  3. Face Your Fear By now, you have identified what scares you the most. You can try repetitive action to minimize your fear and increase your sense of ‘normalcy’. Remember that the longer you expose yourself to your fear, the better you get at handling your emotions. If you are feeling overwhelmed, stop. Pushing yourself too fast and too soon can backfire. Modify your pace and go slower instead.
  4. Talk About Your Fear People by nature, unfortunately, are not quick to offer understanding and support. You need to tell them what's wrong before they can empathize. Talk to someone who you trust and ask for their support, especially in the initial phase of overcoming your fear. If you are too afraid to ride the elevator alone, you can ask them to go with you, and before you realize it, you are on your floor, and there was no indication of panic.
  5. Learn To Be Patient Be patient with yourself and your predicament. This is, after all, your fight against fear. It might take hundreds of elevator ride practices before the fear gets under control. Even then, there might be some hesitations and episodes of nervousness. These are acceptable and expected, so cut yourself some slack and congratulate yourself for every progress.

Seeking Professional Help

Along with self-help, you can always enlist a medical professional's aid to support you with your elevatophobia. Talking to someone who has experience with similar cases can be comforting, because you know that you are not alone, and this situation can get better. Talk to your doctor about the severity of your fears and the symptoms that you experience. Explain how you deal with it in an attempt to control it. An exam and a health history are made to ensure that there are no unrelated or underlying problems that your symptoms might mask. Usually, phobias like this are approached with a combination of psychotherapy and medication. Your doctor will talk about these options with you, and it's entirely up to you, with your doctor's recommendation, what you want to pursue. For psychotherapy, the most common type is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which aims to help you find different ways of behaving, thinking, and reacting when about to step inside an elevator or when already inside it. With medications, there are beta blockers and benzodiazepines, but note that these can have side effects. Whatever these side effects are, you should promptly share it with your doctor.

Simple Tips to Overcome Elevatophobia

Elevators are not perfect, but their likelihood to malfunction, fall, or get stuck is very low. If you are not fully confident with this information, you can help overcome your elevatophobia by learning common elevator safety tips and basic elevator operations. These should help curb your mild fear until you become more self-assured. In addition to that, here are some of the things that you can do to gradually overcome your fear of elevators—both in getting on and riding one.

Conclusion

Yes, elevatophobia can be a challenge in today's world, but don't allow the elevator to win. Don't let it stop you from taking a job on the top floor or attending a social gathering on the rooftop. Sure, you can take the stairs if you insist and arrive winded and sweaty, with the party about to wrap up. But is this the quality of life you seek? Elevators are designed to make life easier. There are guaranteed ways to help you overcome elevatophobia. Take the first step and seek help. Soon, you’ll see yourself breezing through the floors with those arduous stair climbs little more than a memory.
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