Emetophobia: causes and treatment of the fear of vomiting that leads to panic attacks, loneliness and social avoidance
Emetophobia or fear of vomiting is a phobia that can be incapacitating and affect normal everyday life. If you suffer from such a fear it is better to ask for support from a specialist who can help you overcome it! can afflict us, one of these is philophobia, or fear of love, which makes it impossible to bond with someone: watch the video to find out more!
- · No one likes vomiting but being afraid of it is another thing: emetophobia
- · What exactly is hematophobia and how it manifests itself
- Hematophobia in children, adolescents and even adults
- · Emetophobia: the interaction of this fear with other typical behavioral phobias
No one likes vomiting but being afraid of it is another thing: emetophobia
Nobody likes being sick, stomach upset and feeling nauseous and wanting to vomit. Certainly it is not a pleasant feeling that accompanies us in case of flu or when we have a kind of food poisoning. But the fear of vomiting is very different: being afraid of vomiting for those who have vomit a real phobia is a continuous conditioning. In fact, the excessive and unjustified fear of vomiting is defined as emetophobia. Only a psychotherapist will then be able to understand and support you, classifying your fear as a simple phobia or as a more complex symptom of agoraphobia or social anxiety. The important thing when it comes to emetophobia, however, is to understand that this phobia like many others that afflict our daily life must be treated in time because it almost never resolves spontaneously and can turn into a chronic problem. Sometimes you start to suffer from emetophobia as an adult, due to a health problem, for example after poisoning or severe and frequent vomiting. In these surroundings, a fear of vomiting develops which pushes the patient to adopt a series of behaviors aimed at averting the danger of vomiting even when there are absolutely no symptoms and the possibility of this happening. A person who suffers from a fear of throwing up at the very thought may have panic attacks. The patient is always obsessed with. vomiting to the point of avoiding any social occasion. This type of behavioral disorder can be treated with psychotherapy that leads the emetophobic person to investigate the desire to avoid risky situations, helping him to become aware and developing a sense of control and a certain capacity for defense against panic attacks. In order not to let a fear like that of vomiting affect your life, ask for help and start a path of psychotherapy to deal with your disorders and to no longer avoid social situations. Any disorder that leads to social avoidance can have a cure and even your phobia with the help of psychotherapy can find a solution and significantly improve your quality of life.
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What exactly is hematophobia and how it manifests itself
Emetophobia is like an excessive or irrational fear of the act of vomiting and also implies the phobia of the possibility, even if remote, of vomiting. Emetophobics, those who are afraid to vomit, spontaneously avoid all foods and smells associated with past vomiting episodes, as well as avoid smelly foods, junk and other smelly things. Usually when they are around people they hold their breath and have obsessive-compulsive behaviors such as over washing everything they eat or the surfaces they cook on. Before eating something, they smell it, scrutinize it, avoid consuming it if the food is not packaged. Emetophobia leads these individuals to give up on tasting foods they have never tried, not to eat what they do not know, to almost never or as little as possible eat outside the home, overcooking everything they eat and in the end always eating the same things with which they feel safe and whose effects they do not fear. Those who suffer from emetophobia often adopt behaviors that are a little out of the ordinary, for example they consume many vitamins and take antacids and antiemetics in a preventive manner and without medical supervision to avoid the risk of vomiting. You can recognize an emetophobic by the fact that he usually avoids going out as much as possible, as the phobia takes over his life it limits travel and social activities even ordinary ones like going to work. He looks around when he is away from home and always tries to know where the nearest bathroom is. Avoid meetings, moments of aggregation from which you cannot disengage and even travel by plane, car, train: when you feel trapped in a place or situation, the fear of vomiting takes over. Another characteristic of those with emetophobia is to eat only what others have already eaten and to observe their reactions scrupulously to understand if the foods are contaminated or spoiled. Emetophobia also leads you to believe that you have allergies to some foods and do not know which one for sure. In short, as you see, this phobia can really affect your whole life and your social interactions little by little: if you suffer from emetophobia it is if you has happened to feel an "inexplicable fear of vomiting always contact your doctor and seek the advice of a psychologist or a psychotherapist.
Hematophobia in children, adolescents and even adults
Do not underestimate emetophobia. This phobia, like so many other phobias that you may have, can be serious and bring with it extreme consequences. Emetophobia in children leads, for example, to the refusal to go to school, the desire for solitude, l " absence of interaction with other children and of course a fear of vomiting in any context.The child who is afraid of being nauseous or throwing up will not go to his friends' birthday parties, to lunch, to play sports with friends: and from this moment the choices he makes avoiding social life will have a negative effect on his growth and its social development. Even if the child has a mild "emetophobia, the fear of vomiting always causes anguish and sadness to the little ones. Adults can also be afraid of vomiting and this affects their life, leading them to make absences from work, giving up travel and even Career opportunities: They are afraid to speak in public and even to preside over meetings for fear of having to rush to the bathroom to vomit at any moment, so they end up isolating themselves and often choosing a path below their means. As we have seen, emetophobia does not only affect work and professional aspects but also private life. The emetophobic subjects do not go to eat out, they would never go into a restaurant and this also complicates couple relationships. It should not be underestimated then that this fear of vomiting in women can lead in extreme cases to giving up becoming a mother, fearing that once pregnant she will have to endure the nausea typical of pregnancy. A woman suffering from emetophobia may even choose not to have children because of the fear of recurrent vomiting during pregnancy.
Emetophobia: the interaction of this fear with other typical behavioral phobias
When emetophobia depends on a trauma, for example an episode of strong and intense vomiting, it is easier to solve because in this case we are talking about a phobia that can usually be a simple phobia. But in most cases the fear of vomiting hides other types of phobias, such as social phobia or even agoraphobia. If an individual suffers from social anxiety, they may accept the idea of feeling bad in an isolated place or away from their home. If a person is agoraphobic, on the other hand, he would find the idea of being sick in an isolated place where he cannot ask for help very distressing.
As we have seen in this article, emetophobia can take on different outcomes, when, for example, it is linked to social anxiety, it concerns the social consequences and what the person feels in these attacks, ranging from embarrassment to shame of feeling bad in public. On the other hand, when the fear of vomiting is linked to agoraphobia, the person feels ill because they believe they cannot escape or get away and above all they are convinced that they cannot receive help from the outside: this is the basic condition that creates panic attacks.
Remember: emetophobia can have very different causes and occur at different ages, as children as well as adults. If reading this article you perceive that it is a fear of yours, ask for advice from a professional who will certainly be able to support you in the most correct way and offer you an adequate cure for overcoming your ailment!
