For once I am happy to be outside among the bugs. The bugs out here, while annoying, are at least tolerable to some degree. I can’t say as much for the bugs inside my house. While shopping in Trader Joe’s yesterday evening, Mikey starting acting like a little boy on the verge of a stomach flu. For an emetophobic like me, it was very bad news.
I don’t know why I am this way. I don’t know why I have to shoulder this phobia like an albatross around my neck. I do know the inability to comfort your child because of a fear you can’t control is excruciating. Devastating. Debilitating. But not as much as the fear itself. The fear always wins, and the disappointment I have in myself collects in my stomach like bile, leaving me to feel just as nauseous.
I can postulate any number of reasons why I am plagued with this phobia. I threw up as a child often due to severe motion sickness. And by severe, I mean my mom would bring a change of clothes for me on simple trips to the grocery store. I remember clearly one trip to Canada when we were living in upstate New York. I had to be younger than Mikey. I kept vomiting, over and over, into diapers. I was crying and my parents were bickering with each other. It must have been so exhausting for them, dealing with a child who couldn’t go more than a quarter mile in the car without baptizing the contents and passengers. Some therapists believe the trauma triggered my phobia. Others say it’s hereditary. My mother has a phobia, as does my maternal grandmother. Most likely, it a combination of both: a perfect storm of nature and nurture.
Back to Mikey. We got home, and he threw up on the Mister as he was putting him to bed. I was outside, feigning some important task. If you have a phobia, especially one like mine, you are aware. There is no other way to describe the incredible ability you develop to read body language. And so, when my radar starts to beep, I leave. But when I heard his screams, I couldn’t deny the mother in me any longer and came running back.
I bumped into the Mister on his way to change out of his sopping clothes.
“What happened?”
“He threw up.”
“What can I do?” I pushed the words out of my mouth like flat, heavy stones.
“Comfort him.”
It was like a slap in the face. I looked at my sobbing Mikey, wet and scared and feverish and defeated by his own intestinal tract. I asked him what happened as I steered him towards the linoleum of the bathroom.
“I f-f-frowed up!” He was beside himself. So was I.
The mother in me wanted to pick him up, press his soiled little body against mine, and rock him into good health. Instead, I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath as I gingerly tousled his hair and grazed his shoulders with my fingers. I murmured trite platitudes as my chest tightened, my breath shortened, and the cold sweat of fear trickled down my neck and formed rivulets between my shoulder blades.
I don’t hate much, but I hate emetophobia.
I’ve looked for treatment. I’ve consulted therapists. It is, I discovered, one of the more common phobias. People don’t admit to it often because on the Official 1-10 Scale of Cool and Acceptable Phobias it ranks a meager 1. Instead, you’ll hear things like “social anxiety” or “claustrophobia” or “agoraphobia.” For years I used these labels, too, but I stopped once I realized there might be other people like me, and that by being honest I might be rewarded with a comrade in fear. I truly, really, believed I was the only person with this phobia until I googled it in 2003. I was shocked to discover it had a name, and that celebrities like Joan Baez, Denise Richards, and Matt Lauer have it, too. Oh, and Howie Mandel. Probably. It’s been rumored his OCD regarding germs is about emetophobia.
Sadly, this is one of the harder phobias to successfully treat. Even worse, of the four types of emetophobia, I have the more difficult to treat fear of others vomiting. For whatever reason, the usual techniques in the psychiatrist’s arsenal just don’t stick. There is no purple pill for me to take. And believe me, this morning when the Mister left for work and left me to take care of Mikey until 8:30 tonight, I would have swallowed an entire bottle if I thought it would help.
Somehow, I survived. I had him lay on blankets and had bowls at the ready. I allowed him to take slow, controlled sips of water and juice and waited to see what would happen. We had a couple of close calls when his stomach started to feel “crazy” again, but he never threw up. It didn’t matter. If you have a phobia, you know the anxiety of waiting for an event to happen can be more incapacitating than the event itself.
By dinner time, Mikey was almost back to normal. Whatever bug made him sick had left, leaving in its place guilt and disappointment in myself. I’m disgusted I can’t be there for my boys when they need me. I don’t want to be a perfect mother; they don’t exist. But I don’t want to be so imperfect, either.
So I keep looking for a cure because I will not let this fear control me. My stubborn, relentless, terrier-with-a-bone personality finally has a purpose. I won’t give up. I won’t stop researching. I won’t die with regret.
I want you to know that you CAN beat this. You have to be aggressive in treating it, probably with a combination of desensitization and CBT, but I promise you it can be done. I had phobias that are now not much more than distant memories, which is amazing when I think that I suffered with them for so many years, and was 100% convinced that no matter what anybody else said, MY phobias were too entrenched to recover from.
You are tough and determined, and you can do it!
I agree 100% with kathi d. You are tough and determined and you can do it.
Jules, I feel for you as I have this too. I’ve had it my entire life and have been tormented with anxiety as well. Parties are no good for me, social scenes I tend to look around for the people that are “infected”. It is a horrible way to live. I don’t eat out much, I’m afraid of a lot of food, I keep it bland and my kids get asked a millions times a day how are they feeling, if I think they look off. Yes, I am probably driving them into early therapy but I can’t seem to control it. My 4 year old “spit-up” in the car the other day. I think it was some sort of reflux but my world starting spinning and everything went in slow motion. I knew I had to get out and clean him up. I did but for the rest of the night I kept asking him if he was going to “spit” again. Yes, we call it spit-up because the words, throw-up and vomit make me cringe. Spit-up reminds me of when they were babies and it’s easier to handle.
I’ve talked to a therapist about this before and the advice I got was to watch it. Go to where there are sick people. Become desensitized like the others have said. Um….no thanks. Until then, I’ll be a freak and figure out a way to still be a loving Mom and try to freak out more on the inside than out.
Good luck!!
Kathi D & Toi–Thanks for the vote of confidence! I know one day I will beat it, but just the thought of desensitization makes me dizzy.
Melissa–I do everything you do. It sucks.
The thought of desensitization makes you dizzy, but you HAVE to go through it for any hope of recovery. You find yourself a therapist who specializes in phobias, and he or she will take you through the process in a way that challenges you but doesn’t kill you.
When I first went to a therapist for my phobias, I told her the reason it had taken me years to get help was that I was afraid of what she would make me do. She understood that completely, and assured me that while I would have to face some things I didn’t want to, never would I be in “freak-out” mode because that would be totally counter-productive.
I promise you. You can do it. I found my therapist myself by searching the internet for people in my area who specialized. I finally took the plunge for treatment after suffering a panic attack that was so frightening I almost would rather have died. And honestly, within DAYS I was feeling so much better, just for having taken a step, and within MONTHS I was doing things I never would have imagined I could do.
I’m holding your hand, here! I KNOW you can do this.
P.S. If a therapist is advising you to “go watch it” that is not the right therapist. The right therapist will take you through desensitization in a controlled manner.
And besides “fixing” yourself, you will be inoculating your kids against getting phobias. It is so much better to conquer it now instead of dealing with it in you AND the kids later.
P.S. Melissa, you too!
I am telling you. You can not be any worse than I was. And I am FINE now. I am not exaggerating. I had years of barely leaving my house.
Thanks Kathi D!
It really helps to hear people have their own demons, even when they are different.
It is especially encouraging to hear you vanquished yours! :)
You are very brave to write about it, and then to post it. :)
Hugs from me and my own different but just as sucky phobia!
Thanks, Susannah. If it wasn’t for you, Melissa, and Kathi D I would feel like a real big loser right about now.
I feel so bad for the dilemma you were in as a mom! I can relate in a way. I have a horror of catherization. And my 8 year old needs to be cathed to remedy a bladder control issue. I have done everything I can think of to avoid it: changed his diet, therapy, pull-ups at night. Everything short of letting them cath him: because I think I would literally pass out if they did it. But it’s time to bite the bullet and let them do it.
When my 3 yr old developed a UTI last summer, I almost passed out in the ped’s office when they examined her. I could not comfort her, because I was too busy trying to not let the room spin out of control. My palms started to sweat, the blood left my face and I literally could not hear the questions the ped was asking me during the exam. I felt like I deserved loser-mother-of-the-year award. My child was crying for me to be near her, but I could not provide the comfort she needed.
So I guess I can kind of understand how paralyzing your phobia can be. I did not know one could get therapy for fears like that. That’s great!
Mine may not be as bad [or even a phobia], but I empathize with your emotions of feeling disappointment in not helping your little one.
For what it’s worth, just know that he loves you no matter what and even though children know that we aren’t always perfect….we’re still their heroes.
Sorry for novel.
Thank you, Seleta. :)
I came across your blog this morning by way of Making it Lovely and I just want to offer you my thanks for being so candid about your phobia, which I also share. I always figured that I was deathly afraid of throw-up because, as a child, I almost never got sick to my stomach, so if I ever did, it was a huge scary ordeal. And also, my mom is afraid of throw-up so she would get very upset and it would just be a big huge traumatic production.
But anyway, I wanted to thank you for sharing your experience as a mother because I still to this day kick myself for the way I treated my daughter the first time she ever threw up (not counting baby spit-up). It was everywhere and she was so scared and reaching for me, crying “mommy!” but all I could think to do was push her as far away from me as I could. The instinct to get the vomit away from myself won out over the instinct to comfort my child. The look my husband gave me as he said “She needs you!” felt like being slapped in the face. What an awful night. I am amazed that other people actually feel this, and are able to admit it!
Phobias really, really suck (I have another worse one, sadly). I hope each of us can, like Kathi, put them behind us somehow, soon. Strength to you, Jules, and the others who have commented here with their own phobias…. let’s go kick some phobia ass!
Thank you, Amanda, for being just as candid. Isn’t it funny that I can’t imagine a worse phobia than mine? Unfortunately, I know they exist. Good luck to you, and in finding treatment. Hopefully one day we can all meet on a Booze Cruise and laugh all about it.
Not. :)
Yes, it’s me again!
Talking about your fears is a wonderful first step in healing. I spent years making excuses and covering up for mine because I was so ashamed of the simple things I couldn’t do.
I am now actually grateful for the suffering I did, because only those of us who have experienced phobias and panic attacks can understand the feeling. I have the world’s best husband and much as he tried, he couldn’t understand the depths of my feelings. Who could, if you have never been terrified by something that to most people is either “nothing” or a minor inconvenience?
I am going to keep saying that no matter how much you fear that you can NEVER get past your phobias, I promise that you can. I saw so many people on the daytime talk shows who had conquered phobias and I always said to myself, “but I KNOW they didn’t have it as bad I as do, and I KNOW that I can’t do it” — but I could, and I did.
And you can too! And I beg you not to feel shame about it, because it’s not something you asked for, or something you can control (until you get the RIGHT help, and then it’s, I swear, relatively easy).
Please don’t continue suffering forever! After I got my treatment going, I started talking about it to my friends (who had NO idea) and another friend who was suffering silently started treatment and also recovered 100%. Untreated phobias tend to get worse and collect “puppies”–other unrelated fears. On the other hand, treat one phobia and the others fade.
You CAN do it. I know you can (all of you who have spoken up here)!!
Today was the first time I found you. I have this irrational, crazy fear as well. I didn’t know it has a name. And I’m so ashamed too. I have two little girls and we’ve only had this illness once. I live with the dread of it coming back. Worry so much and stress and worry. Not good. Anyway, just wanted to let you know you aren’t alone and I’m so glad to learn I’m not alone. Even if it means someone else has to suffer.
Glad I could help, Kelly. Also glad to know I have yet another friend who has been there. :)
Thanks, Kathi D, for all your encouragement. :)
kathi d gives excellent advice. CBT is absolutely the way to deal with phobias, and there is a LOT of evidence to back up it’s efficacy. I once heard a woman speak on how she got over her fear of flying (she had been in a plane crash) by undergoing CBT, it was an amazing story. I learned a lot more about it in my psych classes. In any case, Kathi certainly knows what she’s talking about. I wish you well. It’s certainly something that you can work through.
I also wanted to tell you that I had the juice from a fresh whole coconut today. i had read about how you use them here a while back, it was delish! (I usually buy it prepared). Eating the meat was such a treat, I’m going to be doing it so much more often, thanks for the inspiration!
Oohh…I understand. My fear? Ophidiophobia. You’ll have to look it up because I can’t even type IT. I also understand your predicament. I have a 15-month old daughter, and I’ve asked myself if I could lay in a pit of them. You know, if it ever came down to that. I say yes, of course. A soft, weak, barely audible, light as a feather Yes.
I’ll have to look into CBT. I’ve tried EMDR with little success, and at the time it was touted as the wonder treatment.
Megan–I love young coconuts. They’re expensive, but so good! I know people who use the milk and meat and mix it with cocoa and other ingredients to make a chocolate pudding. I’m sure there are a bunch of recipes online. :)
Lara–I didn’t have to look it up. As “luck” would have it, a friend in law school had it. We always went to lunch together, and there was one place in a strip mall that happened to have a reptilian pet store. We had to park as far away from the store as possible, preferably in a spot where he wouldn’t have to walk past the entrance. If we couldn’t find a space, he walked about 10 yards away from the door and there was a silent understanding that I was to walk right past the door to make sure “they” hadn’t escaped and were crawling out the door. We stopped going there to eat because I think the whole thing was just too embarrassing for him.
Oh, and I read on your blog last week how your daughter threw-up all over the car and I about passed out. ;)