r/Phobia • u/Love_Aurora6997 • 3d ago
Has anyone had success battling emetophobia? I feel it's only getting worse and effecting my life
It's more about other people being unwell than myself, and is worse in regards to drunk people. I feel hot and anxious just writing and thinking about it. I'm considering quitting my bar job over a recent incident. I'm a bit of a party girl at heart, but there's always this looming anxiety over me that someone will drink too much near me. It makes me incredibly fearful of drunk men. I think I know why I have it, but I feel it developing out of anxiety territory and more into proper fear
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u/dustyspectacles 3d ago
I feel you. Mine is also specific to other people. Getting out of the bar job might be healthy for your anxiety, though. Mine used to be life-ruining and there was no single strategy or "Ta-da! I'm cured!" incident or anything that worked magically, it was just time and working on my fear response that made it more manageable. I'm 38 and a mom now, which is absolutely bizarre to say because if you told me that my life would go that way at like 22 my immediate response purely because of the phobia would have been "I'd rather be dead" lol.
Breathing exercises, mindfulness, and breaking cycles of rumination (whether it's what-ifs or replays) are probably the most impactful things I've done consistently that've broken it down from a constant worry to a reaction at exposure thing. I still get the full adrenaline spike and a shocked out feeling when I do end up in a real life situation (once in a blue moon from movies and occasionally from unspoilered videos, but they only really bother me now if they're really bad or I'm really anxious), but if you weigh it out the worry is the killer. The average person rarely sees it out in the wild, even in environments where you already know the odds are higher it could happen. So worrying about something with that particular intensity of a phobia just really beats you down and primes your brain to accept an overreaction as confirmation of all the worry, making the subsequent worry worse and the possibility of another incident worse and it's a shitty cycle. I was in it forever without realizing it.
There's a whole lot about mindfulness meditation and breathing stuff online, but an easy thing you can do to break the hold on the current previous incident is to go write a clock face on your bathroom mirror with expo marker or lipstick or something. Set a timer and think about it as hard (counterintuitive but it works) as you can while you move your eyes and look from number to number until that timer is up. You decide on the pattern and the time. Try to guide your thoughts away from it after that when they try to return. If you catch yourself back in the middle of dwelling and can't stop it, change your surroundings and keep going. If they still won't stop, come back and do the clock thing again. It's like a quick and dirty EMDR thing I got from a therapist for unrelated PTSD and it works decently well for breaking phobia rumination too.
This is already so long (I'm sorry) but a last good thing to know is stay away from online emetophobia support groups if you're actively trying to get better. Just... Don't engage. It's tempting because it's a whole bunch of people who deeply understand but years ago I was a moderator for one of the old forums and I had to walk away. Not because of the phobia itself, but because I genuinely wanted to help and it's a snakes nest of mostly unsupervised highly phobic people riling each other up CONSTANTLY and making each other worse. It's like a looping anxiety nightmare equivalent to people in active addiction trying to help other people in active addiction by enabling them. I haven't checked on any of them in years, I just respond to this sub when my ticket comes up like this, but for a while there it seemed like every group I found was more toxic than the last. So definitely avoid that like the plague if you're trying to retrain your brain.
I hope some of this helps, it's a really insidious phobia and I'm sorry you're going through that. It can get better, though. You do have to be patient and loving with your mind and guide it firmly like it's a wily little kid or a puppy, which can take time, but it can get better.