Why building good coping skills is an essential part of emetophobia (fear of being sick) recovery
Channel: Emetophobia-Free
Date: 2023-05-03

'Coping Skills' are what you do and think, in order to manage your reactions to experiences in life. When you believe you can cope, you feel powerful, resourceful and skill-full... you don't tend to worry much - or create very much anxiety or stress - because you believe you'll cope with whatever life throws at you, and therefore your experiences will mostly be pleasant and non-threatening.

If don't have good coping skills, or don't believe you'll be able to cope in a specific situation, that situation will be perceived as very threatening, very dangerous and very scary... the only choice you'll have will be to escape from the situation and avoid it at all costs... that's how you create a phobia.

Every single emetophobia sufferer perceives vomiting (or seeing others vomit) as being terrifying and unbelievably horrible, and hence it HAS to be avoided at all costs.

We have heard thousands of real life experiences over the years about the lengths that some emetophobes will go through to avoid vomit, including: jumping off a cross-channel ferry, jumping out of a speeding car, walking out on a young baby, terminating pregnancies and starving yourself half to death.

If you perceive something as unbelievably scary and that you couldn't cope if it happened, you are driven to avoid it at all costs... there is nothing more important in your life, than avoiding this thing that you fear so much.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel though... emetophobia is a conditioned-response - rather like Pavlov's salivating dog - you are just reacting this way to the thought of vomit, because you have (unknowingly and unwittingly) trained yourself to do so...

Being sick isn't a genuine threat - at least not to the magnitude most emetophobes think it is - they have trained themselves to believe it is, and so they have a massive emotional response to their perceived threat. In basic English: you're absolutely right to be afraid of spilling boiling hot water on yourself - thats a genuine threat - it will hurt and injure you if you spill that on you... your 'threat assessment' of the boiling water is correct and accurate. However your 'threat assessment' about vomiting isn't correct (it isn't actually going to do you any harm, and will in fact probably make you feel much better) - but yet you believe it is... you believe your (very strong) emotions.

Slowly changing your beliefs about vomit and building coping skills, is what is going to get you over your emetophobia - completely and permanently. Much like Pavlov's dog though -  learning not to salivate just because a bell rings -  it's going to take time for you to slowly undo and unwind all those unhelpful thoughts and beliefs that are driving your conditioned response: your phobia.

Building coping skills is the first step...


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