Frequently asked questions.

A phobia of vomiting, or of seeing other people vomit. It goes by several names — specific phobia of vomiting, vomit phobia, sickness phobia — and it rarely travels alone. It sits alongside anxiety, OCD, social anxiety, eating disorders, a fear of gagging or choking, and sometimes a fear of pregnancy.

Research puts it at up to 8.8% of the population, and 85–97% of sufferers are women.

People go to great lengths to avoid anything that might lead to being sick: limiting alcohol, avoiding pubs and public transport, obsessive cleaning and hand-washing, taking time off work or school to avoid germs, restricting food to ‘safe’ options, checking use-by dates, avoiding medication that lists nausea, and in some cases avoiding or ending a pregnancy.

Many people don’t know it has a name, or that everything else is connected to it. It is widely misunderstood, including by medical professionals — which is why so many sufferers are given the wrong treatment, or made to feel their problem isn’t real.

An evidence-based training programme that teaches you the skills to overcome mental health problems and learn to thrive.

You work through it at home with the manual or the online course, either on your own or with a trained Thrive Programme Coach®.

It is a training programme, much like a fitness programme. Each day you read a little, do some mental exercises, complete quizzes, and put real effort into changing the limiting or unhelpful beliefs you hold. It takes about six to eight weeks, and most people feel better week on week as they take control of their own mental health.

Every other therapy for emetophobia works on the symptoms. This works on the cause: it shows you how you created the phobia in the first place, and then how to undo it completely and permanently.

Most people arrive having already tried something else that didn’t work. Veale and Lambrou found that nearly a third of vomit phobics in their sample had had therapy for it, and rated it largely ineffective — noting that clinicians find it hard to treat because of high drop-out and poor response.

Drop-out is high elsewhere because people don’t believe the treatment will work. That isn’t what happens here.

Because the programme works on thinking styles and beliefs rather than one specific fear, it reaches a great deal more than the phobia.

People have used it for anxiety, panic attacks, other phobias and fears, stress, OCD and intrusive thoughts, low self-esteem, social confidence and public speaking, sleep problems and night-brooding, eating difficulties, relationship problems, stopping smoking, and getting or keeping a job.

Others have used it simply to get more out of life — to stay steady through something hard, or to finally do the thing they had been putting off.

{ Note for Rob: the current list on the live page also includes infertility, cancer, ME and chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and vaginismus. Those are worth a separate conversation — see the email. }

Someone who loves their life, has the skills to manage their own mental health, and looks forward to the day ahead. They take responsibility for their actions rather than blaming other people or their past, and they take challenges on rather than avoiding them.

A thriving person feels powerful and in control, and bounces back quickly from whatever life puts in front of them.

This is one of the most common things people say to us, and there are usually two reasons for it. Emetophobia is so horrible and so debilitating that it feels impossible to beat. And most people have already tried several things that didn’t work, so they have run out of hope.

You don’t have to believe it yet. Watch a few of the video testimonials, or look at our research study, in which all 62 participants overcame their phobia in six to eight weeks. The belief tends to follow the evidence.

No. The process is the same whether the phobia is about yourself, other people, or both.

A lot of doctors say this, and it’s understandable — emetophobia gets very little coverage in medical training, and the treatments most GPs can refer you to weren’t designed for it.

It’s worth showing them the evidence page, or asking them to look at the research behind the programme.

It isn’t possible to fail at it. The programme changes your thinking styles to the most helpful ones, and you cannot change all of those and still have the phobia.

So if the phobia is still there, something in the programme hasn’t landed yet or isn’t being done. It doesn’t matter whether that takes you weeks, months or years — the moment you fully implement it, you won’t be far from thriving and phobia-free.

Yes. We have put years into building something that genuinely works, and faking testimonials would defeat the entire point of it.

There is a practical reason too: the programme is constantly updated based on what clients tell us and on new research. Fake feedback would poison that loop.

One thing only, and it’s the comparing. Perfectionism is the enemy here.

This isn’t a race and it doesn’t matter how fast anybody else went. Your progress is the only progress that counts.

Six to eight weeks for most people, whether you do it alone or with a coach.

Try not to set yourself a deadline. Some people take longer to work through the exercises properly, or to read and absorb the book. Go steadily and consistently, at your own pace, and don’t measure yourself against anyone else.

It is natural to assume that something which has shaped your whole life must take years to undo. But once you understand what is creating the phobia, changing it is fairly simple — most unhelpful thinking and beliefs take only a few days to shift.

Lisa came through hers in three days. Mary had suffered for more than seventy-five years and was free of it in five weeks.

There is no pass or fail. Some people have taken considerably longer, and in almost every case it is because the exercises weren’t being done consistently from the start.

Once somebody works through the instructions properly, without long breaks and without skipping exercises, the direction of travel is forwards. They get there.

Some people move faster and more predictably with a coach, simply because of the extra support and motivation to keep going. The online course was built to give some of that same structure at a much lower cost.

But there is no quick fix. It takes consistent effort over a period of time.

And setting yourself an unrealistic deadline usually backfires — you end up over-reacting to any blip, deciding you have failed, and believing you can’t do it.

No emetophobic thoughts. Not worrying about whether you might be sick. Living life on your own terms rather than the phobia’s.

The best answer isn’t ours though — go and watch people who have come out the other side describe it themselves.

No. Nobody likes being sick, and not liking it is a perfectly normal reaction.

It is about having a realistic view of it instead — understanding that if it happened, you could cope with it and get through it, the way non-emetophobes do, without the anxiety.

No. This isn’t about sickness, as you’ll come to understand.

Plenty of emetophobes can’t remember the last time they were actually sick and still have an enormous phobia of it. You do not need to be exposed to the thing you fear in order to prove anything. There is no exposure treatment in this programme.

When you have had emetophobia a long time, and perhaps built part of your identity around it, life without it can be hard to picture — even when it is doing you real damage.

People also worry they will feel less in control without it. In practice the opposite happens, because your coping skills are far better by the end.

Focus on the destination rather than the journey: the things you want to do that the phobia is currently stopping. Whatever small gains it gives you now — control, routine — what you get from being rid of it is very much bigger.

No, and we would never recommend suddenly changing your medication. We are not doctors and we don’t make medication recommendations.

We don’t want anything unsettling you while you work through the programme. Plenty of people do decide to change or stop medication once they are thriving and feel ready — but that is a personal decision, made with your own doctor.

We don’t recommend it. Different approaches often ask you to do contradictory things, and that conflict tends to undermine your progress in both.

If you are already working with someone, it is worth finishing there first, or talking it through with us before you start.

Black-and-white thinking — seeing things as entirely on or entirely off, with no middle — is a thinking style most emetophobes have. It is why this question comes up: it sounds as though the choice is between washing your hands and not washing them.

It isn’t. Ordinary hygiene stays. What changes is the washing that is driven by fear rather than by dirt: the extra rounds, the set order, the panic if you are interrupted. That isn’t hygiene, it is reassurance — and reassurance always wants a little more next time.

Exposure works by letting the fear response burn out through repetition. For most phobias you can do that — you can see enough spiders.

With emetophobia, the thing you’d have to be exposed to can’t be produced to order, and attempting it tends to confirm the fear rather than wear it out. So we don’t use it at all.

The book does work alone, and thousands of people have done exactly that.

A coach tends to make it quicker and steadier — someone to keep you honest, spot what you’re missing, and get you moving again when you stall. It’s a preference, not a requirement.

Every coach is licensed, trained directly in the method, and on the register. { Detail of the training and licensing. }

{ Rob to answer — whether the programme is available via the NHS, and whether another practitioner can deliver it. }

{ Which insurers, if any, and what they need from you. }

{ Instalment options. }

{ Hardship or concession arrangements. Worth answering warmly — people asking this question are often the ones who need it most. }

Yes. { Price per additional session. }

{ Rob to answer. }