Emetophobia
What does emetophobia mean?
Emetophobia is an intense, persistent fear of vomiting — being sick yourself, or seeing someone else be sick. Its official name is a specific phobia of vomiting, and it sits within the anxiety disorders.
What it looks like.
The fear rarely stays in one place. It attaches itself to whatever the mind links with being sick, and the day gets organised around avoiding those things — often without the person ever quite noticing that is what they are doing.
Avoidance
Steering clear of anything the fear has attached itself to: particular foods, public transport, social events where people might drink, hospitals, children with bugs.
Physical symptoms
Nausea, dizziness, trembling, sweating, a racing heart — all of them anxiety, not illness. The nausea is the cruel one: it convinces the sufferer they really are about to be sick, which raises the anxiety, which deepens the nausea.
Panic attacks
Brought on by anything vomit-related, or simply by feeling queasy. Many sufferers describe the panic as worse than the thing they are frightened of.
Cleanliness behaviours
Washing, disinfecting, checking dates, avoiding anyone who seems unwell — anything that feels like it lowers the risk of catching something.
How common is it?
of people have a specific phobia of vomiting — the full, life-shaping version described on this page.
have a fear of vomit that troubles them without taking over, which is a different thing and far more common.
Both figures are almost certainly low. A great many sufferers are too ashamed to raise it, or have tried once, been misunderstood, and never tried again.
A fear of being sick, or emetophobia?
Plenty of people dislike vomiting. That is not emetophobia. The difference is how much of life the fear takes: what gets avoided, what gets given up, and how much of the day is spent thinking about it.
For someone with emetophobia, the fear shapes meals, travel, work, school, relationships and whether they have children. For someone who simply dislikes being sick, it does not.
Neither is permanent. Emetophobia is learned, which is the whole reason it can be unlearned.
Bella Ramsey had this too.
And came out the other side.
“It’s not controlling my life anymore.”
The BAFTA-winning actor — The Worst Witch, Game of Thrones, The Last of Us — was housebound at one point as a teenager, and took travel sickness tablets and antacids to get through a working day on set. They had tried self-help books, CBT and hypnotherapy. None of it worked.
Bella went through this programme, and describes no longer thinking about sickness, no longer being frightened of it, and no longer letting it decide what they can and can’t do. They talk about all of it, openly, in their own words.
Listen to the episode →
Where to next?
Everything else you might want to read.