Awareness day
National Emetophobia Awareness Day
We started it to get this phobia talked about: millions of people have it and almost nobody has heard of it. Below is the coverage from the day.
Rob Kelly’s presentation
The full eighty-minute talk is above. Rob covers what emetophobia is, what causes it, how people create and maintain it, why most treatments do not work, and why this one does. At the end an ex-sufferer, Sarah, describes overcoming hers.
It also has a page of its own if you want to send somebody straight to it.
Why a day for it at all
Because it is the secret phobia. Most sufferers have never told anybody, expecting to be told they are making a fuss — in one of our surveys, 44 out of 58 people had told nobody at all. People are treated for OCD or an eating disorder for years without anyone noticing the fear of being sick underneath it.
Awareness is the first part of fixing that. The rest is showing people it can be got rid of.
Sarah’s story
Sarah went through the programme and came out the other side of it. There are a great many more where that came from on the recovery stories pages.
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.