FAQs - Emetophobia & Thriving

FAQs - Emetophobia & Thriving...

Have a question about Emetophobia, The Thrive Programme or any of the Manuals/books ? Well, wonder no more.

Below you will find a comprehensive list of all of the most frequently asked questions (and answers of course!) that Emetophobes have asked us. If you have a specific question that isn't covered here, please get in touch and we'll do our best to answer your question. We may even add it to this page!

Emetophobia is a phobia of vomiting/seeing others vomit. It is known by several names: a specific phobia of vomiting (SPOV), vomit phobia, sickness phobia and fear of vomiting. It’s associated with other fears and disorders, such as phagophobia (a fear of gagging, swallowing or choking), a fear of pregnancy (tocophobia), social anxiety, anxiety, OCD and eating disorders. Research indicates 0.1-8.8% of the population have a fear of being sick (Hout & Bouman, 2011), and around 85-97% of sufferers are women (Hout & Bouman, 2011; Lipsitz et al., 2001; Veale & Lambrou, 2006).

Emetophobia can significantly affect the sufferers’ ability to lead a normal life. People with emetophobia tend to go to great lengths to avoid encountering anything that could lead to vomiting, this can include:
- Not drinking/limiting alcohol consumption
- Avoiding pubs or clubs where others might drink heavily and vomit
- Not travelling on public transport
- Worrying about hygiene: obsessively cleaning; hand washing
- Taking time off work or school to avoid being exposed to germs - Restricting eating
- Eating ’safe’ foods
- Not eating out in restaurants etc. - Obsessively checking sell-by-dates - Taking ’stomach settlers’
- Avoiding medication which has nausea as a side-effect
- Avoiding/terminating a pregnancy.

Many sufferers don’t even realise there is a name for their condition, or even that their issues are related to a phobia of being sick. It is a widely misunderstood condition, with many medical professionals unaware of it. Because of a lack of understanding, sufferers aren’t given the correct medical or therapeutic treatment, or are made to feel like their issues are not valid.

You can undertake the programme at home by yourself - with either one of our books/manuals/online course - or with the help of a trained Thrive Programme Coach®. It’s a training programme, much like a fitness programme… each day you are required to do some reading, some mental exercises, complete some quizzes, some thinking, and put effort in to change any limiting or unhelpful beliefs or thoughts you have. The whole programme will take you about 6-8 weeks to complete, and each day you will feel better and better, as you take control of your mental health and feel more powerful.

All other therapies and interventions for emetophobia focus solely on the symptoms of the phobia, and not the causes. The Thrive Programme teaches you how you created the phobia in the first place, then shows you how to overcome it completely, and permanently. Most emetophobes have unsuccessfully tried a range of treatments before they come to us, and most other treatments have very low - if any - success rates.. Veale and Lambrou (2006), for example, found that twenty-nine percent of their sample of vomit phobics had received some form of therapy for their fear, which overall they rated as largely ineffective. Veale and Lambrou (2006, p. 139) have stated that “clinicians generally regard it as challenging to treat because of high drop out or a poor response to treatment.” The drop out rate in other therapies and treatments is high, because participants have very little belief that the intervention will work… this is not the case with The Thrive Programme!

Whether you are fit or unfit, well or unwell, happy or unhappy, healthy or unhealthy, your mental health and wellbeing has a profound influence over the rest of your body. The Thrive Programme can enable people to overcome emetophobia and other fears and phobias, but it is also effective at helping a much wider range of symptoms and problems. Here are some of the other problems/symptoms/situations that people have used this programme to help with:

• Stopping smoking, staying a non-smoker (92.5% success in recent research project)
• Resolving relationship issues – in families, marriages, and friends
• Getting over alcoholism, either by stopping drinking, or drinking in moderation
• Unexplained infertility
• Anxiety
• Panic attacks
• Phobias and fears
• Stress
• OCD, obsessions, obsessional thoughts, intrusive thoughts
• Public speaking/confidence
• Obesity, dieting, losing weight, maintaining a healthy weight
• Anorexia Nervosa, bulimia, body dysmorphia, other eating disorders
• Vaginismus, premature ejaculation, frigidity, low sex drive, dislike of sex
• Kids’ symptoms and issues, including: school phobias, bed-wetting, night-terrors, not eating, eating too much, separation anxiety, nail-biting, shyness, depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia, lack of confidence, hysterical symptoms, poor school work, poor academic performance, laziness, sibling rivalry
• Getting a job, keeping a job, interview skills, building confidence skills
• Building self-esteem, maintaining high self-esteem
• Overcoming ME/Post Viral Fatigue/Chronic Fatigue
• Staying strong and positive during cancer treatment and remission
• Getting fit, climbing Everest, running a marathon, winning a martial-arts tournament, learning to play tennis, learning to swim, travelling the world, competing in international flying competitions…
• Insomnia (including not sleeping properly for 40 years!), poor sleep, bad dreams, hyper-vigilance, night-brooding, nightmares
• Just being happy and enjoying life and getting the best out of every day of your life

Basically, it can help in just about any situation in life!

Most sufferers of emetophobia don’t believe they can be helped/cured, this is one of the most common questions we are asked. There are two main reasons why you might feel this way: (1) Because having Emetophobia is so horrible and debilitating, that it feels impossible to overcome, and (2) because most emetophobes have already tried lots of different therapies and interventions, as well as trying to make themselves better everyday, that they have ‘run out of hope’. However, if you take some time to watch any of the hundreds of video testimonials we have, or, have a look at our research study where all 62 participants overcame their phobia in just 6-8 weeks, you’ll soon start to challenge your belief and realise that actually a cure is not only possible, but predictable with this programme.

The average time for an emetophobe is around 6-8 weeks, whether you are doing it by yourself or with the support of a Thrive Programme Coach®. Be careful though not to put a set time on how long this ‘should’ take you to overcome. Some people take longer than others to implement the exercises thoroughly, or may take more time to read and understand the book. Take it at your own pace, steadily and consistently, and don’t compare your progress to anyone else.

It’s natural to assume that a long-term phobia which has heavily impacted your life should take years to unpick and work to overcome right? However, once you understand what is creating your phobia, it’s actually fairly simple to make the changes to overcome it. Most of your unhelpful thinking and beliefs only take a few days to change. Watch this video from Lisa, who overcame her emetophobia in just three days, and this video from Mary who had suffered for over 75 years, but still cured herself in just five weeks.

As per the above answer, there is no ‘pass or fail’. Some clients have taken much longer, but only (and admittedly) because they didn’t put the full required effort into doing all the exercises consistently from the start! The moment somebody starts to persistently work through all the instructions in the programme, without taking big breaks or leaving some exercises out, the trend is forwards and upwards, and then they get there!

Some people find they make progress faster and more predictably with the help of a Thrive Programme Coach® because they are being given extra support and motivation to continue implementing the programme thoroughly and regularly. We’ve also developed the online course to offer the robustness of working through the programme with a Thrive Programme Coach®, but at a much lower cost.

However, there is no ‘quick fix’, it does take consistent effort over a certain period of time to overcome this phobia.

Setting yourself very unrealistic goals to get over it quickly and easily is more likely to set you back as you’re more likely to overreact to any blips or perceived failures and believe that you’ve ‘failed’ or can’t do it.

It’s not possible to ‘fail’ at the programme! The programme shows you how to change all of your thinking styles to the most helpful ones so that you are thriving and don’t create your phobia. It’s not possible to change all those thinking styles and still have your phobia, so if you still have your phobia then there’s some things that you’re still either not understanding or not doing in order to fully implement the programme. It doesn’t matter if it takes you weeks, months or years to get there - the moment you fully implement the programme, it won’t be long before you’re thriving and phobia-free!

Of course. We’ve invested a huge amount of time and energy into creating a robust and efficacious programme with the sole purpose to help people across the world make the most of their lives, so fake testimonials would be an invalidation of our goal and the hard work we’ve put in. The programme is constantly updated based upon client feedback and new research, so fake testimonials would also be entirely counterproductive to this feedback loop.

Sometimes when somebody has had emetophobia for a long time, and perhaps even built an identity around it, it can seem strange to imagine life without it, even if it’s having a really negative impact on your life. In addition, you may worry that you’ll feel out of control if you don’t have the phobia anymore and have less ‘control’ over your life (although in reality you’ll actually feel more in control because your coping skills will be much better).

So focus on the destination instead of worrying about the journey to get there - focus on all the great things you want to do in life that your phobia is currently preventing you from doing. Remember that whatever small gains you may be getting from this phobia at the moment (like control or routine etc.), the gains from getting rid of it are MUCH, MUCH bigger.

We never recommend for clients to suddenly change their medication. We don’t want anything that is going to unsettle you whilst going through it (and as we aren’t doctors we would never make medication recommendations anyway). Plenty of clients make a decision to change or discontinue medication once they feel thriving and able to do so, but that is a personal decision for them and with consultation with their own doctor or medical professional.

‘Black and white thinking’ (also sometimes known as ‘all or nothing thinking’ or ‘digital thinking’) is a thinking style that most emetophobes suffer from. The effect of this means that they often - without knowing it - see everything in black or white, with no grey. Things are either ‘on’ or ‘off’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’, things are ‘great’ or ’terrible’, the meal was ‘wonderful’ or ‘awful’… you get the picture.

So, just because you’ll want to challenge any excessive hand washing ’safety-seeking behaviours’, doesn’t mean you’ll stop washing your hands altogether. What you will have - once you've overcome your phobia - is a more realistic attitude towards germs and hygiene, which means you’ll only want to wash your hands when they are dirty, before eating, after going to the loo etc

But the difference will be that you are washing your hands because it’s a sensible thing to do, and NOT because you are terrified of germs or being sick. I lock my front door at night because it’s the sensible thing to do… I’m not anxious when I do it, and I’m not doing it because I’m terrified of being burgled, I do it calmly because it’s a sensible thing to do.

Exposure therapy is generally unsuccessful because emetophobia is a combination of very specific thinking styles, so being exposed to vomit without changing those will only exacerbate the problem. Not having the right cognitive skills to process the event in a helpful, empowering way will only reinforce the fear. Furthermore, emetophobia is not about vomit, so it’s not helpful to encourage the idea that it is with exposure therapy.

Many doctors have no idea the phobia even exists, let alone how to treat it. We are the only organisation with an evidence-based cure for it and our own emetophobia research paper with 62 participants is leagues above any other research paper out there (the next largest after ours featured only 7 participants by the end because of the ‘high drop out rate or poor response to treatment’!).

So as emetophobia specialists we would advise you to trust us when we say that we know what we are doing, and this programme will absolutely show you how to overcome your phobia, even if your doctor may disagree!

SEEING A THRIVE PROGRAMME COACH®

The vast majority (about 60%) of emetophobes overcome their phobia by themselves with just the book/manual. The programme was created specifically for sufferers studying it at home, by themselves. However, some people prefer the support, guidance and expert knowledge of a Thrive Programme Coach® to really make sure they are understanding and implementing the programme as thoroughly as possible for best results. It’s a personal choice, but for some it can help them to get the maximum out of the programme.

At the moment, this treatment is not available on the National Health Service in the UK. We strongly advise against getting anybody except a fully trained Thrive Programme Coach® to take you through the course, you would not be covered by us if there were any issues with the support you received and the results are usually very poor when clients attempt to get a non-expert to deliver this very specialist programme.

Most health insurance providers only pay for treatments with providers on an approved list. As an organisation The Thrive Programme is not - yet - registered with any of these. Individual coaches may be able to go through a bespoke assessment and approval process in unique cases with a provider, but this would be on a case-by-case basis and there’s no guarantee of success at gaining health insurer funding for the course.

In rare cases Rob Kelly does still see clients, however he is dedicating an increasing amount of time to ensuring Thrive Programme Coaches have as much personal training and support as possible from him directly, to updating and adding extra research to the books (and potentially writing more books in the series) and to creating extra resources for clients to use going through the programme. It is therefore more likely if you asked to see him that unless there was a very specific reason to, you would get referred to one of his team of Thrive Programme Coaches to go through the programme as they would have far more time to work with you personally and in depth.