Why building coping skills is so important if you want to overcome emetophobia

‘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 skilful. 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.

In this week’s episode, Rob and Joe discuss why coping skills are so important, how you can build them, and how you won’t overcome your emetophobia without them.

If you 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, in essence, is how you create a phobia.

Threat assessment

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. If you perceive something as unbelievably scary, and believe 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.

An example, in basic English: you’re absolutely right to be afraid of spilling boiling hot water on yourself. That’s a genuine threat — it will hurt and injure 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 you believe it is, because you believe your very strong emotions.

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.

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 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. Building coping skills is the first step.

This episode featured discussion between Joe Manuel and Rob Kelly.