I haven't had another panic attack since that one at the grocery store last month, but my anxiety levels have still been all over the place. Some days have been perfectly fine, others not so good. I have been meditating and doing deep-breathing exercises more. I have been looking through my affirmation flashcards. Hopefully this is helping me even out, but I haven't noticed a significant change yet. That might be because I am still not doing these relaxation exercises consistently enough. I should be doing them every night, but right now it's more like twice a week.
Another change I made that I do think is really helping me is that I stopped going to emetophobia forums. Up until maybe a year or two ago, I never went to these forums. I mean, I can remember popping into them a handful of times during my teen years, but they bored me. I really had no interest in putting more effort into handling my phobia then. I felt like I did well enough. But when things got worse, I started visiting them, thinking they might be helpful.
It's been just the opposite for me. I feel like they have made me worse. And they were somewhat addicting too. I couldn't stop logging in for a while, reading everything, leaving comments with advice occasionally. I tried to avoid threads that looked like they might contain information I didn't want to have in my head. For example, I try not to read anything anyone posts anywhere ever about norovirus. I don't care if it's facts about it, helpful tips on avoiding it, how it's spread, good news about it, whatever. I know I have the potential to get so unbelievably obsessive about it. The information gets stuck in my head, and I find myself changing my behavior.
But it wasn't always easy to tell what might be in a thread, and I still kept coming across this negative information. I remember one night I had just eaten Pizza Hut for dinner. Then I logged into one of the forums, and the very first thing I saw was a thread titled something like "Pizza Hut food poisoning" or something like that. So I didn't even have to click on that one for it to make me anxious!
That is what annoys me so much about groups of people with emetophobia getting together. Inevitably, 90% of what is discussed will be things like that. People asking which foods or restaurants are best to avoid. People posting in a panic asking for someone to give them a safe/benign reason why they feel sick. I wish there was more discussion of how to deal with the anxiety/phobia itself. But I notice that when people bring up this point on the forums, they usually end up getting attacked by people who are "anti-recovery" I guess, that stress they would rather it be a "support" group than a "recovery" group. I find it odd. I think the best support is encouraging someone to recover. If someone had encouraged me to work on recovery when I was younger, I'm sure I would have ignored them, so yes, I agree that no one can/will recover before they're ready. But at the same time, during those years that I was technically "anti-recovery" I wasn't "pro-support" or at least not that kind of support that seems like a merry-go-round of scaring each other. I don't see how that helps anyone.
I have become very afraid of eating out at restaurants during the winter, and I know that is a direct consequence of hanging out on these forums and seeing other people constantly post about being worried about this. It's something I never thought about before. I have eaten out at restaurants year round my entire life, and I have never gotten sick from doing so. My method of eating out whenever I wanted to did no damage, and there was no need for anything to change. But I have changed and am now extremely reluctant to eat out anywhere until it's spring/summer again.
I feel frustrated with myself for letting myself be influenced like this. It seems I can't read the fears of other emetophobics on a regular basis without being affected by them. So I have stopped going to these forums, and now I'm hoping that as time passes these extra thoughts/fears I've acquired will drift out of my head again.
It's a little disappointing, because, first of all, it is exhilarating to be in contact with so many people who understand the way you think. And also, every so often, I would come across something that was uplifting or helpful. But it was so rare, and it's just not worth digging through all that negativity for those few positive gems.
I think I'm much better off sticking with blogs. I've always found they tend to be more recovery-focused and positive, since they are more about sharing information than getting support. I've never seen a blogger post while having a panic attack and expect someone to immediately show up to talk them through it (maybe because bloggers know they're addressing a smaller audience). I really like that. I'm looking for less agitation in my life and more understanding of the fact that anxiety is really something you have to handle on your own. Not that I don't sometimes rely on my wife to calm me down, but I like to see those times as times where I have failed myself. Any time I can fix a situation on my own, I know I've just done something that is so much better for me in the long run.
