Can a period of severe anxiety (or a nervous breakdown, emotional collapse, whatever you want to call it) change who you are forever?
This is a question that has plagued me over the past few years. After my anxiety spiraled out of control in 2010, I felt like I changed almost overnight into a very different person. Other people didn't seem to agree with that assessment, which was comforting, but I was obsessed with the idea that I was different, that it had destroyed/ruined me, that I would never recover, never be "the same" again. And I kept focusing on every change I noticed and claiming it was proof or at least cause for concern, from completely minor changes that didn't even matter to the really big ones.
I expected these alterations in my personality / behavior to go away almost immediately. I definitely expected them to go away after weeks and months of anxiety-fighting work. What's funny is that most of them have gone away by now, but it happened gradually over about 3 years, and during that time it seemed like I was throwing my hands up every month and saying "it's been six months! It's never going to happen!" or "I've done everything I'm supposed to do and I'm still not myself again!"
Some examples (I do so love to make lists):
- My entire life (for as long as I can remember) I have slept curled up on my side. After my breakdown (and even in the weeks leading up to it), I couldn't anymore. I started feeling like I could only sleep on my back. Whenever I lay on my side, I felt convinced I was hurting myself in some way, crushing my organs, or squishing some part of my body to the point that I would end up cutting off circulation, and this would cause me to die in the middle of the night. Even lying on my back, I had trouble falling asleep because I didn't know what to do with my arms. I didn't want them lying next to my body because when they pressed against me, I felt that same 'being squished' sensation. It seemed at the time that I could even feel the pain of this imaginary crushing.
This went on for a very long time. I think it's only been within the past few months that I've finally started to go back to my old sleeping position. Also, I think it was one of the changes that freaked me out the most, even though it had no real significance. Maybe because it had no real significance. I couldn't understand why it had happened and just saw it as evidence that I wasn't me anymore, not even in the most relaxed scenario possible.
- When I was younger, I had problems eating in restaurants and usually would refuse. When I went out to meals with my friends, they all knew this and didn't expect me to eat, and even some of their parents knew and didn't push the matter. But from around the last year of high school up until the breakdown, I had made serious progress in this area. For example in 2009 (1 year, 2 months before breakdown) I went out to lunch with my boss. Ate normally, small-talked, no panic. After the breakdown, I lost my ability to handle restaurants again and frequently complained about this and how I thought I would never be able to eat normally in one again. I know I've mentioned this issue in a lot of my posts. I would say I'm still not fully back to where I was, but I was absolutely wrong about it being a permanent setback. It's obvious to me by now that I'm continuously improving in this area.
- Same for long car rides and vacations. When I took that vacation to VA in 2011, I was a mess. I wrote about it here and tried to put a positive spin on it, as I always do, but I was barely functional for most of the trip. I haven't taken another trip to someplace that far away since then, but I feel certain it would go better if I did. I've taken smaller trips since then. Stayed in hotels. Went to Warped Tour. I got through all of that while still feeling like a sane human being - even, I would say, feeling like myself.
- I had terrifying intrusive thoughts. It was very OCD-like, but I didn't have any compulsions. It may have been something I read about called pure-O, or just my brain's total meltdown. At first I was afraid I was going to kill my cat, and I was afraid to go near him. That only lasted about a week or so. Then that switched to being afraid I was going to kill myself, which lasted much longer. Several months. I didn't want to kill myself, but I thought I would anyway, that my body would just go on auto-pilot and do it, out of my control. I think it was because I was so anxious / unhappy all the time, and I worried it would never get any better. That caused a nightmare chain reaction in my brain. "Not happy --> things will not get better --> you will kill yourself --> oh my god, but I don't want to --> too bad, you won't have any control over it - after all you didn't have any control over this happening in the first place --> no I can't let this happen! must tell someone and/or have them watch me to make sure I don't do anything" etc. I got so panicked over this one day I called my wife and made her come home from work to keep an eye on me.
This has gone away completely. It went on for about a year. I think the last time I had that thought was the end of 2012.
- I couldn't handle sad/dark books or movies or shows. This was a big adjustment for me, and I was incredibly frustrated by it, because most of what I liked to read was dark in some way. I couldn't read anything that referenced death or suicide. I couldn't read anything that was gross or gory (including things that aren't even that bad, like accounts of childbirth) or surreal or that caused any intense emotion (so that was basically everything). I even remember freaking out while reading a young adult book because of a part where one of the characters fused with a chair. The simple (but surreal) idea of someone becoming half-chair was too much for me.
This has been gradually going away over the past few years and I think I am finally at the point where I can read/watch anything without having an anxiety attack over it. Except maybe horror movies. I'm still being super cautious with those. I'll probably never go back to watching the extremely scary ones I used to.
This is getting long, so I'll stop. My purpose in writing all this is just to point out that everything did seem to change drastically, and (especially because the breakdown itself was so traumatic) it was scary to feel like I had lost myself, and I convinced myself I was irreversibly damaged. And that wasn't true. Now I'm seeing that it was all temporary. Of course it was hard to be patient and rational at the time, because everything was so unpleasant, but looking back on it, I can see that it was unreasonable to keep telling myself that because x amount of time had passed, I was clearly going to be this different person forever. As much as I wanted to, I didn't get to dictate how much time it would take to recover.
Maybe it is partially true that the experience forever changed me, but if so, it's in a more positive way than I am used to thinking. Yes, it was intense and horrible, and I'll never forget it completely, and I learned a lot from it. By that I mean I learned how to ensure it never happens again. I learned to take care of myself, both physically and mentally, enough to keep myself from a complete mental collapse. There's still a lot of room for improvement, but I have reached the point where my day to day life is manageable, and I have reached the point where I feel like I have my identity back. Those are both things I used to think I would never be able to say again.
**Just a quick warning. I went into some detail about the act of vomiting in the post below (not in the sense of a personal anecdote, just in the sense of dissecting the act).**
It's still really cold and snowy/icy where I live, and I haven't been leaving the house much, so things have been calm. I did see the movie Frozen (it was amazing) and had my usual movie theater experience of feeling "sick" and anxious for about half the film. I was enjoying the movie so much that I kept ignoring my strong impulses to leave because I didn't want to miss a single second. What's funny is that I was incredibly distracted by my worrying and didn't even realize it at the time. I got the gist of what was happening, but when I re-watched the movie later at home, there were so many lines of dialogue and song lyrics I hadn't fully heard the first time - little details that made me love the movie even more.
Other than that incident, I've been doing really well. I'm pretty sure that's the only time in the past month my phobia has been an issue.
I've been thinking about how weird this fear is. Here's what I think is the strangest thing about it: it seems (to me at least) that vomiting would be less terrifying to me if you were to take away any of the individual components that make up the act.
I don't think I'm alone in this. I've seen other people online say things like "if there was no nausea, I could handle it" or "if it didn't taste bad, I wouldn't care that much." We could all be wrong, since there is no way to test these theories, but it's fascinating to me thinking about all the ways the act of vomiting could be slightly different and how any one of those alternatives seems better than what we have in reality.
What if it came out of a different part of our body than our mouths? That seems like it'd be fine. How bad could that be, if it came out of the foot or the elbow? In fact, that scenario would rid us of other components too - the taste and the feeling or fear of choking.
What if it all happened exactly the same except that there was no unpleasant feeling of nausea right before? That doesn't sound so bad either. None of that awful sensation of the sick feeling building up, getting worse and worse.
What if it was completely controllable? If you knew without a doubt you could decide when and where it happened? This is the one I would vote for. I think most of all I hate the idea of the suddenness or surprise of it, and how little control I have over it.
Somewhat related - what if you couldn't have complete control over it, but you did get a clear unambiguous warning sign at least a few hours in advance? Something like the tips of your fingers turning blue, where then you would know there was no going back. A little scary, but at least then you could start planning your next steps. None of that back and forth "will I, won't I, is this in my head?" crap.
What if it always tasted really delicious, like chocolate? I'm unsure of how I feel about this one. I'm not convinced it would lessen my fear that much, but I've seen other people say they think this would work for them.
What if it was all the same, but there was absolutely no social embarrassment that came along with it? I am always afraid of it happening, even when I am alone at home, but I am much more afraid of the idea of doing it in front of other people. If there was no social stigma, no reaction of disgust, or if people reacted to it as calmly as they react when someone sneezes, I think I would be much less bothered in general. Along the same lines, what if it wasn't indicative of something bad happening inside your body? Obviously this is why the social disgust exists, because people know you could have some illness and instinctively want to protect themselves. If it was just something that happened occasionally (like a cat's hairballs?) and wasn't a warning sign that you were sick, extremely drunk, or had some kind of food poisoning, I don't think it could be as big a deal to anyone, either the person experiencing it or the onlookers.
In a way, I find it comforting to take it apart like this and see that it's something that is made up of many horrible things, and it's the combination of all of those parts that makes it so overwhelming and scary. I don't know why. I feel like there is some bit of hope or wisdom to be found in this thought process, but I'm not sure what it is yet.
I came across this post on tumblr the other day describing what it's like to have emetophobia. It's a really good explanation of the various associated behaviors. My favorite part (so true, and the reason why I think emetophobia is in a league of its own when it comes to phobias in general):
"I’m scared of spiders, but my fear of spiders doesn’t spawn new spiders
to come after me. However with emetophobia, my fear of vomiting creates a
very real sick feeling."
This is why I wish there was more psychological research being done on emetophobia specifically (and similar anxiety issues, like general health anxiety), because this kind of physiological feedback loop adds another dimension that people who are afraid of heights or dogs or clowns are not experiencing.
I recently read Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning, which is both a memoir about his experiences in concentration camps during the Holocaust and an explanation of his therapeutic method/theory called logotherapy.
It was an amazing book, as I knew it would be. I had wanted to read it for probably two years and kept putting it off because I was afraid. For the past two or three years I have been trying to avoid books, movies, news articles, etc. that I thought would make me have any kind of strong emotional reaction. My anxiety issues had gotten so bad that whenever I felt extreme sadness or fear or disgust I would feel "sick" or worry that the emotion would make me lose control or go crazy in some way.
Over the past few months I've been testing this boundary. I've watched a couple horror movies I had never seen before. I read a few books that were really sad or had disgusting parts. Nothing bad has happened. I enjoyed the movies and books and didn't freak out. Probably the ultimate test was going to see the movie August: Osage County last weekend. This one took me by surprise, as I actually thought it was going to be more light-hearted than it was. The previews showed a lot of Julia Roberts / Meryl Streep banter that reminded me of the interactions between Lorelai Gilmore and Emily Gilmore. But the movie was not like that at all. It was dark, dark, dark. From the very first scene, I became tense and felt kind of queasy and upset through the entire thing. I even thought about walking out at some points. But I stayed, and I felt like that was the final proof that I can handle pretty much any form of entertainment again.
Back to Man's Search for Meaning. I loved it and was extremely interested in the concept of logotherapy. I didn't know much about it. Basically it focuses on searching for the meaning in your life rather than trying to solve the problem of suffering (because there will always be suffering of some sort). From the wikipedia page:
"Frankl’s concept is based on the premise that the primary
motivational force of an individual is to find a meaning in life. The
following list of tenets represents basic principles of logotherapy:
- Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.
- Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
- We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we
experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation
of unchangeable suffering."
The concept is appealing to me. I feel like what started to make me feel happier about my life was trying to ignore/minimize my anxiety and focus on the rest of my life instead ("Goals" from my list of coping techniques). Realizing that I would probably never get rid of this phobia (or anxiety in general) completely, and even if that was true, it didn't have to be my entire existence or identity.
It's as if a person wants to cook breakfast, but there is a giant box taking up most of the space in their kitchen. They are still able to make the meal. It's just a little more difficult because they have to work around the box, make sure not to trip over it and spill food, make sure not to stub their toe or bang their knee on it. I'm trying to think of anxiety as being like that annoying box. What's my objective? What do I want to do? Once I know that, I can figure out the exact ways that my anxiety will present itself as an obstacle. Then I can figure out (using various other coping techniques) how I can deal with that anxiety and do what I want to do anyway.
It's worth working around the box to get the delicious meal in the end. And even if the worst happens, like you trip over the box and spill all your ingredients, then you would just have to start over. Go to the store. Get new ingredients. Try again. Because you can't just not eat. And living your life and going after your goals, finding your purpose/meaning, should be as vital as eating.
One of my favorite quotes from the book:
"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him."
It's been way too long since I posted here. Last month I was working on another writing project and this month I've been preoccupied with Christmas, trying to think of what to get everyone. Other than that, not much has been happening.
I can only think of two emetophobia-related incidents that happened recently. One good, one not so good.
The not so good one was a couple nights ago when I went out to eat with my wife. I've got to say, I think I've generally been doing really well with eating out at restaurants. I finally figured out how to deal with the situation, because two things happen to me when I eat at a restaurant. One is that I switch over to my "restaurant stomach" or in other words, my stomach appears to shrink in size. I know it must not actually be shrinking, but because of anxiety, I can never eat the amount in a restaurant that I could eat at home. But I always used to anyway. Out of habit, I would eat the same amount of food I typically eat at a meal, and then end up feeling awful. Now I have caught on to this and am forcing myself to eat way less. It usually means I don't even come close to finishing my meal, but oh well. Then I have tasty leftovers to eat later at home when I have my normal stomach back.
The other thing that happens because of anxiety: my throat becomes tight, feels more closed up, and this is mainly where I am still running into problems. I don't tend to notice this sensation in my throat, because it's very subtle, and it's a symptom I'm not that anxious about. But then sometimes when I swallow a bite of food, it feels stuck or like it's going down the wrong way or like I'm choking. That combined with the worries in the back of my mind about throwing up leads to a giant spike of panic. Which is what happened the other night. I'm talking to my wife, everything is good, and then suddenly I get this terrified look on my face as I panic that I'm choking or am going to throw up. The panic was over within a few seconds (aside from my heart continuing to pound for a while) and then I just felt silly and embarrassed. I'm pretty sure no one but my wife saw that look on my face, but the fact that I could not control it made me think about how awful it would have been if someone else had seen it. And made me flash back to all the many, many embarrassing incidents in my past where someone else did see a look like that on my face, including people who had no clue what was happening to me.
I guess I just need to keep this in mind when I go out to eat. Chew more, be conscious of swallowing and such. Sometimes I wonder if it's a good idea to work around these sensations because it feels like I am working with my anxiety instead of against it. But I don't seem to have much of a choice. I regularly go out to eat and that anxiety (so far) is not going away. The level of anxiety varies, of course, based on a million factors from my mood to the weather to whether I watched a movie/show earlier that day that showed someone vomiting. But there is always some level there, so if I want to be able to go out to eat at all, I need to adjust to these two symptoms. And like I said before, I think my adjustments are working out and making it so I can actually enjoy going out to eat, and that's nice. Not something I'm used to being able to enjoy, ever. Even with the brief panic the other night, I feel like the meal was a success.
Now for the good emetophobia-related incident. A friend came to stay with us at the end of November. He visits us pretty frequently, and over the last few years, I have been having a difficult time with these visits. Just like with going to restaurants, having someone stay with us makes my base level anxiety go up, and what tends to happen is I start getting a lot of stomach aches, almost constant stomach aches, especially if we go out anywhere. And when your friend comes to stay with you, they don't want to just sit around your house the entire time. And to make things even worse, I find it almost impossible to hide the fact that I feel sick and miserable or to keep quiet about it. So this friend has had to hear about how I don't feel well a ridiculous amount of the time, and it's a wonder he still comes to visit.
I'm sure you know where this is going. This last visit was practically PERFECT. It was the best time I've had hanging out with him in so long. I can't even say for sure why it went so well. Probably because I expected it to. I was feeling really great physically before he showed up, and I just felt confident that I would continue to feel great, that I could keep up the momentum of feeling good, if that makes sense. I was determined to. I've been feeling very guilty about what a terrible friend / hostess I've been.
As soon as he arrived, we went out to eat, and I ate more than I think I have in several years while at a restaurant with someone other than my wife. After that, we went somewhere else before going back home, which would normally make me very anxious (I always want to go straight home to digest and recover from the experience), and I was fine. We also went to see the movie Catching Fire (second in the Hunger Games series), and it was opening weekend, which meant the theater was completely packed. I was sure I would end up panicking at least a little during the movie, but nope, didn't happen, and I even had some popcorn. Also, he takes a bus when he comes to visit, and the bus station where we pick him up is a long drive from our house, about two hours one-way. I got through all eight hours of driving without any high anxiety periods (seriously, a miracle)!
It was like I was a normal person for a whole weekend. He's coming to visit again in about two weeks, and I'm excited. Because now I know it's possible, that I'm capable of handling it without any problems. Maybe it won't be absolutely perfect again, but I'm at least positive that I won't be the complete downer I've grown so accustomed to being.
I
hate having emetophobia, obviously. It impacts every area of my life and
generally makes everything a little more difficult. But I’ve been thinking
lately about what it was like to have this phobia during high school, and I
have to say that was probably one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced –
getting through every single day of those four years while having to deal with
this fear. I’m so glad to have that behind me and have the utmost respect for
anyone still in that situation, because it is incredibly difficult.
You are pretty much trapped in one building for the entire day, going straight
from one class to another. You have all the usual stress of schoolwork,
interacting with your classmates (some of them nice, some of them psychotic),
interacting with teachers and counselors and administrators and security guards
and bus drivers (some of them nice, some of them psychotic), and then when you
add anxiety issues and panic attacks to all of that, things start to get
incredibly messed up.
I definitely made the situation worse, because I didn’t take care of myself
physically in any way. I thought it was fine to get four to six hours of sleep
a night. I usually skipped breakfast and sometimes lunch too. Many days I just
ate one giant meal after I got home from school and that was it. Plus my diet
consisted mostly of things like frozen pizza and soda (yes, tons and tons of
caffeine), which I guess is pretty normal for adolescents, but definitely not healthy. I wasn’t even really aware at the time of how unhealthy all this was,
but I’m certain it’s the reason I had horrible stomach aches so frequently.
I’ve been remembering some of the ways I used to cope with these stomach aches
and the anxiety that came along with them. For the most part, my coping skills
back then were pretty unhealthy and I would not recommend them, but I’m going
to list everything.
***
1) Probably my main coping mechanism was to dig my nails into my skin (usually
the backs of my thumbs or other fingers) as a distraction from my stomach hurting.
Not the worst form of self-harm, but it did sometimes leave marks that were
embarrassing.
2) I skipped school a lot more than I should have because of feeling “sick”
when I woke up in the morning.
3) Along the same lines, I went to the nurse’s office an abnormal amount of
times and sometimes went home early from school. This fluctuated. I went
through periods where I was in the nurse’s office almost every day, and other
times it would be more like once a month.
4) I guess you could say skipping breakfast/lunch was a coping skill I used,
although a really bad and counterproductive one. I was even afraid to drink anything
at times and would end up dehydrating myself.
5) I would leave class to go to the bathroom just to calm myself down. Getting
myself out of the classroom where I felt trapped would usually make me feel a
lot better, and then I could convince myself that whatever was happening was mostly
in my head. But obviously I could only do this one time per class, so I had to
try to save it for when I really needed it. Sometimes I would break down early
and then regret it later in the class.
6) In my notes for class, I would draw lines, each one representing a minute,
for however many minutes were left in the class. I would watch the clock and
keep telling myself “I can get through this next minute. I can get through this
next minute” and then scribble through each minute line as the minutes passed.
7) I had a bunch of questions I asked myself to try to determine if I was actually ill, like "if I was home right now, would I still be feeling this way?"
8) I heavily relied on my friends. I was open with almost all of them about my
phobia. Most of them understood, even if some didn’t grasp the full extent of
the problem. My closest friends knew almost everything about it and were an
amazing support system. It was so great to be able to talk to them and have
them reassure me. They had mental health issues of their own, and we actually
had a simple hand code to communicate with each other about how we were feeling
(for when we were around a lot of other people, or when we were in class but
sitting across the room from each other). Holding up a hand meant “are you
okay?” or “what’s going on?” Then two fingers meant the person was sad, three
fingers meant the person was fine, four fingers meant the person was anxious.
One finger was the response that only I used. It meant “I feel sick” and
everything implied along with that.
After a while we started using these numbers in our notes/emails and when
speaking to each other too. I can remember many times answering the question
“what’s wrong?” with “I feel one” or “oneness.” Even though “oneness” is
basically a philosophy of unity/harmony to everyone else in the world, it will
always make me think of feeling anxiety-related sickness.
Anyway, having that code and knowing that I usually had someone around who
would understand how I was feeling was a big comfort to me.
***
I would say numbers 5-8 are the only good responses, and #5 is iffy since
it’s better to wait out your anxiety than flee the situation you’re in.
I so wish I had been aware of all the anxiety-reducing techniques I know now
during those years. I know just making the changes to my diet and sleep
schedule would have had such a huge impact on how I felt, and using
affirmations, mindfulness, and breathing techniques would have helped with the
rest.
But I would recommend telling friends if at all possible. Unless your friends
are jerks and you know they would only use the information to make fun of you
or torment you (in which case it might be a good idea to get some new friends),
having them know takes so much pressure off. Before I started telling people,
it felt like this huge weight/burden and this shameful secret I had to keep, and
that tended to make the anxiety attacks even worse, feeling like I was not just
trapped in the situation and in the feeling of anxiety but also trapped inside
my mind, alone, with the secret of what was happening to me.
I still find that in any situation where I feel anxious, if I can say it out
loud to the person I’m with, it helps diffuse a lot of the anxiety. And most
people are understanding about it, many more than I would have imagined back
when I tried to hide it.
In general, I was embarrassed by the way I acted a lot of the time in high
school. I’m still embarrassed thinking back on some of these things. So I just
want to say that if anyone reading this is in high school and feels this way,
cut yourself some slack. Emetophobia and high school don’t mix well. You’re
basically a superhero for every day you deal with both. Whatever you can do to
get through it (aside from hurting yourself/others), it won’t be that big a
deal in the long run. And college (where you have a little more freedom to
design your schedule and can include breaks between your classes) is not nearly
as terrible.
I can't decide if I'm doing a particularly good job lately of living by the "emetophobia shmemetophobia" motto. I guess in some ways. But I've been noticing many areas where I need serious improvement.
I volunteered to help out at an event at my old college this weekend. I was at a registration table for some of Friday and most of Saturday, which meant having to socialize with a lot of people (and reflect on how terrible my social skills are, but that's a whole other issue).
It was early afternoon on Friday when I first got there, and one of the very first things that happened - I mean, probably within fifteen minutes of me showing up - was that a janitor walked by and stopped to inform me that I should be glad I hadn't been around this morning, because someone had thrown up in that room. She of course didn't know about my phobia and was just following that weird custom of gossiping about any vomit one has seen or heard about recently. I don't quite understand why people love to do this - maybe they feel compelled to because of their own disgust over the situation. I've encountered it many times in my life, but this was probably the first time in several years. It gave me déjà vu, because it's always so similar with the person lowering their voice and giving you this sly and almost gleeful smile. I've got something good, it's really really good, it's going to make me super popular with everyone, because it's about vomit! It's stuff like this that makes me want to stay home and never interact with anyone again.
She didn't give too much detail except to say it was "gross" and that it had all been cleaned up, but after she left I could not stop thinking about it. Wondering where it had been. Was I sitting right on top of it. Wondering, of course, if it had been from sickness or drunkenness or something else. I couldn't let it go, and it tainted the whole weekend for me.
My one success is that I still ate, and I ate pretty normal amounts. I'm proud of myself for that, because having heard this story, I didn't particularly want to anymore. I also only had one brief period (about five to ten seconds) of feeling on the verge of panic because of imaginary "sick" feelings. The rest of the time I felt fine.
But I couldn't bring myself to eat in the campus dining hall (the closest available food) and walked to a restaurant in town instead. The dining hall is buffet style, and I kept thinking the most likely way to catch any sickness going around would be to share food with all the students.
What really bums me out about this is that when I was a student there, I ate in that dining hall almost every single day and usually didn't worry about it that much. Now it seems like a terrible and dangerous idea. I've been thinking about this and realizing that my germophobic tendencies have gotten much worse since college. I guess that makes sense, because these days I am usually at home, which means I feel like I'm rarely in contact with other people's germs. That's not true at all. I still go out places, and even if I didn't, my wife does, and other people come to visit here occasionally. I'm not at all isolated, I just have the illusion of being isolated. It makes me feel safer, and then on the other hand it makes me much more anxious about certain situations and places that I used to be able to handle.
Logically I know that someone has probably thrown up in every single room on that campus, and that it was even happening when I was living there. I lived there for four years and encountered plenty of illnesses. I caught a lot of colds but managed to avoid the stomach bugs. Possibly that was just luck. Either way, it makes much more sense that I would have gotten sick then, while living there, than now, when I was just working there for the weekend. But it didn't feel that way to me. I felt like I left the safety of my apartment and walked into a hotbed of various illnesses.
On both days, the first thing I did when I got home was put my clothes in the hamper and jump in the shower. Then I thought about how that behavior has been gradually developing over the past few years, where I feel the need to get rid of all contact with the outside world when I come home from certain places that I feel were particularly dirty or germ-filled. In some of the books on OCD I've read, they talked about how people with extreme germ-focused OCD will have "outside clothes" and then have to change into their inside/home clothes as soon as they get home. This reminds me of that, and while the thought of me getting to that point seems ridiculous right now, I probably shouldn't dismiss the possibility. Which is unsettling.
All that extra anxiety just because I happened to hear about an instance of vomit that happened that day, even though it's likely happening all the time without me hearing about it. It's so difficult to get something like that out of your head once it's in there. It makes me think about how I watched the original short for the horror movie Mama on Youtube a few weeks ago and ever since then, I can't stop myself from imagining her standing behind me at night when I turn off the lights to go to bed. I normally don't let myself watch anything in the horror genre anymore. It was a tiny act of defiance (against my own limitations) that was clearly oh so stupid.
Sometimes I stop right before I flip the light switch and wait until I can think of something that is not scary that will hold my attention long enough for me to get to the bed. Sometimes that works. I wish that technique was as effective in the emetophobia situations, but there is no destination point (like the bed) where it feels like the obsessive thoughts can be let go, so instead I just have to keep reminding myself to replace them with positive thoughts, over and over and over.
