taking a class / affirmations

I am auditing a class at a nearby college, and it starts tomorrow. It will be Monday and Thursday evenings. It's been a really long time, at least a year, since I have pushed myself so far out of my comfort zone.

So my main goal for this week is to go to both of these classes. I'm betting that I will "feel sick" in the first class and that this will make me want to give up on it. And since I'm only auditing, it will be too easy to drop it.

My other goal, of course, is to bring down my anxiety if/when it occurs during the class. I have a four-part affirmation I've been using during the past year in situations where I don't feel well:

1. This feeling is temporary.
2. This feeling is not dangerous.
3. Calming down will always help.
4. Calming down is the only thing within my control.

Using affirmations in general is a pretty new concept for me. I used to dismiss them whenever I heard them as too simplistic or "lame" or something similar to that. When I first started repeating them to myself, it just felt like a useless chore. I didn't really believe any of them and would frequently come up with arguments against them. I still have trouble with this (trying to debate the affirmations, although now I'm more hoping to prove to myself that they are true), so I also have an affirmation about my affirmations that I use now: "Affirmations are meant to be repeated, not debated." This is a reminder to myself to just stop arguing with them. It took many months, but eventually they began to sink in, and now I find that they can be really helpful.

But I do want to elaborate on numbers 3 and 4 of my list, because these are the ones I had (sometimes still have) the most trouble accepting, and remembering the logic behind them is helpful to me.

Emetophobics want to believe they are in complete control of their bodies, and I have always believed that if I remain alert (aka anxious), I am better prepared to fight the possible sickness. This is not true. First of all, if someone is legitimately sick, being in a calm/relaxed state will not cloud their vision/judgment about what is happening to them. Calm is not the same thing as being unaware of reality. I tend to think things like "if I am calm, I may not notice I am about to vomit" which is completely ridiculous. Being calm will not ever make things worse.

Secondly, being calm will make things better, even for a person who is sick. Having a sickness, even a stomach virus, does not guarantee a person will vomit. The illness could cause other symptoms instead (in the case of a stomach virus, probably diarrhea). Anxiety is an emotion that easily causes an upset stomach all on its own, so having an illness and then adding loads of anxiety to it can't help matters. Of course, if a person is emetophobic, they will not be able to feel anxiety-free during illness, but there are always things they can do to feel less anxiety. It will be an extremely stressful time, and it will be difficult for them to lower their anxiety, but it is possible, and it is something that should be attempted. As a person living with a phobia, lowering anxiety is something that should always be attempted, no matter what the circumstance.

And in closing, I became familiar with affirmations (along with a bunch of other incredibly helpful anxiety-reducing techniques) through The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook by Edmund J. Bourne. I actually have the fourth edition, but I'm betting it's not that different from the newest version. The book has several pages of affirmations, and I have spent a lot of time reading and writing them over and over. I usually have one written or typed out on a sheet of paper and taped up on the wall over my computer. The one I have hanging there right now is one of my favorites:

"I'm learning to let go of worrying. I can replace worrying with constructive action."

obligatory introduction post

It feels strange to give a background / explanation of something that has been with me my entire life. Chances are you already know something about emetophobia anyway, if you're here, and there are plenty of websites that explain it. Best of which, in my opinion, is this one. I'm not sure about the reliability of the rest of that website, but this FAQ was the first thing I ever stumbled across that made everything make sense to me.

I have no idea what caused my phobia. I have no memory of a traumatic experience involving me or someone else vomiting. I was 9 the last time I actually did throw up, but I must have already had the phobia at that point or was at least on my way to developing it, because I can remember times before that where I acted in weird ways. If my stomach hurt, I would crouch down on the floor if possible, because I thought that made me safer. I would try to hide from my teachers the fact that I felt sick, because I felt it was something shameful. If eventually my anxiety overwhelmed me, I would suddenly blurt out that I didn't feel well and needed to go to the nurse, and the teacher always looked taken aback. At some point in my childhood, I became scared to touch food at all, even after washing my hands, and went through a phase where I ate like a dog, holding my plate or bowl up to my mouth.

I was around 11 or 12 when I started researching online and found the FAQ website linked to above, but it took several more years before I really felt like I had any control over what was happening to me.

So moving on from history, this is business-as-usual nowadays.

-- I feel "nauseous" almost every day. This fake "nausea" is really anxiety, hunger, normal feelings of digestion, indigestion, heartburn, etc. It's hard for me to tell the difference between these and to identify my current feeling correctly. It's gotten easier over the years. But I still frequently get nervous that I am in danger of throwing up, especially if I "feel sick" in public. It's even hard for me to tolerate non-stomach pains, like a headache or general muscle soreness, since I will interpret these as signs of potential illness.

-- I think about the safety of my food a lot, the potential to get ill from food poisoning. This leads to avoiding certain restaurants or types of food that don't seem "safe" to me, throwing food away that is most likely still fine because I worry it has gone bad, or feeling anxious after consuming certain foods that seem high-risk to me. I also have a long list of foods I avoid eating before going out in public or while out in public (anything spicy, greasy, rich, too filling, too sweet - aka anything that could make my stomach hurt). This makes eating on long car trips and vacations difficult. Grocery shopping is also kind of a pain, because I inspect everything I am buying, and if anything looks weird or "off" to me (like an apple with a spot on it), I usually can't bring myself to get it.

-- Eating in restaurants in general doesn't work out that well. It's rare that I can get through an entire restaurant meal without "feeling nauseous" from anxiety.

-- I can remember times when I was young and threw up in the middle of the night, right after waking up. So I consider sleep to be a time where illness can sneak up on you and make you vomit before you have a chance to stop it from happening in some way. Because of this, it's hard for me to fall asleep if I don't feel well. I also frequently wake up in the middle of the night and "feel sick" - I'm guessing this is usually just hunger, since sleeping is also a long stretch of not eating.

-- I do not drink alcohol at all and avoid being in places/situations where other people are drinking (excessively to the point of drunkenness, I mean).

-- I avoid being around children, since they are much more likely to have some illness and/or be vomiting.

-- I keep a store of anti-emetics, Pepto Bismol, and Tums at home. This hasn't always been the case. I have always been extremely strict with myself about using these things, because I remembered reading that emetophobics could become dependent on them or abuse them to the point of unhealthiness, and I never wanted to allow myself to reach that point. But this past year has not been the best for me, and I have become (slightly) more lenient about it. I also just don't like putting anything out of the ordinary in my body, even something as harmless as Tums.

-- I avoid traveling in general and public transportation. I don't have a problem with motion sickness as far as I can tell, but my anxiety will lead to me feeling "sick" anyway if I am on a boat, plane, or bus. Trains and cars, not as much, depending on the situation and who I am with.

-- I am afraid that if I get a tickle in my throat or have a coughing fit, this could lead to throwing up, so I tend to carry a water bottle with me everywhere I go just in case this happens.

-- I ask my wife at least once a day if I am sick or if I have a fever. Or I will ask her while eating or directly after eating if she thinks the food is likely to make me throw up.

-- When my wife is sick, I don't take care of her. I keep my distance as much as possible. One time when she had a stomach virus, I went to stay with a friend and didn't come back until I was sure she was better and she had decontaminated all our belongings.

I think that's about it. I can't say I diligently stick to any of the behaviors in the above list, because I am always trying to challenge myself when it comes to this. Ever since I realized I had emetophobia, I have tried to keep the momentum of a normal life going, mostly by pushing myself to keep going out places. Keep going to movies, to restaurants, to school or work. My tendency is to want to be home all the time where I'm safer. I currently work from home, which I think has led to me losing some of that momentum. I don't go out enough anymore. But I'm determined to fix this.

Which is the main point of this blog, I suppose. To force myself to do the things I am afraid of doing and then write about how successful I am. There are so many ways I am successful already (some emetophobics can't even speak/write the word "vomit" or watch vomit scenes on TV), and I know I can do even better than I am doing now. Will I ever be completely cured? Most days I think absolutely not. But it's not just "cured" or "not cured," it's an entire spectrum of fear, and reaching the perfect positive end of the spectrum doesn't matter so much to me as long as I am able to function well enough in order to do all the things I want to do in life.