dream-sick

I decided to keep a dream journal this year, just for fun, because I love dreams and attempting to analyze them. I also kept a tally of how many times I dreamed about a particular person or thing. So, for example, I dreamed about my mom 97 times this year, I dreamed about being at work 52 times, etc. That I can remember, anyway. The other night I got curious about emetophobia-related dreams and reviewed every dream I had about vomit. I dreamed about it 29 times (it ranked 33 in my list of 143 people/things).

When I've seen other emetophobics talk about their vomit dreams on forums/blogs, usually they say the dreams cause them a lot of distress, that they are nightmares even. I wonder if this is the "norm" for emetophobics or if those people are just the only ones who talk about their dreams because of the fact that they are in distress over them. It's not the case for me. I think I dream about vomit pretty frequently, but I don't usually feel upset about it, either in the dream or after I wake up. I wouldn't consider any of the dreams I had this year to be nightmares. These are the categories I could divide them into:

-- seeing vomit or mentions of vomit on a sign, in a book, online, or while watching TV (9)
-- hearing someone is sick, has vomited, or might vomit but don't actually see/hear them do it (6) 
-- someone I recognize vomits - people I know or "dream friends" (5)
-- a stranger vomits (4)
-- my cat vomits (3)
-- I vomit (2)

I will feel anxiety in the dream, but it's like a muted "dream anxiety" that is really more shown by my behavior in the dream than actually felt. I will cry, hide, run away, obsess about it, avoid anything I think may be contaminated, etc. All the standard behaviors from reality. But the anxiety doesn't wake me up or cause me to feel upset after waking up and remembering it. It's maybe more like a general rehearsal, since I so rarely encounter vomit in reality.

Also, in dreams where I get sick myself (and they are so rare that even having two this year seems excessive to me), I usually don't feel sick. Sometimes I am doing it intentionally (for example, in one I was engaged in a vomit competition with someone), and it's easy and laid-back. It always feels like liquid spontaneously appears in my mouth without actually coming from my stomach.

This really has nothing to do with coping with emetophobia. I'm just sharing out of nerdy curiosity. I'd be really interested to hear what themes or patterns other emetophobics have encountered in their dreams.