happy new year

Happy New Year! I hope 2012 is a great year for everyone. I feel optimistic that it's going to be a better year for me. 2010 was a crazy hurricane / whirlwind of anxiety. 2011 had its intensely bad moments too, but it was better than 2010, so I seem to be heading in the right direction. Also, I am determined to get it together this year and actually do the work I need to do (like eating healthier, doing CBT, etc.). I had to go back to my long list of New Year's resolutions and revise it into a plan that I think is realistically achievable. This is something I've never done before. For some reason, letting go of the idea of "perfection all at once" tends to fill me with a squirmy reluctance to try anything at all. But that reluctant feeling wasn't as strong this year. More evidence of progress!

So the last book I ended up reading in 2011 was Living with Emetophobia by Nicolette Heaton-Harris. I bought it months ago, maybe around September, but I have been putting off reading it, because I had heard that it was mostly a long description of emetophobia, and I had a feeling it would only end up upsetting me or triggering me in some way. I figured it would not be helpful at all but might add more irrational thoughts or behaviors to my list. A few times, reflecting on that, I thought about never reading it. But since it is pretty much the only book on emetophobia out there, and I am writing about the same topic on a regular basis, I had to check it out.

All the reviews I heard were correct. The book mostly explained emetophobia in depth, all the different thoughts or behaviors an emetophobic person might have. I could relate to most of it. Some of it made no sense to me. (Am I the only emetophobe that doesn't feel compelled to look at someone who may be getting sick? When I see a car parked on the side of the road, I shut my eyes or look away and feel no urge to witness what I fear might be happening.) In addition to the explanations and personal stories, there were about four pages of advice on how to cope, including nothing more advanced than deep breathing, distracting yourself, and taking small risks whenever possible to try to expand your comfort zone.

But as bad as I felt it was objectively, I am hesitant to really criticize it, because it exists, at least. It's something that takes emetophobia out of just the Internet world, and I have to think it has had some positive impact in giving the problem more weight / attention. Also, if what an emetophobic is looking for is validation of their issue and the knowledge that they are not alone, the book does provide that.

Unfortunately, I'm way past that. Thanks to the Internet, I've known for years what the name of my issue was, and I've read stories from and talked to many people who are also dealing with it, and I'm betting that's the case for most of the emetophobes of my generation. It's not enough anymore. I'm not looking for someone to swap horror stories with. In fact, I generally feel like it might not be a good idea for me to ever meet another emetophobe in person. The idea of emetophobia support groups all over the country raises some doubts in my mind. Would we not just feed off each other? If half of us in the meeting felt nauseous from anxiety at being at the meeting, and the other half found out about it, wouldn't we all just be scared one of us might be legitimately sick? I don't know.

My real issue with the book is that I felt a little damaged and hopeless after reading it, and that feeling stayed with me all night. I rang in the New Year with a vague feeling of sadness at knowing that this phobia touches every part of my life and that there is no cure for it. I don't think the author meant to leave the reader with that impression, at all. But I feel like she spent 95% of the book talking about all the ways emetophobia manifests in a person's life and then ended the book with the message that it could be contained but not cured. It's hard not to focus on the bad parts of that instead of on the ray of hope that is "containment."

This morning, though, post-sleep, I felt better and able to see it all in a more positive light. Containment may be settling, but that doesn't mean it dooms me to a life of unhappiness. Everyone is settling for something in their life. Like someone might have a bad ankle because of an injury when they were young. Of course it would be better if they didn't have to deal with that, but they do, and they work around it. I know from experience exactly how contained emetophobia can be. In college, it was there, but I rarely felt upset about it. I wasn't doing anything special to contain it. It was just out of luck, I guess, or maybe because I had so much going on (schoolwork, friends, events) to distract me from it.

So that's my hope for 2012, that I can get my phobia as contained as possible. With the knowledge about managing anxiety that I have now, I should be able to reach a level of containment even better than the one from college.

And if I want to be wildly optimistic, I have heard of some emetophobes who have been able to cure themselves. Plus with more research into it, maybe a cure that works for everyone will be discovered / developed. It's possible.