CYEAT: Introduction

In the introduction to Cure Your Emetophobia and Thrive, the author includes a first-person declaration that the reader is supposed to sign. The declaration says things like "I intend to overcome my emetophobia" and "I will complete all the exercises in this book with vigour", etc. Then a place to sign your name and date it.

On the page after the declaration, he asks anyone who didn't sign to think about why they didn't sign. He offers suggestions such as maybe you thought it was silly or wouldn't make any difference. But it got me thinking about why, in a broader sense, I sometimes feel wary about trying to cure this phobia.

First of all, I very much doubt it can be cured, at least not completely. I feel like at the very least you would still have moments in your life, moments where you had a stressful week or were really tired, where it would creep back out again.

But mere moments would be an improvement, obviously, and something to strive for. My next thought is that getting to that stage of 'mere moments' of anxiety would obviously be difficult and horribly unpleasant. The introduction talks about this too, how you have to put in a lot of time and work and complete all the exercises. Then I end up putting those two thoughts together and come up with: I could spend so much time doing these difficult unpleasant things and in the end, it's possible it still wouldn't make any difference.

The author mentions that he thinks exposure therapy (inducing vomiting) would help many people with this phobia, but they won't do it: "Their desire for control tends to be so strong that they would not let themselves undergo exposure therapy - even for just one day, if they were guaranteed a cure."

That's the problem though. No one can be guaranteed a cure. Honestly, if I was guaranteed a cure after one day, I would induce vomiting for sure. That's not reality. Reality is that you would probably have to do it several times to desensitize yourself, which would take more than one day, and there is no guarantee it would be successful. Without that guarantee, it's not worth it. In my mind anyway.

Another thing that makes me uneasy is thinking about how if I was cured, I would probably vomit more frequently than I do now. I get caught in that emetophobic feedback loop where I'm horrified thinking I would vomit, then remind myself that since I was cured I wouldn't care, but still feel freaked out by the thought. The present me feels sorry for the future me who would be cured and thus would not protect herself adequately by the standards of present me. It doesn't make sense. But I keep circling back around to what is essentially a fear of being cured.

Then there is the fact that I have had this phobia my entire life, as long as I can remember anyway, and it is such a huge part of me that it feels like part of my identity. Sometimes I can't imagine who I would be without it. And it's always scary to think about losing a huge part of who you are, even if it's a sick part that's holding you back in so many ways.

So those are my reservations. All that being said, if someone came up to me, handed me a pill, and told me that if I took it I would throw up once and then be cured forever, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I know that's not possible, but it's a nice fantasy.

I do want to commit to the experience of this book as much as possible and see if it can help any (even if it doesn't actually cure), so I will sign the declaration (well, write it out and then sign it, since I bought the ebook version). Since they say it's so important to do so. Full speed ahead!