Emetophobia Archives - Turnaroundanxiety.com

Emetophobia is the fear of vomiting, others vomiting, or the effects of vomiting. The articles below will give you insight on this hidden epidemic.

How to Find a Counselor for Your Child: 8 Things to Consider

Once you decide your child may need some specialized help how then do you find the most effective treatment and therapist? Here are 8 things to consider as you seek help. Identify Your Child’s Needs Understand the Issue: If possible, determine the specific reason your child may need counseling (e.g., anxiety, depression, school issues, trauma). Developmentally your child may not have the experience or self-awareness to be able to describe what is bothering them so you may need some tools. Sometimes online symptom checklists can be helpful in identifying problem issues. A selection of sites [...]

Exposure and Response Prevention: What if it fails or makes things worse?

The answer is, it might. But it is not the Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) itself, rather is a result of unfavorable conditions or inappropriate applications. Briefly, ERP methodically exposes individuals to anxiety-provoking stimuli while preventing safety behaviors. ERP helps to retrain the brain and reduce distress with repetitive practice. I would say that most people have a least some reservations about trying the treatment called exposure and response prevention (ERP). There is evidence that as many as one in five will refuse to do it.[1] I have seen other articles [...]

Emetophobia Self-Help at a Whole New Level

When you think of self-help with an anxiety disorder, you usually think of a book. If you see a psychotherapist for an anxiety disorder you think of an interactive conversation that is customized to your needs. What is recently possible is a combination of both the right information with an interactive application of treatment. With the advent of interactive web design, a new set of possibilities opens up. I have often thought about how to create an app that would mimic what would happen with an experienced therapist but would be self-directed. I even pitched this idea to an app development [...]

Just Released: How to Treat Emetophobia: A Guide for Providers

A few years back, I was happily surprised when Anna Christie, B.A. M.Div., RCC emailed Dr. McCarthy and me about Turnaround, our anxiety program for kids. She was and is one of the premier specialists in the world for treating emetophobia. (This is a fear of vom**ing.) She put this on the map for clinicians and sufferers. If a therapist was treating this phobia, they were using her website. If a sufferer started to search using their symptoms, they would find her website. Unbeknownst to her, I shared a passion for helping people with emetophobia. In one of the moments of “what do I have to [...]

A Kid’s Guide to Emetophobia Release

I am happy to announce the release of a kid’s book on emetophobia. Like Turnaround it provides a thorough explanation of the problem with the steps needed to overcome it. I hope it will be entertaining, engaging and effective like Turnaround. (We also offer a supplement to Turnaround for emetophobia. It is designed for parents or professionals to use along with Turnaround.) This book, like Turnaround, is directed toward children. One of my absolutely favorite things is that my daughter, Lindsey, did most of the illustrations. I think you will enjoy them as much as I do. An [...]

Is Emetophobia an Eating Disorder?

The fear of vomit or vomiting, known as emetophobia, is a very real and often debilitating form of childhood anxiety. As with any phobia, the fear can be overwhelming, causing sufferers to avoid contact with anything associated with vomit or things that could lead to vomiting. This includes sick people, activities that can cause dizziness or overheating, and even food. In fact, emetophobics may reduce food intake or avoid certain foods altogether. While emetophobia is not considered an eating disorder, it can lead to one without proper treatment. Link Between Emetophobia & Eating [...]

How to Get Your Anxious Child Back to School Step-by-Step

School is often the setting where anxiety becomes a crisis. Going to school, staying at school or functioning in school can become huge problems. Getting a child back in school and functioning becomes THE family focus. In this post I am going to try to detail the process I would usually recommend and provide a case study to illustrate it. I hope this post will be general enough to fit most situations but specific enough to offer concrete practical direction. To keep this "relatively" brief and applicable, I am going to make some assumptions. Your child is in primary school, approx. ages [...]

Your Child, Anxiety, School Refusal and the Desire to Curl in a Fetal Position

If you are taking the time to read this post you are probably not having a minor problem with your child being anxious about school. There is a good chance you are having a 5-star wild-horses-can’t-drag-your-child-to-school problem. Anxiety is bad enough but when you throw in school you have an agonizing crisis. If your child is either not going or fighting (as in emotional maelstrom) going to school this is called school refusal. Sometimes you will see it described as a school phobia. I prefer school refusal because the anxiety that causes the resistance may not be a "phobia" of school but [...]

Emetophobia: The Hidden Epidemic

Emetophobia is the fear of vomiting, others vomiting, or the effects of vomiting. It is from the greek word "emesis" meaning vomit and "phobos" meaning fear. The reason we call it hidden is because it is so little known. Virtually everyone has heard of phobias in children like fear of needles or snakes. However, people are often surprised this is a phobia. The reason we call it an epidemic is because it is far more widespread and debilitating than one would expect. Like any phobia the fear, when triggered, can be overwhelming. When something triggers a fear response, one thing the body does [...]

Help for Kids Afraid of Throwing Up or Getting Sick: Part 4 Treatment – Hierarchy

In the first three posts in this series, I provided an explanation of the fear called emetophobia and described the two elements of treatment: exposure and response prevention. We have finally completely the emetophobia supplement and the step-by-step process and hierarchy are part of that program. We have 5 steps for emetophobia help and each step is broken into several tasks. First Step: Imaginal Exposure In the emetophobia supplement we start with exposure that is in the imagination. We use words, sentences and short stories that will trigger the fearful thoughts about throwing up. For [...]

Help for Kids Afraid of Throwing Up or Getting Sick: Part 3 Treatment – Safety Behaviors

In the previous blog, I mentioned treating this fear (emetophobia) was two-fold. First, face the fear. This is called exposure. Second, don’t play it safe. This is called response prevention. This is third in the series on helping kids afraid of throwing up or getting sick and will make more sense if you read part 1 and part 2 before you read this. In this post I will do my best to describe response prevention and what to do about it. Response Prevention is the academic phrase for NOT doing something. When anyone gets anxious they try to fix the problem. This is the response. Ironically, [...]

Help for Kids Afraid of Throwing Up or Getting Sick: Part 2 Treatment – Exposure

The effective way to help kids afraid of throwing up is two-fold. First, face the fear. That part of the treatment is called exposure. (Just so you know, contact with actual vomit or the act of vomiting is not a necessary part of exposure.) Second, don’t play it safe. That is called response prevention (preventing the usual response). Kids come up with all kinds of ways to stay "safe." These are steps 4 & 5 in my previous post. In this post I will only cover exposure. In my next post I will cover response prevention. For kids with anxiety both of these are incredibly difficult so it is [...]

Help for Kids With Fear of Throwing Up or Getting Sick: Part 1 Emetophobia Explanation

Disclaimer: This is an article about getting sick, particularly nausea and vomiting. If you are squeamish or anxious about this, reading this article may cause distress. In 2004 the Elementary School my daughter attended had an outbreak of the flu. She saw several kids vomit. She became afraid of getting sick. I have since discovered she was not alone. Over the years it has been my professional experience and personal opinion that the fear of throwing up or getting sick (nausea & vomiting) is far more common than reported in the professional literature and media. It is often missed as the [...]

What are the Symptoms of Childhood Anxiety? Part 1

A certain amount of anxiety, worry and fear is part of every normal childhood. At various developmental stages kids have fear of strangers, loud noises, critters, the dark, change, school, storms, etc. While these cause anxiety symptoms, they are not evidence of an anxiety disorder. Most the time these worries eventually fade and there is no need to do anything out the ordinary to help your child. However, there are things to look for as markers that you child has a problem. 4 guidelines to determine if you have a problem There are 4 major guidelines to look for that provide a good rule of [...]

Signs of Anxiety in Children

Children have the same anxiety problems as teens and adults. However, kids can have trouble understanding and expressing how they are feeling. This means parents may have to be detectives to get to the bottom of what is going on. Sometimes anxiety is obvious as in the case of a panic attack. Other times it is not so clear. Sometimes the signs of anxiety in children are physical symptoms like stomachaches, muscle pain or fatigue. Some worries or fears are kept secret because of potential embarrassment or imagined disapproval. In children it can be expressed as angry outbursts or extreme [...]