Holding It All In: My Struggle With OCD & Emetophobia
It’s 8:42 pm, I ate dinner at 6:00, in 3.75 hours I will be “in the clear” to go to bed. This is how most of my nights go.
I wake up and drink my coffee, have a light breakfast, exercise, and feel good. I think to myself “today is going to be a good day.” And then lunchtime hits, but the lunchtime food anxiety isn’t as bad, just a few trips to the bathroom for some deep breathing. I finish work and maybe pour a glass of wine, then, the most dreaded time of day arrives, dinner time.
As someone who considers themselves a “foodie” to some degree, this sentence seems bizarre to say. The thing is, I love food. I love shellfish and sushi. I love a big saucy bowl of pasta and a crunchy piece of pizza. I love wine. But I don’t love the intense feelings of doom and dread in the hours that follow.
This is my life with emetophobia — the specific fear of vomiting and avoidance behaviors related to vomiting situations. And my lifelong emetophobia is the best of friends with my lifelong OCD, they really work well together — true team players! When my emetophobia rears its head, my OCD likes to fixate on those thoughts for hours, days, months, or in this case, years. I’ve always struggled with my fear of vomiting, which likely began when I was around 6 years old and came down with a very bad case of the rotavirus — an intense gastrointestinal disease characterized by vomiting and watery diarrhea, in my case, for over a week (there is now a vaccine for this awful illness).
My struggle with emetophobia, much like my struggles with panic disorder, OCD, and depression, has ebbed and flowed. High school was a slog for my fear of vomiting and my panic disorders. Yet, in college, when my depression kicked into high gear, I had my panic and emetophobia pretty under control.
Post-college my depression lingered a bit, then about one-year post-grad, I met my fiance, secured a great job, and was able to move back to my home state of New York. Things were good for a while, I was still anxious, but not to the extremes of high school. My emetophobia was at an all-time low, my fiance and I still joke about how I even used to get lunch at the local grocery store food buffet when it was half price at 4 pm (because it had been sitting out all day). We are BOTH in awe of my behavior from back then… and how quickly it changed.
You may be reading this and thinking, “well no one likes throwing up” — which I’ve heard from pretty much everyone I’ve ever opened up to. But see, the problem isn’t that I “don’t like” vomiting, the problem is that when I feel nauseous, I think “I would genuinely rather be dead than vomit.” My logic you ask? If I am dead, then I can’t throw up.
I lay awake most nights counting the minutes until it hits 6 hours after I have eaten so that I feel that I am “in the clear” to go to bed without waking up to vomit. I make my fiance leave parties early to take me home so that I can be near a bathroom just in case I vomit. I avoid the foods that I love the most, I avoid babies and children who I adore, I do anything to avoid vomiting — even if it troubles my own logical thinking or hurts the feelings of those I love most.
I ruin holidays for myself with obsessive thoughts of food poisoning or a contagious stomach bug passing through the family. I live in a constant state of fear about vomiting, and even the slightest inclination that someone has to use the bathroom, pass gas, or god forbid feels nauseous sends me into a spiral of panic. I am terrified of being pregnant, having school-aged children, and even scared about enjoying the food at my upcoming wedding.
As I write this, I am embarking on a new journey in my attempt to combat this disease. And while I’m still afraid, anxious, and mostly living in fear, I remain hopeful that one day soon, I will be able to enjoy these things and that my fears will be nothing more than a bit of background noise in my very loud brain.
