I don’t normally talk about making mistakes, because after all, we’re all learning as we go, ya? The thing is, you don’t want to be headed down the wrong road for long. It wastes time, and time is something that we with emetophobia don’t really have. I said “we” in that last sentence because even though I’m totally healed of my emetophobia, and my life is positively grand, there is still a lot of my life gone when I look back.
When I was a kid, I was terrified of going to sleepovers, to birthday parties, to school a lot of the time, to field trips. I remember one field trip we went on when I was in elementary school. I lived in small-town Ontario, so we always got on a bus and went somewhere that took at least two hours one way, if not three or four. The field trip I remember was somewhere to a forest or nature park and we saw salamanders for the first time. The reason I remember this so clearly is because it was the ONLY field trip I ever went on in school. I managed to get out of them through a variety of means like faking an illness or just hiding from everyone until the bus left. Once I got on a bus to go on a school trip to be on a local TV show where kids just danced to music. Someone threw up on the back of the bus (I was sitting in the very front seat) and when I got to the TV studio, I was so upset I couldn’t go on TV – I just sat in the green room, crying. I remember being nonplussed about this in the end, as most girls only went to see the host, a guy named Dave who everyone thought was gorgeous, but he was my cousin and I saw him at home all the time anyway.
I missed even more stuff in high school. I was a cheerleader, but wouldn’t get on the bus to go to any away games and got bullied for that. I was afraid to go to gymnastics competitions. I missed even more sleepovers and parties and who knows what else.
As a young wife and mother, the list of stuff I wouldn’t or couldn’t do is a mile long. So time is of the essence. Now that we know so much more about emetophobia, at the very least we should be on the right track.
So the biggest mistake people with emetophobia make is avoidance. Yes, we avoid things we think will make us sick. Yes, we avoid situations where we or someone else might be sick, but there is more. People with emetophobia waste a lot of time avoiding getting treatment. If you have money to pay to a private therapist, then you’re really wasting time every day that you don’t look for one. If you don’t have money or insurance there are lots of free or very inexpensive ways to get better – buy a book and work through the exercises.
If you’re not on the road to getting better, ask yourself what you’re waiting for. Are you waiting for when you have more time? You never will. Waiting for emetophobia to go away on its own? It won’t. Waiting for when you’re less anxious? You won’t be. Are you waiting for more money? There are a thousand ways to spend more money outside of getting emetophobia treatment.
Don’t make the biggest mistake of your life and waste more of your life having emetophobia. Start now on your road to recovery!