The 5-minute solution

Giving up safety behaviour is probably the hardest part of recovery from emetophobia. Your safety behaviours don’t actually keep you safe, but because you rarely vomit, your brain (the anxious part) convinces you (the logical you) that you didn’t vomit because the safety behaviour worked. It also convinces you that there was something to fear all along, and that vomiting is therefore very dangerous. This isn’t true either, but your use of safety behaviours keeps your phobia frozen in place, as you go ’round and ’round with what you believe is cause-and-effect.

I haven’t vomited since 2010, going on 16 years now, and I have no safety behaviours at all. Yes, of course I wash my hands before eating and after using the bathroom and I never put my fingers in my mouth, but that’s just good hygiene as I don’t want to catch a cold or Covid or RSV or whatever else may be lurking about to take over the world.

Your therapist may have told you to give up all your safety behaviours at once. I think this is a bit rash, so I give my patients a couple of months to ease into giving them up. But it’s still hard not to reach for that Zofran (Ondansetron), ginger, sip of water, or a hot water bottle. It’s also easier to run away or avoid going out to dinner, to a friend’s house, on a play date, to an indoor playground, etc.

When giving up a safety behaviour seems exceptionally hard, I suggest the “5-minute solution.” Don’t reach for your safety behaviour for 5 minutes. Sit with the feeling of nausea and the anxiety it produces, and don’t try to lower your anxiety or calm down. Just notice the feelings and where they are in your body. Notice your thoughts about them. Say to yourself nothing more than “I’m having a thought that….. (I’m nauseous and will probably vomit).” Just try it for 5 minutes.

When the 5 minutes are up, assess yourself again. Is your anxiety higher, lower or the same as it was? If it’s lower or even the same, ask yourself if you can go another 5 minutes without the safety behaviour. Keep doing this exercise for a half-hour. Clearly, if that’s the case, you’d have been sick by now – so you don’t need the safety behaviour!

Recovery and Setbacks with Emetophobia

One of the hardest parts of recovering from emetophobia is realizing that progress isn’t a straight line. You can have weeks—or months—of feeling braver, eating more freely, going out more often, and managing sensations with confidence. Then suddenly, without warning, a setback hits. A stomach flutter, a virus going around, a stressful life event, or even an unrelated anxiety spike can bring the fear roaring back. This can feel discouraging and confusing, especially for people who thought they were “done” with the phobia.

But setbacks are not signs of failure. They are signs that your brain is still learning. Anxiety circuits are sticky—they take time to weaken. When a setback happens, the brain is simply falling into an old habit. This doesn’t erase your progress. It doesn’t mean you’re back at the beginning. It means you have an opportunity to practice again.

The most important thing during a setback is how you talk to yourself. Many people panic when old fears return. They think, “I’m going backwards,” “I can’t handle this,” or “I’ll never get better.” These thoughts fuel the fear and make recovery feel harder than it is. A more helpful response is, “This is a setback, not a failure. I’ve done this before, and I can do it again.” Self-compassion reduces the emotional intensity and helps you return to your coping skills more quickly.

Another helpful perspective is remembering that recovery is about courage, not comfort. Comfort is unreliable—it changes day to day. Courage is what grows over time. When you face your fear even while uncomfortable, you strengthen the new pathways in your brain. You’re teaching your nervous system, “I can handle this sensation.”

Parents supporting a child with emetophobia can also help frame setbacks as normal. Instead of saying, “Why is this happening again?” try saying, “Hard moments happen, and you know what to do.” This teaches children resilience rather than shame. Children learn that they can cope even when fear returns.

Setbacks also give you the opportunity to review what tools worked well before. You practiced gradual exposures. Hopefully you eliminated safety behaviors. Maybe you leaned on supportive people or routines. These tools haven’t disappeared—you can return to them anytime.

It can also help to visualize the long-term path of recovery. Imagine it like a hiking trail: sometimes the trail dips, curves, or becomes steep, but you are still moving forward. Every brave step counts, even if you stumble.

Recovery from emetophobia is absolutely possible. You have already proven your strength by seeking understanding, practicing new habits, and facing sensations that once felt unbearable. Trust that the work you’ve done is still within you. Setbacks are temporary, but the resilience you are building lasts a lifetime.

Pop Culture and Emetophobia

I often lament that while many mental illnesses and phobias are depicted on television, in movies, and social media, emetophobia is not. At least, not at this writing at the end of 2025. I keep waiting for someone on Grey’s Anatomy or the latest Netflix mini series to have emetophobia, so that more people might become aware of it.

Unfortunately, however, pop culture has a funny way of exaggerating things for shock value, and vomiting is no exception. From slapstick comedies to horror movies, it’s often portrayed as grotesque, loud, and over-the-top. For someone with emetophobia, these depictions can reinforce the belief that vomiting is catastrophic, or that it happens to adults all the time, and often in public which is not the case. Unless you’ve been around drunk people, you don’t actually see people vomiting in public at all. If you have, it was a very rare event indeed. Adults almost always have enough time to “hold it in” until they get to a washroom or at least a receptacle of some kind.

In real life, vomiting rarely looks like the chaotic scenes in movies. But when you see it dramatized on screen, your brain interprets it as a threat. This makes even fictional scenes triggering. Interestingly, now that I’m recovered from emetophobia I don’t remember all the scenes of vomiting in movies. When I was afraid of seeing others vomit, I could remember every last time I saw it on screen.

Some of the more memorable vomiting scenes on screen are in the movie Bridesmaids (although the diarrhea scenes are the really funny ones), the one in Pitch Perfect and the one in Bring It On. There are also very graphic scenes in both The Sandlot and Stand by Me. Back in the 80s there was a Monty Python film called “The Meaning of Life” which had a ridiculous vomit scene in it. In the film “The Green Mile” the main character opens his mouth and whole bunch of grey flies kind of swarm out. Some people look upon this scene as “vomiting” and I recently read an article where the writer described it as the worst vomiting scene ever, whereas others don’t even see it as a vomiting scene.

People with emetophobia may avoid entire genres of movies, skip TV shows, or even panic when an unexpected scene pops up – quickly changing the channel, closing their eyes or plugging their ears. On Instagram, X and Facebook there are people with accounts who preview movies and tell you whether there are scenes of vomit in them so you can avoid them. This avoidance reinforces the idea that you can’t cope with vomiting.

Some therapists want to begin exposure therapy with their clients in emetophobia treatment by showing them videos from YouTube or movie scenes with vomiting. This is far too far up the hierarchy ladder of emetophobia resources, however. One should begin with easy things like words and drawings, moving on to pictures and so forth before ever looking at video.

If you’re ready to start using exposure to tackle these triggers, you can sign up for my group exposure and response prevention classes for people with emetophobia. The next set of 11 classes begins in January. More info can be found at http://www.emetophobiahelp.org/classes.