P's Story with Anxiety and Emetophobia

When Sach first asked me to write a piece for her blog, I hesitated. 

I hesitated because I felt like I didn’t have anything hopeful or inspiring to say at the moment, and I wanted to write a piece about how therapy changed my life and how much I progressed after years of CBT. Unfortunately, at the moment I’m in a rut. But, I know I want to share how much personal transformation has taken place the past few years and how much transformation can still happen, despite my current feelings.

The point of this blog is that healing is not linear. 

I have had chronic generalised anxiety, panic disorder, and emetophobia since I can remember. There was no specific event that brought it on, it's always been a part of me. I ignored it for many years because the fear I had felt comical and ridiculous to me and would to most people. Having a debilitating fear of vomit sounds made-up. But it’s very real and has plagued my entire life. 

It started as a small fear about vomiting and engulfed my life throughout my teens where I was afraid to go to school and to use public transport. I was afraid of hot weather, travelling too far from home, drinking, exercising too much, eating too little, being trapped in an assembly hall, school trips, sleepovers, and about everything else you can loosely link to the possibility of vomiting. I spent most of my school years having panic attacks in the medical room, leaving classes, and staying home. 

It wasn’t until I started emetophobia specific CBT (alongside medication), that my life started to change for the better. It was a gruelling couple of years of exposure therapy and dissecting my whole belief system and understanding why it was wrong. When I got better, I managed to move into University to have my first normal experience as a young adult. I got better and better and eventually moved away from home into London alone. I was cured.

My friends and I would reminisce and laugh about the years I spent afraid of everything and how different I was now. 

In the last 6 months my anxiety has slowly crept back into my life and I didn’t notice it because I was so preoccupied with being cured. 

I’ve started therapy again as I’ve slowly felt myself turn into the panic-ridden child I had always been. I’ve realised I never fully detached myself from the beliefs I had surrounding my anxiety and all its intricacies. With all this being said, I know now more than ever that healing is not linear and you have to put work in every day to get better. It’s exhausting but I’ve seen what happens when it works, and when it works, it's life-changing. I’ve learnt everyone is on a different timeline and something that someone could do without hesitation, would take me months of therapy. 

So for the next weeks, months, or years - however long it takes this time, I'll be working to get myself back to the old me, or transforming into a completely new me. I don’t know what will happen, but I’m going to stick around to find out.