hello ocd community! my obsessions and fear of throwing up and compulsions of praying about it cause me to have physical anxiety and my stomach hurts almost every night before i sleep. this triggers my ocd because i am deathly afraid of throwing up which causes me to act on obsessions when i start to feel sick. the anxiety and stomach aches can trigger each other, and when one happens, it is a vicious cycle and they make each other worse. i have a hard time getting out of this headspace or relaxing without taking xanax or drinking alcohol, and if i don’t, i will stay paralyzed in fear for 1-2 hours. any suggestions for healthy coping strategies? anybody have similar fears?

hi im a fifteen year old girl with really bad ocd and emetaphobia nobody knows my fear except for my best friend and my sister. its so hard to even say the word or even type the word so i just say “sick” even typing this out makes my heart race and my hands sweaty. ive been really struggling with ocd for almost a year its gotten worst about every month. its always on my mind. i have a therapist but i cant even tell them about my anxiety and thoughts that go on in my head. my whole family is watching me fall deeper and deeper into this dark whole that i dont know how to get out of. its feels awful to see everyone around you watch you fail over and over again. please forgive me if this was graphic thank you

So I’m severely emetophobic but these past few weeks have gotten SO bad. I had a bad reaction to an SSRI that made me feel like I was gonna throwup, I stopped taking them over two weeks ago but ever since then the fear has got even worse. I haven’t left the house properly in weeks because I’ve convinced myself I’ll be sick. I feel nauseous even indoors a lot of the time (there are hours when I don’t, like for example this afternoon I was fine). But I challenged myself to go for a short walk this evening and omg it was so hard I really thought I might throwup. The thing is I KNOW it’s anxiety and not real nausea because it feels completely different to when I was actually nauseous from the medication. This feeling is more like a tight throat/sensation of a lump in my throat that makes me feel like I’m gonna gag. I also have RCPD (I can’t burp basically lol) so I just feel like I have trapped air in my throat that’s gonna make me puke. The phobia has gotten really really bad. I have started therapy recently but I’ve been scared of throwing up since I was a kid and I’m now 31 lol wtf. I remember last Christmas my mum said someone at her work had been sick and I was so scared my mum had caught it and would pass it on to me that I refused to leave my bedroom without wearing gloves and a mask and wiping everything with anti-germ wipes. But right now it’s so so bad because I have literally gotten to the point where I’ve convinced myself I feel nauseous pretty much 24/7 and I am taking anti-nausea meds almost every day. Has anyone else dealt with/has tips for this??? I’m literally desperate 😭

I have emetophobia. And have been battling with it for about a year and a half now. It stems from a trip I took with my high school where everyone ended up getting the stomach bug. I didnt have it so bad but I ended up feeling nauseous the entire trip (1 week long). And then every time I would eat food I would feel nauseous or unwell and had a strict clean diet for a while. It got to the point where I couldn’t attend school without feeling like I was going to vomit and pass out. I couldn’t even hear the word without getting anxious. I eventually got on lexapro and when that didnt work then I recently got on prozac. I have been talking to my therapist about my anxiety and she had initially thought it was a trauma response from the trip, but eventually came to the conclusion that it was a form of OCD. Like it was where I wouldnt eat something if it touched the counter or I wouldnt eat something unless someone else ate the exact thing a few hours before. I avoid red meat completely because it is slightly raw. I get panic attacks after eating something like a freaking cookie from Crumbl, because I would read reviews about someone getting sick from the uncooked dough. But it felt like before summer I was getting to a point where I could eat most things and not get too much anxiety. Until the other day. On my birthday at midnight I ended up getting sick like stomach flu sick like real bad and ended up in the er. I havent eaten anything since and am horrified to eat something. And my thoughts keep running and I dont know how to be normal anymore. I dont know how to have a relationship with food anymore. I am horrified. I spent the entire year just dreading this one day and it happened on my birthday. I am supposed to be in school but I don’t know how to function anymore. Please someone help, I feel so alone.