Anyone struggling with Emetophobia OCD? (Fear of vomiting) it's taken over my entire life, I cannot eat out of fear of vomiting, I cant stop washing my hands and disinfecting everything so that I dont get sick. I'm so tired of feeling this way

I'm 20 but I've been dealing with this since I was about 14 on and off. I'll clean my entire house several times a day, I'll wash my hands to the point where they bleed, I'll avoid anyone who is sick, I wont eat certain foods like spaghetti or anything red in case i do throw up. I will chew mint gum to ease nausea. Theres so many rituals I do daily and its exhausting

@ram190 this sounds similar to me, my hands are always bleeding and dry. and i find it hard to eat meat, specifically pork and chicken, and i refuse to touch surfaces, and i questioned my little brother for about 20 minutes as to why he didn’t want any popcorn. i’m annoying everyone around me and i just want it all to stop

@evahasocd I can imagine it's hard being around smaller children everyday given how often they're sick. This is one of the reasons I dont want children because if they get sick I will not be able to deal with it. My boyfriend is getting upset about the fact that we still dont have kids and wont anytime soon. I would reccomend seeking help, even if its just asking your parents to take you to therapy or finding someone to relate to and talk to daily.

@ram190 i’m really sorry about that. and i’m also like that with children, i’m only 14 and would love to have kids in the future, but i just can’t because of the germs. and i did have help of the summer, i did the CBT help. and it was all wasted and now i’m even worse than before i saw a therapist and i don’t have the heart to talk to my parents about it because they went through so much trouble to get me appointments to see someone.

@evahasocd Does talking about it help?

@ram190 well it doesn’t improve my ocd, but it does make me feel better if someone genuinely wants to listen to me

@evahasocd Well I will listen to you if need be, it doesn't help OCD you're correct. I find that talking about it makes me feel better because then I dont feel like I'm crazy anymore. I would try talking to your parents and being 100% honest with them. If therapy isn't working then it's time to try something new.

Hey that's okay Haha. I enjoy helping people and you seem to be going through an anxiety attack right now so it's okay to talk about you and your feelings.

@ram190 thank you but i feel really bad about it

@evahasocd Have you filled out the therapy tab on this app?

@ram190 no i haven’t, i prefer to just talk in the community section rather than doing all of the technical things

@evahasocd I'm not sure if you have the reddit app but theres a subreddit called r/emetophobia that's pretty active. Everyone there shares coping techniques and their concerns if you want something a little more intimate than this.

@ram190 okay thank you, and yes i do have reddit

I went through that when I was 14, I didn't eat anything besides toast for months and lost like 30 pounds

@ram190 Sounds familiar. All I ate was pretzels. I went to the doctors and got tons of blood tests and physical exams because I was convinced that something was medically wrong with my stomach and didnt recognize it as emetophobia and anxiety

@sorryitsemmy Same! My mom was convinced that I was anorexic but I was just terrified of vomiting. I also noticed that it isn't as severe all the time. I'll go through episodes where the fear is much stronger and itll last months at a time