about

Hello All,
I am counsellor with over 12 years experience specializing in parenting, families, youth and mental health. I answer questions in a blunt and straightforward way so if you are looking for coddling or really touchy feely type advice thats not me I provide real solutions for your problems and concrete suggestions in other words I tell you the plain truth I don't sugarcoat.

I am really worried these days with the easy access to the internet and all the false information that is out there and the fact that people believe it!! So please ask first. I don't claim to have all the answers but I can claim that NOTHING will shock me you can try though :)

I look forward to hearing you thoughts and questions.

advice

40's(f)
I saw the advice you gave someone else with this fear and as I asked this question generally sometime ago, and got nothing in the way of a helpful answer, I thought I would ask you.
I have a phobia of vomiting, me or other people. I have tried counselling, hypnotherapy, NLP and confrontational therapy. Nothing has worked. I have run out of ideas on how to beat this. Do you have any other suggestions on things to try? If so, how? Thanks.

First of all in all the different types of counselling have you discovered the root of your phobia? Usually it is the biggest key to helping you to solve the issue. Now you also need to seperate your fear, there is a difference between other people vomiting and you vomiting. I as a professional who often works in hospitals can't handle other people vomiting, so leave that one aside for now.

As for you vomiting, without knowing why you have this fear I would suggest that you perhaps try cognitive therapy. I have seen it work on similar fears, basically this takes you back to events in the past where your fear is rooted and helps you to re-create memories so that your fear is no longer an issue.

I hope this helps somewhat, if you know the root of your fear then I may be able to give you a few other hints and tools.


EDIT***
So it sounds to me like your fear is more rooted in the fear of disappointing the men in your life and even sending them away, this is obviously sub conscious as your logical mind knows this won't happen. What I would suggest you do is first is to look at this a different way your husband gets upset not only because no one likes to see others throw up but because he hates seeing his wife ill or in pain. Also write out a list of worse case scenerios throwing up will not cause you to die, it will not cause you to lose the love of your husband its unpleasant yes but not life threatening. Write it on a piece of paper and put it somewhere where you see it first thing in the morning and last thing before bed.

Hope this helps a little.

[view]

(Rating: 5) I have tried cognitive therapy before and it didn't work unfortunately. However, I have recently discovered that the fear might possibly lay in the fact that from a very young age, my sickness was always met with anger by my father. It seems the two events are now bound together in my mind as my dear husband also has a tendency to not react well to this situation. If there are any other pointers you are able to give, I would be very grateful. Thanks for your help so far.
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