Emetophobia help - How to overcome emetophobia

Emetophobia is a tricky thing, you may think that somebody you know has an eating disorder while in fact their real problem is very different from that. Chances are that you will never work it out, unless you know how to identify that they have a phobia.

The word phobia sounds worst than it really is; a phobia is a strong fear that creates an irrational emotional response that is beyond the person's control. If you ever had somebody freaking out about a small thing that meant nothing to you, then you may have been in front of a phobic reaction.

How can you tell that a person close to you suffers from a phobia? Look at their actions, look at the way they react consistently in front of the same trigger. A trigger is anything that elicits a phobic response, for some people it's finding a fly in their soup, for some people it's sneezing, for others it could be dirt or a frog.

When I was a kid a group of my friends threw a frog at another phobic friend, his reaction didn't wait long to kick in.. Within a split second, a glass full of milk was thrown at the person responsible, to teach them not to play with other people's phobias.

How can you avoid eliciting this kind of response? Learn to recognize a phobia and learn what you can do to help your emetophobic friend.

Some tips to follow

Ask: Some people will be sincere about their phobias, they will tell you and laugh at themselves for how silly their phobias can be. Others will tense up or freeze, showing that this is a touchy subject for them. Does the response makes sense? Does it sound like a pitch to avoid admitting or doing something? Is the answer almost unchanged across days, months or even years? Most phobic people have become masters at avoiding the trigger situations and have good reasons to do so. Just ask, you maybe the first person to ever ask and to offer help overcoming emetophobia.

Watch: Watch people's reactions in normal conversations and normal situations. What may be completely insignificant to you may mean the whole world to a phobic person. A can of tomatos close to its expiry date would be eaten by most people without any issue, but to an emetophobic it would mean 24 hours of discomfort and anxiety.

Invite: Do you get a consistent "No" response for travelling, going to the cinema, eating out, going for camping, flying, swimming, etc. Again, you can ask and pay attention to what answers you do get. More avoidance may be the answer too.

Trigger: This is what my friend did as a "joke" and it backfired on him. You don't want to throw a frog to somebody or anything like that, but you can test a tiny bit and pay attention if that produces an over reaction. Eating from the same spoon or fork of an emetophobic will certainly create a disgusted face. Talking about being enclosed in a room without any toilet will make a claustrophobic person feel unease. Please if you decide to use this technique, be sure to know what to pay attention to, you don't want to torture somebody with your inexperience.