Eve thanks TALKWORKS for changing her life

Emetophobia refers to a fear of throwing up, or seeing someone else be sick. Eve spent years experiencing anxiety and worry around sickness, before reaching out for support. Through contacting TALKWORKS, she was able to get to the root of her anxiety and learn how to manage it:

"My name is Eve. I have experienced a fear of being sick from a child, however, over a period of a couple of years, my emetophobia reached a point where it was affecting my day-to-day life. Linked to purchasing my first house and stresses with work, general anxiety led to me having physical feelings of being sick, which fuelled my emetophobia. This began to affect my eating. I was losing lots of weight as I didn’t want to feel full. This impacted my social life, as I wouldn’t go anywhere I had to stay overnight, or where there would be people drinking. I spent hours in the night in the bathroom worrying about being sick.

After going through doctors and various scans to find out whether there was something physical causing my symptoms, one of my close friends (who is currently training to become a therapist), highlighted that my physical symptoms were most likely down to emetophobia. My friend suggested that I should reach out to TALKWORKS to work through my anxiety.

It came to a point where I knew that I had to find a solution to get my normal life back. I had around 3 months of sessions with Jasmine, who was extremely kind and patient and supported me at my own pace through the sessions. We worked through the root of the anxiety, created visual representations of the causes, the safety behaviours I used and triggers. We also looked at exposure techniques and useful reasoning techniques. Over the weeks, I became much more confident to face my fear, and I was starting to reach my goals and change my behaviours.

By the end of my sessions, I had a completely different mind frame regarding my phobia. I am now able to rationalise any warning signs and know exactly what to look out for to ensure it doesn’t get out of control again. I now feel in control of my life and able to do all the things I had stopped doing. A huge thank you to Jasmine and TALKWORKS for changing my life!"

Have you been experiencing increased stress or anxiety? Or have you been feeling low in mood or not felt yourself? TALKWORKS is an NHS Talking Therapies service, here to help adults across Devon get back to feeling like themselves again. All treatment and support is free to access, and completely confidential. You can self-refer to TALKWORKS by completing our online self-referral form, or you can speak to a member of the team by calling 0300 555 3344.