I’ve lost count of how many panic attacks I've had. My first one ever happened when I was only six years old, but this particular one was very different. It was a “vasovagal attack” a doctor at an Urgent Care later explained to me. A couple of summers ago we were staying at a beach house and the morning of my dad's birthday, my mom and I stopped in a donut shop after breakfast to get some for him. The combination of the thick, sugary waffles sitting in my stomach, the ruthless Florida heat filling the crowded room though the open door, and the overwhelmingly sweet smell of the fresh donuts was too much for me. I was hit with an intense wave of nausea and I retreated outside to try and calm myself down when I decided I was about to throw up.
I immediately looked around at all the smiling families enjoying their delicious donuts and all I could think about was that I was about to ruin their fun summer morning by getting sick in front of them. The fact that I didn't even have a hair tie to get my long curls out of my face sent me over the edge. Just when I was about run behind the building, the panic attack became intensely different than any other I had ever had. The bright white sand in the parking lot expanded over everything and my vision went completely white. The sounds around me faded away like I had thick ear plugs stuffed in my ears. My heart was racing, I quickly became drenched in sweat, had lost use of all of my senses, and couldn't move my arms. When my mom finally came outside and found me slumped against a bench I couldn't even speak to tell her what was happening. I was terrified and had no idea what was happening to me. After I few mumbles I was barely able to force out, “cant…talk.”
I could hear a woman I didn't know run to get me a wet towel and a water while my mom was franticly trying to figure out what was wrong with me. When the woman came back with the water bottle, I needed help to take a sip because I couldn't lift my hands to my mouth or even see the bottle at all. After it finally started to pass, my vision was coming back in splotches, and I started to form words again so we made our way to our car to head to an Urgent Care because we were especially concerned that I still couldn’t move my right hand.
So if that can put anything in to perspective, my body went through all of that just because I was too scared to throw up… and that is what emetophobia does.
When I was 17, my anxieties and phobia become so bad they took over every aspect of my life. My constant nervousness and worrying made it almost impossible for me to eat. I had quickly dropped to 99 pounds, and at 5’5, that was nowhere near how much I usually weighed. I suddenly found myself just trying to get down whatever calories that I could, and it became a regular thing for me to realize at the end of the day I had only eaten a piece of toast. Constantly feeling anxious completely destroyed my ability to have an appetite and hunger had become a distant memory. Anytime I was able to actually eat something, my queasy stomach would fight it causing horrible stomach aches that would just make my anxiety and fear to eat again even worse. It was a horrible, vicious cycle and I became terrified of food.
I wasn't aware of how severe my mental illness was getting at first, but I was eventually officially diagnosed with emetophobia, anxiety, and panic disorder. I would never have thought that emetophobia (the intense fear of anything pertaining to throwing up) could actually become so disabling that it would come close to ruining my life. People use the word “phobia” a lot as a loose term for being afraid of something, but throwing up became something I worried about endlessly, every single day. That phobia would also lead to the panic disorder, which constantly preoccupied my mind with the fear and kept me from doing anything where I thought an encounter might be possible. Which was practically everything.
All of my clothes were too big, I had nothing to cushion the underwire in my bra from painfully digging into my sternum, going out to eat with others was embarrassing because of how much food I would leave on my plate, and I even began to edit the pictures of myself in bathing suits to blur out my ribs and collar bones. It wasn't even just an appearance issue. I was sick. Not only did the constant anxiety eliminate my ability to have an appetite and always make me feel sick to my stomach, but I physically couldn't exercise anymore without quickly becoming so lightheaded I’d have to stop, I commonly woke up in the middle of the night having panic attacks for no reason at all, I constantly felt like I was struggling to breathe, and socially, my life was falling apart.
No one loves throwing up, I know that, but basically any event where I could have the slightest chance of encountering someone throwing up, being surrounded by a ton of people, or feeling like I was stuck somewhere would send me into a panic. Once I had to take a Xanax on the bus ride back from our senior trip to Universal Studios just because I hate forms of transportation with large groups of people, a panic attack prevented my family and I from going on a sunset cruise in Mexico on my birthday, I avoid eating chicken ever since my sister got salmonella poisoning one Christmas Eve several years ago, and just hearing Grouplove’s music now gives me anxiety because I once left their set at a music festival because of yet another a panic attack. Just to mention a few instances my fears really got the best of me. I’ve had countless experiences ruined by my me, my head, and my own thoughts and worries that I didn't know how to control.
It wasn’t until the end of my senior year of high school when someone really sat me down to ask if I was ok when I knew I needed help. On one of the last days of school I was the only one in the training room. I was working on physical therapy for an old cheer injury when one of my trainers confronted me about having an eating disorder. My weak and shaking legs during the exercises had finally prompted her to ask me if I was ok.
"Your legs… are so tiny," she pointed out to my obviously thin thighs in the loose yoga pants that had fit me so well during the past three years that she had known me.
I tried to explain that I just always felt too nervous and sick to eat, how I wished that I could more than anything, and that I wanted to get help but just hadn’t yet.
That was the first time anyone had accused me like that and I might not have actually gotten professional help if it wasn’t for her. That day made me realize how bad things had actually gotten and that I really needed to reach out to the therapist who’s contact information had been sitting in my phone for months. I knew I didn't want to just cover up my anxiety with pills that I would eventually become dependent on, so I found a type of drug-free therapy that would actually retrain my brain to get rid of the phobia and panic disorder all together. Confronting something in therapy that you’re terrified of even thinking about was too daunting for me so I consistently put off calling them for a consultation until Jen finally convinced me that it needed to happen now, before I left for college.
It’s an irrational fear and I recognize that but for some reason, I couldn't stop it. I just wanted to know… why me? Why did it have to freak me out so much? Why couldn't I just be momentarily grossed out and laugh it off like everyone else did? Why couldn't I go to concerts, my favorite things in the world, anymore without having panic attacks? Why did I have to feel sick all the time? Why couldn't I just be normal? My phobia was the giant puppeteer pulling my thin, shell of a body around, and for a long time I just let it.
I went through two hours of intense neurotherapy three times a week, every single week the summer before I moved away to college. The brain maps and recordings that I took before and after show how much physical change my brain made that summer from darkly saturated images of my brain waves (you don't want any deep blue or dark red… and I had plenty) to a much more mellow and healthy yellow and light green.
I knew that life in college would literally hurl situations involving people vomiting around me all the time and if I was going to survive, I needed to get better. I really didn't know how sick, unhappy, and how horribly I was living until I got better. Lucky for me, the “freshman 15” was so real and I have made amazing friends that love and support me in the rare cases that I ever need it now. I’m definitely not the one to call to hold my friends’ hair back, I don’t really know if I ever will be, but I can honestly and happily say that emetophobia has not held me back from anything since I got the help I so desperately needed. The only thing I regret about asking for help was that I didn't do it sooner.