My Battle With Mental Health:

Spending so much time at home has made me think quite a bit, like many of us I suppose. Being isolated from loved ones, taken away from our freedom and any kind of normality is bound to make us think and feel deeply.

Today I have decided to write about my own battle with mental health issues throughout my life, though I must confess I am certainly nervous about doing so as very few people know any of the stories I am about to speak about, and it isn't something I usually make known at all.

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Emily's Note For Readers:

If you are feeling overly depressed, anxious or suicidal to the point it is affecting your daily life and your thoughts - please contact a helpline straight away. If you don't know where to turn, there are plenty of sources online which can direct you to the correct sites or contacts you may need. Don't suffer in silence.

I recommend UK based site HOPELINEUK (Papyrus UK), a suicide prevention charity.

Link to the site is here: https://papyrus-uk.org/hopelineuk/

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So, I've spent most of my conscious life suffering with the largely-invisible condition called Emetophobia. Yes, it is a phobia, a phobia of vomit or vomiting - it's unlikely you would have heard of the term unless you work with medication or in the science industry. An 'emetic' is a specific drug made to make people (and sometimes animals) vomit, mainly in cases where they have ingested something they shouldn't have, that's where the name comes from. It seems pretty laughable at face value, and seemingly so because... Well, doesn't everyone hate throwing up? The answer is yes, of course nobody likes feeling unwell, but unfortunately my condition doesn't stop at just having a strong dislike for it.

Getting Crafty With My Friends

Let me take you back to my first day at school. I was a naturally anxious child, I loved school but I was terrified by the idea of leaving my mother at home when I had spent all of my life with her up to that point. Being only four at the time, starting school is a big adventure for any child, some are better at handling it, while others not so much. I had a few others in my class who like me, were rather afraid and would have a tantrum or misbehave. I didn't tantrum or misbehave, instead I would vomit. For the first few days at my new school, my teachers were supportive, like they were with the other anxious kids. I remember being sat on their knee, rocked softly as I cried until I felt better. My natural reaction to anxiousness is to vomit, and this is the first time I experienced true anxiety. As the other children improved and began to settle in, I did not - each day was getting worse and my teachers were no longer as sympathetic. It got to a point where they almost expected me to turn up and be unwell, I'd ruined countless carpets, play-mats and toys which disappointed the children and left my poor mother getting a mouthful from the school about my vomiting behaviour, even though it most definitely wasn't my fault or hers.

A memory that sticks in my mind is one day during registration, we would line up outside our classes to be counted, but I was unwell during the process. My less-than-impressed teacher took the caretaker's mop and bucket and handed it to me to clean up myself during class. As a result, not only did my classmates avoid me, but it made me feel terribly sad. As it was not improving, my mother decided to pull me out of school for a while and get the doctors to check me over. I was refusing to eat anything during the day at school, so they suspected I may have a food allergy, but found this not to be the case. I didn't have anything physically wrong with me, I had the beginnings of a mental illness not yet known to exist.

Skip a few years down the line and I would be starting secondary school (or big school, as my family would call it). After being able to break the habit of illness at my last school once settling in, starting at a new school was terrifying and the nerves kicked in once again with me vomiting each day, as I did before. What made things worse is that I had my then best friend with me for a lot of the time as we went to school together. I could never forget the look of disgust on her face when I was unwell in the car next to her. Of course at this point, nobody knew, not even I, what was going on. I recall another time outside the school locker room, for a bunch of older kids to laugh at me and make terrible remarks - even the first aid workers got tired of seeing me, they always told me to go back to class with little support. I was embarrassed and ashamed and this is what makes the condition so damaging. After these episodes, my parents were getting worried, they thought I had an eating disorder, and at one point thought I could have even been pregnant, but of course neither were the case. I too knew something wasn’t quite right. Once I started digging, I would search up things like “why am I scared of being sick” and “is it normal to feel nervous about being sick” and then I saw it. “Emetophobia - the fear of vomit.” It was a word I would never forget once I saw it. Reading through the symptoms list was like a lightbulb moment: not wanting to eat out, being embarrassed by feeling unwell, being uncomfortable around people who are ill, fearing judgement and so on. In fact, I couldn’t find one symptom I didn’t have. The cause? I wasn’t sure at the time. While my friends were having sleepovers and experimenting with alcohol, I couldn't bear to be seen eating, or to leave the house by myself. Theme parks, aeroplanes and elevators were also high on my avoidance list.

By the time I left school, things were bad. I went through a horrible break-up with a partner who was unfaithful to me, causing me to be even more unwell then ever. I lost two stone in weight, was reduced to eating one small meal a day and even had to quit my job for a few months in order to get myself back together. I didn’t know where to turn and that’s when I knew I needed to talk about it. I was offered anti-depressants that I was willing to try, but the only issue is the side effects, they made me feel nauseous, which certainly made the problem worse. So I made the decision that talking therapy could help, and as the most effective treatment for this condition, I was confident.

Me and The Lovely Jack!

I started going to therapy every two weeks. I had cognitive behavioural therapy, which is just a fancy name for exposure therapy, or changing your perception of things with the help of a mentor, mine being a wonderful guy called Liam. Progress was slow, and the course was tough, really tough. From eating food in front of others, to visiting friends’ and having meals out, the whole journey was a wild ride, but a success. Liam confirmed my suspicions, I did have Emetophobia and that it would have been caused by trauma in childhood, and that’s when I remembered my first day at school and all of the unfortunate events that happened afterwards. After around four months of treatment, I did come out of the other side a better person and I had hope I would be able to live a relatively normal life, with Emetophobia being a shadow rather than at the forefront of my thoughts all of the time.

I met my wonderful partner Jack at college - he was the friend I first chose to meet up with on my therapy course and he was so supportive that I ended up falling in love with him. He has shaped me into the most confident version of myself there ever has been. I still have anxiety from time to time, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it was, just last week me and Jack celebrated our two year anniversary together (socially distanced, of course), and things are looking up. The only thing I regret is not getting the help sooner, I lost countless years of my life suffering that I can never get back. Emetophobia is the fifth most common phobia in the world but very little is known or said about it. Chances are, you know someone with the condition. If you believe that you have this condition, you’re not alone, it is estimated that 10% of the population have it too, that’s around 700 million people! My advice would be this, get help as soon as you can. You won’t regret it, the longer it goes on, the worst it will get, so please reach out now, it can and will change your life.

If you know someone with this condition and want to help them, firstly, thank you. It is a lonely place suffering with an invisible condition because so many people don’t notice it, and sometimes just don't believe you. There have been people in my life who thought it was all done on purpose and it couldn’t be further from the truth. An easy answer would be to just be supportive. Everyone needs a support, and I was lucky enough to find mine. You have the power to influence how someone thinks and feels, and for someone with a condition which makes them feel so lonely, you can make such a difference with the simplest of gestures. We know you can’t understand our condition, and that’s okay. All we need is a listening ear sometimes. A little encouragement goes a long way.

We’re very lucky to have so many resources out there to help not just people like me, but anyone who feels although they have nobody to turn to. Never feel ashamed to use them, because everyone deserves to be happy, and if you are to take just one thing from this post today, it is that if you look for it, you will always find someone who cares.