Hi, my name is Nici, and I’m emetophobic.
I-met-a-what?
Emetophobic. Wikipedia defines it as “the irrational fear of vomiting, being around others who are vomiting, and/or the vomit itself.” It’s a strange fear, and I have no idea where it came from. I know most people believe fears are fears because of something that happened that was traumatic during childhood. I agree with those people, but I don’t believe it affects my case. I have no memory of a “traumatic” experience with vomit. I do however remember being around the age of 3 or 4 and going to a McDonalds. I was playing in the outdoor playplace (it was California, they put them outside) and I had made some friends as I always seemed to do. The little girl I was playing with told me to be careful because someone threw up in the tube. I started to feel uncomfortable and went to my mom at the table and told her I wanted to go home. I have a very fond memory of this as well as not wanting to go to McDonalds or even eat at McDonalds for quite some time. I have other memories of vomit as a child, but for all of them I was scared and have no idea why.
You’re probably wondering why/how I work with children and pregnant woman while being emetophobic. To tell you the truth, I wonder that too. I have no idea what I’ll do when a baby gets sick while I’m working. Or worse, what if they throw up on me. I don’t know, and it worries me. I’m able to deal with baby spit up, as that just looks like milk and I experienced plenty of it growing up with much younger siblings. As I started to nanny for one family in particular, the little boy (about a year old now) would spit up A LOT. It wasn’t the milky regular spit up either. Oh no, I’m not that lucky. It was chunky and colored and gross. But not “OMGPROJECTILEVOMITOMG”. The first few times seeing that were iffy, but I’d like to think I went into “mommy-mode” and told myself I had to clean it up. There was no one else but me to clean it up. And that’s what I did.
Now I think it would be different if he came up to me and did, in fact, projectile vomit all over me. But I think I’m working through it and he has definitely helped with his colored, chunky, nasty spit up. So thank you 1yoBabyA. You’ve been a great help.
I urge all of you to question me and look up emetophobia. It’s interesting, and I never thought other people felt the way I did until I did an internet search for “fear of vomit” about 2 years ago. I remember how extatic I was telling my fiance, “there’s a name for it! I’m not insane! I’m just emetophobic!”
The interesting part about my particular case is that I’m not afraid myself to vomit. I’m not afraid to talk about it. I’m not afraid when someone says what color their vomit was yesterday. I am however very afraid when someone says they feel like they’re going to spew. Or if they do near/around/on/in front of me. I don’t think I’m quite a germaphobe either. Except when I’m around vomit. I will admit, I have an unnatural love for hand sanitizer.
So please, ask away! I’m quite interesting.
