Anxiety over throwing up/feeling sick - An endless cycle.

[Pluckyhbomb]

Hi everyone. You can call me Hayley. I'm 22 years old and am feeling really lost and down at the moment.

This week I've really been struggling with a new aspect of my anxiety. I've always suffered from social anxiety but have always been able to keep the anxiety at a manageable level. However this week I have added a new stressor into my life - dating. I have found that I am now often plagued by this uneasy, unsettled, nauseous feeling in my stomach. I have long had a fear of vomiting - I don't exactly know why. Perhaps the loss of control that you feel when you vomit? I also got alcohol poisoning once and that was extremely difficult to deal with so I'm sure that is also a contributing factor.

Upon arriving at a date the other day I proceeded to throw up in my car - classy I know. I had thought the feeling was just 'normal' butterflies in the stomach - but 10 minutes before meeting him I had a hot sweat and my mouth began to salivate and I knew I was done for. Throughout the date this same feeling swept over me in waves about five more times - luckily with no actual vomiting but there may have been a few audible gags at times. He was very understanding and sympathetic to me though.

I'm now scared to eat any food because I both can't stomach the thought of eating because it makes me feel nauseous and I'm also afraid that if I eat I will need to be sick again. But then I am also sure that me not eating nearly enough food (other than bird nibbles when I am not feeling nauseous) probably only exacerbates the problem because I am probably feeling weak/tired/nauseous from lack of food.

The kicker is that my mind wasn't even feeling an unmanageable feeling of anxiety before this date and since then. It's like my body started to exhibit physiological signs of anxiety and now its those physiological responses that are causing me anxiety. Does that make any sense?

This constant feeling of anxiety is now leading to me feeling incredibly 'down' and critical of myself.

I feel like this is an endless cycle and I don't really know how to go about putting it to a halt. We have another date tonight and I don't want to cancel because I genuinely like this guy - but the thought of feeling like this every time I see him makes me want to curl up in a ball in my room and never leave.

[Hope_for_the_best]

Welcome to BB, Hayley. I am sorry to hear what you are going through. It is clear that what you describe is a manifest of your social anxiety. You said you had been able to manage it. How did you do that? It would be good to brainstorm what helped you in the past to cope with social anxiety. May I ask, did that alcohol poisoning incident happen before you have social anxiety? If so, that could be the root cause of the problem, e.g. you are worrying about how others judge you as unavoidably you did not look good when intoxicated. For tonight's date, if you are not up to it, I don't see why you should not cancel. It is okay to reschedule if you don't feel well. But I agree that in the long run you need to face your fear head on. What exactly are you afraid of? Being rejected? It would be good for you to receive some counselling to cope with social anxiety. If you wish to attend the date, perhaps take some anti-nausea medication. This way you at least take your mind off a bit from getting sick. If you don't feel like eating, you can order some soups, juice etc. in the restaurant. I don't see he will think you less of it by not eating. The whole point of dating is getting to know each other.

Get well soon.

[JellicoeGirl99]

Hi Hayley

Even though I am so sorry you're going through this, I am so relieved to have found your post. I thought I was alone. I'm 18, have GAD, and because of this same new stressor, feel like I'll be alone forever. I know people always say nausea is a common symptom of anxiety and I've had it for long enough to know its true, every website I looked at or movie I watched hovered around the nitty-gritty. I know exactly how you feel and was in your shoes about 3 months ago. I had a date with a guy I've been friends with for a couple years, so I thought I'd be fine, but just before he picked me up I was throwing up my dinner. It's happened to me a couple of other times before and after that too. I was so anxious that it would happen again in his car which i thought would be so embarrassing because, like you said, 'classy'. But like your date, I just had sweats and was salivating. Still, its not fun and really takes the joy out of actually dating- I was too busy suppressing the waves of nausea. I ruined things a little cause the dread made me refuse proper dates and eventually I told him i couldn't do it. Sorry my advice isn't very professional, but I wanted to say I think there's hope for this situation because you mentioned that you already discovered a genuine like for the guy, and it's important to remind yourself that you made it through that first date and even if you needed to call off the second one, maybe it'll only get better from here.

With the whole eating thing, I felt the same but I focused on starting small. Most importantly don't freak out about it. I find it helps to think; who cares? If I'm gonna be sick so be it. It's not the end of the world. I threw up before and got over it and look at all the food I've kept down since then. (It sounds odd, but it's worth trying...)

By the way, when you said he was sympathetic to you, had you told him what you were experiencing? I tried to do that but I just got so embarrassed about it and worried he'd tell our mutual friends. Also, I too wanted to crawl into a ball, never leave the house even, but it's important to push yourself. You can come back from anything but the sooner you take control of this the easier that come back.

I hope this helps and it'd be really cool if you kept posting here 🙂