Vomitting from Anxiety

[Kim78]

Hi

Can anyone help? I have bad anxiety, so much to the point I throw up / be sick. So sick of it (pun not intended!), to the point I have started to get depressed by it.

I feel like I have tired everything been to a few counsellors, see a Mental Health nurse. Tried medications, including one which lowers blood pressure, which makes me feel drunk so I can't drive, which I need to be able to do. I have talked to Beyond Blue.

Any help would be grateful.

[Here_I_am]

Hi Kim78,

The physical symptoms of anxiety can indeed get in the way of our life sometimes more so than the internal. It sounds like you experience quite a severe physical symptom of your anxiety that I imagine is both intrusive and perhaps anxiety inducing in its own right!

Can I ask if the vomiting occurs without warning, or if their is a period of anxiousness that grows and leads to your physical symptom of vomiting? Has this always been something that your anxiety leads to, or is it relatively new?

You state you have done a lot to try and get ahead of this (GP's, medication, counseling, etc.), and I imagine it's very underwhelming to feel like nothing has worked. My exploration here is to see if their is something that is controllable within the symptom of vomiting (like in the case of it being preceded by anxiety and stress), or if it just occurs without warning (in which case, is their value in exploring something other than anxiety as a cause of this problem?).

What has the GP said about causation? Are their things you do to reduce your anxiety in general, and do these lead to less instances of physical illness?

I know their are a lot of questions here, but in truth exploration of questions leads to answers - so the more questions the better in my experience! 🙂

Hope you find a way forward to reduce - if not eliminate - this very unpleasant sounding effect your anxiety is having on you.

[Jill_G]

Hi Kim

Sorry to hearvyou are feeling this way. Ive had this nauseous feeling every morning for months..l had all tests done and was told its the anxiety. .its so awful. Its getting better but not totally gone. No easy fix unfortunately.

[Alexlisa]

Hello Kim,

I’m so sorry that you’re going through this. I too have experienced this in the past. About 10 years ago I went through a year-long period where I lived with high anxiety and nausea all day everyday, and would vomit as soon as my panic got too high. I ended up not leaving my home for 6 months. It was really terrible and affected every aspect of my life.

Anxiety is such a tricky thing because when we get anxious, it makes us more anxious. If we have a panic attack (or vomit) we then panic that it’s going to happen again, and so it does. It’s a difficult cycle to break. But I can tell you that it can get better. Although the panic attacks still catch me very occasionally, I haven’t vomited from anxiety in 9 years. But getting to that point took a lot of work and was really tough in the meantime.

You mentioned that you’ve tried counselling and medication, which is great that you’re being proactive. But finding the treatment that will help is a very personal thing and can take many tries to find one that works for you. For me that meant seeing a few different Clinical Psychologists until I found one that I clicked with and had the right skills to teach me to manage my anxiety. Because it’s not about trying to manage the vomiting, you need to learn actual, proven skills to manage anxiety/panic. My current psychologist is amazing and I can say it’s absolutely worth persevering to find the right one for you. There’s a lot of variation in quality and therapy styles out there and you don’t have to settle for one that isn’t helping you. Also, there’s a big difference between the different mental health professions (eg. a Clinical Psychologist has far more training in this area than a counsellor or mental health nurse).

My medication story has been long, but I definitely found a combination that worked, though it took persistence and trying many variations. You mention that you see a GP, but with the level of symptoms that you’re experiencing and how much you’re suffering it really sounds like it’d be a good idea to be seeing a Psychiatrist for your medication. They are the specialists in psychiatric medicine, where as GPs are usually better suited at more simple mental health cases.

GO TO NEXT MESSAGE...

[Alexlisa]

There are LOTS of medications out there, that work in a lot of different ways, so please don’t give up hope on this front. It’s true that some people find the right med straight away, but that’s actually pretty rare. I know that can be hard to hear, but let it give you hope that that avenue is still available to you.

When I was at such a severe point with my anxiety/panic/vomiting, by far the most helpful thing was that I spent 3 weeks in an inpatient mental health hospital. You deserve this level of support, so if you have private health cover please consider this (and if you don’t have private health cover look into it anyway because the government has recently changed the private health cover rules to make it easier to access mental health care quickly). In hospital they have programs that teach you about anxiety and teach you lots of skills that will help. You are well supported by psychologists and nurses and can feel less alone because you’ll be surrounded by people going through similar things as you. Hospital is also a really good place to find a medication that will help, because you’ll be given a Psychiatrist there and can really focus on this aspect. Please think about it. Private mental health hospitals are not scary places. I’ve since been in a few times and I will never ever go through anything like that alone again.

If you have any more questions, please come back to this thread and I’ll keep an eye out. I just want you to know that it can absolutely get better and there are still so many options open to you. It’s great that you’re being so proactive. Take care.

Alexlisa

[Jill_G]

Hi Alexlisa

Was there anything specific that helped with the nausea/vomiting? Ive had it for months not to mention a constant weird taste l have.

[Jill_G]

Hi Kim

Just checking in to see how you are doing.

[Guest_9486]

I have had horrible anxiety like you describe to the point where I would have an anxiety/panic attack, vomiting and then just sick for days. I struggled a lot for years. A psychologist put me on everyday medication for generalized anxiety which made things horribly worse. I gave it the recommended 3 months and then tapered off as it was not helpful for me. I now have a medication which I have half of ‘only when needed’ which so far has only been twice in 6 months. It’s helpful just to know that I have it there if a panic attack gets really bad. A huge help for me has actually been a technique called ‘tapping’ it looks like a bunch of bollocks, but is actually really helpful to sooth me out of an attack so much so that if my husband sees me starting to freak out he will actually start tapping with me as sometimes when you’re stuck in that ‘I’m going to throw up’ mode it’s hard to have the motivation to even sit up and try a technique. I hope you find what works for you. It can get better! I have suffered through some truly terrible anxiety and panic attacks and have managed to find ways to ease my symptoms. Also positive self talk is a huge one for me, which the tapping helps with too. Good luck.

[Jill_G]

Hi Sam

I just read your post. I will try your advice for tapping...lve read alot about it but never applied it . Ive had anxiety now for 12 months totalky out of the blue. ...even though its getting better my biggest issue is my mornings where l find my tummy gets in knots and l feel nauseous. I dry heaved for months but thats better now than it was....lm hoping that this will eventually stop so l can feel normal

[Desedrata]

First and foremost I would have to say you need to talk to your doctor about this to make sure there are no other reasons for your sickness.

I found that I would always dryreach and vomit before work started and usually for the first half of the day every day. I did find that strawberry Up&Go stayed down better then anything else first thing in the morning. Just keeping this down helped me to feel physically a bit better.

Coconut water is also good for dehydration which may or may not be adding to that drunk feeling you described depending on how frequently you vomit. Bloodpressure medication can take a while to balance out but again I think it would be a good idea to have a chat with your doctor.