Exposure therapy

[Kelcrow]

Hi everyone, just a little background on myself first, I'm a 25 year old female living in Melbourne with clinical depression and general anxiety disorder, I have battled with both for the last 10 years. My main problem the last couple of years is "health anxiety" or in particular my phobia of vomit. It absolutely dominates my thoughts, fears and life. I avoid certain situations, freak out if someone's sick near me and convince it will happen to me. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with exposure therapy? To be honest I can't think of anything worse but I need this to stop. It's ruining my life. I can't live like this anymore, whilst I have great support around me I don't want it to dominate my life anymore. Thanks in advance

Kelly

[Dwwmills]

Hi Kelly.

My daughter had severe OCD (contamination fears/hand washing) and we use exposure and response therapy to tackle this. We did this with the guidance of a psychologist and a psychiatrist for medication.

As you probably already know it involves finding one of the fears and exposing a person to it and in this case preventing the response which was the hand washing. My daughter had to go to the toilet for a couple of weeks without washing her hands afterwards. I suspect most people without OCD would find this challenging but the idea was to show that even in the worst case scenario nothing was likely to happen. It was very effective and very quick. We started her on medication at about the same time which had a profound effect on her anxiety levels which made it then possible for her to challenge her beliefs. I doubt very much whether she would have been able to do it without the medication helping. It required a lot of support and input from the rest of the family as well. It took many months to completely set in the changes but her anxiety levels dropped markedly, early on, as she gained confidence from facing her fears.

It was pretty gutsy effort on my daughter’s part as she believed that if she didn’t wash her hands, she or someone else would get sick or die. I can understand why people put off facing these fears. Anyone that has a go at challenging these types of fear has my full respect.

Whilst you may be able to organise this yourself I would suggest seeing a psychologist as they are very good at judging what will be effective and supporting you through the challenge.

I wish you all the best and don’t leave it any longer than you have to. From my experience with my daughter’s OCD the changes were extremely quick using this method.

Dean

[Chris_B]

Hi Kelcrow, welcome to the forums. Great response from Dean above.

We have quite a few threads on all these topics if you're looking to connect with other members too. Try typing the following search terms in the search box at the top:

emetophobia

health anxiety

exposure therapy

[Guest_5218]

Hi Kelly,

This sounds awful for you, and I'm not surprised that you are looking to relieve yourself of some of the distress caused by this phobia.

I have been through exposure therapy for PTSD caused by a sexual assault. As you would know, Exposure Therapy is based upon the principal that if you are exposed to a certain memory or fear often enough, without experiencing further harm, you will eventually become desensitized to that memory or fear.

It is hard work, and very distressing. I can tell you that you will definitely feel much worse before you start to feel any better. And many people do give up because they feel that it is making them feel worse. However you do need to persevere and see it through to the end. I had 10 x 2-hour long sessions of Exposure Therapy last year, as well as some CBT sessions. Afterwards I do think I had some improvement in that the distress caused by triggers, flashbacks, etc was somewhat reduced to what it had been previously. But it has still remained. I think in reality PTSD never really goes away, so perhaps my experience is not comparable to yours.

Just in the last few weeks I have commenced EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing) with the same psychologist that I did the ET with. Although I have only had 2 sessions so far, I am finding it to be very helpful. I know that a lot of the hard work had already been done through the ET last year, but the EMDR is definitely less distressing. And it also supposedly works over a much shorter time frame to what ET does. It could be worthwhile for you to ask whether this therapy would be of benefit to you.

I hope this information is helpful to you Kelly, and I wish you the very best.

Sherie xx

[Kelcrow]

Wow. Good for your daughter, so very brave! Thanks for your reply, I will discuss it again with my therapist and take the leap of faith 🙂

[Kelcrow]

Thank you for your reply sherie, and sorry for your own experiences. Sounds like Emdr could definitely help. And I will be absolutely looking into it. Thank you again

[Guest_5218]

Thats okay Kelly, and good luck!

[Lazykh]

Hi Kelcrow,

I'm not very familiar with EMDR but I certainly know a lot about exposure therapy. It's really effective for this sort of thing, and does not have to be distressing. Before you start, you'll discuss with the therapist how much distress you can handle, and the therapist will make sure not to exceed that. It depends how quickly you want to get rid of your phobia, but you can take your time and do homework assignments thinking about vomit, which will help between sessions. But I've never known of anyone conducting exposure therapy or receiving it who did not experience a positive outcome, and it is fairly quick too.

Good luck with it!

Lazykh

[ggbug]

Hi Sherie,

How does EMDR work-what do they do?