My Next Appointment

After being on the waiting list for 9 months, an appointment came up for me to start CBT in December but as you'll know if you've been reading, it didn't work out and I went back on the waiting list. I was told another place would come up around March but lo-and-behold I got a letter in the post at the weekend to let me know I have an assessment with a new therapist on Friday (11th)!

So, having secured childcare for Friday - no mean feat, I can tell you - I am all set to meet Ms Warren and once again, go through the history of my phobia and work out where to take it from there...

I'm about 1/6th of the way through the book I was telling you about, written by the lead expert in the field of emetophobia (aka, GOD). It's more about health anxiety in general and using CBT techniques to combat it but there is a chapter concentrating on emetophobia. It's nice to see it acknowledged for once. I'll share a little snippet of the book with you, as you may find it helpful:

Close your eyes and think of a pink elephant. Now try really hard not to think of pink elephants, push all thoughts of pink elephants from your mind. What do you notice?

This is called the 'White Bear Effect' and research consistently shows that when people are asked not to think of a white bear, they can think of nothing but! This is the key to understanding health anxiety as anyone experiencing it will be plagued with constantly trying to rid themselves of thoughts/doubts which actually has the opposite effect. Now try a more real experiment...

1) Spend a day dealing with your thoughts related to emet in your usual way, record their frequency and the distress they cause you.
2) Spend the next day trying even harder to try and rid yourself of these thoughts and record their frequency and the distress they cause you. Try as hard as you can to suppress them.
3) Repeat step 1.
4) Repeat step 2.

Review the results of your four day experiment. What do you make of them? Most people find their thoughts become even more disturbing and frequent the more they try and suppress them.

Stop trying so hard not to have the thought or image that's bothering you and it will bother you much less.

I'd be interested to hear from you if you try this. Good luck if you do decide to give it a go.

In other news, we're almost mid-February now! Noro seasons is almost over, one might think. I won't be getting complacent though, as I caught some nasty stomach bug (no vomiting but still awful) at the end of last Feb so I don't quite feel we're on the home stretch yet. I hope you're all having happy, healthy winters!