Top 5 tips for parents of children with a fear of being sick

Emetophobia, the fear of vomiting, can be challenging for both parents and children to navigate. As a parent of a child with emetophobia, you can often feel lost as to what to do or how you can really help your child. In this week’s podcast, Rob and Michelle share their top 5 tips for how you can help your child manage and overcome their phobia. 

1. Upskill your Knowledge about Emetophobia: Start by educating yourself about emetophobia. Take the time to learn what you can about it: we recommend buying the adult emetophobia manual, or watching the other videos on our channel. We also have tonnes of resources and articles on our website www.emetophobia.co.uk. Often, this phobia seems complex and challenging, but education is key. A solid understanding of emetophobia will empower you to better help your child manage and conquer their fears.

2. Look Beyond the Surface: Instead of viewing your child's emetophobia as an isolated symptom, consider it within the context of their overall well-being. All too often therapists and doctors just provide help for the fear of being sick itself, or the control behaviours your child exhibits - such as excessive hand-washing or avoiding school - rather than diving deeper into the underlying causes. The fear of vomiting is just the tip of the iceberg; addressing and resolving the underlying causes leads to a comprehensive recovery. The programme was designed to address these causes and help people beat their fear from the ground up. 

3. Empower, Don't Enable: It's natural to want to alleviate your child's distress, particularly when they’re extremely anxious.  But sometimes, when trying to reassure our children, we can reinforce unhelpful beliefs. These main unhelpful beliefs are 1) The phobia is happening ‘to’ them 2) Being sick is frightening. It’s important to realise the phobia isn’t happening ‘to’ them - not from a traumatic experience, or from some wiring in their brain that means they’re stuck with this fear. It is possible to overcome it. Secondly, most people don’t love being sick, but only a fraction of the global population have a phobia of it. If it was truly terrifying, wouldn’t we all have a phobia of it? It’s unpleasant, but it’s important to remind your child that they can cope. Instead of saying ‘you won’t be sick,’ try saying ‘you probably won’t be sick, but if you were, you would cope.’ This phrase immediately puts a pin in the belief balloon that this is something to be te

Find out more: https://www.emetophobiafree.org
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Thanks for watching :)

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Emetophobia is the fear of vomiting/sickness: either yourself, other people, or both. Research suggests 0.1 to 8.8% percent of the population have a fear of being sick (Hout & Bouman, 2011). Emetophobia is a debilitating phobia, which significantly impacts your life: sufferers are chronically anxious and go to great lengths to avoid encountering anything sickness-related, which provides temporary relief but often results in a rollercoaster of anxiety, fear and exhaustion. Issues associated with emetophobia include: OCD, eating difficulties, anxiety-related gastric problems, phagophobia, tocophobia and more. Our goal is to raise awareness of this severe phobia and provide a solution for sufferers and their families.

You do not need to live with Emetophobia - you can COMPLETELY overcome it. The Thrive Programme for Emetophobia (also known as Emetophobia-Free) is the single most successful and predictable method for getting rid of your emetophobia. It has helped over 20,000 emetophobes around the world overcome their phobia.

You can study the programme at home by yourself wit...