Hello everybody, and welcome to my new podcast, I guess.
My name is Jay, I'm 24 years old, I'm from Australia, and I've been dealing with emetophobia
for the last four years pretty heavily.
So I've had it my whole life, I can tell just by looking back and noticing the anxiety I
felt as a child around situations like this, but it never really came to like its full
sort of power, I guess, until I was about 20 years old.
And ever since then I've had to learn a lot, I've had to do a lot of research, I basically
started with nothing, I didn't even know there was a word for it, I didn't know anyone else
had something like this, so it's been a journey.
But I am where I am now, and I would like to offer my support to those who may be in
need.
I have no professional background, it's all just my own advice or my own words from just
me, so I'm not going to claim I have any like, you know, qualifications in anything, I don't,
I'm just a normal guy, I've had emetophobia for a long time, and I've had to deal with
it for a long time, and I think I've learned a lot of ways, and a lot of good coping strategies,
also a lot of bad ones, and there's a lot of both, but I hope to offer those and offer
support, save space for anyone that feels they need something to listen to, to, well,
listen to.
So mine all started really about, yeah, four years ago.
A lot of things were going on in my life at the time, I had just lost a job that I was
pretty passionate about, I had a car that I really loved, it got wrecked in a car park
funnily enough, someone in a big truck came by, hit it, and I didn't have that car for
about three months, four months, which doesn't seem like that long, but I live in a small
town, it's a bit of a drive to the city where I worked, so not having a car obviously kind
of, you know, made it really hard for me to get to work, there was no public transport
I could have taken, at least none that I knew of, so it was a pretty bad situation, and
among that a lot of other things happened that I'll get into one day.
But it all sort of collided together and exploded in a panic attack I had one night, and I remember
it was the entire night from about 12am to about 7am in the morning that I was just panicking
and I was freaking out, and I'd had panic attacks before that, but nothing like this,
nothing I knew of that was a panic attack either, you know, I didn't really think this
was a panic attack, I thought a panic attack was like when you're nervous about going on
stage in like a school concert or something, I don't know.
So I actually thought I was dying, I was like damn I'm gonna get sick, I'm gonna die, like
it's not gonna stop, something is gonna happen, I don't know, but I spent the majority of
the night just freaking out, shaking, and ever since then it never seemed to end after
that, and it progressed worse, and it got to a point where I couldn't leave my house anymore,
and the only real reason I would leave my house is to go to the shop if I could, but
sometimes I would drop my groceries in the middle of the line and just leave, and mind
you this shop is just a local shop, you know it's good for the essentials, it's about
two minutes down the road, so a little two minute drive, not that long, easy, but I couldn't
do that anymore, you know, as the months progressed it got to the point where I couldn't even
really get the mail, and it was really hard for a long time, but I had enough dedication
in me to continue moving forward, although I didn't see much purpose in doing so, I
really thought it was sort of the end of everything for me, I thought I would never get better,
I thought I would never improve, I thought this anxiety that I felt every day that I
woke up from the minute I opened my eyes to the minute I closed them, it was just it,
and it was bad, it's hard to talk about now even, it was a really sad, depressing, dark
time in my life, and I'm not going to lie, I'm currently in a similar situation right
now, you know, but I have the knowledge I've gained, the skills that I've learned, the
coping strategies, the healthy ones at least, I've still got a few bad ones, I still like
to have a lot of mints, a lot of antacids, I was pretty bad on anti-nausea medication
for a long time, you know, like I wasn't like overdosing it or something, I was just taking
a lot of it like because it really helped me, but not in the right way, you know, it
made it easy to leave the house because I didn't feel sick anymore, but it also made
me feel really dizzy, really tired, and it was just like I don't want to rely on something
like that, I want to just rely on me and healthier ways, but anyway, sorry for getting sidetracked.
I basically, to start dealing with that, I would, I started this thing where I'd walk
down the end of my road, and it was hard a lot of the time, but I did that every day
for a couple months, I did that, just the end of the road, it was a minute walk, it
took very little time, it was a very little amount of walking to do, but to me that felt
like the biggest challenge I could have faced at the time, but I continued doing it, I didn't
really know why, there was just something in me that pushed me to do that because I
just needed to go outside, I needed to see if I could do this today, you know, and there
were days where I couldn't do it, there were a lot of days where I couldn't do it, there
were days where I came home after doing it and felt like shit because I didn't feel
better, but it still was a step, albeit a very small one, but it was a step in the right
direction, and it got a little easier over time, I started walking a little further,
and then I got a bike, and I started riding that, and then that caused a whole lot of
panic attacks because I would ride so far compared to how far I walked, it was really
hard, but it got easier with that as well, and then I started driving back down the street
again, and there were times where I turned around and went home at the end of my road,
and I would give up for the day, go lay in bed, have a panic attack, eat a bag of mints,
not eat any actual food for the rest of the night, but one day I sort of realized it's
going to sound pretty stupid, but I realized that I could try again, directly afterwards
if I wanted to, half an hour later or six hours later, I could try again, and then when
I realized that, even though it took me a while, I'm a bit slow, it made it a lot easier,
and I had more determination, because I could attempt it as many times as I wanted I realized,
I had my entire life to do it, so I started doing that, every time something failed, or
I took something as a failure because I couldn't do it, even though it's not, I would come
home, I'd reevaluate myself, I'd calm myself down, and I would try again, and nine times
out of ten I did it on the second try, sometimes I needed a third try, sometimes you need a
fourth in that day, but if you keep trying, you will succeed.
There's a lot of things that go into it, like mindset, and a lot of other things that I'm
forgetting too, but we'll get into that one day, one day very soon, but my point here
is that this sort of thing can be overcome, because after I started doing those things,
I got to the point where I got my first job that I'd had in two years, and it was good,
I started working again, I started coming out of my shell, I made some new friends,
I signed up for a gym, first in my life I'd ever been to an actual gym, and I started
even traveling a little further, you know I had to drive from my small little town,
my little bubble, to a city, a massive city, one of the biggest cities, if not the biggest
city in Australia, two hour drive, just for a work thing, and if I'd asked myself if
I would have done that two years before that, I would have said no way, I'd rather die,
there was absolutely no way I would have been able to do that, but I did it, I had a panic
attack there, took a breather, had a mint, calmed down, and I was fine, like unbaffled
that I could be able to do something like that, after such a hard two years, I'm probably
rambling a lot, sorry it's my first attempt at this, I do work in retail currently so
I should be better at talking to people, but you know, I'll learn, but just my whole point
realistically is that like, I know what it's like to be in that dark place, and I've been
there a couple times, a couple separate times for a while at each point I've been there,
I know what it's like, I know the hopelessness, the fear, that just burning sensation inside
you, you know that just pure anxiety and pure fear, the restlessness, I know all of it,
I've been there, you know, and I want to try and offer my support, my advice, even if it's
just a story about something that I went through, or something that could help, I want to be
able to share those things with anyone that wants to listen, but yeah, probably going
to cut this one here, I will be planning on making a lot more of these very shortly, and
I will link socials below so if anyone wants to ever ask me any questions or even just
chat to me, you'll be able to do so, yeah, so until then, thank you for listening, I'll
see you next time.
Hey, sorry I just wanted to add on to the end of this, sorry if I rambled a lot, and
sorry if the things I said didn't make any sense, my story is complicated as is all of
ours and I sort of wanted to fit as much in as I could in the littlest amount of time,
but I will go over these things more in depth and my own story more in depth in the future,
definitely plan on making more of these, I'm excited to sort of start this journey, and
hopefully anyone listening finds support in the things that I have to say, I hope to offer
the best advice that I have and share the, you know, best stories, I guess, I don't know,
thank you again though, see you later.