Hi there, was reading another thread and someone mentioned this page and I thought I would check it out. I'm in my 20s and have had pretty bad anxiety issues related to emetophobia my whole life. All of the females in my family suffer from pretty huge GI issues so vomiting has been a pretty regular occurrence around my house. I have many different types of anxiety related to vomit. Personally, I had stomach troubles a lot as a kid, and I also had a sleepwalking problem. Combining the two makes for some pretty interesting results... I would sometimes wake up and find myself puking all over my parents' bedroom floor. Not so fun. Also, I always seem to have a lot more... volume... for lack of a better word, than many other people do. I am a pretty petite person so seeing that much stuff come out of me is always surprising. I also never only throw up once, it's hours and hours of agony where I am vomiting every 20-30 minutes or so. The last time a few years ago I think I should have gone to the hospital because I was so dehydrated to the point where I could not physically stop myself from drinking tons of water and then explosively throwing it all back up. It was really a traumatic experience for me.
I am the oldest of three girls, and the next oldest has an extremely easy gag reflex so she would always be throwing up, especially during thunderstorms. I have a lot of guilt associated with this; she was obviously suffering from her own anxieties, but she would chase me around my house wanting me to help her and I couldn't bring myself to do anything but run away because she was vomiting. My youngest sister has had gallbladder issues since before she was a teenager and also suffers from extremely painful GERD and IBS but no one will help her because they just blame it on her weight. She is overweight as a direct result of what her other issues allow her to eat comfortably, so our family is very frustrated with pediatricians right now. My parents have pulled her out of school and everything. She's sick probably every day, multiple times a day. She's almost 18 now and I feel horrible thinking back on all of the things I had done at that age that she hasn't been able to do.
Because of all of that, I have a lot of anxiety when it comes to people around me throwing up. I used to lock myself in my room when people in my family had a stomach bug. I've been on my own for a while now but if I still lived at home I don't know if I'd ever get out of my room. One of the biggest reasons why I never had any interest in human medicine was because I didn't want to have to deal with people vomiting. I'm currently in veterinary school... For some reason animal vomit just isn't the same for me and doesn't trigger anxiety unless it's my own pet, and then I'm just anxious because I want them better!! I'm glad we're humans though and not horses or cows. Horses physically can't throw up so if they have a stomach issue it's surgery or death, and vomiting (or rumination) is part of a cow's normal digestion process. They vomit into their mouths and re-chew everything before swallowing it again!
On the bright side (is there one??) alcoholism runs in my family but I won't ever drink to the point of sickness because I am afraid of vomit. My DBf has grown out of a lot of his younger antics, but still occasionally drinks to the point of blacking out. I am always angry at him, partially because I afraid that he will start puking (even though he never has).
Outside my family, I haven't had to deal a lot with seeing people "in the act" in public, although I did see a poor man hurling his guts out in a trashcan after one of the rides at Harry Potter land last summer. I felt sympathy for him more than anything because it made me a little motion sick as well. I also picked up two of my friends one night after they were too drunk to get back on their own, and one ended up hanging out of my car dry heaving the whole way home. I was surprised that it didn't effect me more, but he was making such hilarious noises and it didn't seem to trigger an anxiety attack.
I am almost at the point in my life where I am thinking about a family of my own, and there's a girl in my class right now who is dealing with months of terrible morning sickness. My mom tells me horror stories of vomiting into a plastic bag, while driving, with me in the car when she was pregnant with my sister.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my story, I'm glad I'm not the only one. I have people tell me that throwing up is "relieving", and I always look at them like they've sprouted two heads. I would 100% rather suffer through the stomach pain or have it come out the other end
. I also hate when they tell you to turn off all electronic devices because I like to play my music loud so I won't hear someone vomit. Landing is the worst time for motion sickness and that's when they make you shut it off! Ugh! I also make sure to give my son dramamine just in case. I take phenergan to help with nausea although it doesn't really help me because being nervous makes me nauseous. If I wouldn't get so sleepy I would take an anxiety pill in addition to the phenergan but I will be a zombie once we get to our destination. The anti emetic meds are far more important to me. I have avoided drinks in public with ice. I heard a story of a whole wedding reception getting Norovirus from the ice. Someone working the bar was sick and contaminated the ice and sickened over 300 ppl. YIKES!!!! No more ice for me 
Congrats to you!!! Don't worry too much I never threw up during my pregnancies. Your mind is a powerful tool, just talk yourself out of being sick.
