Emetophobia: moving forward with hypnotherapy support

Emetophobia is a fear of vomiting. Just the word can make you feel queasy and may conjure up images that you would rather not engage with, including perhaps your own past experiences of being unwell.

People suffering from emetophobia may experience the following:

• an intense fear and thoughts around vomiting
• avoidance of people and places where vomiting may be a risk, such as doctors' waiting rooms
• avoidance of situations that may be associated with past experiences of vomiting
• avoidance of food and drink associated with past experiences of vomiting

For some people, this fear of vomiting or feeling sick can become very debilitating.

How emetophobia can affect everyday life

In my work as a solution-focused hypnotherapist, I have worked with many people who have emetophobia. These clients may present in a number of different ways.

For example:

John, in his 30s, had suffered a bad experience on public transport when he had vomited on a bus. This loss of control in a public space resulted in anxiety and the fear that the same thing may happen again.

Becky had a fear of being travel sick. She had suffered from travel sickness as a child and was planning to go on holiday to Greece, but was worried that this problem would prevent her from going.

Brian had severe emetophobia. He had food poisoning as a child at a time when there was a lot of stress and tension at home. Subsequently, he avoided anyone who was sick. If someone coughed, he had to leave the room as he thought they might vomit. He had a young child and was very distressed every time they vomited. This was interfering with his life on an almost daily basis.

All three of these clients suffered from anxiety around the possibility of being sick in the future: something we call negative forecasting. Negative forecasting is when we anticipate something bad will happen, and this can start when we have a traumatic experience, and let’s face it, vomiting can feel quite traumatic.

The brain may hold onto this experience to help us avoid it in the future, even when it is unlikely to repeat itself in the same way. In Brian’s case, this was clearly related to a bout of food poisoning as a child and in the case of John, when he was sick on public transport.

Why the brain predicts negative experiences

The brain works with pattern matching. This means we are constantly looking for patterns that may repeat themselves, so we are prepared. At its most basic level, this is due to energy efficiency. For example, most of us have a regular morning routine when we get up. We don’t have to think about what we do, and it is easier to follow our routine than to do something different every day.

This works well most of the time, but isn’t so good when we establish pattern matches that are not useful, such as avoiding travelling on public transport in case we may be sick. We become trapped in a way of predicting negative events, even though there may be no reason for this pattern to repeat itself. Becky was fearful of travelling as she imagined herself being sick in those situations, no matter the mode of transport.

Thankfully, hypnotherapy was able to help John, Becky and Brian to overcome their fear of vomiting and leave it behind in the past, where it belonged.

How hypnotherapy may help with emetophobia

Phobias are often associated with a particular event that is remembered as the possible starting point of these overwhelming feelings of fear and loss of control.

This was the case with Brian, who had suffered from food poisoning as a child and at a time when he was already anxious due to events unfolding at home that were beyond his control. John was also able to pinpoint the time when he vomited on public transport.

In both cases, I used a solution-focused hypnotherapy approach with rewind techniques. Although I want to stress that each client came with their own experiences, the approach was client-centred.

Brian's experience

In Brian’s case, we used a Muss Rewind to help process the experience he had as a child. We then followed this with sessions which involved looking for exceptions when he felt a little less anxious and identifying small steps he could take to help him cope with those situations and see that he was doing better.

He knew he had hit a major milestone when he was able to clean up his small child after he had been sick. These successes helped him to build confidence in his ability to deal with this problem, and he has gone on to make improvements.

John's experience

With John, in addition to a Bandler Rewind, we worked on reducing anxiety and building confidence in our solution-focused hypnotherapy sessions. He was soon able to travel on public transport with more confidence, and those feelings of anxiety faded into the background.

Becky's experience

In Becky’s situation, she had been travel sick since she was a child, and when I first met her, she had booked her first holiday abroad; she had a clear goal for overcoming this problem and was looking for some help.

In our first conversation, we discussed exceptions – those times when the problem is less or absent. She told me that if her mum was driving or she was driving, then she felt no symptoms. This was our road into the problem. It also transpired that whenever she would travel with her family, they would also spend a lot of time asking her if she was going to be sick or how she was feeling. Unsurprisingly, this meant that her stress response was raised and she was anticipating problems.

Consequently, she asked her family and friends not to talk about the problem, and this started to help her. She also said that she felt isolated socially, so we began to work on social anxiety and confidence, as well as reducing general anxiety and stress through solution-focused talk and hypnosis. She started to make changes and meet up with old friends. This, of course, meant some travel, but in the course of these social interactions, she did not feel any travel sickness. This helped her to build up her store of positive experiences, and her fears of travel sickness fell away.

Techniques used in hypnotherapy sessions

A range of techniques was helpful across these cases. Useful approaches included:

• imagining a future and situations without this problem
• taking small steps towards that future
• visualisation
• reframing
• rewind
• trance

Emetophobia can be a very debilitating condition, and it can affect many people who may never discuss or mention it. Instead, they may avoid doing those things or situations that cause them anxiety and stress. Hypnotherapy may offer supportive techniques to help people begin to address these fears and move forward with greater confidence.

References

Corcoran, S., & Ponder, J. (2026). Emetophobia: School-Based Intervention Strategies. Beyond Behavior, 0(0).

https://www.anxietyuk.org.uk/anxiety-type/emetophobia/

Whittaker, S., (2021) Overcoming Emetophobia: from fear to flourishing in The Art of Solution Focused Hypnotherapy Ed. Carolyn Gillan and Tiffany Armitage.

The Clinical Hypnotherapy School Complex Phobias eg Emetophobia CPD delivered by Dorothea Read Senior Tutor for CHS DSFH SFBT HPD