'My phobia of being sick is so severe I couldn't hold my daughter's hand for a week when she was poorly'

Real Fix

Credit: SWNS / Maddie Blockley  A mum with a severe phobia of being sick couldn’t hold her toddler's hand for a week after she fell ill – and even throws away freshly opened food if it doesn't 'smell quite right'.  Maddie Blockley, 28, was so worried about vomiting she would examine her dinner under her bedroom lamp as a child and now sticks to a diet of ‘safe foods’ - opting for dry and ‘best before’ items and avoiding dairy and meat products to make sure she avoids falling unwell.   The mum-of-one was diagnosed with emetophobia – an extreme fear of vomiting - in May 2019 after years of suffering with a fear of being sick but not being able to place what was wrong with her.

Transcript

00:00 After she's been poorly, I can't deal with it.

00:03 That's when the anxiety starts because I think it's going to come to me.

00:05 So emetophobia is the fear of being sick, other people being sick or both.

00:17 When I was younger, so mine started probably about, I was about nine,

00:21 that was definitely both.

00:24 As I've got older, it's kind of gone into just being myself that I'm worrying about.

00:31 Definitely realised that after having a child, that it's something that's got better

00:36 since having her that I can deal with the actual action.

00:42 Because you kind of have no choice if it's going to happen to your child,

00:45 like it's going to happen.

00:46 Definitely got better in that sense.

00:48 It's then after, so after she's been poorly, I can't deal with it.

00:53 That's when the anxiety starts because I think it's going to come to me.

00:56 It's like a ticking time bomb.

00:58 That's what it feels like.

00:59 That's how I explain it to all my friends and my family.

01:01 So this is going to bed with emetophobia.

01:03 I use pillow spray every night.

01:07 Then I have a herbal tea just to be relaxed.

01:11 Then I have to have some water just in case I wake up with a dry mouth.

01:14 And I've also got my mints again, just in case I wake up in the middle of the night.

01:18 Then I have my Gaviscon again, just in case I wake up in the middle of the night.

01:23 I always listen to like an anti-nausea, subliminal sound.

01:26 And then I've always got my fan, which my boyfriend hates.

01:29 Somebody commented something about like,

01:31 "Oh, emetophobia is not ultra cleaning and all of that sort of stuff."

01:36 And no, they're absolutely correct.

01:38 It isn't.

01:38 It is the fear of what I've already explained.

01:42 However, those behaviours are the things that now take over my life.

01:46 So they're things that a lot of people with emetophobia will end up doing.

01:51 And it's kind of like a vicious circle because you end up creating like OCD behaviours.

01:57 And if you don't do those things, you feel like the inevitable is going to happen to you.

02:01 So things like checking food all the time, being very cautious about what you eat,

02:06 being very cautious about what you touch, always washing your hands,

02:10 checking expiry dates, being careful about where you go to eat.

02:14 You might go to a lot of trusted places.

02:16 Some people don't even go out and eat at all.

02:18 Like they cannot go and eat out.

02:20 I'm lucky I can go and eat out in a restaurant.

02:23 I'm very picky about where I go.

02:25 There's a lot of people that do know about it because I feel comfortable enough to speak to them

02:29 about it.

02:29 But there's a lot of people that don't.

02:32 And the reason they don't know about it is because I'm really good at hiding it.

02:35 And you become like this actor when you have something like this,

02:38 because you're so worried about getting judged.

02:40 You're so worried about people saying, "Oh, well, no one likes that."

02:44 I get that.

02:44 Nobody does like it.

02:46 I would think you're a little bit strange if you did like it.

02:48 But it's not that.

02:50 It's the fact that we go about our whole daily lives trying to avoid it.

02:54 So we would say things like, "I don't like going on boats."

02:58 I don't even know if I do like going on boats.

03:00 But I say to people that I don't like going on boats because people could be ill on boats.

03:04 It might make me feel ill.

03:05 That's why I don't go on boats.

03:07 Like that's how we get around it.

03:09 I just want it to get out there, normalize it a bit.

03:12 I don't take what people say on comments in an offensive way.

03:16 It's just very clear that people don't know about this.

03:20 It's not something that's spoken about, yet it's one of the most common phobias ever.

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