Emetophobia – The fear of vomit
For almost forty years, I lived with a fear I couldn’t name. A fear that shaped my reactions, my parenting, my body, and my life in ways I never understood.
It was always there. Quiet, familiar, and strangely normal because I had grown up with it. I didn’t question it. I didn’t challenge it. I didn’t even realise it was fear. Vomit!
It was about trauma
Until I finally understood that the fear wasn’t really about vomit at all. It was about trauma. It was about loss. It was about being a child of an alcoholic. Worst of all it was about a six year‑old girl hiding under a hospital bed, watching her world fall apart.
This is the story of how emetophobia, a fear I didn’t even know existed, became the catalyst that exposed everything I had buried for decades.
Something inside me snapped open
My daughter was seven when she clutched her tummy and said it felt strange. Then she began to retch. Something inside me snapped open. I panicked. I screamed for my husband. I froze instead of comforting her.
I didn’t know it then, but that moment planted a seed in her, a fear she would carry for ten long years.
We tried everything to help her. Nothing worked. She avoided life in ways that broke my heart. At sixteen, she was still living in the shadow of something she never asked for.
Then she found a masterclass by The Speakmans earlier this year. I booked it immediately, wanting to support her in a way I hadn’t known how to when she was seven. But I was sceptical. How could a five‑hour session undo a decade of fear?
I had no idea it would undo my lifetime of fear too.
We sat there, and then Eva Speakman said something that hit me like a punch to the chest:
“This fear is always instilled before the age of 8 years old. If you have a fear of vomit and you have brought your child here today then it is probably your fault.”
The words stung but in an instant a padlock opened up in my mind.
Memories began flooding back
I sat there replaying my own childhood, and suddenly memories I had buried deep began flooding back. Here we go again, I thought. Another way being the child of an alcoholic has shaped my life in ways I never understood affecting those it should have never.
I remembered the man at the carnival, drunk at eight in the morning, dancing like it was normal.
I remembered seeing him later, passed out on the grass. “Don’t look, he’s just drunk.”
I remembered refusing to take my mam in the car because she was drunk, and the family fallout that followed.
I remembered being out with friends and someone being sick on my shoes. My friend at the theme park being sick in the bin after a ride.
But then Eva said something else, the thunderclap that changed everything:
“The moment you think caused your fear… isn’t the moment. It’s something that happened before that.”
Where the padlock was unlocked
I had always thought that I disliked (not feared) vomit from hearing my mam in the bathroom when I was young.
This was where the padlock was unlocked. The memories and the tears escaped before as I had realisations of how childhood trauma had affected me.
And suddenly I was five years old again.
I was in a hospital room. Hiding under the bed. Sweating, heart racing, fiddling with a metal lever rubbery and grey because it was the only thing I could control.
My dad above me, vomiting from chemo. The smell, the fear, the confusion. The moment that carved itself into my nervous system before I even understood what fear was.
And then the next memory, being told he was going to die and being shipped off while it happened.
That was the moment my body learned that vomit meant danger. That vomiting meant loss. That the world could fall apart without warning.
The moment that shaped everything
I didn’t know it then, but that moment shaped everything that came after.
It shaped how I reacted to my mam’s drinking. It shaped how I coped with chaos. It shaped how I parented. It shaped the fear I passed on to my daughter without ever meaning to.
I realised, sitting in that room, that I wasn’t just there to support her. I was there because I needed support too.
Fear becomes familiar
Growing up with an a childhood trauma isn’t one big trauma, it’s lots of small ones. It’s the unpredictability. The confusion. The responsibility you were never meant to carry. The way your body learns to stay on high alert, even when you’re safe.
It’s the way fear becomes familiar. The way chaos becomes normal. The way your nervous system never really rests.
I lived almost four decades with a fear I didn’t understand because it had always been there. It was woven into my childhood. It was part of my emotional DNA.
Emetophobia wasn’t the problem. It was the doorway the thing that finally forced me to look back and see the truth.
My daughter didn’t inherit my weakness. She inherited my wound.
A wound I never asked for. A wound I never understood. A wound that started long before I became a mother.
And now, together, we are finally healing it.
Breaking generational trauma
This is what breaking generational trauma looks like. Not perfection. Not getting everything right. Just awareness, honesty, and the courage to face what hurt you so your child doesn’t have to carry it.
For the first time in my life, I understand the fear that shaped me. And for the first time, I know it doesn’t have to shape my daughter.
Again using the Nacoa staple of the 6 C’s which has helped shaped my recovery as a COA it’s given me a new motto:
“Realising this fear was born from something I could never control has finally given me the power to control what comes next.”
