The Emetophobia Free Podcast

As an occupational therapist, Hannah is faced with many people who are sick regularly. When she had Emetophobia, Hannah would escape these situations due to the fear she was creating. Hannah also experienced contamination OCD, IBS, trouble sleeping and continuous nausea which affected her all through her younger years. Hannah would sanitise her hands continuously and would inspect her food before...

Does your intense fear of vomit stop you from travelling? Ex-emetophobe Lauren Singer joins Michelle Johnson on the podcast to talk all things Emetophobia and travel. Lauren developed her Emetophobia from around 5 years old. Before the Emetophobia-Free Programme, when the topic of travel was raised Lauren thought “I would love to be able to do that!” but then her inner voice would begin asking wha...

Meg is keen to share her powerful message: 'Don't let your ASD diagnosis hold you back from tackling your biggest fear - you CAN beat Emetophobia!' Meg held a strong belief that she couldn’t overcome her Emetophobia because her ability to process information wasn't the same as neurotypical people. She had heard of the Emetophobia-Free programme but was skeptical about starting...

Caitriona’s daughter, Cara, started showing signs of Emetophobia when she was just 8 years old. After trying multiple different therapies they came across the Emetophobia-Free Programme. Caitriona got fully involved in her daughter's recovery, completing the programme alongside her so that she would support as much as possible. Caitriona was so blown away with the transformation in Cara she w...

In this weeks episode of the Emetophobia-Free podcast, Michelle and Sophie discuss her journey through the programme.  Sophie contacted us as she wanted to talk about the part of the programme where you have almost overcome your fear but there are some final pieces of work to do - 'the last 10%' in her words. Sophie explains that when she was working through the programme herself she fou...

The Emetophobia-Free Programme was developed to be easy to understand and accessible by those with learning disabilities and/or neurodiversity.  Coach Ruth speaks to Emma regarding her experience going through The Emetophobia-Free programme with dyslexia, and how being neurodivergent affected her understanding of the programme and processing of the new concepts contained within it. Like many with...

18-year-old Gabbie suffered from a debilitating fear of vomit that ruled her life. Her fear started after Gabbie and her brother caught the stomach flu around the age of 7 and gradually grew to the point that it was having a debilitating effect on her life.  Gabbie would have panic attacks, struggle to eat, struggle to go to school, would spend days in bed feeling sick convinced she was going to v...

In this Episode of the Emetophobia-Free podcast, Michelle speaks to Sam who is an ex-emetophobe as well as a Thrive Coach in the United States. The topic today is food, and how an emetophobe’s relationship with food can be very problematic.  Sam starts off by explaining that because she struggled to eat as a child due to the fear of vomiting, she was deemed ‘failure to thrive’ and was underweight...

The wonderful 10 year old Summer has just completed the Emetophobia-Free programme and is now completely over her fear of being sick!  Summer was supported on her journey by her mum Susan and they have both kindly taken the time to join us on the podcast to share their experience.  Susan describes how difficult life was as a family when Summer was suffering from Emetophobia.  Summer started to sho...

Fiona Brown, one of the longest standing Thrive Programme coaches joins Michelle Johnson on the podcast this week to talk about the Emetophobia-Free coaching programme. Key questions: What does the coaching programme look like? The coaching programme is 6-8 weeks in length followed by a back-up session 6 weeks after the sessions are completed. Each session is between 60 and 90 minutes. What does t...

Experienced teacher’s Claire and Michelle, talk openly about their own journeys through and over Emetophobia and the impact it had on their individual teaching careers.  Claire's story: Claire currently teaches children aged between 14-18 and struggled with Emetophobia for 33 years. Claire's main fear was other people/children being sick. After reading a lot of misinformation on the inte...

Bloss’s journey to Emetophobia-Free wasn’t a quick one. It took Bloss years of re-reading the manual and applying the skills to get where she is today. Bloss explains that she put more effort into overcoming her fear than she did to anything she did at school! She read the book up to 5 times, made lots of notes and posters that she stuck up around her house,  had a reminder that popped up on her p...

Lisanne Prooij suffered with Emetophobia, anxiety and depression and has joined us on the Emetophobia-Free podcast to share her unique and insightful story. Lisanne is now over all of her mental health symptoms and passionate about helping others. Lisanne’s shares her experience of overcoming Emetophobia whilst still believing that she was suffering with it. The podcast highlights the importance o...

Mary’s BACK! The wonderful 92 year old Mary overcame her Emetophobia over ten years ago at the age of 81 after suffering for 75 years! You can listen to her original testimonial video here. https://youtu.be/yKb-M1P1Jww Mary has been a massive inspiration to so many Emetophobia sufferers and is a huge advocate for the programme. In her many years of suffering Mary tried many different types of trea...

BAFTA winning actor Bella Ramsey has starred in over 30 films and series and in the last 12 months alone has been nominated for around 65 awards. Despite a jam-packed schedule, Bella has been kind enough to find time to join us on the Emetophobia-Free podcast to help those who are suffering with this debilitating fear not to lose hope and to seek help.  Emetophobia is the pathological fear of bein...

This week Michelle Johnson is joined by Bree Billington (ex-emetophobe and Emetophobia-Free Programme Coach) and her girlfriend Sy. Sy was Bree’s significant other on her journey to overcoming her fear. A ‘significant other’ is any person who is important to an individual's life or wellbeing. Significant others are usually someone’s spouse, best friend, or parent. In this brilliant episode, S...

Megan's Story Megan started suffering from Emetophobia around the age of 11. Megan’s Grandmother had just passed away and it was the first time that Megan remembered seeing her mum vulnerable. Around that time Megan remembers being on school bus, beginning to feel sick and having a  panic attack. It was after these two events that Megan remembers really being affected by her Emetophobia. Mega...

In this brilliant episode, Michelle Johnson and Bree Billington have an open, candid and genuine discussion about pregnancy and Emetophobia. Michelle and Bree are both ex-emetophobes, both parents and both working to help other people overcome their fear of sickness and vomit.  The episode does contain reference to sensitive topics including miscarriages and abortion.  Michelle and Bree share thei...

Your Emetophobia is NOT caused by past events.  Most people believe that what has happened in their past has a massive impact upon their future. Most therapuetic interventions such as counselling, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, hypnotherapy, analytical therapy are all focused on going back and revisiting past experiences, memories, and rehashing them. What is REALLY important to understand is that...

This week Michelle Johnson is joined by Bree Billington who overcame her debilitating fear of being sick by reading the Emetophobia-Free manual is just TWO WEEKS!!  In this brilliant episode Scientist Bree explains that she developed Emetophobia around the age of 7 after what witnessing a traumatic incident. Bree believed that because she had witnessed the event at a young age, there was nothing s...

Millie is now 5 years on from beating her Emetophobia, she has been sick since overcoming it and is here to give us all an update on what her life is like Emetophobia-Free.   Millie recorded her first video just 5 weeks into the programme.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXAnMGtUiBY In this podcast episode, Millie explains that throughout the programme she experienced blips and dips. She found it...

The lovely Loretta talks openly and honestly about her journey through The Thrive Programme which she embarked upon to help her son overcome his fear of being sick/vomiting.  Nine year old Sonny was struggling with Emetophobia and had lots of anxiety around being sick. Before the programme Sonny was struggling to eat certain foods, was scared to go to sleep without travel sickness bands, couldn’t...

Do you spend hours a day trying to understand your phobia? Where did it come from? When did it start? It's understandable that when you are searching for answers you would look back to find an event in your past which may have 'triggered' your phobia. Perhaps you developed your fear after a sickness bug, food poisoning or another unpleasant incident. However, it is important to unde...

This week Michelle Johnson is joined by the lovely Lucy in the first of our 'Real life' podcast series. In this series we are inviting people who are currently going through or have already completed The Thrive Programme for Emetophobia to talk openly and candidly about their experiences of life before, during and after the programme.  Lucy had suffered with Emetophobia since around the...

Joe is back for this week’s podcast, where he and Rob discuss why emetophobes struggle to recognise their achievements when working to overcome emetophobia. Why is this? Partners, friends and family often notice the huge improvements an emetophobe makes, but the emetophobe themself struggles to see this. This is mainly due to the perfectionist mentality, typical of emetophobes, where small success...