For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an excessive fear of germs. Not just a tid bit here and there; all the time. It was less extreme as a kid, due to my child like mind not fully understanding the whole concept. I also took the whole “Keep Clean” thing they taught through out elementary very seriously. Yet I’ve always been uneasy about it and going places, such as a doctor’s office, that are, in my mind, completely covered in germs. Even today, I went to the doctor’s office to have a sinus infection checked out, and I refused to sit down in the chairs, touch a pen to sign papers with, and basically anything in that room. Which comes along to my next point; emetophobia. I’m not entirely sure when my phobia of throwing up came along, but I always remember being heavily traumatized by kids throwing up in class during grade school. This connects my struggle between mysophobia and emetophobia. I’m terrified of germs, but it’s only anything related to the stomach bug, which explains the calm behavior to other sicknesses, such as the chronic sinus infection I’ve had. My parents don’t help or take it seriously either. They always joke about getting me sick, or throwing up on me. Which doesn’t help the fact that I haven’t thrown up in 10 years, and don’t plan on it anytime soon. And this also means that I haven’t had the bug, I’ve just never allowed myself to throw up due to the intense fear of it (My stomach is literally iron when it comes to holding stuff down, which I’m severely grateful of.) My daily schedule has been heavily altered to fit the needs of being free from the germ. I take multiple showers a day, just to be sure I’m clean, I spray down everything that came to school with me that day with disinfectant, and I never, ever, leave the house without hand sanitizer. This also keeps me from having fun in places such as amusement parks, where throwing up is a common result of too many rides and too big of a lunch to handle them. And I love roller coasters, which also related back to the point my stomach is iron. If I have the choice, I’ll always take front seat(which subtracts the event of someone throwing up on the ride and it flying back and hitting me.) The idea of the germ constantly haunts me, and every decision I make is usually based on, or effected by the fear. It’s getting to a point where I won’t let my friends into my room due to the fear of my things being contaminated. I just hope this all gets cleared up when I eventually do throw up and teach myself it’s really not that big of a deal.
Emetophobia and Mysophobia combined
What Now?
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Rum says
Everything you described is exactly me minus the obsessive cleaning — I only do that when someone feels unwell. You are not alone.