Unusual Phobia

I heard of a phobia that was controlling someones life this morning that I have never heard of before. The fear/phobia was of someone throwing up. It apparently is an underlying part of obsessive compulsive disorder, but it seemed rather weird in some respects. As its not likely very often you will come into contact with someone throwing up. But this woman, on her wedding night, because her husband had drank three pints of beer, and she thought he may throw up, she spent her wedding night sleeping in another room. If her kids are ill, she moves out. Where the youngest child had thrown up on the carpet she had to have the carpet removed before she would move back home. Her husband will turn down work in other peoples homes, if anyone in the place who is employing him is ill, because if his wife got to hear about it, she wouldn't be able to cope knowing he had been in contact with people who may have been throwing up. Now as I said, it seemed a bit odd to me, but this woman is on medication to the extent that much of the time she is so sedated she is almost a zombie.

I think we all have some fears/phobias. My most obvious one is bees and wasps. But most of our phobias do not control our lives in the way this woman's fear of anyone throwing up does. She has tried aversion therapy, hypnosis, etc, but still the phobia persists. I'm not into buying mental health stuff at first blush, and don't know enough to pass an opinion in that respect on this particular scenario. But, if a huge spider crawled into a croweded room, and half the people left, scared witless cause their phobia was arachnophobia, people would probably laugh, but not think it very unusual. But if someone threw up, and someone left the room having the screaming ab dabs and an anxiety attack, most people would be somewhat perplexed I think.

So for me the jury is out as far as having an opinion on something like this. But, the mind is a powerful thing I do believe that, and what goes on in the mind can have very real physical affects. But, I had never come across this phobia at all before. |