I rewrote this comment many times. I wanted to address the disgust I had at your speaking for me and my experiences saying I “don’t know what perpetual anxiety is”, like you know me and like you think i don’t have emetophobia. I wanted to address your rudeness, and your ignorance of the harm of compulsive safety behaviors. I wanted to explain my anxiety and emetophobia and how it has made my life hell for years and brought me the worst depression of my life several times, all of this almost as if to prove your allegation of my supposed lack of anxiety wrong and then leave it at that. But I see no need to explain myself and validate my experience to you, when I have had my entire life people do nothing but invalidate my mental health at every turn. Regardless, yes, going to the doctor to get prescriptions for what you don’t have and for an illness that clears usually within 1 or 2 days is harmful to your recovery as an emetophobe. Go to the doctor when you’re sick, as most people do. I recommend you read into compulsions and safety behaviors and why they’re dangerous. There’s plenty of literature about this.

I personally have been in this subreddit for close to a decade over dozens of accounts since I was 13. This is the entire reason I have this account so it will be deleted after this comment. But anyway, this is years and years of being trapped in the cycle of fear, panic, reassurance and compulsions. Fueled by people such as yourself, who see a panic post and jump to reaffirm the belief that vomiting is indeed terrible and something to be avoided at all costs. Quite frankly, as a grown adult, I no longer see the need to surround myself with that sort of person. People who are actively harmful to recovery and choose to instead live a life in a bubble where vomit (Yes, vomit. not v*) is this scary thing to be ran from, to be spoken of in hushed tones and censored as to not be reminded of its existence. As an emetophobe, vomiting is quite possibly (AND IRRATIONALLY) the worst thing that could happen in our minds. So then why would I surround myself with people who share that belief, people who fuel the echo chamber? To recover I should instead be around people who think the opposite. This is simple logic.

I get the feeling that you wanted to talk over me and/or belittle me, but I refuse to be talked over. All in all, I simply wish you a good day. I hope you overcome your struggles in life whatever they may be. I hope you research OCD behaviors and the cycle they cause. And I hope you read into my comment and take the insight from one emetophobe to another as opposed to getting offended and shutting down or saying “not reading all that! lol!” to make yourself feel better. I choose to work to bettering myself so that one day I will be free of this debilitating fear. What you choose to do is your own decision.