Emetophobia UK - David Kaneria

11/05/2026

Why are safety behaviours unhelpful:

When we are anxious about something, our anxiety changes how we act. Often leading to actions designed to:

• Check if a danger will or is currently happening.
• Prevent a danger.
• Avoid a danger.
• Prepare to reduce the impact of the danger if it was to happen.
• Reduce our anxiety about a danger.

For those with emetophobia, this ‘danger’ is often:

• Being sick.
• Seeing others be sick.
• Nausea.
• Food poisoning.
• Viruses.
• Feeling out of control.
• Feeling anxious.

These actions seem very helpful in the moment as it feels you are staying safe. These actions are actually called “safety behaviours”. However, often they actually provide little benefit to actually keeping you safe and only lead to you feeling much less safe in the long term. They only feed the emetophobia and cause you to get constant thoughts and fears about being sick, increase anxiety, cause unwanted mental pictures of sickness and is often the cause of the chronic nausea those with emetophobia feel.
When I work with clients, the first thing I help them realise is that if they stop all of their safety behaviours their emetophobia goes away.

Example safety behaviours:

1) Things done to verify danger and the chance of vomiting:
• Checking behaviour.
• Reassurance seeking.
• Body scanning for nausea
• Hypervigilance (scanning for danger).

2) Things done to avoid vomiting:
• Avoiding cues/reminders of vomiting.
• Avoiding physical sensations.
• Avoiding places and situations.
• Cognitive avoidance

3) Things done to prevent vomiting, nausea or anxiety:
• Preventative safety behaviours (e.g. Mints, anti-nausea meds, over cleaning, gloves etc).

4) And mental strategies:
• Worrying.
• Mental planning.
• Mental debate.
• Distraction.

Stop these and you can reach recovery

10/05/2026

06/05/2026

Emetophobia makes life hard. Every event that everyone else finds simple and carefree is a battle for you. Life doesn't need to be this way.

If you:
-Struggle with eating what you want.
-Find restaurants hard.
-Are always on edge and high alert
Stuck in your head.
-Constantly thinking today is the day you catch something.

Real help is available.

Visit my website at www.emetophobia.uk to find out more

05/05/2026

Nausea is often a side effect of our “fight or flight” system. When we are anxious, regardless of the cause, our body gets ready to either fight the danger or run away from the threat as fast as possible. Your body reacts as if you are in a life-threatening situation. All resources get taken away from less vital things like digestion and gets redirected to your muscles. Basically, your body presses the emergency stop button on your stomach
This instant stopping, paired with increased muscle tension and hormonal changes causes nausea as a side effect!
If you feel nauseous all of the time, it most likely means you are stuck in this fight and flight mode constantly. The main problem is that we can perceive this nausea as a sign of impending vomiting and therefore feel scared of it and see it as a danger. Which then only increases the fight and flight response and causes more anxiety and even more nausea. This creates a loop you can get trapped in.

If you are interested in in finding out how therapy can interrupt this process, reduce your nausea and help you finally overcome your emetophobia visit my website at www.emetophobia.uk

04/05/2026

"What if this time is different?" 🙄

If you live with emetophobia, you know that voice all too well. It’s the voice that makes you skip meals, avoid crowds, and constantly check how you feel. But here’s the truth: Your brain is lying to you to try and "protect" you, but it’s actually just keeping you afraid.

The 3 big lies:

1. That it’s definitely going to happen (even though you’ve been fine 100 times before).

2. That it will be "world-ending" (ignoring all the times you got through it before).

3. That you can't handle it (ignoring your own resilience and keeps you trapped in avoidance).

It’s time to stop listening to the whispers and start looking at the facts. Change your actions, and the fear will follow.

Tag someone who needs to hear this today ❤️and comment with the biggest lies your emetophobia tells you.

24/04/2026

What does it feel like to have emetophobia?

Often those with emetophobia feel friends and family don’t take their fear seriously. Hopefully this video can help explain to people why your emetophobia feels so scary all of the time and how you just need some compassion and understanding.

23/04/2026

If you are in the UK and looking for therapy for your emetophobia, I am a BABCP accredited CBT therapist. Have a look at my website for details on what therapy could do for you -> www.emetophobia.uk

Free no obligation consultation available.

22/04/2026

I’m an emetophobia therapist currently partnering with the Bia app. Bia, short for (pho)bia, is a dedicated tool for emetophobia recovery using ERP. I’m looking for one person to join me in a unique "test run."
I’m offering one person the chance to use the Bia app alongside free therapy sessions with me.
The Goal: We will be "co-pilots" in this. You’ll get the tools and the support for free, and in return, you’ll help me understand how this app works best in a clinical setting.

Requirements:
• Have emetophobia to the extent that you avoid reading words or looking at images.
• You are ready and motivated to try ERP.
• Over age of 18.
• Living in the UK.
• Willing to share your feedback on the process with myself.
• Be IT literate (as this will require you to use an app).

If this sounds like something you would be interested in, please follow my page and comment “Bia” bellow. Feel free to ask questions.

Because I can only accommodate one participant for this pilot at this time, I will be selecting a name at random from the comments in about one week’s time. If your name is chosen, we’ll schedule a brief consultation to ensure this program is the right clinical fit for your needs. If I (or you) don’t believe this is the best fit for your needs at this time, I will select another participant to ensure someone can fully benefit from this opportunity.

22/04/2026

Weekly Q&A. Drop any questions you have emetophobia in the comments below.

21/04/2026

If you see vomiting as the problem, the solution becomes to monitor, avoid, or prevent sickness. This only makes you phobia worse.

Instead, if you recognise that the real problem is your interpretation, then the solution then becomes to change the way you are thinking about sickness. This shift in perspective allows you to escape the emetophobia trap by allowing you to stop the constant battle against vomiting.

For more information on how to overcome emetophobia, visit my website: www.emetophobia.uk

20/04/2026

This weeks emetophobia goal is to reduce checking behaviour.

Checking behaviour is any action that you do to monitor for safety or to see if your fear is likely to occur.

Some example checking behaviours can include:
• Inspecting food: You may over inspect food by visually looking, cutting it up into small pieces, or checking its temperature etc. This can occur, before preparing food, during, or afterwards before or during eating.
• Checking expiration dates: You may excessively check expiration dates or looking for signs of mould or spoilage.
• Checking for cleanliness: You may check if places are clean such as restaurants or public restrooms, hospitals, plates or cutlery.
• Monitoring cooking methods: You may check how others prepare or handle food.
• Monitoring health news: Some people set alerts or check the news for outbreaks of illnesses or foodborne diseases.
• Checking for emergency exits and toilets: When in public you may check the location of exits or toilets in public places in case you need to leave or use them quickly.
• Mental checking: Reviewing things in your mind such as trying to remember all the foods you ate that day.

Checking behaviour is an attempt to monitor for danger to prevent or avoid the threat from occurring. Which sounds helpful. However, it typically only helps in the short term to make you feel more safe (when you were in fact already factually safe) but leads to an increased preoccupation and fear about vomiting.

Why it is important to stop checking:

Overcoming checking is 100% needed for recovery from ANY anxiety disorder. This is because when used excessively it always worsens anxiety over time.
The biggest problem is that checking increases your fixation on your fears, resulting in more intrusive thoughts and anxiety long term.

How we are going to work on this:

This week, I want you to try a small experiment. Have one day where you don’t do anything checking at all. Most people notice that when they stop checking, their anxiety slowly goes away as well. And most importantly, they realise that it has no actual effect on stopping them being sick.
Feel free to try it out longer than one day. The longer the better.

Post any questions or comments you have. Good luck for the week.