I’ve spoken with hundreds of people with phobia (mainly emetophobia and agoraphobia) and dozens of therapists who treat it. A major topic is setbacks, relapse, and lost progress. I’m writing today to say that there… Read more: Your Emetophobia Recovery Setback is a Good Thing, I Promise
William, February 15, 2024 Introducing custom exposure exercises. At Bia, our mission is to enhance the modern therapy experience to help you overcome phobia. We believe technology is an extension of therapy, not a replacement,… Read more: Custom Exposure Exercises
William, January 10, 2024 When I built Bia, I started using it every day. I spent 15 or so minutes using it in the morning, I used it on the bus on the way to… Read more: Recovery Pyramid
I’ve spoken with hundreds of people with phobia (mainly emetophobia and agoraphobia) and dozens of therapists who treat it. A major topic is setbacks, relapse, and lost progress. I’m writing today to say that there is no such thing as a setback in phobia recovery.
I don’t mean that there won’t be hard days. There will be hard days. I also don’t mean that there won’t be days where you go back to old habits, that will happen too. What I mean, is recovery is not linear, and a bad day or old habits do not set you backward in time. When we think of recovery we often think of a graph, like this.
In fact, this is the graph from Bia’s impact report, where we show that users report significant improvements during their time using Bia. I can tell you this with 100% confidence, no one, and I mean no one, recovers from phobia immediately, on their first try, without hard days or setbacks. It does not happen, just like someone learning a language doesn’t say the wrong thing from time to time, or someone learning a new instrument doesn’t occasionally play the wrong note. We use graphs because they are simple and easy, but it’s the wrong way to think about recovery. A much better visual is a pyramid.
In this visual, every single day, you add a stone to your pyramid. This includes good days but almost more importantly it includes bad days. Each bad day is an opportunity to process and learn. Most people with phobia are incredibly hard on themselves, and these “bad days” exist as a constant torture of guilt, shame, and regret, on top of the day to day suffering we experience. Part of the recovery process is to pause here, and give yourself some credit. Imagine someone else who was your age when your phobia started. They are scared, alone, suffering, they are confused. Would you put the same guilt, shame, and regret that you place on yourself on this person? You wouldn’t. And you shouldn’t to yourself.
When you fall back to old habits, that’s a stone in the pyramid. When you set a goal for yourself and you don’t reach it, that’s a stone in the pyramid. You try something new and it doesn’t go as expected, that’s a stone. Every day of life, in our careers, school, personal relationships, hobbies and more, we get stones to add to our pyramid.
When will the pyramid be done?
Never.
That doesn’t mean we have to suffer from phobia forever. Each time our pyramid gets bigger, we can see more of the world around us. Even after my recovery from emetophobia, I still get to add stones to my pyramid, and stand tall on the top and experience life through a lens that has been crafted by decades of days, good, but I think more importantly, the bad ones too.
I am extremely excited to announce today that Bia has partnered with the Center for Anxiety and Behavior Therapy, or CABT for short. They are the first organization in history, as far as I can find, that offers therapist continuing education units on the topic of emetophobia specifically. I was jumping out of my chair when I found their website and the resources they offered. They’ve formed The Emetophobia Institute, a practice offering workshops for individuals and parents, and training for clinicians. The Emetophobia Institute is run by Dr. David Yusko and Dara Lovitz, two people who understand emetophobia extremely well.
Dara is an emetophobic in recovery and was in fact a client of Dr. Yusko. They’ve combined their two unique perspectives of emetophobia into helpful resources for individuals, parents, and clinicians. They have a book together call Gag Reflections, which I recommend due to this unique and powerful duel perspective. Last year, I took Bia to them and I was happy to find their mission was the same as mine: To make emetophobia recovery easier and more accessible.
We’ve kicked off our partnership with some exciting work coming soon. First, providers signing up for Bia can get a discount to the CABT’s trainings. Bia’s provider portal combined with the expert instruction from The Emetophobia Institute mean that no clinician needs to be concerned or confused about treating emetophobia. Second, we’ve kicked off research to raise awareness about emetophobia and inform clinicians on the signs and proper treatment. Finally, we are developing a new clinician directory for providers to advertise their expertise in emetophobia, helping clients find therapists who know and understand emetophobia. Not to mention, their feedback and expertise continues to shape and improve the tools in Bia, helping individuals take recovery into their own hands at an affordable cost.
It’s always been extremely important to me that Bia was built correctly, safely, and with the partnership of experts. This partnership with CABT is solid confirmation of that mission, and I am so excited about the work to come. In 2025, I am absolutely confident that more people will learn about emetophobia, get help, and feel better, than ever before.
If you are suffering from emetophobia, there has never been a better time to start recovery. Get started in 5 minutes with Bia, or sign up for an affordable workshop with The Emetophobia Institute.
If you are a clinician, it’s important to understand emetophobia is one of the most common and debilitating specific phobias impacting almost 1 in 12 individuals. Most individuals with emetophobia go decades without treatment. Emetophobia treatment is often unique, in that it is not the same as other specific phobias and typically requires a slower, more incremental approach similar to OCD. Bia provides you an easy tool to assign ERP homework, with pre-made curated exposure hierarchies and guiderails that prevent over exposure and resulting drop-outs. The CABT provides you continuing education units on a disorder that is so common, that mentioning it on your website will likely result in a wait list of clients in need.
If you work in a school or in-patient clinic, Bia is a massively cost effective way to get your kids back in school and free from their phobia. Bia provides step-by-step incremental exposure with resources and training for parents and a dashboard with automatically charted progress.
Interested in using Bia but have questions? Please contact us anytime.
Introducing custom exposure exercises. At Bia, our mission is to enhance the modern therapy experience to help you overcome phobia. We believe technology is an extension of therapy, not a replacement, and with this latest feature we make practicing exposure and response prevention easier whether you are recovering on your own or with a therapist.
Here is how it works. Head over to the custom exposure page and with a few clips add content to your exposure activity. Content can be words, sentences, images, or videos. Bia will automatically break content into incremental steps.
For example, let’s say you enter three words into your custom exposure activity: Cat, Dog, Bird. Bia will generate an exposure activity with three phases. Phases will start slow, and ask you to engage with the content. Bia check’s in on your discomfort level and automatically adapts. Once you complete your exposure activity, you can see your discomfort over time, and repeat your practice over time and track your progress.
Or maybe there is particular video that you would like to practice exposure on. A movie scene, or a video you saw on social media. Provide that as a video and Bia will break the video down into easy to conquer incremental steps – starting with still images from the video, a blurry version, black and white, short clips, and eventually the full video.
Phobia is an ironic process, by leaning into it and sitting through discomfort now we reduce the discomfort we feel later. Research shows practice and repetition is key. We know exposure works, but it is hard. With Bia’s custom exposure exercises, things that cause you anxiety become opportunities for incremental practice.
If you are a therapist looking for a better way to help your client practice exposure, we are building this tool for you. With Bia, your clients get a guided, structured place to practice skills they are learning in therapy. You can quickly build personalized exposure activities and share with your client.
Everything you need to know about Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy. With sources.
What is Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy?
Exposure and Response Prevention therapy, or ERP for short, is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). It involves three primary parts:
Psychoeducation: You will learn about mental disorders, why we have them, and how treatments work. You will develop a plan for your ERP therapy and learn new skills and strategies to use.
Exposure: You will create a hierarchy, which is list of exposures ordered from easiest to hardest. You will start at the easiest exposure, which might be as simple as reading letters and words, and slowly progress along the hierarchy. You are in control of the order and pace of exposure, your therapist will guide you and help you make progress.
Response Prevention: Perhaps the most important part, you will avoid engaging in compulsions when facing the discomfort of your exposure hierarchy. This will include stopping safety behaviors. For example, you may be asked not to rub your hands together as a distraction, or you may be asked not to repeat a specific phrase in your head, while practicing exposure. By choosing to sit in discomfort you over time reduce the anxiety response.
Here are two major misconceptions cleared up. First, you will never be asked to do something actually dangerous. ERP is about addressing fear that is out of proportion with the actual danger, so at no point are you expected to enjoy your fear, or do something dangerous – the goal is only to return your fear response to the appropriate level. Second exposure is not the same as exposure therapy. If you’ve been faced to face your fear but didn’t ‘get better’ that’s because simple being exposed is not enough. Exposure is only one part of ERP. It becomes ‘therapy’ when you add in psychoeducation and response prevention.
Does it work?
Yes. ERP is clinically proven to treat OCD, phobia, and anxiety disorders. Studies show success across adults, children, teenagers, all around the world from mild to severe cases. Virtual ERP is shown to be just as effective as in person therapy.
Will I have to do (thing you don’t want to do)?
Many people do not start or consider ERP as a treatment option because, well, it’s quite directly the last thing on earth they want to do. Remember, ERP is an incremental process, where you build and move along your own hierarchy. You may never need to complete certain tasks, as ERP skills generalize (meaning practicing ERP for one phobia can even relieve you of another), but more likely you will find the that thing is no longer scary by the time you reach it in the hierarchy.
It sounds scary
ERP is about facing fear is a controlled, and incremental way so that when you face them in life you have already had practice. Ask yourself what is scarier: living your entire life with OCD/Phobia/Anxiety, or practicing exposure and response prevention therapy?
What if I move too fast?
Your therapists will help you adjust your rate of exposure. Growth, and therefore new types of discomfort are a sign of progress in ERP. When you face a new challenge, allow yourself to feel the discomfort as a part of the process.
What if I have a set back?
There is no recovery without setbacks. Like potentially moving too fast, accept this as a part of recovery and work with your therapist to adjust as needed.
I tried it once and it didn’t work for me
OCD and phobia have high co-morbidity with depression, which leads to higher drop out rates of therapy. Evidence suggests that multiple attempts are more likely to lead to relief.
Can it work with kids?
ERP is shown to be highly effective for kids and teenagers.
How do I get started?
Find a therapist near you who has experience with ERP.
When I built Bia, I started using it every day. I spent 15 or so minutes using it in the morning, I used it on the bus on the way to work, I used it while waiting in line at the bank. Things were finally clicking for me. I noticed myself sitting through vomit scenes in T.V shows without shutting my eyes. I noticed myself feeling full after a meal and not spiraling into thinking I had the flu. A positive cycle was forming where I was doing new things and feeling good, so doing even more new things was becoming easier and easier. I shared all this progress with my therapist. He asked me ‘Why do you think everything is working right now?’. This post is about my answer to that question.
I had attempted therapy for emetophobia multiple times, but never felt like I could fully conquer it until now. What was different? I had to compare the two versions of myself – me now vs me from 7 years ago. I realized that my recovery from emetophobia was only a little bit about vomiting and a lot about confidence and empathy for myself. I used to visualize recovery from emetophobia as a line. If the line goes up I am recovering, if it goes down I am feeling terrible. Obviously life is more complicated and as my phobia retreated from my life I started visualizing my recovery as a pyramid. Each stone in the pyramid as essential as the rest.
The Foundation: Practicing exposure and response prevention gave me the skills and confidence to tackle other problems in my life. I called my closest friends and I told them about my emetophobia – they had never known. I explained how I had wanted to go to the bars with them but always found an excuse not to go. I told my parents that phobia is why I quit playing soccer in high school, and I asked my wife if she remembered I made us leave our high school prom early (She didn’t). I felt connected and closer to the people around me for sharing my emetophobia. A foundation to my pyramid was formed.
Empathy for My Past Self: Thinking back I could so clearly remember all the times that phobia was behind the wheel of my actions. I was so frustrated with myself for letting phobia dominate me. I wanted to scream at myself. I pictured it, this little 8 year old boy – terrified to eat pizza or ride in the back of the car – and I’m just screaming at him. Releasing this guilt and understanding that boy was just doing the best he could was a massive part of my recovery. A weight was lifted, more stones were laid.
Emetophobia is Not My Identity: I honestly didn’t understand other people. Were they just pretending that the movies, concerts, and bars were fun? These places are cramped, full of germs and potential sick people. I wondered why in the world people enjoyed traveling. How do they get to the bathroom quickly when they needed to? I accepted all of this as my personality and had resigned from the possibility of enjoying these things. However, I started to realize these were decisions my phobia was making. I actually wondered, will I enjoy going to concerts now? My emetophobia didn’t like traveling, but I ordered a passport because I was going to find out if I liked traveling. I went to a concert. I met some friends downtown for drinks. I paid attention to discomfort that was specific to my phobia (dirty discomfort) or discomfort that was just me not enjoying the activity (clean discomfort). I learned that I love live music, I love riding the subway into town for lunch, and I don’t like bars because they are just loud and not my style. I was discovering my personality – and because I had connected with my friends and family about my emetophobia I could share my true personality with them. I finally felt like myself for the first time. Importantly, I was happy about this revelation instead of frustrated that it took so long to happen, because I had already forgiven that 8 year old kid. The pyramid was climbing higher and higher.
Work Life Balance: As you might know, life with emetophobia sucks. Nothing is fun, and mundane things like going grocery shopping are challenging and terrifying. I was a software engineer for work and it was easy to bury myself in work. It was safe, but I sat on the side lines while my friends went camping and traveled abroad. Again I wondered if this was just a personality thing – maybe I like working? Well, as I become more successful at telling my phobia to f*ck off, my life became bigger. My wife and I would catch the train downtown for a day of coffee, shopping, and lunch, and I could ride the train home with a full belly (and have zero anxiety). For the first time in my life going out after work was fun. I started to work a bit less and my perspective on life changed a bit. My career ambitions changed – this was scary. But closing my laptop at 5:00 pm meant I was free to do what I want and it became easier and easier.
Crafty Emetophobia: Through all of these life changes emetophobia tried every possible avenue to break back into my life. I had frequent dreams related to vomiting, I worried about a relapse, I wondered if I was just telling myself I was recovered but I actually wasn’t. Over the span of 20 years emetophobia had perfected its arguments – it was like a professional debate team ready to twist every point I made. Ken Goodman says in his book, The Emetophobia Manual, that beating emetophobia is a move by move game. He says when anxiety comes back, don’t fret and think ‘oh no’. Instead welcome it back with open arms. Say ‘Hi anxiety, nice to have you back. Are you ready for me to beat the sht out of you?’.
“Hi anxiety, nice to have you back. Are you ready for me to beat the sh*t out of you?”
I’ve accepted that either through chemical imbalance, physical neuron connections, or 20 years of habit, emetophobia (and OCD) will continue try to creep its way back. But I have my recovery pyramid foundation built, of which I stand on top and say ‘Come on anxiety, I dare you’.
Your Recovery Pyramid: Everyone’s recovery will look different. Bia is designed to help you build your recovery pyramid, and we add new content and activities each week to help expand the foundation you need to take your life back from phobia. Thank you for reading about my journey with emetophobia and I’m wishing you all the best in yours.
We recently reached a major milestone – 10,000 exposure exercises have been completed on Bia. In this post, we will celebrate the courage and growth of people around the world.
It takes immense courage to turn around and face a phobia. It’s often the last thing people imagine themselves doing. Facing a phobia may involve processing past trauma, guilt, and shame. Phobia thrives off feedback cycles in the brain that strengthen associations over time – exposure works to incrementally reverse these feedback cycles and turn them into positive ones. It is a process of trust. It is a process that involves intentionally practicing sitting in discomfort.
“People living with phobia are living every day in spite of their fear. This is why they are the most courageous people you will ever meet. But many people with phobia don’t see it that way, they are so hard on themselves and expect they will have to ‘tough it out’ to get better. Once they see they are already living extremely courageously, they can channel that energy toward recovery. I believe recovery starts with being kinder to yourself and it ends with confidence and freedom.”
– Willy, Founder and Fellow Emetophobic in Recovery
10,000 completed exposure activities is a testament to the courage of those living with emetophobia. Since we launched Bia, people have shown up every day to practice exposure, revisit difficult exercises, and overcome challenges. Research shows exposure is an effective treatment for phobia. We built Bia to help people start and follow through with exposure practice. With 10,000 exposure activities completed, we are just starting the journey of helping people take their life back from phobia.
Congratulations
To those that have started your recovery journey, congratulations. Oftentimes, getting started is the hardest step. To those considering starting your journey, the perfect moment to start is right now. You deserve a life free from phobia.
When I learned about emetophobia I was brought to tears. For the first time in my life I had an explanation for the suffering I felt every day. I felt understood. I read down a list of common issues faced by people who suffer from emetophobia and couldn’t believe that there were millions of people out there going through the exact same thing. One of the bullet points said “sufferers may avoid wearing certain colors or clothing that remind them of illness” and I was so massively relieved that I was not the only one. I was 17 and I had suffered from emetophobia for as long as I could remember. Now I finally had a name for it. This blog post is about my tie dye shirt and the 13 years of my life where I could not bring myself to put it on.
The Shirt
Highschool junior year homecoming dance had a simple theme – match your partner. My date (now my wife) and I chose to wear tie dye. We made tie dye pants, shirts, and socks, and we rubber banded our outfits together so our tie dye pattern would match up when we stood next to each other. Homecoming was a great time. However, that evening, I went lazily to sleep in my tie dye outfit and had recurring dreams of swirling tie dye color. I woke in the middle of the night covered in sweat and extremely nauseous. I didn’t vomit, but I paced in my room for what felt like hours in the middle of the night until this wave of panic passed. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was suffering from OCD and emetophobia.
Intrusive thoughts and images flooded my mind so strongly that I forgot where I was. I couldn’t take my mind off of tie dye or vomiting and the two ideas became violently intertwined in my mind. Eventually this wave of panic died off. I took off my tie dye outfit and went back to bed. In the morning, I could not stand to even look at my tie dye outfit. I stuffed the shirt deep in a corner of my closet. I could not bring myself to look at it, or even think of it. Tie dye was now a direct link to nausea and fear. Just like that phobia had another hook.
The Hurdle
Two and a half years later I cleaned out my closet while packing for college and rediscovered my tie-dye shirt. I felt uneasy just holding the shirt, but it also represented a fun memory of that homecoming dance. I put it on, and shortly after I was sweating and nauseas. Now I was convinced the shirt would make me sick. I didn’t think the shirt was magic or cursed. I knew full well this was a mental hurdle, an association I had invented and continued to maintain, but knowing the thought was irrational did not help me conquer it. I also knew by taking it off I was giving more power to this idea that the shirt would make me sick, I was raising the hurdle each time I gave up. I stuffed the shirt into a keepsake box. I couldn’t wear it but I also couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.
Ready
9 years later I was making a list with my therapist of things I avoided and rituals I performed as a part of my emetophobia. I carried a plastic bag with me almost everywhere I went, I had mints stashed in my jackets, backpack, and bedside table, I repeated ‘safe’ phrases in my head hundreds of times a day. Each of these things were meant to protect me from my fear but they actually propped it up. I slowly tore down these habits and replaced them with positive ones. It was time. I knew it was time to wear the shirt. This time, I was ready for the mental hurdle. I told myself, I will throw up when I wear this shirt. I left no room for what if, no room for that little anxiety voice to creep in. I was dancing like everyone was watching. I wore the shirt to bed ready to vomit. I woke up with a good night’s sleep.
A Symbol of Growth
The shirt is now in my regular sleeping shirt rotation. It brings me joy to grab it and wear it. Phobia has such a powerful and cruel way of taking hold of small things in our lives. This shirt represents one of the cases where phobia had won the battle, but I ultimately won the war.
Exposure is hard. It’s also the most effective treatment for emetophobia that we know of. Bia’s mission is to lower the barrier to starting exposure and help you follow through. We do this with our interactive, guided exposure activities. You can use Bia from your phone, tablet, or computer, in short sessions where ever you are comfortable.
How Does Exposure Work?
Exposure is just like practicing a musical instrument before playing on stage, except we are practicing experiencing discomfort so that when it comes in real life we are prepared with techniques and tools to handle it. Exposure works using a hierarchy of triggers, an ordered list of words, images, videos, and activities that you move through at your own pace. As you conquer each step in your hierarchy, you reduce sensitization, remove bad habits, re-wire the brain, and develop confidence and skills that apply to all aspects of life. Exposure is often paired with behavioral therapy and other insights. We like to visualize recovery as a pyramid, exposure it one part of the pyramid, but so are relationships, professional, and lifestyle changes. Exposure is proven to be effective at treating emetophobia, you control the pace and order of exposure, and vomiting is never required.
Exposure is Hard
If you’ve tried or considered exposure, you know it is hard. It takes immense courage for someone with phobia to face their fear. Am I doing exposure correctly? Can I do exposure too fast? Can exposure make it worse? These are all common concerns that prevent people from seeking therapy. Bia completely solves these concerns with Guided Exposure.
What is Guided Exposure?
Guided Exposure adapts to your input and automatically adjusts exercise to help you practice exposure at a pace you are comfortable with. If your discomfort goes higher than the limit you set, Bia wont show you any new content. If your discomfort spikes from a specific piece of content, Bia will present techniques to help you process and retry. If your discomfort remains flat over a long period of time, Bia will switch up the activity to help keep you engaged and check for safety behaviors. Essentially, guided exposure is the first and only tool that ensures your exposure sessions follow a structured, step-by-step approach.
How does it work?
Personalized
When you create your personalized journey with Bia, you set your discomfort start, goal, and limit. Your discomfort start is what your phobia makes you feel now. Your discomfort goal is what you imagine you would feel if you did not have any phobia. Your discomfort limit is what you are willing to experience as a part of practicing with Bia. These values act as guide rails, creating an exposure experience that is tailored to exactly what you need.
Clean and Dirty Discomfort
Bia uses the concept of clean and dirty discomfort. Clean discomfort is what anyone would experience when sick. Dirty discomfort is what our anxiety and phobia adds on top. You may have heard people say “No one likes being sick”. They are referring to clean discomfort, and may have no idea of the dirty discomfort you are experiencing. Bia works to remove dirty discomfort from your life completely, by helping you to accept the clean. Can you imagine what your life would be like with only clean discomfort?
The Exposure Curve
The goal of exposure is to experience dirty discomfort and practice techniques to process it, instead of avoiding it or relying on safety behaviors. By processing dirty discomfort, we will turn it into clean discomfort, discomfort that anyone would feel doing this activity. Bia will guide you along the curve and always slow down if your discomfort goes above your limit
Your Journey
Your journey with Bia is a set of milestones. Each milestone is broken down into exercises, and each exercise is broken into phases. You control the order of the milestones and which exercises you work on. There are never any tricks, traps, or surprises. Guided exposure automatically walks you through your journey, one step at a time, slowing down when needed. If a single phase of a single exercise is challenging, Bia will help you slow down and conquer it. Every challenge is now an opportunity.
Using Bia with a Therapist
If you have experience with exposure, or are using Bia in live sessions with a therapist, guided exposure can be turned off. When off, Bia will still pause activities if your discomfort crosses your limit, but staying engaged and repeating challenging content will be up to you.
Bia’s guided exposure ensures you don’t move too quickly in exposure, stay with content until you conquer it, and teaches you skills to apply in life. We know everyones phobia is different, that’s why guided exposure is combined with custom goals, limits, hierarchies, practice frequencies, unique daily lesson plans, and more, to make Bia a tool that adapts to your needs.
Getting Started
If you have never tried exposure before, Bia is a great starting point to see if it is for you. If you have tried exposure unsuccessfully, Bia can be a way to build good habits in short sessions. If you are in therapy, Bia provides a curated library of hundreds of words, sentences, audio clips, images, videos, and activities to ensure you fully overcome all aspects of your phobia.
It takes immense courage to face your phobia. Bia is designed to make practicing discomfort as easy as possible. You deserve a life free from phobia.
Thank you
I built Bia on the weekends for over 4 years as I went through several rounds of therapy for my lifelong emetophobia. Building Bia became my therapy, a way for me to learn about my phobia and focus on recovery. Bia transformed into a place where I could monitor my progress and visualize my growth. I started using Bia every morning, and I felt myself taking my life back from phobia. I knew it had potential to help others. Now Bia is used by people all over the world to take their life back from phobia one step at a time. I am happy to share I have recovered from emetophobia, and I believe you can too.
Can you burp? Many people with emetophobia cannot.
Retrograde Cricopharyngeal Dysfunction (R-CPD), also called no-burp syndrome, was first published about in 2019 [1]. The cricopharyngeus muscle sits at the top of the esophagus and normally relaxes for eating and when under gas pressure. However for some this muscle fails to relax when under gas pressure causing pain, bloating, painful hiccups and more.
R-CPD can be successfully treated[2] by applying muscle relaxing medication to the cricopharyngeal muscle.
We don’t know if there is a link between R-CPD and emetophobia. Could the muscle disorder cause nausea and reduce burping which leads to emetophobia? Could emetophobia cause people to suppress the natural muscle movements in the throat leading to R-CPD?
R-CPD is not to be confused with globus pharyngeus which is the feeling of a lump in the throat.
Tightness in the throat muscles is one example of many feedback loops of phobia[3]. Physical discomfort triggers anxiety which increases physical discomfort. Part of phobia recovery is identifying and breaking these feedback loops.
In this blog post, learn how Bia’s design evolved over time and how input from fellow users shaped what it looks like today.
Conquer Emetophobia. Bia started out as Conquer Emetophobia, a static website with simple exposure content for emetophobia. The site explained how the avoidance cycle causes phobia and why exposure works to unlearn phobia, then provided a small amount of content in the form of letters, words, sentences, and images. I personally used this version for months during my first attempt at exposure therapy. I would visit each level in order on my phone or computer and practiced moving through the content until the content no longer triggered an anxiety response. The site was clear, easy to use, although not very pretty and had no engagement or personalization. All of the work of ensuring a positive exposure session was put onto me as the user, as the site offered not much more than a catalog of exposure content. As I shared this with others also embarking on their emetophobia recovery people asked for specific types of content, new levels, better support for mobile devices, but most importantly, a way to track their progress over time.
The Journey. Exposure is about incrementally taking your life back from phobia by intentionally seeking discomfort. It’s a process built on trust – trust that by going through discomfort now you relieve yourself of the discomfort of your phobia later. The journey re-design was intended to visualize this trust. A full journey of 60 exercises was broken into 8 milestones, and each step recorded your progress. Having a way to visualize progress through the journey and see yourself improving over time was a massive benefit. All of a sudden, there was a clear path to overcoming phobia. Trusting the process became easier. A week of exposure showed real progress which made it easier to keep practicing exposure the next week.
Partnering with Professionals. If it’s not clear from the first two screenshots, my personal design taste is not great. I had a vision, and the underlying content was there, but the UX on top was missing. I partnered with the digital design firm Tubik. We worked together through every step of the process, starting with reviewing my current site, designing the UX flow, aligning on a color scheme, and creating custom illustrations. I was extremely happy with the end result and I look forward to working with Tubik on more Bia features in the future.
The new design condensed exercises and takes much less vertical space. Custom illustrations for different exercise and lesson types make the site easier to navigate, and progress is easy to grasp at a glance. The mobile view collapses a milestone in a single horizontally scrolling view, with an expandable footer to help jump to each milestone.
Thank you for reading. I’m always interested in your stories and feedback, please contact us anytime. Also, check out this related blog post about the history of Bia.
