I suffered from emetophobia for 27 years. For those of you out there with it, I see you. You are not alone.

For the last 4 years I’ve made it my mission to make emetophobia recovery easier and more accessible. One of the greatest parts of this journey has been finding and partnering with great people on the same mission.

David Kaneria is a UK CBT therapist who specializes in the treatment of emetophobia, and runs emetophobia.uk. He is currently accepting new clients, and has a compassionate and thoughtful approach to this debilitating phobia.

I’m excited to share that David is available as a provider in Bia’s provider directory. If you are ready for a therapist, Bia can connect you to one automatically, or you can browse our growing directory of verified, specialized therapists like David. If you are not ready for a therapist right now, you can start Bia entirely on your own, as many of our users have done and made great progress.

If you choose to work with David or another therapist through Bia, they can support your journey by adjusting your hierarchy, building you personalized exercises, and monitoring your progress. This added layer of insight and accountability sets you up for recovery that is intentional and effective. Recovery is like learning a new skill, and we believe that making practice easier to do, easier to remember, and easier to share, helps you take your life back from phobia. Bia helps fill the gaps in between your therapy sessions, ensuring you get the most of your time in session while getting more consistent and effective practice.

Curious about David’s approach to emetophobia? We asked him about it.

David, can you tell me how you got started treating emetophobia?

My interest in treating emetophobia began with my own experiences. Not of having Emetophobia but instead growing up within eating disorder which meant that I viewed vomiting in a very different light, as something almost positive. Thankfully, I fully recovered.

But like so many, I was unaware that Emetophobia even existed. It was during my therapy training that I first heard about Emetophobia, and I was immediately fascinated as it was the opposite of how growing up, I viewed throwing up. Sadly, the training we got on Emetophobia was not good enough. It was just a couple of slides, an article and a warning that treating Emetophobia was challenging, best left until I was fully qualified.

I did not like that advice and started to actively seek out clients with Emetophobia, determined to learn as much as I could. The more I learned, the more passionate I became about it. This eventually led me to write a textbook, aiming to teaching other therapists and setting up a private practice to exclusively treat Emetophobia.

The thing that made me want to treat it was witnessing and hearing the personal stories of how Emetophobia was stopping people really living. It was infiltrating every aspect of their lives, leaving them scared, hopeless and constantly on edge. During my research and clinical practice, I discovered that Emetophobia can easily and successfully be treated. I loved helping people finally reclaim their lives overcome this fear.

Can you share about your approach? What should people expect in their first few sessions?

My approach is based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which is seen as the gold standard in therapies for emetophobia as it has been the only therapy which has been problem to work in clinical trials.

The first few sessions are about understanding your thought processes about being sick, nauseous or out of control and exploring the ways your behaviours, which are designed to keep you safe might be keeping the therapy going. This will be an interactive process and by the end you will have tailored therapy diagram which shows you what is causing your emetophobia and the direction needed to break you out of it.

Sessions with myself are designed to be as stress free as possible. They usually start with a chat about any triggers or wins you have had that week. Then we focus on a specific topic for the week. What can be about figuring out the cause of your emetophobia, working on a trigger, stopping a safety behaviour, helping you plan on how to face something with more confidence or using a specific therapy tool that was been selected to help you based on your specific issues.  

How does Bia fit into your approach?

One of the biggest factors that keeps any phobia going is avoidance. We typically avoid things for two reasons. The first reason is that we think something bad is going to happen if we face our fears, and secondly, we tell ourselves can’t cope with the anxiety of that situation or if our fears were to happen. The more we avoid, the more we become afraid and the less we believe we can cope. This often becomes a downward spiral and a self-fulling prophesy. Prompting more avoidance. The Bia app is designed to help you overcome this avoidance in a step-by-step approach to build confidence. This pairs up with what we will be doing in sessions, and the app gives you actionable daily tasks to move you through therapy at a faster speed.

If someone is nervous about starting therapy, what should they know?

Therapy can feel scary. Often people fear it will not work, or worse yet, make their phobia worse. Some of you may have had bad experience with therapists or found therapy not effective in the past. However, when you have a therapist who specialises in this phobia, you have nothing to fear. Sessions are easier than you can imagine and in no time you will feel comfortable and may even feel excited for your sessions, knowing that each one brings you that step closer to freedom of your Emetophobia.

I offer a no commitment, no pressure, free 15-minute call to answer your questions about what therapy can do for you.

David and I both strongly believe that emetophobia recovery is possible, and that you deserve it. If you’ve been wondering about taking the first step toward recovery, consider booking a free 15 minute consultation with David to learn more. Make today the first day of your recovery.