I don't really know how to begin this other than with the words 'I faced one of my biggest fears and I bloody well survived'. Living with a fear for an eleven years and having it pretty much rule your life for the past four, it can be become quite a draining and annoying thing to have to carry round. There have been many occasions where I have told myself that if I was ever to be faced with my most feared situation, then  I don't know if I could possibly stay on this earth, that I would have no other option than to end it all, because the fear was so crazily intense, I could see no other option than to end it all. 

Flash forward to this moment in time and I can proudly say I faced my fear and I survived. I didn't have to end it all. I didn't have to get off the earth. I stayed. I survived it. I made it through. It was unpleasant and scary, but I did it and I feel so unbelievably proud of myself. 

But I also feel a little strange. I don't know. I almost feel all kinds of emotions. Like I feel scared still (which is perfectly normal when you've faced a big fear), I also feel on edge and paranoid, but then I feel relieved and overwhelmed in someway to have gone through what I did.

If you didn't know, then this fear I have been carrying around with me is known as emetophobia. A fear I have mentioned plenty of times on this blog before, but never did I quite realise I would talk about it from this side of things.

I never could quite imagine myself throwing up. I mean from an emetophobia point of view it's like the worst thing ever. But now I have thrown up for the first time in 11 years, I feel almost like why was I so scared in the first place? Sure it's pretty grim and wouldn't be anyone's first choice of things to spend their evening doing. But it's not as bad I ever could imagined it to be and honestly it made me feel so much better. 

For me it was the part before and after that has been the most difficult to deal with. Before I was sick,  it was like my body was preparing me to face my most feared situation ever. It was like it was giving me a warning and gearing my body up. I felt all the usual flight and fight symptoms you would experience with a panic attack, but I just treated them as my usual anxiety. 

But this was different. This was way out of my control. I have been in control of my panic and know that I call the shots with that one, so I couldn't quite understand where this out of control experience was coming from until my boyfriend and I came down with the same bug in a matter of twelve hours. Then things started to add up more. 

I didn't necessarily fear the sick itself afterwards. And this had been something I had worked out before around sometime last year. Another traumatic experience in my life had potentially created this fear of sick. This had helped me a lot for to change my terminology towards 'sick' and treat it as something that wasn't harmful. Because I definitely know that now even more having gone through it. 

It happens to make you feel better. 

But I'm still having a hard time dealing with the aftermath. I feel all kinds of emotions and even have been experiencing a little bit of post traumatic stress disorder symptoms, which honestly did not come as a shock to me when you think about it. I've just faced a situation I've been fearing for over a decade. It's no wonder I've reacted the way I have and my emotions are all over the place. It's been hard to get my mind and body round the whole thing. It's been just crazy!

That's mainly why I wanted to write this post. Because I needed to get my thoughts of my head and the situation out in front of me. To realise my achievements the past week and praise myself for getting through it. To give myself the opportunity to document this amazing moment in my mental health recovery and learn from it. Because I most definitely have learnt a lot from facing my fear.

Now it's just confirmed for me more and more than it's not the actual sick I'm fearing myself. It's the aftermath. It's how I will be afterwards. It's how I deal with any anxiety after, how my eating habits will be (something I've not really touched on my blog, but eating plays a big part in my mental health), if I'll never get better or if anyone else will get ill. It's all these things that have been a struggle for me the past few days.

As of right now I'm trying to deal with facing my fears and the trauma, trying to get my eating back to normal, not picking it up from anybody else because I swear everyone I know and see is coming down with it, looking after myself and upping my self care to the max.

That's also the reason why I have been quiet on my blog the past week. I couldn't even open it up until yesterday. It made me feel sick. But now I'm working on allowing this feeling to pass and getting back on it. And it's also the reason I'm not going to be doing #blogmas anymore. I'm gutted. I had so much planned and was excited for it. But I just don't have the time now nor do I have any motivation. 

I just need to spend the time focusing on me. Any posts I had pre-written I am going to try get up over the next few weeks, so there will be hopefully some content going up very soon for you all. But I just wanted to let everyone know how things are for me right now and the reason behind my absence. 

I really hope you're all well. I send my best wishes always.

Lauren x

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