"Emetophobia, IBS and health anxiety"

I had ten face-to-face sessions from October 2018 to January 2019.

The first step for my treatment was to contact Hounslow IAPTS and after filling out a form initially, I was contacted by a very friendly person who call Joe who conducted a triage assessment of my anxiety and gave me the choice of CBT or group session therapy - I decided to go for CBT.

My first session consisted of meeting Jaqueline, who is a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist Trainee. The start of treatment involved identifying and understanding the nature of my anxiety, and what fuels the anxiety. We developed a flower diagram which mapped out how the anxiety is maintained and what can be done to break the vicious cycle. We then went over numerous techniques, which comprised of expanding techniques that I have tried in the past, such as the role distractions play in anxiety and how anything can be used as a distraction by focusing on finer details. 

Working with Jaqueline, we both agreed that rationalising the concerns were the best way to alleviate the anxiety as a whole in the long run. We crafted two theories, theory A which regarded how there is definitely something physically wrong with me, I have food poisoning and I will not be OK; the other theory was Theory B which was about rationalising these concerns and realising that they are anxiety episodes and just that. During the process of looking at these two theories, we moved on from focusing on emetophobia to the greater underlying problem which fuelled this phobia, and that was health anxiety or the fear of being unwell. We then both agreed that if more evidence for Theory B is built, then there will be more rationalising of my concerns which will lead to a decrease of my overall anxiety levels, which meant that experiments would be conducted.

These experiments consisted of us agreeing on a hypothesis as to what will happen if a safety behaviour was taken away, with the intention of demonstrating that safety behaviours are not necessary and do more harm than good. My main safety behaviours were carrying a sick bag, mints and consuming heartburn medicine (Gaviscon) which provided short term relief, but in turn prolonged my anxiety in the long term.  At the time, I had a lot of special events on, which afforded me with a perfect opportunity to conduct these experiments by simply going to the particular event with fewer safety behaviours on me. After a successful experiment (so in other words, my hypothesis being proven wrong), an additional experiment would then be carried out which resulted in even fewer safety behaviours. After having success with these experiments, it was clear that safety behaviours were one of the biggest logs on the fire of my anxiety.

In the final session, I was set up with a "Blueprint for the Future" which was an action plan on how to sustain the progress that has been made. This session was extremely useful, since it is a fact that I could not be in CBT for the rest of my life so it was important to ensure that the steps taken to lower my anxiety are maintained. 

Overall, I was extremely happy with this service and I would recommend ANYONE who is experiencing anxiety or any other mental health issues, to use the IAPT service. I am so grateful for all of the help that I have received, and the fact that it a service on the NHS is amazing. My therapist was extremely professional, I was treated like a human and respect, so once again, thank you for all of your help. I hope my story inspires people to seek professional help if they have run into an anxiety roadblock in their life, seeking is a great investment for the future and I am glad such a service exists.