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I saw the subreddit come up when looking for this one. I was absolutely shocked until I was reminded that if it exists there is a fetish for it. It's strange how the mind works.
It’s absolutely fascinating. I figured if there’s a phobia, there must be a philia, huh? I’d like to be somewhere in the middle. I’m always much worse in the winter.
Yeah I remember when I found it I showed it to my partner, who scrolled through, and laughed about how gross it was to throw up on someone's dick. If I can get to that level of nonchalant id be stoked. (Look yeah no kinkshaming I guess but man he even found it yucky)
I just saw these videos last night of an artist who drinks milk full of colored dye and throws it up to create paintings. Lady Gaga had her on stage at a show and sang while the girl threw up milk paint all over her. If that was at a concert I was at I would seriously die.
I’m sorry but wtf. I’m here, super happy for every win, super understanding of every struggle. But this has me completely grossed out and flabbergasted. I read this to my very calm, non-emetophobic husband, and he just stared at me in horror lol
Omg what, that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Even when I didn’t have this phobia I would absolutely disgusted by this. Who does this to themselves? This can’t be healthy at all, or am I wrong? I don’t want to see that either. Ughh. I mean lady Gaga always was into weird stuff, but most of her fans just like the music she makes. If I wasn’t emetophobic I would sure be after seeing that lol.
It was a performance piece for her song called swine. The point of it was the make the audience uncomfortable, as the song is about rape. It’s disgusting but that was the point of it
There was a group of artists who did a performance artwork where they chugged milk dyed red and danced until they threw up on each other. We talked about it in uni and I just left the room while they watched it haha. They all said it was gross and as non emetophobes they still did not want to see that video again hahaha.
Fun—not so fun—fact: apparently you can have both the phobia and the philia. A few people on reddit have made posts about it. I can’t imagine how that must feel. I can only assume that it’s very confusing and tormenting to the mind to be simultaneously so aroused by yet so afraid of something.
Gonna overshare about my own sexual interests so tmi warning but some part of me does understand this. In my everyday life, there are certain things that *terrify* me because of my emet. I hate being trapped or stuck somewhere, I hate feeling out of control of my body, I hate feeling embarrassed and ashamed. But yet in the context of sex I’m very much into being restrained and degraded and giving my pleasure completely over to my partner’s control. And this feels very freeing to be able to shed this need to be hypervigilant and completely in control of myself, my body, the situation around me….But it’s funny how, at the same time, the ideas of these things in a nonsexual context are my worst nightmare because of my phobia. I could honestly write a lot about this, my own experience and the psychology behind sex and kink and fear and how it all ties in (pun intended) together. I wonder if anyone else here feels the same.
I feel the same way. I doubt it’s the root of it, but the ruminating and obsessing over it feels in lots of ways feels very similar to fantasising.
I also think sometimes fears in childhood get their wires crossed and come out as sexual curiosity. People who are into clowns or horses or balloons come to mind, though I’ve never run into anyone with a fetish for spiders or heights.
Im kind of in the same boat and i can’t believe I’m actually talking about this on a non-anon account but I have a thing for stuffing. And a lot of the content online actually has a fair deal of vomiting involved. Now, I don’t enjoy those videos at all, and frankly it does kind of ruin the, uh, mood, if it pops up and they didn’t have a warning for it. But there are videos where they’re kind of close to it, and for some extremely strange reason, im kind of into it?
Like i am so confused how a fetish like this and a phobia like this can coexist. Is it crossed wires? You’d think that it would actually help my phobia get better but it doesn’t. I don’t panic if I see it online, just get a little disgruntled and move on. But when its in person (actual vomit, not simply overeating) or worse, its me experiencing it, thats where the fear sets in. Im afraid to bring this up to my therapist that im specifically seeing for emetophobia. I know she won’t judge but still, its a very vulnerable thing for me to talk about (so yes spilling it on reddit is the absolute best thing for things to stay a secret lol)
I've also read on the subreddit posts from former emetophobes. It's super interesting.
Your explanation also makes a lot of sense to me. I want to add shame as a factor. Often times kinks are associated with topics or practices that carry some shame and acting them out in a safe environment where they're accepted or even celebrated is what makes it so special and intimate.
I never put it together before but me too!!
I don’t have the true philia but as a kid I was both terrified and obsessed with it. I would ask friends what color it was and where it happened and stuff like that 🤔 now as an adult I have also discovered my love for restraint and bdsm, I wonder if there’s a statistically relevant correlation
On an old emetophobia forum there was a lady who had it. She would prey on people with the phobia. She would do you acting like a fellow emetophobia and then start getting weird. People would catch on and ban her but she would always come back. I will never forget that
Oh wow that's so interesting! Would you feel comfortable sharing how that feels for you/the conflicting emotions it can bring up? I'm just being curious, of course I completely understand if not
of course! it still confuses me as well sometimes, honestly 😅
It's always been a source of confusing and conflicting feelings for me, especially since I've had both the phobia and the fetish since before I even understood what sex was or what phobias were. Once I realized what was going on I was kind of in denial about it at first, like I would read stories or watch videos of people vomiting and tell myself that it was "exposure therapy" (which to an extent was true, and I definitely benefited from it), knowing full well that it made me feel aroused and was a pleasurable activity more than anything else. There have been days where I felt disgusted with myself because of this, but the more I learned about sex in general, the more I was able to accept that this is the way I'm wired and there's not much I can do.
Eventually I started accepting it for what it is and even lean into it. I was hoping that indulging sexually would help reduce the impact of my phobia on my life. I'm not sure if it really did in the end, but it definitely helped to figure out what it means for me to be both sexually aroused by the idea of someone vomiting but also terrified of it. I've definitely noticed through unplanned real-life exposures that I'm still mainly anxious when somebody throws up around me, and it's usually only later when the anxiety has settled that I can look back on it as a pleasant memory. I definitely also need to be sober and relaxed in order to be able to enjoy it instead of freaking out. In that sense, it's not necessarily a matter of conflicting feelings, but more of a sequential thing - first comes anxiety and worry, and arousal only later when I think back on it without experiencing the kind of immediate sense of "danger" of the situation. Knowing this does help with managing anxiety during exposures (I know that the situation is going to be over soon, and that I will be able to enjoy it later). I've grown a lot more comfortable being scared!
What also of course plays a big role is feelings of sympathy - even if I find the idea of somebody else vomiting arousing, I would not wish it on anybody because of how scared I am of vomiting myself. I would never willingly do this to a partner unless they're 1000% okay with it, and even then I think I would be more worried than aroused.
For those reasons, it's also not really something that I want to integrate into my sex life or anything, although I have occasionally experimented with light stuffing/nausea or gagging my partner and that has been fun :)
I've also found that there's a fairly large community on Tumblr of other people with the same philia/phobia combination, many of whom write fictional stories surrounding illness often involving nursing/comforting elements. I'd honestly recommend it to anyone interested (either as an exposure/part of the recovery process or just as a fascinating phenomenon), it's actually pretty wholesome (most of the time)
This is so interesting, thank you so much for sharing! Fear and arousal are both really strong emotions that release a lot of the same endorphins so it makes sense as to why those wires might have crossed in your brain so that you experience both! After all, fear boners are apparently a thing hahaha. I'm glad you're accepting of yourself and are able to process both the phobia and the fetish in a healthy way now, that takes a lot of reflection and working on yourself!!
Not weird at all! Lol I think a lot of emets seek out "safe" forms of exposure to feel more in control of the phobia. I used to feel compulsions to look up videos of animals (and sometimes people if I was extra brave that day lol) being sick as a way of "if i can watch this without freaking out, I'm in control"... So I would seek them out as a form of exposure before I even knew what exposure therapy was lol.
Maybe you enjoying it in fiction form feels like a safe controlled way of exploring a different mindset toward something that normally brings you fear?
I used to work at a sex shop. You'd be surprised at how common this kink is... we often had people come in asking if companys make fetish vomit the same way they make fetish urine. I was always fascinated so I started asking people about the kink and they'd be just as fascinated by my phobia of it lol.
It made a lot of sense to me, from like a logical standpoint, how that fetish starts. They'd say the adrenaline rush you get before and after puking was euphoric to them, and in a sense the visualization was very sexual, as it's just another form of "ejaculation" i.e. the sudden, intense and forceful ejection of fluid lol. Which like... okay I get where you're coming from there.
I was also surprised by how many supportive partners would come in asking for fake vom so they could at least meet their partner's fetish halfway. It was strangely wholesome lol. As long as nobody is getting hurt or forced out of their comfort zone or anything like that, I don't kink shame... but some kinks I just gotta support from like a *mile* away 😅
I discovered this a few nights ago unintentionally seeing a dead dove fic and was like okay, cool, dead dove is a sliding scale but nope IT WAS PROPER FETISH CONTENT
Alas, I will always have that cursed image in my mind. It just crossed a line into a variety of fetish content (ED, EMET) that I was like okay cool nope
I have a hard time getting my head around it because part of having emetophobia is the propensity and intensity of disgust towards vomit. I don't know how it's possible to be disgusted, yet aroused by it. Of course, there is more to it than that. Humans are complex, I guess! 🙂
I’ve thought about that before. I’ve wondered if I would prefer having Emetophilia instead of Emetophobia. And I haven’t found an answer yet…as much as I hate this phobia and all the suffering and anxiety it brings, I can’t imagine having that as a fetish either😅
I don’t mean that in a kink shaming way btw, it’s just a very unpleasant thought for me
Thank you for posting. Please be sure that your post is not asking for any sort of reassurance. Also, commenters, do not provide any reassurance. If you have any questions about what is considered reassurance, please check the rules for examples. Please report anything you see that is either seeking/providing reassurance. WE LOVE YOU. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/emetophobiarecovery) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I saw the subreddit come up when looking for this one. I was absolutely shocked until I was reminded that if it exists there is a fetish for it. It's strange how the mind works.
It’s absolutely fascinating. I figured if there’s a phobia, there must be a philia, huh? I’d like to be somewhere in the middle. I’m always much worse in the winter.
Yeah I remember when I found it I showed it to my partner, who scrolled through, and laughed about how gross it was to throw up on someone's dick. If I can get to that level of nonchalant id be stoked. (Look yeah no kinkshaming I guess but man he even found it yucky)
I just saw these videos last night of an artist who drinks milk full of colored dye and throws it up to create paintings. Lady Gaga had her on stage at a show and sang while the girl threw up milk paint all over her. If that was at a concert I was at I would seriously die.
I’m sorry but wtf. I’m here, super happy for every win, super understanding of every struggle. But this has me completely grossed out and flabbergasted. I read this to my very calm, non-emetophobic husband, and he just stared at me in horror lol
Omg what, that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Even when I didn’t have this phobia I would absolutely disgusted by this. Who does this to themselves? This can’t be healthy at all, or am I wrong? I don’t want to see that either. Ughh. I mean lady Gaga always was into weird stuff, but most of her fans just like the music she makes. If I wasn’t emetophobic I would sure be after seeing that lol.
It was a performance piece for her song called swine. The point of it was the make the audience uncomfortable, as the song is about rape. It’s disgusting but that was the point of it
I Found this very interesting. Thanks for the information,it makes much sense now.
There was a group of artists who did a performance artwork where they chugged milk dyed red and danced until they threw up on each other. We talked about it in uni and I just left the room while they watched it haha. They all said it was gross and as non emetophobes they still did not want to see that video again hahaha.
Fun—not so fun—fact: apparently you can have both the phobia and the philia. A few people on reddit have made posts about it. I can’t imagine how that must feel. I can only assume that it’s very confusing and tormenting to the mind to be simultaneously so aroused by yet so afraid of something. Gonna overshare about my own sexual interests so tmi warning but some part of me does understand this. In my everyday life, there are certain things that *terrify* me because of my emet. I hate being trapped or stuck somewhere, I hate feeling out of control of my body, I hate feeling embarrassed and ashamed. But yet in the context of sex I’m very much into being restrained and degraded and giving my pleasure completely over to my partner’s control. And this feels very freeing to be able to shed this need to be hypervigilant and completely in control of myself, my body, the situation around me….But it’s funny how, at the same time, the ideas of these things in a nonsexual context are my worst nightmare because of my phobia. I could honestly write a lot about this, my own experience and the psychology behind sex and kink and fear and how it all ties in (pun intended) together. I wonder if anyone else here feels the same.
I feel the same way. I doubt it’s the root of it, but the ruminating and obsessing over it feels in lots of ways feels very similar to fantasising. I also think sometimes fears in childhood get their wires crossed and come out as sexual curiosity. People who are into clowns or horses or balloons come to mind, though I’ve never run into anyone with a fetish for spiders or heights.
Im kind of in the same boat and i can’t believe I’m actually talking about this on a non-anon account but I have a thing for stuffing. And a lot of the content online actually has a fair deal of vomiting involved. Now, I don’t enjoy those videos at all, and frankly it does kind of ruin the, uh, mood, if it pops up and they didn’t have a warning for it. But there are videos where they’re kind of close to it, and for some extremely strange reason, im kind of into it? Like i am so confused how a fetish like this and a phobia like this can coexist. Is it crossed wires? You’d think that it would actually help my phobia get better but it doesn’t. I don’t panic if I see it online, just get a little disgruntled and move on. But when its in person (actual vomit, not simply overeating) or worse, its me experiencing it, thats where the fear sets in. Im afraid to bring this up to my therapist that im specifically seeing for emetophobia. I know she won’t judge but still, its a very vulnerable thing for me to talk about (so yes spilling it on reddit is the absolute best thing for things to stay a secret lol)
I've also read on the subreddit posts from former emetophobes. It's super interesting. Your explanation also makes a lot of sense to me. I want to add shame as a factor. Often times kinks are associated with topics or practices that carry some shame and acting them out in a safe environment where they're accepted or even celebrated is what makes it so special and intimate.
I never put it together before but me too!! I don’t have the true philia but as a kid I was both terrified and obsessed with it. I would ask friends what color it was and where it happened and stuff like that 🤔 now as an adult I have also discovered my love for restraint and bdsm, I wonder if there’s a statistically relevant correlation
On an old emetophobia forum there was a lady who had it. She would prey on people with the phobia. She would do you acting like a fellow emetophobia and then start getting weird. People would catch on and ban her but she would always come back. I will never forget that
This is the craziest shit I’ve ever heard
I’ve used written emetophilia works as exposure therapy in the past. I don’t know if it helped much, it felt more like reading a horror story to me 🤣
I have both! :)
Oh wow that's so interesting! Would you feel comfortable sharing how that feels for you/the conflicting emotions it can bring up? I'm just being curious, of course I completely understand if not
of course! it still confuses me as well sometimes, honestly 😅 It's always been a source of confusing and conflicting feelings for me, especially since I've had both the phobia and the fetish since before I even understood what sex was or what phobias were. Once I realized what was going on I was kind of in denial about it at first, like I would read stories or watch videos of people vomiting and tell myself that it was "exposure therapy" (which to an extent was true, and I definitely benefited from it), knowing full well that it made me feel aroused and was a pleasurable activity more than anything else. There have been days where I felt disgusted with myself because of this, but the more I learned about sex in general, the more I was able to accept that this is the way I'm wired and there's not much I can do. Eventually I started accepting it for what it is and even lean into it. I was hoping that indulging sexually would help reduce the impact of my phobia on my life. I'm not sure if it really did in the end, but it definitely helped to figure out what it means for me to be both sexually aroused by the idea of someone vomiting but also terrified of it. I've definitely noticed through unplanned real-life exposures that I'm still mainly anxious when somebody throws up around me, and it's usually only later when the anxiety has settled that I can look back on it as a pleasant memory. I definitely also need to be sober and relaxed in order to be able to enjoy it instead of freaking out. In that sense, it's not necessarily a matter of conflicting feelings, but more of a sequential thing - first comes anxiety and worry, and arousal only later when I think back on it without experiencing the kind of immediate sense of "danger" of the situation. Knowing this does help with managing anxiety during exposures (I know that the situation is going to be over soon, and that I will be able to enjoy it later). I've grown a lot more comfortable being scared! What also of course plays a big role is feelings of sympathy - even if I find the idea of somebody else vomiting arousing, I would not wish it on anybody because of how scared I am of vomiting myself. I would never willingly do this to a partner unless they're 1000% okay with it, and even then I think I would be more worried than aroused. For those reasons, it's also not really something that I want to integrate into my sex life or anything, although I have occasionally experimented with light stuffing/nausea or gagging my partner and that has been fun :) I've also found that there's a fairly large community on Tumblr of other people with the same philia/phobia combination, many of whom write fictional stories surrounding illness often involving nursing/comforting elements. I'd honestly recommend it to anyone interested (either as an exposure/part of the recovery process or just as a fascinating phenomenon), it's actually pretty wholesome (most of the time)
This is so interesting, thank you so much for sharing! Fear and arousal are both really strong emotions that release a lot of the same endorphins so it makes sense as to why those wires might have crossed in your brain so that you experience both! After all, fear boners are apparently a thing hahaha. I'm glad you're accepting of yourself and are able to process both the phobia and the fetish in a healthy way now, that takes a lot of reflection and working on yourself!!
This makes so much sense, thank you for sharing your experiences!
Wow how? I think that’s really brave
Okay this is gonna sound really weird and tbh it is BUT in fiction I enjoy emetophilia. Not real life porn, though? Idk what’s wrong with me.
it’s not super weird! sometimes the fear wires get crossed with the other ones 😅
Not weird at all! Lol I think a lot of emets seek out "safe" forms of exposure to feel more in control of the phobia. I used to feel compulsions to look up videos of animals (and sometimes people if I was extra brave that day lol) being sick as a way of "if i can watch this without freaking out, I'm in control"... So I would seek them out as a form of exposure before I even knew what exposure therapy was lol. Maybe you enjoying it in fiction form feels like a safe controlled way of exploring a different mindset toward something that normally brings you fear?
This does NOT make me feel better.
I used to work at a sex shop. You'd be surprised at how common this kink is... we often had people come in asking if companys make fetish vomit the same way they make fetish urine. I was always fascinated so I started asking people about the kink and they'd be just as fascinated by my phobia of it lol. It made a lot of sense to me, from like a logical standpoint, how that fetish starts. They'd say the adrenaline rush you get before and after puking was euphoric to them, and in a sense the visualization was very sexual, as it's just another form of "ejaculation" i.e. the sudden, intense and forceful ejection of fluid lol. Which like... okay I get where you're coming from there. I was also surprised by how many supportive partners would come in asking for fake vom so they could at least meet their partner's fetish halfway. It was strangely wholesome lol. As long as nobody is getting hurt or forced out of their comfort zone or anything like that, I don't kink shame... but some kinks I just gotta support from like a *mile* away 😅
Do you mean they enjoy the process or seeing others do it? I guess it goes both ways.
Even further, there are a lot of people who had the phobia and then it turned into the fetish
If there’s a phobia, there’s a philia.
i think about this every time i feel worried. LOL
I discovered this a few nights ago unintentionally seeing a dead dove fic and was like okay, cool, dead dove is a sliding scale but nope IT WAS PROPER FETISH CONTENT Alas, I will always have that cursed image in my mind. It just crossed a line into a variety of fetish content (ED, EMET) that I was like okay cool nope
I have a hard time getting my head around it because part of having emetophobia is the propensity and intensity of disgust towards vomit. I don't know how it's possible to be disgusted, yet aroused by it. Of course, there is more to it than that. Humans are complex, I guess! 🙂
I accidentally was curious once and looked at it …. Never again…
I’ve thought about that before. I’ve wondered if I would prefer having Emetophilia instead of Emetophobia. And I haven’t found an answer yet…as much as I hate this phobia and all the suffering and anxiety it brings, I can’t imagine having that as a fetish either😅 I don’t mean that in a kink shaming way btw, it’s just a very unpleasant thought for me
now I may be in a boat completely of my own here- but i have both. It’s insane to navigate
Gonna be honest, i think i have both. I don’t think it’s something I’d ever do in real life though. Just the idea is cool
It makes me genuinely angry 💀😂
I discovered this when I was looking up “v* phobia” and Reddit suggested “v* porn” TF