Emetophobia - Fear of Vomiting w/Dara Lovitz & Dr. David Yusko (Episode 106)
Disordered: Anxiety Help
Josh Fletcher and Drew Linsalata
4.9 • 665 Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emetophobia - an intense fear of vomiting and any thoughts or sensations associated with vomiting - is a more common struggle among anxious people than anyone might initial think. But Emetophobia can make its way into virtually every aspect of life, often resulting in a highly restricted lifestyle and a dramatic decrease in the ability to function.
This week Dara Lovitz and Dr. David Yusko join Drew and Josh to talk about emetophobia. Dara suffered for over 30 years before finally overcoming emetophobia through exposure based treatment with Dr. Yusko. Now they're sharing this experience with others in need of help, which is pretty awesome.
If your anxiety is driven by an intense fear of vomiting, this episode is absolutely worth a listen.
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Dara Lovitz is an attorney working for a legal nonprofit organization, adjunct professor of animal law at two law schools in the Philadelphia area, and an author. She is a recovered emetophobe and co-wrote her fourth book, Gag Reflections: Conquering a Fear of Vomit Through Exposure Therapy, with her therapist Dr. David Yusko. With Dr. Yusko, she also co-founded Emetophobia Institute, which is the premier online resource for individuals struggling with emetophobia as well as therapists of all experience levels who wish to learn how to help their clients conquer emetophobia.
Dr. David Yusko is a licensed clinical psychologist in Pennsylvania and is the co-founder of the Center for Anxiety & Behavior Therapy. He received his Psy.D. in clinical psychology from the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Upon completing his doctoral studies, Dr. Yusko joined The Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety (CTSA) at the University of Pennsylvania where his expertise in anxiety disorders broadly speaking was developed and refined. Under the mentorship of Dr. Edna Foa, Dr. Yusko focused his career on providing clients, and teaching other mental health professionals, evidence based treatments for anxiety related disorders (e.g. OCD, panic disorder, social phobia, PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, and specific phobias).
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Struggling with worry and rumination that you feel you can't stop or control? Check out Worry and Rumination Explained, a two hour pre-recorded workshop produced by Josh and Drew. The workshop takes a deep dive into the mechanics of worrying and ruminating, offering some helpful ways to approach the seemingly unsolvable problem of trying to solve seemingly unsolvable problems.
https://bit.ly/worryrumination
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A mother of twin daughters and a metaphob who had suffered for more than three decades before seeking the help of Dr. Yusko, who through a treatment of ERP with him, I was able to get to the other side of the phobia. |
| 0:19.0 | But before the internet, so many of us suffered in silence. Nobody around us was a metaphobic. We felt ashamed of our fear. We know that it's not rational. You know, we know that there's nothing wrong. We know we're not going to die. And yet our brain tricks us into thinking that this is a real threat. Like you kind of have to spend a little bit of time trying to kind of dig around |
| 0:39.0 | with what they're truly, truly afraid of. |
| 0:42.1 | When all roads lead to vomit, |
| 0:44.7 | then you are, oh, this is the metaphobia. |
| 1:12.8 | Welcome to Disordered. This is episode 106 on the topic of a metaphobia. Guys, this episode is going to be sick. I'm Joshua Fletcher, also known as anxiety. Josh, you know who I am. I'm a therapist and I talk about anxiety with my podcast co-host, |
| 1:17.5 | who is Drew Linzalata in New York and the US, also a therapist. I ain't going to go through all this stuff. You know the deal. If you're listening, you're listening. And yeah, today we're going |
| 1:20.9 | to talk about a metaphobia, which is like a really intense fear of vomiting and everything that |
| 1:25.7 | goes along with that. Sorry, we triggered you right from the beginning. But we have two special guests, Dara Lovitz, a former sufferer and |
| 1:32.3 | Dr. David Yuscoe, who's a metaphobia and anxiety specialist in Philadelphia here in the |
| 1:37.2 | States. They wrote a book together about Dara's treatment and how she recovered. It's really good. |
| 1:42.0 | We talked to them for maybe 40 minutes, I guess, roughly. |
| 1:45.6 | It's brilliant, excellent guests from both sides, from both therapy chairs. |
| 1:51.7 | You've got a brilliant, brilliant therapist and an excellent client who's being willing to share their experiences. |
| 1:59.0 | I think you're going to love this one. |
| 2:00.2 | Yeah, very good. Let's get to it. Welcome, guys. Today we have, as promised, we have Dr. David Yusko and Dara Lovitz, co-authors of Gag Reflections, which is probably the greatest title of an emetophobia book ever. There's no doubt in my mind. So welcome, guys. Yeah, thanks for coming by. We've been told otherwise. We have been |
| 2:19.4 | told that it was too triggering for emetaphobes and they might be turned off by the title. |
| 2:23.6 | We were talking, Dan, and I were talking about that before we hit the record button, like the triggering |
| 2:27.7 | nature of the book, but I really admire the book for being kind of triggering, to be honest with you. |
| 2:33.3 | I mean, yeah, our intention obviously is to target a metaphobes and let them know that |
| 2:38.3 | you can get to the other side of this. And so we're hoping that a metaphobes will be drawn to the |
| 2:42.6 | book. And I don't know, in retrospect, I don't know, should we have chosen a different title |
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