Stuff You Should Know - How Vomit Phobia Works

Episode Date: December 5, 2017

No one - no one - likes to vomit, but there are some people who would prefer to die rather than vomit, people who spend their days worrying they will vomit at any moment and become so obsessed they cu...rtail their lives to prevent it from happening. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.
Starting point is 00:00:17 We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass
Starting point is 00:00:37 and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.
Starting point is 00:00:57 Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
Starting point is 00:01:21 This is Stuff You Should Know, a very special, surprisingly sad edition. Oh yeah? I think so. Yeah, of course it's sad. It's really gross. It is gross. I'm gonna have a hard time getting through this one.
Starting point is 00:01:37 So we should give everybody fair warning. We are talking about a metaphobia, which is a specific phobia, a fear of throwing up, and we'll get way more into all of that and what it means, but we're talking about vomiting. It's basically tied for first as the subject of this episode. So we're gonna be talking about vomiting a lot,
Starting point is 00:02:02 and I found from researching this, reading, and I imagine hearing about vomiting for a good 30 minute, 40 minute stretch, it can make one queasy. So just fair warning. I don't think it's actually going to make you queasy, but it's possible if it starts to happen, just plow through it.
Starting point is 00:02:26 Just say Josh and Chuck would want me to plow through it and your queasiness will magically go away. Oh yeah? All right. So like you said, it is a specific phobia and it is actually listed in the DSM now. Not sure how long it's been in there, but it is... Well, a metaphobia isn't.
Starting point is 00:02:45 Oh, well, I thought the specific phobia of vomiting now. I guess I think specific phobias are. I don't know if it's specifically listed, Chuck. So when this says it is a specific phobia, a current according to the DSM, what does that mean? I think it means that it falls under the umbrella of a specific phobia. Okay.
Starting point is 00:03:07 You see what I mean? Not really, but that's okay. This means, well, you're afraid you might vomit. You're afraid someone else might vomit around you. You're afraid what people will think of you if you do vomit? Yeah, and it's not this article. Where'd you get this stuff anyway?
Starting point is 00:03:28 Was this sort of cobbled? It was cobbled together from some pretty good sources, including Psychology Today, the American Association of Anxiety Disorders, the National Institutes of Health Library, the BBC, VICE. And I want to give a shout out to the listener who wrote in to share her a Metaphobia story. I had never heard of it before,
Starting point is 00:03:52 and she had a very harrowing experience and overcame it just through sheer grit and willpower and came through the other side of this very serious phobia. Yeah, which we'll get to how to do that later, but these articles make great pains to point out that it is, I think all people think it's gross and are very much repulsed and turned off by the sound or the smell or the look or anything
Starting point is 00:04:20 that deals with somebody getting sick like this. But this is different than that. This is a debilitating fear that can overtake your life. Yeah, that would specifically be a Metaphobia. There's actually, it seems like a spectrum where you can also suffer from what's called fear of vomiting, which is much less overwhelming, but still you're preoccupied with the idea of vomiting.
Starting point is 00:04:47 With the Metaphobia, your life does not resemble what your life would be if you weren't afraid of vomiting. Yeah, it's a real impairment to your life in a lot of different ways, which we'll go over. It seems like there's not a lot of study about it. I mean, I ran across a few studies, but even in the studies I found, they specifically say, there's not a lot of studies about us.
Starting point is 00:05:12 So a lot of the guesses about the prevalence are guesses, but one thing I saw was that in the general population, 8.8%, I think that's actually fear of vomiting. I think a Metaphobia is more like less than 1% of the population has actual Metaphobia, but that it tends to be about four to one ratio of women to men, women suffer from it. They have a tendency to suffer from it more.
Starting point is 00:05:39 Yeah, and I certainly do not have it, but like I said, like almost everyone in the world probably, it is a trigger for most folks. Yeah, nobody wants to throw up, but if you have a Metaphobia, just seeing the title of this come through your podcast feed could have set off an anxiety attack. And like I feel very guilty about that.
Starting point is 00:06:03 There's nothing we could do, because even if we warned everybody in the episode before this that this was coming, that would set off a panic attack. Just the mere mention of the word vomit can set the anxiety disorder into full gear. Yeah, this one article you sent, one of the clinicians they interviewed
Starting point is 00:06:22 who treats anxiety disorder said it is in her practice the most common fear among children that they see. Yeah, and that's typically how it starts. So it's a chronic disease, meaning that if you don't treat this, it's going to persist basically every day of your life and it tends to get worse over time. And it usually starts with a traumatic experience
Starting point is 00:06:46 of vomiting most frequently of all in childhood. So it's more common I think among kids, but it can survive into adulthood and it can start in adults. But what seems to happen is you have a traumatic experience from vomiting and just like with any other traumatic experience, whether it's surviving a violent crime or being in war,
Starting point is 00:07:10 vomiting can have that same effect on the brain apparently. And you develop something pretty closely akin to PTSD at the thought of vomiting and it overwhelms your life as a result. I had a traumatic experience with this when I was a kid. I might have told this story before for another reason, but I was on the bus going to elementary school and there was a scary kid.
Starting point is 00:07:37 Remember in elementary school, they were just the scary kids? I remember my scary kids first and last night. Yeah, right? And they're scary for various reasons, whether they were bullies or, I mean, you could probably diagnose something that was wrong as an adult. But as a kid, they were just scary kids.
Starting point is 00:07:55 And I'm not talking about like, I mean, I'm talking about like sociopathic behavior, not something that, you know, like some... They weren't goth, you mean? Yeah, exactly. Right, they had like real issues that were affecting other people around them. Exactly, so this one kid,
Starting point is 00:08:11 I remember his name was Tony something, but he on the way to school one day would, or many days, he would make himself throw up outside of the, with his face out of the window. And it would, you know, the school bus was going down the road and it would fly down and land on the windows all the way down.
Starting point is 00:08:30 Oh my God. Come in other windows and he would make himself vomit. And it just, it scared the crap out of me, man. Oh, okay. And it wasn't like, oh, that's gross. I bet it scared the crap out of the bus driver. I was scared, scared, scared, scared of this dude. Yeah, well, that's really bizarre behavior,
Starting point is 00:08:48 especially if he was doing it to like intimidate or freak other people out. Yeah, and I think I might remember. You've never told that story before. Story because it's, you know how sometimes a certain event can tie something else in your brain? You know, my dad was my elementary school principal. I don't know why I was riding the bus
Starting point is 00:09:03 because he usually just went to work with him. Oh, he wanted to normalize things. Maybe, but I ran to my dad's office right when I got to school crying. He wasn't in there and the secretary, Dot Jones, let me in the office and Dot, let me stay in his office because I was sad. And he had one of those big cabinet stereos.
Starting point is 00:09:25 Did you put on the Rosie Greer record? So the stereo was already on, but the song that was on weirdly was The Bee Gees, How Deep Is Your Love? Oh, that's good. And to this day, I hear that song and it makes me want to cry. Really?
Starting point is 00:09:41 Yeah, it's just a trigger from that day with that guy. You know what? Isn't that weird? That's a sad story because that's a good song. I know, it makes me want to weep. It makes me want to weep for you. Thinking about Tony, making himself throw up and I always wonder what happened to that guy.
Starting point is 00:09:54 He's in Jim Rose's side show right now. Maybe. Is that still around? I don't know. Pukie Tony? But yeah, that was him. Pukie Tony and hippy robber in like a little jug band together.
Starting point is 00:10:07 But anyway, that's a long way of saying that that was not enough even to traumatize me to the point where I have a metaphobia. No, but I mean, it could have been. It just seems to be like, and it's not even necessarily like a type of person or it's the brain can just, the synapses can fuse in a certain way.
Starting point is 00:10:30 And all of a sudden you have this phobia. And the problem is this, it starts from a traumatic experience. So let's say that that had had this impact on you Chuck, right? What would have come next if you were on the road to a metaphobia would have been to start to fear throwing up.
Starting point is 00:10:47 Seeing somebody throw up probably is how it would have started. And then that would have spread to throwing up yourself. Right. And then you would have become hyper-vigilant. You would want to protect yourself from seeing somebody throw up or from throwing up. Well, how do you do that?
Starting point is 00:11:04 To prevent yourself from throwing up, you're gonna monitor every single weird feeling you have to say, am I about to throw up? I need to like tamp this down. Or I can't eat that food. It might make me throw up. Or I can't read in the car. It might make me car sick and I'll throw up.
Starting point is 00:11:19 Or that person looks kind of sick. I'm gonna avoid them. And then let's just take it a little further and avoid everybody altogether because anybody could really throw up at any given time. And you start to become preoccupied with this and you adjust your life and alter it. And then you're constantly worried about throwing up.
Starting point is 00:11:38 And once that happens, the phobia is complete. Your life has changed. You're constantly worried about it. And then the cherry on top of the whole thing is that when you finally are confronted with the word vomit, actually seeing somebody vomit, something like that, you enter a panic attack, an actual panic attack.
Starting point is 00:11:58 Yeah, you can for sure. And the only way to overcome that is to get away, to run, to get out of there to, I'm not sure all the ways you can handle a panic attack, but then it calms down and your anxiety returns to normal levels, which is to say high for the average person. Yeah, so in my case in elementary school,
Starting point is 00:12:18 how that could have gone was I had another ride to school, but if I hadn't, I might have stopped taking the school bus and started skipping class and not going to school at all because I was afraid to get on the school bus because of Pukie Tony. And gone weeks in a row and then my parents get a call saying Chuck hasn't been in school for weeks and what's going on.
Starting point is 00:12:41 And that's exactly what's going on. Like it can get that severe. And it all boils down to the, at least in most cases, the anticipation of this more so than the actual act. In every case. Because the people that are struck with this by all accounts are less vomitous than the general population.
Starting point is 00:13:03 So much so because they've tried to avoid it so much so that this one article said that most of these people can even name like the three or four times in their life they have ever puked and what they ate that day and what they had on television and what they wore because it stands out that singularly to them. And then so that's horribly ironic that the people who are the most worried about throwing up
Starting point is 00:13:26 are the people who are actually statistically speaking, they're least likely to throw up, right? But there's an even greater irony to the whole thing. And we'll talk about that after this break. How about that? We'll talk about that after this break. On the podcast Paydude, the 90s called David Lasher
Starting point is 00:13:50 and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.
Starting point is 00:14:09 It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger
Starting point is 00:14:25 and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s.
Starting point is 00:14:40 Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.
Starting point is 00:14:58 Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.
Starting point is 00:15:10 Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander
Starting point is 00:15:23 each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.
Starting point is 00:15:43 Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It's a check we were on the irony train, and I want to keep going, okay? Yes. The irony of paying attention and being hyper-vigilant about vomiting, especially when you are worried
Starting point is 00:16:15 that you're going to vomit. Because again, there's a number of things that you're worried about. You're going to be worried that you won't be able to find a bathroom in time to go throw up. You're worried about throwing up in front of other people and embarrassing yourself or being teased for throwing up. You're worried about just the experience of throwing up.
Starting point is 00:16:37 It's just a horrible experience, but once you start to get a metaphobia, you lose perspective completely. I've seen multiple, they call them metaphobes, people with a metaphobia, I've seen multiple people say, you would prefer to die than to throw up. That's how much they fear throwing up. And to the rest of us, it's like,
Starting point is 00:17:00 God, that would suck to throw up, but I know I'll be fine on the other end of it, not to a person with a metaphobia. So the irony of all this is the more you start to focus on this and you start to think about every gurgle in your stomach or every weird twist or turn, it actually produces more anxiety. And here's the ironic part,
Starting point is 00:17:24 anxiety can actually make you queasy when you're thinking about throwing up. That's right. So it makes the whole thing worse and it becomes this vicious cycle. Well, yeah, and they recommend trying to tell yourself, like, I might feel queasy, but I'm not going to throw up. My anxiety might be making me feel nauseous,
Starting point is 00:17:42 but I am not going to throw up. Yeah, because there's a confusion of queasiness equals nausea equals throwing up, and that's just not the case. Like you can make yourself sick with anxiety, but you can't make yourself throw up from being anxious. So the whole thing is just wasted worry. Yeah, some of the other things you might do
Starting point is 00:18:01 because of this fear, you might not shake hands with anyone ever again. You, well, I think a lot of people avoid looking at television puke scenes. Yeah, you cannot watch. You really can't watch those at all. You can't watch Stand By Me or The Meaning of Life. Those are so funny looking though,
Starting point is 00:18:22 but still probably not. You might throw away food in your fridge that is not even past this expiration date. You might have a trigger there. You might overcook your food on purpose. And then before you eat it, you will lift the bread a bunch of times. It's called checking behavior.
Starting point is 00:18:41 Sure. You might not eat on vacation as readily because you only trust your trusted food sources. You might go into a place and like, you know, when some people go into a music venue, like they check for the exits, like you're checking for the bathrooms. You may not even make it to the music venue.
Starting point is 00:19:00 A lot of people with a metaphobia end up being agoraphobic and just don't leave their house. Really debilitating. It's often confused for agoraphobia by counselors and shrinks. I've got another one. Apparently a lot of people who have a metaphobia walk around with a plastic bag on them at all times,
Starting point is 00:19:20 something to throw up into. An emergency throw up bag. They walk around with this because they're so afraid of throwing up. But they never need to use because they probably don't ever throw up. I know. And some of them will actually carry
Starting point is 00:19:32 a change of clothes around with them as well. Really? Mm-hmm, for the same reason. If they throw up on themselves, they can change their clothes. Yeah, and of course, air travel, drinking alcohol. Any of those things are, or car travel even. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:49 Like any kind of travel is probably avoided. Definitely don't booze it up or... Yeah, they probably don't drink at all. Yeah. And subsist on things like pasta and bananas and very, very safe, digestively speaking foods. Although a banana could gag you. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:07 You know? God, that would be a nightmare if you had a metaphobia. I wonder if they mash them up and eat it, like mashed up with a fork maybe. Maybe. You could see it. Yeah, and I could see cutting your food up into the tiniest pieces
Starting point is 00:20:22 because you feel fear choking. And that's one of the fears too, what I think we mentioned. They're not just afraid of the vomiting, but they sometimes can fear choking on vomit and dying and affixating or going to the hospital. Or starting to vomit and the vomiting never ending. That's another fear of a metaphobia.
Starting point is 00:20:40 One other thing that I saw people do is prevent getting pregnant because of a fear of morning sickness. Yeah. So yeah, so your life is altered and curtailed because you're afraid of vomiting. Everywhere you look, there's some potential trigger out there,
Starting point is 00:20:59 so it'd just be easier to stay home and eat your pasta and not watch movies, basically. And to just lie there and monitor your stomach for signs that you're about to throw up. That's what they do. That's what you do when you have a metaphobia. That's your life. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:14 It's no way to live. It is not. So this is not all just academic and stuff we're grasping at straws and pulling together from different cases. Like this is, there's actually a case study we found that was of an eight-year-old girl who had a terrible experience throwing up
Starting point is 00:21:32 and really kind of encapsulates the experience of a metaphobia. She had full-blown a metaphobia. She had appendicitis and had been throwing up before the doctors figured out she had appendicitis and had her appendix removed. And that experience throwing up was, well, it triggered a metaphobia in her.
Starting point is 00:21:52 When she came to and was recovering from her surgery about 10 days later, she started getting really worried she was gonna start throwing up like that again. Yeah, it was a really sad case. And pretty much covered everything we've said and even then some to the point where her father traveled for business and she didn't want him to travel anymore.
Starting point is 00:22:14 Her father to travel anymore for fear that he would get some sickness and then bring it back to the house. Right. And I mean, that's pretty extensive. Yeah, like she didn't want to eat herself. She didn't want to eat any outside food. She had her safe food,
Starting point is 00:22:30 but she also didn't want her parents to eat any outside food either because she didn't want them throwing up. She stopped playing with other kids because she was worried about throwing up in front of them and being teased. That was her big thing. And as one of the clinicians who we came across
Starting point is 00:22:47 in this research said, it's not the vomiting that's really the problem. Like that's the focus, that's the obsession, but the real problem is the worry, the constant worry. It's the worry that's altering your life. And it altered this little girl's life, you know? Very sad. So let's take another break
Starting point is 00:23:06 and then we'll come back and put a silver lining on this thing and talk about treatment. Music On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude. Bring you back to the days of slipped dresses and choker necklaces.
Starting point is 00:23:32 We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.
Starting point is 00:23:50 Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,
Starting point is 00:24:03 because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:24:22 Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?
Starting point is 00:24:39 If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.
Starting point is 00:24:51 And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.
Starting point is 00:25:08 Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so we've talked a lot on the show over the years about CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or Exposure
Starting point is 00:25:42 and Response Prevention, ERP, basically Exposure Therapy. And this is definitely probably the way to go when it comes to a metaphobia. So depending on who you go see, you might undergo various kinds of treatments ranging from starting out by literally saying the words, bomb it out loud, or throw up, or puke, or just all the words. Because that's literally the first step sometimes,
Starting point is 00:26:14 into getting over this, is just being able to speak the word. Yeah, and you may have to start out by writing it down first before you can say it out loud. For real. And so once you move past that, the therapies range from, they're kind of all over the board, from looking at fake vomit that your therapist has made in a toilet.
Starting point is 00:26:35 Yeah, now you're starting to move into exposure therapy, right? Yeah, I mean, this is all of this stuff, ERP and CBT. But they'll make up some fake vomit, put it in the toilet, make you go look at it. They themselves, the therapist might make the noises in front of you. They just have it nowhere.
Starting point is 00:26:53 Well, I imagine they probably prep them, or maybe not. It may go in the bathroom and jump up and say, I've got to go get sick. And all of this is just exposing this patient over and over to the point where they can handle hearing the sound, seeing the thing, saying the word, hearing the word. Smell is another one, too. One of the recommendations for exposure therapy
Starting point is 00:27:14 is you make your own throw up, like in the toilet, a little bit of cold soup, or something like that. Maybe mix in some oatmeal with it, and then pour a little vinegar in there to make it pungent, and sit around and think about that being vomit. Maybe try to make the sound of throwing up yourself. Try to make yourself gag.
Starting point is 00:27:37 And all this is to show you, when you have a metaphobia, that this is, first of all, it's manageable. That's the first part, is what you're trying to do is get to this point without having a panic attack. But then also, that if you gag, it doesn't mean you're automatically going to throw up. And if you do throw up, it doesn't mean you're never going to stop throwing up,
Starting point is 00:27:58 or that everyone's going to ridicule you for throwing up. And that's the point of any cognitive behavioral therapy is just kind of change your perspective and give you a more realistic view of the thing you're worried about. There's also a website called Rate My Vomit. Have you heard of it? Yeah, I wouldn't get to mention that, but go ahead.
Starting point is 00:28:18 You have heard of it before? No, no, no, I read about it, but I just, yeah. It just sounds like, I mean, that's like classic internet stuff, right? Somebody's like, oh, let's put pictures of throw up on there. And you guys tell me how gross it is. Well, it's actually used by people with a metaphobia as exposure therapy at home.
Starting point is 00:28:35 To just go look at this stuff and see it. There's also videos of people throwing up. There's a lot of stuff. The internet, unintentionally, is this great place for people with a metaphobia to go get over their fears. And I'm sure like if you have a fear of snakes, it's good for that too.
Starting point is 00:28:54 But so is like a time lifebook. You're not gonna find a time lifebook that's nothing but pictures of vomit. No. You're gonna find it on the internet though. Yes, you will. That's not in the Old West series. No, and then I found this other type of therapy chuck
Starting point is 00:29:11 called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, EMDR. And it's used for post-traumatic stress disorder and it's the most bizarre treatment I've ever heard of in my life. But apparently it really, really works. Yeah. Are you ready for this? Yep.
Starting point is 00:29:28 So say I was your therapist and you were, you had PTSD and it's been used to treat a metaphobia a couple of times. But you're talking about the thing that gave you PTSD. You're focusing on the worst aspect of this traumatic experience and you're talking about it out loud. But while you're doing it,
Starting point is 00:29:49 I'm moving my finger back and forth and up and down, maybe in a slow circle. And I've instructed you to follow my finger wherever I move it while you're recounting this horrible traumatic experience. Supposedly just doing this over multiple sessions, but sometimes just in one long session, PTSD can be treated.
Starting point is 00:30:13 And the way that they think this happens, if it actually does work, it just sounds like such just like totally made up that in 50 years they're gonna be like, I actually thought this worked. But if it does work, they think that it works because it taxes your working memory to follow the finger and your recall then is not aided fully
Starting point is 00:30:36 by your working memory. So the vividness of this horrible memory isn't as robust as it would be if your full working memory was working on it. And so when you reprocess it, when you file it away again, this memory, it's lost its luster. It's lost a lot of its bite
Starting point is 00:30:57 because you've gotten it out there and reprocessed it in a way that's not nearly as traumatic because your working memory was being used in part to follow your therapist's finger. Supposedly it works. Wow. Yeah. Isn't that nuts? It's pretty neat. Yeah, I think so too.
Starting point is 00:31:13 I wonder if it really does work. You should try it. Anyone who has ever undergone eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, I would love to hear your story if it actually helped you or not. For sure. And if you have a metaphobia, Godspeed, we hope you get well soon.
Starting point is 00:31:32 And to take this on or any phobia really has so much courage and grit that just taking a first step toward treatment, my hat is off to you for life. Yes, and chances are you probably didn't even listen to this episode. Yeah, but if you have a different phobia. Yeah. You know, any phobia.
Starting point is 00:31:53 And since I said phobia a couple of times, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this our second PSA in as many weeks if this releases the same week. Okay. But this one's about dogs. It's very sad. Hey guys, take me a while to write this
Starting point is 00:32:11 because it's been very difficult to talk about. Now you're animal lovers though, so probably a good majority of your listeners are. I thought sharing our tragic story would help prevent others from experiencing the same thing. We lost our dog river about two months ago because I left a bag of chips out. We were at work while she got her head stuck in the bag
Starting point is 00:32:31 and we came home to find our dog stiff and lifeless from suffocation. We've always been careful about plastic bags and stuff like that and kept them stored away for recycling, but never occurred to us that a chips bag on the counter would something would need to be concerned about. No, no one ever would ever think about that.
Starting point is 00:32:51 Everyone we've also told said it was something they never thought about either. So now we keep all of our bag foods in the cupboard and cut the bottoms off of anything that goes into the recycling and waste bins. That's a good idea too. Yeah, I started doing that since these guys wrote it. Oh yeah, we were and still are extremely heartbroken.
Starting point is 00:33:08 I hope no one else will have to go through this experience. It was the worst and if I can help save just one other dog's life, it's been worthwhile. So thanks for being you guys. Thanks for being you guys. No, there's a comment there. There's not, but I think that's how I'm supposed to read it. Hope we make it into your next Seattle show.
Starting point is 00:33:28 That's Jackie W. from Seattle. Jackie, thank you for writing in. I'm so sorry about river, but I hope you guys are doing okay. Yeah, that sounds like a guest list. Yeah, agreed. Action to me. Yeah, right back in and we'll guest list.
Starting point is 00:33:43 Yeah, we're coming in January. So 15. Yes. So just right back in, we'll throw you on there. And she sent a picture of a river. Beautiful dog, very, very sad. River look very sweet. If you have a PSA that happened to you
Starting point is 00:33:59 that you think we should share to warn everybody else about, we want to do that. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. I'm at Josh Shum Clark. You can also check out my website, R-U-SeriesClark.com. Chuck's on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's the official Stuff You Should Know Facebook too.
Starting point is 00:34:17 You can send all of us and Jerry an email to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite
Starting point is 00:35:22 boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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