Phobias
Hypnosis for emetophobia
Loosen the fear of vomiting so it stops deciding where you go and what you eat.
Fear of Being Sick is a session for anyone whose day is shaped by where the toilets are and what feels safe to eat.
The practice spends its time turning down the alarm in the stomach so that nausea feels less urgent and less like a command. It works on the dread of the feeling rather than the feeling itself.
It is the notice on a restaurant door that stops you, or the thought of a long journey on a coach. You check the exits before you sit down and you avoid situations where a toilet might not be close.
The day becomes a series of careful decisions made to keep the risk at zero.
What’s in it
A much smaller fear and a life that stops shrinking around it.
Why do it
A few quiet minutes turn down the alarm, so the fear stops making your decisions for you.
- Theme
- Phobias
- Delivery styles
- 3
- Lengths
- Quick ~10mStandard ~20mDeep ~45m
- Ends
- Calm and present
- Stages
- 4
- On this shelf
- 12 sessions
Timeline: Start to Finish
The middle of the build stays on the idea of being sick. It rehearses the thought with no urgency attached, repeating the scene until the mind has nothing left to do with it.
3 of the 4 stages are named techniques with a published origin, credited under each.
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InductionStage 16 min
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
A classic head-to-toe relaxation. Tense and release, or simply soften, each muscle group in sequence.
After Edmund Jacobson PMR (1929); Dave Elman Hypnotherapy · what progressive muscle relaxation is
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DeepenerStage 23 min
Staircase Descent
Visualized stairs descending into a deeper level of trance. Each step takes you down.
After Ledochowski, Deep Trance Training Manual
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Suggestion ScriptStage 310 min
Fear of Being Sick — Balanced
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AwakeningStage 42 min
Calm Alert Awakening
Awake and present, but calm rather than energized. Good for evening or pre-meeting use.
After Yapko, Trancework
Three ways to say it
The same goal, written three ways. You pick the one that sounds like something you would believe — and you can hear a different one tomorrow without rebuilding anything.
Balanced
Loosen the fear of vomiting so it stops deciding where you go and what you eat. The default.
Future self
Meet the version of you who is settled in your stomach and free to go where you like.
New identity
Step into being settled in your stomach and free to go where you like, starting now.
Where it sits
Specific fears, worked one at a time.
Before you press play
- This one asks for a bit of care. In the app it opens with a consent step before anything plays.
- Not the right session right now if any of these are live for you: eating difficulties under clinical care; severe phobia currently in therapy.
Hypnosis is not for everyone. If you have epilepsy, a psychotic illness, or you are under psychiatric care, talk to your clinician before using this — here or anywhere.
Why this works — and what the research actually says
Group-level, not session-level: no study has tested this exact session, and we will not pretend otherwise. Every source below was opened and read on 2026-08-25 before it was quoted.
Why do it as hypnosis?
Trying to argue with a fear that strong usually makes it worse. What quiets an alarm is having it heard and then staying in the room while nothing bad happens.
This spends time on the feeling itself, turning the volume down gradually so you can stay with the thought without having to run away.
Hypnosis and anxiety, measured
Worth knowing: The same analysis found hypnosis worked better as an addition to another psychological treatment than on its own. It is not evidence that hypnosis alone beats therapy.
The exact wording and figures
A meta-analysis of 17 trials found that at the end of treatment the average person receiving hypnosis reduced anxiety more than about 79% of control participants (weighted effect size 0.79).
At the longest follow-up, across seven trials, that rose to about 84% (effect size 0.99).
Fifteen studies and 17 trials, screened from 399 records, in the field's main peer-reviewed journal.
Valentine KE, Milling LS, Clark LJ, Moriarty CL (2019). The Efficacy of Hypnosis as a Treatment for Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. PMID 31251710.
abstract free; full text paywalled
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