Stop vomiting

Vomiting is incredibly annoying. It gives you a foul taste in your mouth, it affects your teeth, and in the process you can start eating all over again when otherwise you just can't keep anything down at all. Whether you vomit on purpose or not, sometimes you just want to stop. To stop vomiting, in this blog I describe possible causes of vomiting, what you can do if you vomit on purpose and what you can do if you have another medical cause for vomiting

Why are you vomiting?

Initially, it is important to know why you are vomiting. This is because there are people who vomit on purpose and people who don't want to vomit at all, but for one reason or another (usually physical) can't stop.

Therefore, first check for yourself whether you are vomiting on purpose or not on purpose.

Vomiting is a symptom of...

Are you not vomiting on purpose? Then vomiting may be a symptom of an underlying (physical) problem. As a woman, for example, you might be pregnant and suffering severely from morning sickness. In some severe cases, you might not be able to keep anything down at all; in such cases, you often suffer from GERD and need medical help because you’re eating for two.

Vomiting can also be a symptom of a type of severe migraine. In the case of cyclic vomiting syndrome, vomiting is a type of migraine that can cause you to vomit 6 to 12 times per hour. This usually lasts a few hours, but in severe cases, you can experience extreme vomiting for up to 3 weeks. No wonder you’d be desperately searching for ways to stop vomiting.

Fortunately, this condition can be treated well[1].

Vomiting due to psychological reasons

Unfortunately, some people vomit on purpose. If you just thought to yourself, I vomit fairly intentionally. I don't want to vomit, but I really do it myself, then chances are you are vomiting for psychological reasons.

In general, people who intentionally induce vomiting suffer from an eating disorder. This can include bulimia, anorexia, binge eating, or a purging disorder.

Even with psychological reasons, the cause is not always in the person's environment. After all, the odds of throwing up on purpose are genetically 50%[2]. But if you vomit regularly, such as at least twice a week, the genetic probability becomes lower, at 8%. To tell if you have a disorder, it also looks at vomiting behavior and whether you have been vomiting on purpose twice a week for more than 3 months in a row, for example.

It’s still something worth addressing, even if you might say it runs in the family. Many conditions involving intentional vomiting can be fatal in the long term. Anorexia, for example, is still an extremely deadly disease.

Express vomiting, for example, is often used as a means of controlling weight and body shape. This is caused by feelings of not liking your body, and those feelings are often caused by the environment (possibly cultural environment) where being slim is important.

In addition, people may believe that being slim is important for achieving success or for living a good life. However, these beliefs about the importance of being slim may not be accurate.

The psychological reason, for example, is that you feel you are not successful or happy, and you think that being thin is the solution to this. You don’t consider yourself thin, and to lose weight faster, you resort to vomiting.

Purging disorder and vomiting

If you suffer from purging disorder, you don't even have to eat so unhealthily. You may have a very normal diet, but in doing so you find it important to have nutrition out of your system. Vomiting and laxatives are then among the options you have given yourself for this.

In addition to being dissatisfied with their weight, people with this disorder are also more likely to experience depressive feelings than people who primarily rely on exercise to maintain their desired weight[3].

Binge-eating and vomiting

Sometimes you just have a binge-eating episode, and some people are better at dealing with it than others. When you feel terrible regret after a binge, for example, you might intentionally induce vomiting. This is something that people with bulimia may also do.

Binge-eating is much related to judging your own body as if you were a stranger. This includes being dissatisfied with your body and having low self-confidence[4].

Eating disorders and vomiting

With bulimia, you often throw up food again after you have eaten and not always just after binge-eating, and someone with anorexia often does this after having to eat as well.

Beliefs and vomiting

As can be seen, eating disorders and intentional vomiting often go hand in hand. These beliefs often revolve around the idea that having a slim body will make you happy or help you succeed in what you do.

A slim body becomes so important that you will do anything for it, like vomiting. While vomiting in general has an incredibly bad effect on teeth, and having nice teeth can also be important for having social connections.

The beliefs you have about being slim and its importance in the world often also largely determine whether or not you will vomit on purpose when you do not conform to the image of being slim while believing it is vital to your life.

Finding out the basis of your beliefs

Changing these beliefs is usually done through cognitive behavioral therapy and hypnosis. For example, changing beliefs involves identifying the basis of a belief. This can be done through a Socratic dialogue or regression.

In a Socratic dialogue, the “why” question is repeated several times to get to the core of your belief. Another method is regression. With regression, you go back to the moment when your subconscious mind formed a belief, thereby returning to the root of that belief.

Because many beliefs originate in your childhood, that is often the moment you go back to during a regression. For example, the situation that can cause you to think being thin is incredibly important is because one of your parents was overweight and was fired. As a child, you may see a connection there that is not there at all for you as an adult. This realization alone can change your beliefs so much that it becomes a lot easier to stop vomiting.

Changing beliefs about the importance of vomiting

In particular, beliefs about being slim and its importance in getting success and happiness are often the cause of vomiting. Especially when combined with an environment that also considers being slim to be very important. Besides finding out the basics, sometimes more change work is needed.

Hypnosis can change beliefs and behaviors in 2 ways, with hypnotic suggestions or post-hypnotic suggestions. Hypnotic suggestions aim to supplant unhealthy beliefs with healthy beliefs. You can often also repeat these beliefs during self-hypnosis. These may include, for example:

"Being happy is a mental thing and has nothing to do with your body."

"Success comes from hard or smart work, not a slim body."

"Your success depends solely on you, not on what other people think of you," says the company's CEO.

"You only have to deal with people who make you happy."

These are just examples of hypnotic suggestions. Depending on your beliefs about the importance of vomiting, you may receive other suggestions from your hypnosis expert.

A post-hypnotic suggestion is precisely a suggestion that affects your behavior after you have been in hypnosis. For example, a post-hypnotic suggestion might be:

"You just had a delicious meal and you want your body to absorb all the nutrients properly to be healthy. You have absolutely no guilt and know that this delicious and healthy food is necessary for a nice and healthy body. You take a moment to feel how the food fills your stomach and how happy this makes you. You go on with your day and don't even think about vomiting anymore."

This is just one example of a post-hypnotic suggestion. Depending on your relationship with food, you may receive a different suggestion to help you stop vomiting.

So vomiting can be physical or more psychological. Don't have a clear cause? Then see a doctor first to make sure there isn't something physical going on with you. Then you can check if you have a mental aspect to the vomiting and for this you can get psychological help or seek help from a hypnosis expert. Vomiting is incredibly unhealthy, so seek help either way.

Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works? Then come to a hypnosis workshop or sign up for one of our training programs. Ask about our online options.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ajg2007549

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4834264/

[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eat.22811

[4] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/eat.22535