Skip to main content

The PsychCafe
Share, connect, and learn.
I have had recurrent phases of chronic nausea several times in my life, lasting sometimes days, sometimes weeks, occasionally months. In the past I've tried tinkering with my diet, have spoken with a nutritionist and a natural medicine doctor and attempted to follow their advice, and have also been on several medications prescribed or recommended by my traditional medical doctor.

Now that I've been working with T for awhile I'm wondering how much of it may have been a mind thing related to anxiety and stress.

Over the last few days I've fallen into the misery of constant queasiness again. I am thinking this time around I want to work harder at trying to combat or at least manage it through a mind over matter approach, rather than obsessing about foods to avoid or try. I am thinking along the lines of:

1) Distraction. Don't focus on how miserably nauseous I am. Instead concentrate on a person, conversation, idea, image, task, anything but on feeling nauseated.

2) Guided imagery. I've heard it can be effective in helping with nausea symptoms felt by chemo patients and I've downloaded some guided imagery and music from Amazon designed for that purpose.

3) Continue to work on reducing and managing anxiety and stress overall.

I am wondering if anyone else on here has had troubles with debilitating nausea and if you have any tips or recommendations. What have you discovered that has worked for you?
Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Dragonfly-- Ah yes, those wrist bands. At one point in my life I was convinced they'd be my cure and I wore them for weeks. Not sure if they helped or not really, but I guess it's possible I may have been worse off without them. Big Grin Only after that, I now I associate them with nausea so much I can barely stand to look at them. Yeah, peppermints are one of my go to solutions as well. I try to always have some in my purse. Smiler

BLT, cool that the ginger works for you. A lot of people seem to swear by it. Alas, I've tried it in nearly all it's forms and nada. Frowner Thank you for the suggestion, though! Smiler

Starfishy, interesting that you mention breathing through nausea. I learned of this for the first time through one of the guided imagery tracks I downloaded a few days ago, and was amazed that it worked! The guided imagery has been surprisingly effective as well.

These are the one's I've been listening to in case anyone wondered:

http://www.amazon.com/Nausea-V...ancer+nausea+imagery

http://www.amazon.com/Guided-I...3120&s=dmusic&sr=1-1

If I can really learn to manage it this way I will be one happy person. It's been a recurring annoyance for years and frequently debilitating.
I have really super duper strong nausea medication.

Another thing I try is drinking milk (most people would not recommend this but it helps me). My somatic experiencing work (body work) has helped a lot sometimes I can move the nausea elsewhere like... try to think of a body part that feels relaxed and I imagine it talking to my tummy (sort of like "combining" them and that can help. I know you said you do guided imagery but this is a little different.

Eating crackers or bread helps me, too.

You may want to look in to allergies, such as to gluten or certain types of sugar. For some strange reason there are several fruits I absolutely cannot eat (despite loving the taste of them) because I just get so so so so sick. Many fruit juices or sugared drinks I can't eat either. Same goes with chocolate and sweet baked goods (when I have cake i can only eat the icing... that doesn't make me sick but the cake part will). There are other times I can handle a lot of sugar (like have a cupcake or something, or eat more than 1/4th a chocolate bar) I'm not sure why. I also eat anything sweet w/ milk. It's not like I get... throw up sick but just the nausea is intolerable.
HIC

I have used the breathing through nausea many a time in my place of work and seen good results, so I am glad you have some information on it that might be helpful. Medications take a while to work, whereas the results from this can be far quicker.

Glad you are geting such helpful replies from people. I hope something might help Hug two

starfishy
Cat,
Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions. I was tested for food allergies several years ago and nothing official came up, but I have noticed certain foods will tend to trigger the nausea as well.

The "moving the nausea" exercise you describe sounds intriguing. Could you maybe describe in a bit more detail how to do it? I'm looking to add as much as I can to my tool kit of mental tricks for dealing with this Smiler, since the medications I've been on and the diet adjustments have not been all that effective.

Thanks for the well wishes and kind words, Starfishy! And thanks everyone for the tips and help. Smiler
HIC - it is sort of like imagery but here is what you do...

focus on a part of your body that feels okay (not anxious, not sick, not itchy, just feels... okay, maybe even relaxed) let's say it's your nose. So you're concentrating on how nice your nose feels... you describe it in colors, shapes, maybe sounds, textures (what does your nose "feel" like - I don't mean LITERALLY but like the emotion or calm feeling associated with it - describe that). So the relaxed feeling may be blue... maybe a ball, maybe slippery, etc... maybe it's nothing but just notice what comes up (if anything). Some times that will help. What can also help is doing that description stuff (so you're really FEELING the relaxed or okay feeling) then thinking.. okay what's it feel like to be nauseated... if it had a color (I'll bet green!) or a shape, texture, sound, is it heavy, soft? Etc... then mentally combine it with how your nose felt.

It sounds INSANE. It's SE stuff. But it works for me with almost anything I'm feeling emotionally. So it may work if your tummy issues are emotional.

Or you may just giggle, then feel better Smiler
lol, Cat, did not die laughing at your post although your last comment did make me smile. Smiler Sorry I did not reply before now. The exercise did not seem all that strange to me, because I have gone to see a hypnotherapist a couple times for learning relaxation, etc. and she's talked me through some similar things. I've never used it for nausea before though so I was wondering how you did that. Smiler Thank you for explaining. I was actually trying it just this morning and it helped a little.

And thanks Dragonfly and Cat for checking on me. Wish I had a more glowing report but I'm actually not feeling very well at all and haven't for many days now. Frowner The imagery, breathing, etc. is at least helping me cope, manage, and stay functional which is huge, but I still feel sick most of the time. I'm going to see hypno T on Friday and will ask if she can hypnotize me out of this. You never know. Smiler

Thanks again everyone for being so sweet!

Add Reply

Post
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×