I had a fear of vomiting so severe that I stopped wearing green for 11 years because it reminded me of puke. Therapy has made my life livable again.

• As a child, I made up "rules" to try to protect myself from getting sick.
• When I was 18, I started working with a therapist specializing in emetophobia, the fear of vomiting.

As a kid, I notoriously hated green. My friends joked about my aversion by writing my name in green ink or coloring my skin with green markers. They didn't understand that I didn't think green was an ugly color — my fervent loathing had nothing to do with its appearance but with what it represented.

I was 7, sitting in my mom's lap during a family gathering. I was staring at the kitchen floor, my stomach in knots, and then I saw it: green, all over the floor.

Barf. Puke. Vomit. Throw-up. Whatever you call it, I did it all night. After cleaning up, my parents drove me home, and every few hours I'd gag, retch, heave, ache, and cry.

I was afraid of getting sick again

After the trauma of that evening, I pledged my eternal disdain for green. I assumed that if I were to wear green or use a green pen, I'd be sending the universe a message: "Make me sick!" From that moment forward, I avoided green like the plague, literally.

If a classmate threw up, I rushed to the bathroom in a panic, fervently washing my hands. If someone said their stomach hurt, I sprinted to the opposite side of the room. I constantly asked my parents to check my temperature. The puke scene in "Pitch Perfect" was so hard to watch that it might as well have been a torture scene in "Saw."

But I never really thought too much of it; nobody likes to throw up.

After the incident when I was 7, I threw up two more times, when I was 8 and 9. I'll spare you the nauseating details, but I spent years fearing and avoiding the things I'd done the day before I threw up.

I avoided whatever I'd done right before vomiting

I sat on the right side in the back of the car because one time I sat on the left side and came down with food poisoning that night. Obviously the universe was telling me to change my ways.

I ate spaghetti for dinner one night and threw up later. Though I'd enjoyed spaghetti for years without a problem, I took this as a sign from the cosmos that spaghetti was off-limits.

There were other "rules" I set for myself, like avoiding certain songs or clothes or anything I associated with vomit. If I broke the rules, I'd basically be asking to get sick.

I went a decade without puking. While I never volunteered to hold my girlfriends' hair back when they were hunched over the toilet after a night out, my mind wasn't constantly consumed by fear.

But in December 2021, I woke up with food poisoning. I felt chest pains, nausea, helplessness, dread, and misery. Though I was 18, I felt as if no time had passed and I was a scared 7-year-old again.

I have emetophobia

In the weeks after I got food poisoning, I suffered from frequent panic attacks, became overwhelmingly depressed, felt anxious about eating, and was afraid to sleep. I kept the nausea drug Zofran by my side at all times.

My dad saw me in this state and did some research. I learned about emetophobia, the fear of throwing up.

Though awareness and acceptance of my phobia were some of the first steps in healing, my fears persisted and grew. All I could think about was how scared I was of throwing up. I was on edge, I was eating less, and my life didn't feel like it belonged to me anymore. So I began working with a therapist who specializes in emetophobia and another therapist who specializes in OCD and generalized anxiety disorder.

Therapy is a lot more work than I anticipated; you don't sit on a lounge chair and lament your feelings like in the movies. A lot of my sessions are dedicated to exposure: I expose myself to germs, alter my routines, and try to get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

It's hard work, and I have a long way to go, but I'm glad I'm taking steps to regain control of my life. Sometimes the techniques my therapists teach me feel a little outlandish or silly, like imagining my anxiety as a monster I have to defeat, but most of the time it feels incredibly empowering to tell my anxiety to go fuck itself.

I'm getting better and overcoming my fears, and green is now my favorite color. I haven't vanquished my anxiety monster, but I've definitely kicked its ass many times.