A Norwich woman left housebound by a crippling phobia has regained her freedom with the help of a pair of marbles.
Sophie Tudor, 29, started showing symptoms for emetophobia - which is a phobia of vomit and illness - when she was 18.
She said: “When I would tell my friends and family about how I was feeling, they would say ‘Well nobody likes sick, Sophie’. But for me it was so much more than that.”
But her fears got worse over the course of a year - especially having seen her cousin get spiked and sent to A&E.
And Sophie's symptoms slowly worsened until she was left suffering panic attacks if people were sick or could be ill nearby.
She said: “I became a recluse. I was too terrified to leave the house in case I got something.
“My dad heard about a course called ‘Cure Your Emetophobia and Thrive’ by a man called Rob Kelly so we paid for me to go and see one of his coaches.”
She said the crux of the course was about managing her thoughts.
She explained that the more you think something, the more it becomes a belief system.
She added: “So, I spent a few months visiting the coach weekly. My coach helped me to process positive thoughts and eventually they began to overrule the negative ones.”
A suggestion was made that Sophie used marbles as a visual tool to help her.
The course suggested marbles because they're compact and can pulled out of a pocket at any time of day.
“If I started panicking or brooding about what could go wrong for me, I look at them as a prompt.
“They remind me to change what I'm thinking. It enables me to come out of the panic by stopping myself from overthinking.
“I'm now over emetophobia thanks to the programme. I'm feeling so much better about life in general,” she said.
Sophie now has not had a panic attack for over two years thanks to both the coaching and her trusty marbles.
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