My Reality: I Have Emetophobia

by Jessica Critcher

While I missed the boat on Mental Health Awareness Week in Canada (May 6-12) May is Mental Health Awareness MONTH over here in the US. Jarrah’s bravery in opening up about her experience with Trichotillomania (Hair-Pulling Disorder) inspired me to speak up about my emetophobia.

Emetophobia is a strong fear or aversion to vomit. I know, most people don’t like it. But for emetophobes like me, it’s a constant fear that warps into a daily struggle. Some don’t even type or say the word “vomit” out of superstition. Here is a pretty neat infographic on the subject. Wikipedia also has a nice summary:

Emetophobia (from the Greek εμετός, to vomit, and φόβος (phóbos), meaning “fear”) is an intense, irrational fear or anxiety pertaining to vomiting. This specific phobia can also include subcategories of what causes the anxiety, including a fear of vomiting in public, a fear of seeing vomit, a fear of watching the action of vomiting or fear of being nauseated.[1] Emetophobia is clinically considered an “elusive predicament” because limited research has been done pertaining to it.[2] The fear of vomiting receives little attention compared with other irrational fears.[3]

This fear has also caused me to indirectly be afraid of several other things, like traveling by boat (never tried it, too scared!), roller coasters, crowds, hospitals, dental exams, new medications, new foods, drinking or being around drunk people, pregnancy or being around pregnant people, and little children, because they vomit like it’s their damn job. I will avoid all of these things things to varying degrees just because the possibility of feeling slightly nauseated or hearing someone talk about being ill exists.

This phobia has also caused me to fear a lot of other things because they are connected to a concern or incident specific to me, including cashews, McDonald’s, Vicodin, multi-vitamins, intense exercise, and even just being at the gym. Read more

Posted on May 19, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in My Reality 2 Comments

My Reality: I Pull My Hair Out

(not my real hair)

by Jarrah Hodge

I’ve been struggling with whether or not to write on this topic ever since we started the “My Reality” series here at Gender Focus. On the one hand I think it’s important to share these stories because the stigma involved with mental illness is a huge problem. On the other hand, that very same stigma made me worried that talking about my experiences would cause my friends and coworkers to look at me differently.

But I finally decided to face up to the potential consequences because of GF contributor Roxanna Bennett, who is writing about her own experiences on her blog Choose Your Own Adventure. She drew my attention to the fact that last week (May 6-12) was Mental Health Week in Canada, and the main goals are raising awareness and fighting stigma.

So here goes.

I’m a gainfully-employed communications professional, a cat-loving uber-nerd, an occasional TV commentator and a feminist activist and award-winning blogger. I also happen to have a disorder that was until recently known as trichotillomania. In recognition of the fact that the disorder has nothing to do with “mania”, the DSM-5 has now added an explainer to the name: Trichotillomania (Hair-Pulling Disorder).

Trichotillomania (I’m just going to use the short-form “trich” or the previously-recognized abbreviation TTM for the rest of this article) is classified as an Anxiety and Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorder and it is characterized by the irresistible urge to pull out hair from your scalp, eyebrows or other parts of your body. I’ll start by giving a few more facts before I go in to how I experience it.

According to Psychiatric Times, up to 3.4% of adults have TTM (Olivia Munn is probably the most well-known example) and nobody knows for sure what causes it, though there are theories. It is not a nervous habit that you can just stop. It is also not causally-linked to experiencing child abuse or other trauma. It does not come out of a desire to self-harm; it doesn’t even hurt. According to the Trichotillomania Learning Center, trich actually acts as a “a self-soothing mechanism” to alleviate anxiety.

Tackling stigma is important in dealing with all mental illness but in trich has a particular direct connection to beauty ideals in our society. Most people with TTM are girls and women like me, who deal with constant messages telling them they have to look a certain way. When their disorder leaves them with bald patches on their head or gaps in their eyelashes, many withdraw. If a trichster doesn’t feel their elaborate beauty routine is enough to let them fit in, they may isolate themselves from work, school and/or medical care. Read more

Posted on May 16, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in My Reality 20 Comments

Canadian Girls Face Interconnected Life Challenges

Participants in a Girls Action Foundation leadership training session, 2012.

by Jarrah Hodge

In the lead-up to International Women’s Day, the Girls Action Foundation has released a new report about the situation facing girls in Canada. Beyond Appearances: Brief on the Main Issues Facing Girls in Canada contains findings from a close review of population surveys and academic literature and shows that girls in Canada face serious and interconnected life challenges, at rates higher than the general public might expect.

I spoke with Saman Ahsan, Executive Director of Girls Action Foundation. She has worked with and on behalf of girls for most of her career.

“There were a couple of statistics that I found really alarming: one was the proportion of girls who try self-harm. In BC we found one in five girls had attempted self-harm in the previous year and that really showed me that the mental health of girls in Canada is something that needs attention,” said Ahsan.

“Another statistic I found alarming is the rate of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. It’s shocking that as a nation Canada can just sit by. I don’t think action is being taken at the level that needs to be done.”

17% of reported missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada were under 18 years old.

Ahsan summarized the situation facing Canada’s nearly 3.6 million girls today:

“Girls are facing a lot of issues that are very intertwined – all the issues they’re facing such as mental health, violence, their career and educational prospects, their physical health – are intertwined and reinforce one another.”

For example Ahsan said many girls experience mental health issues such as depression and anxiety as a result of experiencing violence and feeling unsafe at school. Some of the most disturbing stats in the report were around violence: 46% of high school girls in Ontario reported being the target of unwanted sexual comments or gestures. Four times more girls than boys are sexually abused and 75% of the time it is by a family member or friend. The situation is even worse for girls with disabilities. Read more

Posted on March 1, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism, Politics Leave a comment

My Reality: How to Become an Orphan

Child's_drawing by Roxanna Bennett

[Trigger Warning for discussions of child rape and molestation]

I divorced my entire family in 2005 and it was the healthiest action I’ve ever taken for myself.

In 2004, I started getting panic attacks every time the phone rang. I had never had them before so at first I was convinced I was dying, that I was having a heart attack or something was wrong with my brain. I broke out in hives a lot. Had nightmares. Found myself spending entire days in bed, just staring at the ceiling, unable to play with my son. Sometimes making his dinner and staring slack-jawed at the television was a challenge. I’m not sure when I made the connection between what was happening in my family and what was happening with me but when I came to the realization that they were the source of my pain, I had no choice. It was them or me. My son or my mother. I chose my ability to function as a healthy parent over the feelings of my family and this is why.

I was raped by my uncle, my mother’s brother, when I was four years old. My mother is an identical twin, her sister was like a second mother to me. My biological mother was distant, anxious, sometimes cold. Her sister, my aunt, was more outgoing, warmer. My mother moved out of the province when I was 18 and it was my aunt who was my source of support during my early adulthood. She nursed me when I was sick, let me sleep on her couch when I had nowhere to go. She stayed with my son every night for a year while I put myself through night school. We were very close.

My uncle, who had damaged me beyond measure when I was a child, had been living in British Columbia for years when I made the decision to orphan myself. And this is why, and it sounds small to say it but it wasn’t, it was because of a family vacation. Read more

Posted on February 4, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in My Reality 19 Comments

Ashley Smith Inquiry Commences: Is Incarceration the Solution to Female Offending?

Gender Focus welcomes new contributor Kim Mackenzie. Kim is a recent graduate from the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, BC where she completed her BA in Psychology and Criminology. She is passionate about social justice and hopes to pursue a graduate degree centered on women’s rights, with a focus on sex workers’ rights.

An inquest into the circumstances of how Ashley Smith died in a Canadian federal prison five years ago has finally begun. Hopefully some questions will be answered as to how Ashley managed to commit suicide as prison guards watched from the other side of her cell door. Instead of just looking at why the guards did not intervene, I think it is important to question the entire system. How did the system let Ashley down?

Ashley had originally been incarcerated for throwing crabapples at a mailman, but due to her oppositional and defiant behavior, she was kept in custody for more than three years and most often forced into segregation for periods longer than Corrections Canada technically allows. Her life ended in the Grand Valley Institution for Women- an institution that is supposed to have more gender-responsive programming.

Clearly the biggest problem in this case was the mismanagement of someone dealing with mental illness. Ashley engaged in repeated self-harm. Research suggests that over half of federally-sentenced women engage in self-harm. The truth of the matter is female offenders have different needs compared to male offenders, especially those suffering from mental illness. It is not enough to create a female-centered facility; the gender-specific programming needs to be followed and staff need to be properly trained. Instead of focusing on control and punishment, female offenders dealing with mental illness need to be treated. They need to have access to mental health and community resources. Read more

Posted on January 23, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism, Politics 12 Comments

New Survey May Say More About Gender Expression than Youth Mental Health

by Ashli Scale

Last week Global Montreal posted a news article about a survey conducted by Queen’s University in partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada. A total of 26,000 youth between the ages of 11 and 15 were surveyed. The main gist of the results is that girls are more likely to have emotional problems and mental health concerns than boys. However, the method of information gathering and the types of questions asked may actually tell us more about gender expression than mental health. To illustrate my concerns I have analyzed two survey conclusions below.

1. “While boys are more likely than girls to report behavioural problems such as cutting classes or skipping school, talking back to teachers and getting into fights, girls are more likely to report emotional problems – feeling low, feeling nervous or helpless, feeling left out of things or feeling lonely” (Global Montreal, 2012).

I provide social support to homeless and street-involved youth. In my experience, the vast majority of male youth DO experience feelings of depression, nervousness, loneliness or alienation but DON’T feel comfortable expressing these feelings. Instead, they act them out in more masculine and socially-approved ways – getting into fights, bullying or withdrawing. Remember, boys are raised to be MEN and told that real men don’t cry or show signs of weakness. Read more

Posted on March 3, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism Leave a comment

Radical Beauty

by Sarah Jensen

As a teenager, I worshipped the pages of Seventeen and Y&M, later graduating to Glamour and Marie-Claire. I even read Cosmo for a while, in an effort to learn all the dirty sexy secrets that weren’t included in the sex-education curriculum at my Catholic high school. As I flipped through the magazines, one flawless model after another stared back at me from the pages.

While finding my footing as a woman, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Linda Evangelista were strutting and stomping down runways; they were beautiful. They were perfect.

As a slightly pudgy thirteen year old, I looked nothing like these models. The more I compared myself with them, the less beautiful I felt. I started wearing makeup daily with the hopes that maybe it really was Maybelline. 60 minutes of layering, shadowing and blending produced results with which I was seldom thrilled. I assumed, however, that the makeup was an improvement over what hid underneath.

Though dissatisfied with my face, I reserved the most hateful thoughts for my body. I’d been a fairly average-sized kid, but puberty hit and I filled out before many of the other girls in my school. I began to feel like a fat troll compared to the elfin-sized popular girls. I wasn’t overweight then, though an unhealthy diet, often fueled by self-hatred would soon change that.

Both my parents worked full-time, so my brother and I spent a lot of time with babysitters. During the week, my best-friend’s grandmother watched us after school. She was a tiny, round, Haitian woman whose eyes always smiled. She spent most of her time in the kitchen, singing in Creole, dancing and cooking. Her specialties were fried chicken, fried potatoes, heaping plates of rice, and something we nicknamed “deep-fried deep fry”, which was basically deep-fried dough sprinkled liberally with salt.

Back at home, my meals could usually be described as “convenient”. By the fifth grade, I was packing lunches for myself and my brother. They usually consisted of luncheon meat-filled Wonder Bread sandwiches, a heavily processed fruit-based snack, candy bars thinly disguised as granola bars and occasionally an actual piece of fruit which was destined to shrivel and die alone, untouched and unloved. On the bus-ride to school, I often traded my sandwich to another girl whose own lunch was a can of Dr.Pepper. Read more

Posted on February 22, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Pop Culture 2 Comments

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