Rapid relief from fear of vomiting in 1-5 sessions.
Emetophobia Treatment in Boston
Virtual Emetophobia Therapy Serving Boston, Cambridge, Brookline & Greater Boston
Using Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)
You’ve been living with emetophobia in one of the best healthcare cities in the world, yet you still can’t find treatment that works for you. You’ve tried therapists in Back Bay, Cambridge, Brookline; or maybe you saw someone at McLean or one of the Harvard-affiliated practices. But the only option seems to be months of CBT and exposure therapy, so you either refused altogether, or you dropped out after a few sessions.
Meanwhile, the phobia keeps narrowing your life. You avoid the North End because restaurants feel too risky. You skip networking events and work happy hours in Seaport because people drink. You turned down the job in Cambridge because the Red Line commute terrified you: what if someone got sick on the train?
If you’re approaching your late 20s or early 30s, the pregnancy question looms larger. Your friends are starting families, and you can’t fathom nine months of morning sickness, or a sick baby or child. The fear that should have resolved in childhood has followed you into adulthood, and you haven’t found an answer to emetophobia — until now.
Emetophobia typically resolves in 1-5 sessions with Accelerated Resolution Therapy. You don’t need months of weekly appointments in Kendall Square or years of traditional therapy. You need treatment that targets the traumatic root of the phobia directly.
Why Traditional Exposure Therapy Fails Many People Living With Emetophobia
Many Boston therapists offer evidence-based CBT with exposure therapy. The research supports it: when people complete exposure treatment, it works. But completion rates for emetophobia are terrible.
Over half of people refuse exposure therapy entirely. The thought of watching vomiting videos, deliberately imagining worst-case scenarios, or progressively exposing yourself to vomit-related content feels unbearable. You’ve spent decades desperately trying NOT to think about vomiting. Intentionally triggering that response goes against every defense you’ve built.
You’ve also already experienced accidental exposure countless times. Every stomach bug season in Boston. Every drunk person on the Green Line. Every time someone at your office mentions feeling “off.” These experiences didn’t desensitize you, they reinforced the fear.
The exposure model assumes your brain needs to learn the feared situation is safe through repeated contact. But you already know vomiting won’t kill you. Intellectual knowledge doesn’t override the nervous system response.
Here’s what we’ll do together.
How Accelerated Resolution Therapy Works Differently for Emetophobia
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) treats emetophobia as what it usually is: a result of a traumatic experience, not a rational fear that just needs to be corrected.
Many people with emetophobia can identify a specific triggering event, often from childhood; ie, you got sick at school in front of everyone or you had a medical procedure that made you violently ill. There’s an origin point where your brain learned “vomiting = danger.”
The important thing to say here is that ART works even when you can’t pinpoint a specific memory. Sometimes the fear feels like it’s always been there, or the connection isn’t obvious until we’re actually in the session. The brain often makes connections we’re not consciously aware of: ART works with those unconscious links, not just the memories you can articulate.
ART uses bilateral eye movements while you recall that triggering image or memory. Then, instead of forcing you to sit with the distress until it lessens, you actively change the image itself. The brain stores the memory differently; you keep the factual knowledge of what happened, but the visceral fear response evaporates completely.
This means you can think about the original event, or about vomiting in general, without your nervous system activating. The trigger becomes completely neutral. Not “manageable with coping skills” — just a matter of fact.
Treatment typically takes 1-5 sessions. The original traumatic memory usually resolves in one session. Additional sessions can address related triggers: specific foods, specific situations, pregnancy fears, caring for sick children, etc.
Stop Just Surviving and Start Living
Through our work together, you’ll stop surviving and start living. Not managing fear, not coping with triggers, not white-knuckling through each day. Actually living with spontaneity, joy, and the freedom to choose your life instead of emetophobia choosing it for you.
What changes after our work together…
You can live in the city. Take the Red Line from Cambridge to South Station during morning commute without scanning every passenger for signs of illness. Walk through Faneuil Hall on a Saturday night. Live in Allston or Somerville without constant anxiety about your roommates’ health.
Food becomes normal again. Try that new spot in the South End everyone’s talking about. Accept dinner invitations to the North End. Order something you’ve never had before at restaurants in Cambridge. Stop interrogating servers about food preparation and expiration dates. Eat lunch with coworkers instead of bringing the same safe food from home every single day.
Your career can progress. Show up to networking events in Kendall Square. Attend the conference in Seaport. Take the promotion that requires occasional travel. Interview for the job that means commuting through downtown Boston. Stop leaving work early when someone mentions feeling sick.
Dating and relationships open up. Go on first dates without requiring three days of restaurant research. Say yes to your partner's friends’ parties. Travel together: weekend trips to Vermont or longer vacations. Stop being the person who always has an excuse for why you can’ t go somewhere.
The pregnancy decision becomes about readiness, not fear. Evaluate whether you want children based on your relationship, your career stage, and your actual readiness, not whether you can tolerate morning sickness. If you’re already pregnant, prepare for the baby without nine months of terror about morning sickness.
Medical care becomes accessible. Go to your annual checkup. Take medications your doctor prescribes without obsessing over nausea side effects. Schedule the procedures you need. Trust your healthcare providers at the excellent Boston hospitals instead of avoiding medical care entirely.
Get in touch
Serving Boston, Cambridge, Brookline & All of Massachusetts
I’m independently licensed in Massachusetts and provide emetophobia treatment entirely via secure telehealth. You don’t need to commute to an office in Cambridge or downtown Boston, or sit in a waiting room worrying about other patients’ health.
Sessions are 60-90 minutes, typically 1-5 sessions total. Most people see significant change in the first session. This is not long-term weekly therapy requiring months of appointments.
Investment: $500 per 90-minute session. For emetophobia treatment averaging 3-4 sessions, total investment is typically $1,500-$2,000. This model makes sense when resolution happens in weeks rather than requiring months of weekly therapy.
My practice operates entirely private-pay (no insurance). This allows for intensive 90-minute sessions focused on rapid resolution rather than insurance-limited 50-minute appointments stretched across months. I provide Superbills for potential out-of-network reimbursement, and services qualify for HSA/FSA.
I provide emetophobia treatment via telehealth to clients throughout Massachusetts:
Boston & Inner Suburbs: Back Bay, Beacon Hill, South End, North End, Fenway, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Roslindale, West Roxbury, Hyde Park, Allston, Brighton, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Newton, Watertown, Belmont, Arlington, Medford, Malden, Everett, Chelsea, Revere, Winthrop, Quincy, Milton, Dedham, Needham, Wellesley, Weston, Waltham
North Shore: Salem, Lynn, Peabody, Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Swampscott, Gloucester, Rockport
South Shore: Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, Cohasset, Scituate, Plymouth, Marshfield
MetroWest: Framingham, Natick, Wayland, Weston, Lexington, Concord, Sudbury, Marlborough
Central Mass: Worcester, Shrewsbury, Westborough, Leominster, Fitchburg
Western Mass: Springfield, Northampton, Amherst, Pittsfield
Cape & Islands: Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket
About Allyson Clemmons, LICSW
Real healing happens in the nervous system, not just in conversation.
After 15 years in traditional talk therapy, I now specialize in helping people who have tried multiple approaches but aren’t finding lasting change. Using ART’s bilateral eye movements (similar to what happens naturally during REM sleep) we’ll work directly with how traumatic memories are stored in your brain. Most clients experience relief from emetophobia in 1-5 sessions instead of months or years.
If you’ve hit a wall with other approaches and want freedom from symptoms (not just management), you’re exactly who I work with.
Licensed in Massachusetts: LICSW #126480
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heal the root cause in 1-5 sessions
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heal the root cause in 1-5 sessions —