Emetophobic Thoughts and Cardboard Hamster Tubes

Dedicated to my lovely client Daniela from Mexico

She asked “what if I still have thoughts…am I still an emetophobe?”

What Hamsters, Toilet Roll Tubes, and Emetophobic Thoughts Have in Common

When I was a kid, I had hamsters. Too many.
Some were sweet little puffballs who melted into my tiny hands, and some were straight-up grumpy jerks who drew blood from my innocent fingers.

Now, to be fair, I wasn’t some hamster villain, I treated them pretty well for a kid. But they still bit me, staged daring escapes, and in some cases, I still have no idea how they got out or where they are now…I think in my parent’s walls! This was the 80s, when hamsters lived in glass tanks, not the flimsy plastic chew-out-of-it-like-Shawshank-Redemption setups we see today.

So… what on earth do hamsters, toilet roll tubes, and emetophobic thoughts have in common?

It’s an analogy I use with my clients all the time to help them understand that they’re not failures if they still get the occasional emetophobic thought.

See, even though I haven’t owned a hamster in decades, every single time I finish a roll of toilet paper or paper towels, my brain still pops up with:

“You should keep this. Your hamster could play in it.”
or
“These are valuable—store them!”

Which is ridiculous… but why does my brain still do that?

Because I trained it. I spent years saving every single cardboard roll for my hamsters. My brain learned, “This is important!” and created strong associations. You can’t just expect your brain—a machine that responds to repetition—to stop thinking something you once told it was valuable or vital information.

Now, do I have catastrophic, anxiety-inducing thoughts about vomiting anymore? No. But sometimes my brain still goes:

“Hey, remember we were scared of this thing…”

When that happens, I simply respond:

“Nope, we’re not scared anymore. Thanks, but no thanks.”

And that’s perfectly fine.
It doesn’t mean I have a phobia again, it’s just an old mental habit, just like the cardboard tube thing.

Sometimes it’s like having an annoying assistant who says, “Are you sure? Because you told me like a million times before…” And you just have to interrupt it and say,

“No brain, we don’t feel that way anymore. We’ve moved on.”

Here’s the thing:
A few random, harmless thoughts a day is totally normal.
The more you go out and live, the more they fade.
The more you stop avoiding things, the more they fade.
The more you build your coping skills, self-esteem, and social confidence, the more those pesky thoughts lose their power—until eventually, you’re just left with the occasional “Oh hey, remember when we used to…”

And when that happens, you’ll know exactly what to do. You won’t spiral. You won’t wobble. You’ll be in control.

To tell someone overcoming depression that they’re a failure if they ever have another sad thought again is unrealistic—and harmful. It sets people up for perfectionistic, black-and-white thinking. Emetophobes often wear those same mental “failure lenses,” fearing that any setback means they’re doomed. They are in the habit of extreme catastrophic black and white thinking.

Not true.
It’s okay to have thoughts sometimes. It’s what you do with them that matters. You are NOT responsible for the first thought, but rather how you respond to it… and that’s what makes all the difference.

There’s a part in Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence that explains this perfectly. In the early chapters, he talks about something called the amygdala hijack. Your amygdala—the little almond-shaped part of your brain—fires off an emotional reaction before your logical brain even gets the memo. In certain situations, this fast response can be useful, like when you need to act quickly without overthinking.

The problem is, the amygdala reacts the same way even in completely harmless situations. That first flash of fear or worry isn’t you “failing”—it’s simply your brain running an old pattern.

The good news is your rational brain can step in and take control. You can notice the thought, interrupt it, and say, “No thanks, brain, we don’t feel that way anymore.” Each time you do this, you’re reinforcing a new way of thinking and responding.

I can show you how to shrink those old habit-thoughts down to almost nothing—so they never limit you or hold you back again.

Because thriving and emetophobia recovery doesn’t mean having zero thoughts—it means those thoughts have zero power over you.