Crying in an airport over my dead nana, my fear of public tears started to crumble

I always feared the embarrassment of being visibly emotional – but after a hard year, there’s relief in letting it all out, writes Rebecca Shaw

Crying in public is one of the things that I would never let myself do, for fear of drawing attention, and feeling embarrassed.

I recently read an interesting chapter (watched a video) in a medical textbook (on TikTok) about a woman who suffers from emetophobia – the intense fear of vomiting. She had gone her entire adult life without doing it, going to great lengths to avoid ever becoming sick, and preferring to remain nauseous than upchuck. 

That is, until a few days ago, when she unfortunately got a bad case of food poisoning. As is implied with the ‘poisoning’ part, it didn’t go well. None of her anti-spew techniques worked, and her willpower was not enough to hold back the tides.