Anna is officially...

This past week I've been spending inordinate amounts of time marketing and social networking. This involves blogging, writing articles, answering ads, bidding on freelance jobs, keeping a presence on some phobia discussion boards, designing and running ads, adwords, adsense. It takes a ton of time.

But it seems to have paid off. I've hooked up with a guy who markets a program to help people with emetophobia (fear of vomiting). Since that's what I had for many years it's a natural partnership. His program is very cheap and very sensible. Not a quick-fix, but a good program. So he and I decided to partner around the counseling I offer via Skype.

Since I'm one of the few counselors in the world who's a recovered emetophobic, I really enjoy working with other phobics and doing my part to help. Most therapists have never even heard of emetophobia, let alone treated it. So for half of my first session fees, this dude is going to send out to his emetophobia email list my name and bio. He ran a test email yesterday to 100 recipients and I got 3 new clients. Next week he's going to email out to the other 14,000.

Yikes!

I really hope I don't get 4,000 people emailing me for counseling. I can only take 10 clients/week and still have 3 days left for writing (which is why I quit my job in the first place - it wasn't to do counseling). I already have 7 clients - all emetophobic. So that would make me really sad - to turn thousands of people away who need help. I might have to spend a year writing a training manual for therapists or something.

Anyway, that's my news this week. I'm out of the closet now. Yes, I had a puke phobia. It was pretty severe for 30 years. I did 300 hours of therapy and can safely say I'm anxiety-free now. And my therapist has a really nice car.

Since I've outed myself, if you're curious about emetophobia, I have a secret website (well, how secret is anything on the internet?) It's www.emetophobiahelp.org