My Brother's Afraid of Bugs

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My brother seems to have an irrational fear of bugs. Yeah, they can be poisonous, venomous or at the very least gross, but my brother gets all manic and histrionic whenever he's around them, regardless of where he is. He can't even kill them by himself; he has to ask others to deal with pests for him. How do I convince by little bro to simmer down around creepy-crawlies now that he's an adult?

That's the thing about phobias - they are irrational. Even people who have phobias know logically they are irrational, but that doesn't make any difference.

As far as I'm aware, only therapy can help with a true phobia, and it's usually desensitization therapy done by someone who is experienced.

In the meantime, you will have to be the bug killer for your brother.

There is nothing wrong with adults having phobias. I have a phobia of spiders, even the harmless ones. I can't kill them either because I think they're going to suddenly move towards me before I kill it. But it's only spiders I'm irrationally afraid of.

My girlfriend's like that except she doesn't kill them because she hates the idea of killing anything. There's been times where me or she has had to kill one because it couldn't be caught & relocated outside easily. She's had that phobia all her life & I think she always will. I think it may be the same for your brother LJ

I also don't like killing anything, even a wasp. We have a bug-zapper gadget at home, and my family zaps a wasp whenever it comes near. The zapper doesn't always kill the wasps, but it hurts them, and they fall to the ground kicking their legs. It really upsets me. I know wasps sting and nobody likes them, but I don't like seeing them suffer either. I hate anything suffering, even if you got no choice and have to kill something to save your or someone else's life, it still upsets me.

The only thing I love to kill are germs or bacteria.

I don't have a bug phobia. Meaning, if I see a bug on the ground I don't have fear and I don't have general anxiety about bugs when their aren't any around.

However, I have what I think is more than a natural aversion to having bugs crawl on me. Ticks, spiders, ants, centipedes, etc. All have crawled on me at different times. I had a very large black ant crawl around the inside of my mouth and bite the inside of my lower lip when I was asleep as child and forgot to brush my teeth before bed after eating something sugary. Not cool!

There have been more than one case reported in the news lately where passengers on commercial airline flights are subjected to being bitten by bedbugs and having no way to avoid it during the flight. I don't like flying as it is for many reasons, but I told my wife, IF I were ever on a flight and there were bedbugs crawling on my seat and on me and biting me where I would have no control over the situation, no other place to sit, not allowed to stand, etc....... I would freak out. I would be one of those people that they would have to pin down in the aisle or sedate me. I just think I would lose it. The idea of someone just sitting there and "taking it" because they were told they had no other choice but to be bitten repeatedly by blood sucking and potentially disease carrying parasites would be too absurd and violating for me to accept.

Sometimes it helps
to name them.

The a large spider
in my bathtub
could be the nameless
hairy threat
that must be destroyed...

or

it could be
Timmy,
the awkward adolescent
who got lost
while on a date
last night.

Timmy gets help.