Insect Phobias --HELP!

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Anyone else have a really bad insect phobia? Mine's gotten so bad I get afraid every time I go outside. I've been working with a therapist on desensitization (watching bug videos) for about 2 months, but it hasn't been working. Anyone successfully overcome an insect phobia, and, if so, what worked for you? I also take an anti-depressant for anxiety, and the doctor tried "upping" that, but it hasn't helped either.

HELP!!

SPIDERS & TICKS, these freak me out, What seems to work
for me is large boots and lot of stomping, problem solved.

i don't like insects .. i fear big one's too

Bugged out topic

When I was a kid I used to be wary of insects until I started studying them in their own environment, I found them fascinating. I have seen a frog eat a fly. And I saw a fly eat a smaller fruit fly by sucking it up with a long tube-like mouth structure.

I have lots of stories to tell about bugs, but I will not bore anyone here!

funny, when I was a kid, I was as fascinated by bugs as any kid is; caught fireflies in a jar, tied a string around a June bug's leg and flew it around like a toy airplane, took tarantulas to show-and-tell. Now I have a freaking wreck if a grass spider gets in my truck.

I have become a little bit desensitized in the past couple years, because I lived for awhile in a house where Cave Crickets got into the house all the time. Now I don't know if you've ever seen one of these things, but they look like the bugs in Starship Troopers. Until about ten years ago, I'd never seen or heard of them. Now they're everywhere around here. They're harmless, but if there was ever an insect who's very ugliness would make you jump on a chair and scream like a little girl, this is it. After having to kill a couple hundred of these things, I finally got past the sudden adrenaline injection everytime I encountered one. Still, I wouldn't pick one up with my bare hands. eeeeyycchh.

Here's a sweet bedtime story for ya: In '99, I woke up one maorning and showered, got ready for work and realized my hearing in one ear seemed clogged. Assumed I'd gotten water in it while showering.

Couple hours later, I'm at work, sitting at my computer, doing boring programming. My ear still seemed clogged, so I reached up and rubbed it, to see if I could dislodge the water bubble. When I did so, there was a loud rubbing against my eardrum as something shifted itself. Holy crap! There's something alive in my frickin' ear! (visions of earwigs and Chekov in Wrath of Khan)

So I start thinking (in an irrational panic of course) "How the hell do you get a living creature out of your ear? Ask a doctor? There's no time to sit in a waiting room, I gotta get this thing out now."

So I got to the local Walmart, to look in the pharmacy for any kind of solution. Nothing. "Well", I thought, "I used to have a Cocker Spaniel that got ear mites from time to time, I'll look in the pet section. Sure enough, there's ear mite liquid for dogs, so I get that and a rubber bulb syringe and take it back to work. In the kitchenette at work, I turn on the water faucet, squirt the ear mite medicine into my ear which not only has a nasty hot chemical burn, but also causes the thing to BITE ME ON THE EARDRUM, and stick the bulb syringe into the water stream to fill it with water. In a panic now, because this thing has BITTEN ME ON THE EARDRUM, I stick the filled syringe into my ear and leaning over the sink, squirt the water in, to flush the little bastard out. Only I've forgotten that in this office kitchenette the only water that comes out of this faucet is the HOT kind.

Within six seconds I've squirted a burning chemical into my ear, been bitten by what turns out to be a little fuzzy black house spider and followed that by scalding my eardrum with hot water.

When I later recounted this story to my 90 year old grandmother, who grew up on a country farm, she said: "You didn't need to go to all that trouble, you could've just squirted cold water in there and it would have rinsed him right out."

Yeah, well. It's hard to think that calmly and rationally when there' a SPIDER IN YOUR EAR.

It's a funny thing with insects and I. When I was younger (to some extent even now) I was very interested in insects. I had a number of insect books. The only thing is that I was afraid was many insects. I fear bees, wasps, hornets, big flies and really big scary looking insects such as dragonflies. I'm very sensitive when something is buzzing around me, I can't stand the noise it goes through me especially when I'm in my own house. This phobia and interest increased a bit about 20 years ago during a trip to a park with my summer camp. I saw this interesting bug. To this day I could never find out what it was. It was a large round black beetle with white dots. It just stood there, so I kicked it over. The bug went crazy and started making all kinds of loud noises! I got scared and ran away! There were a number of these bugs around the park. Someone else kicked another one over and the same thing happen but a puff of grayish hair was sticking out of that one. A few people thought their were cicadas but cicadas are not beetle like. It couldn't been a click beetle because they're thinner and longer, this was more rounder.

Anyone know what I saw back then?

Insects are cute, I was used to pick them up when I was child
except for the cockroach ...very disgusting.

I have no problems with insects and other creepy-crawlies (I LOVE dragonflies and colorful beetles), it's biting and stinging insects that scare me to death.

I love insects, but I'm incredibly arachniphobic

Insects usually don't bother me unless they're in my room in which case they die on sight.

Only bug that really bothers me are earwigs.
Of course I try to be careful around stinging bugs too.

Ever since i was stung twice on both arms and once on my butt by a wasp, I have a phobia of flying insects with stingers. If any of those bugs get into my room I introduce them to my can of RAID.

I don't necessarily have a phobia of any insects; they just make me extremely neurotic. If I see any of the following: grasshoppers, earwigs, centipede type things, cockroaches, large flying things... I just do my best to hide from them and try not to get too hysterical. But large grasshoppers, in particular really freak me out. Because they can jump, of course.

If there is a cockroach, earwig (those things stalk me, I swear) or large mosquito etc inside my house.. No matter how late it is, I will NOT rest - I will patiently stalk it, perched on a high area, and wait until it emerges so that I can trap it under a large bowl or something similar.
..Which means that in the summer, my mother often awakes to find the house littered with upside-down bowls and pillows on the floor (with trapped insects underneath.)

I used to be very afraid of butterflies.. Which was triggered, I believe, by a visit to one of those big greenhouse-type places in a science museum, filled with butterflies (my sister lured me in there by claiming there would be birds, instead). They were everywhere and I had a meltdown.

Now, I'm still a bit scared of the larger butterflies (like monarchs), not the small ones really. I never hurt them, I just duck and try to get out of their way.. which people seem to find quite amusing..

I love moths, though.

I love insects, used to collect them as a child and keep them in jars.\

However, the following:

- Cockroaches
- Scorpions
- Centipedes
- Maggots/Flies
- Mosquitos
- Annoying biting flies
- Parasitic bugs

I dont like those for varying reasons. Perhaps you can get CBT for insect phobias? I hear it can help.

I've never had a severe insect phobia, but I was probably more aversive to them than most people until recently. I liked them, but I didn't like to touch them, even to squish one or move it outside.

Then I got an insectivorous lizard. At first, I thought that I would not have to directly handle the insects. Oh but I was oh so wrong! I did (and still do) have to handle crickets and other invertebrates every day.

After I got used to the crickets, I added meal worms (beetle larvae) to my lizard's diet. I found that the meal worms were FAR less disgusting than the crickets. Crickets are cannibalistic, and they produce a lot of waste, so if you keep 200 crickets in a box for a week, well, you can imagine. So once I could handle the crickets without being grossed out (most of the time) other insects were pleasant by comparison.

Now I'm planning to introduce cockroaches to my lizard's diet. I'm still creeped out by them, but they're said to be MUCH cleaner and nicer to handle than crickets.

Also, live crickets are sold very cheaply at reptile stores (about $0.10 per cricket, or 12 for $1 US). So are meal worms, often at an even lower cost. So if you ever get to the point where you want to interact with an insect in a very controlled setting, that could be a resource to take advantage of.

Flies! They're filthy!

I sometimes get the creeps when ants crawl on me but, all in all, flies are the worst. Maggots are gross, too!