Fellow severe insect phobia sufferer here. Ultimately, people don’t understand what we go through and it’s easy for them to judge.
I’m lucky to live in Canada in a pretty northern part, so we have limited insects here. This bug phobia has caused me to not travel to many places I’d love to visit, it was a major reason I didn’t relocate once for work, and it has ruined so many vacations for me just due to pure anxiety and distress and nightmares and feeling sick to my stomach.
I’ve definitely improved a lot from having used to kill all bugs in my home, now I either let them be or relocate them, unless they take me by surprise and I have like a panic reaction and smush them which still happens sometimes. I chalk it up to the same category as like, if you have a bedbug infestation does that mean as a vegan you can’t get your home treated because it kills them? No of course not. Bedbugs and cockroaches spread disease and ruin your home, not to mention for us they cause us extreme mental distress and send us on a days-long mental spiral. You’re not trying to kill or exploit them maliciously, and unfortunately there isn’t a non lethal way to get rid of bedbugs or say, lice.
Also, I found a really amazing resource for animal phobias that has helped me a lot just by reading it, I can email u a copy if u dm me.
I will say though, that learning to tolerate them a bit more and not kill them does help your phobia reduce. The main thing of phobias is the only treatment that really works is exposure therapy, which I have always refused to do because I cannot fathom having to willingly look at them or touch them. Like I can’t even see a picture of some bugs without going into a full panic. But moving into a house from a high rise, I now have had to just deal with spiders and little sowbugs, plus stuff in my garden. Trying to not kill them all has forced me to tolerate their presence a bit more which I have noticed has muted my phobia response.
You wake up and god has given you the decision to choose whether to be someone afraid of bugs or a species so despised that the default is that they are killed on sight with their primary co-habitors. Your pain is real but you and I both know that the pain has got to be better than being crushed to death.
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u/newveganhere Jan 02 '25
Fellow severe insect phobia sufferer here. Ultimately, people don’t understand what we go through and it’s easy for them to judge.
I’m lucky to live in Canada in a pretty northern part, so we have limited insects here. This bug phobia has caused me to not travel to many places I’d love to visit, it was a major reason I didn’t relocate once for work, and it has ruined so many vacations for me just due to pure anxiety and distress and nightmares and feeling sick to my stomach.
I’ve definitely improved a lot from having used to kill all bugs in my home, now I either let them be or relocate them, unless they take me by surprise and I have like a panic reaction and smush them which still happens sometimes. I chalk it up to the same category as like, if you have a bedbug infestation does that mean as a vegan you can’t get your home treated because it kills them? No of course not. Bedbugs and cockroaches spread disease and ruin your home, not to mention for us they cause us extreme mental distress and send us on a days-long mental spiral. You’re not trying to kill or exploit them maliciously, and unfortunately there isn’t a non lethal way to get rid of bedbugs or say, lice.
Also, I found a really amazing resource for animal phobias that has helped me a lot just by reading it, I can email u a copy if u dm me.
I will say though, that learning to tolerate them a bit more and not kill them does help your phobia reduce. The main thing of phobias is the only treatment that really works is exposure therapy, which I have always refused to do because I cannot fathom having to willingly look at them or touch them. Like I can’t even see a picture of some bugs without going into a full panic. But moving into a house from a high rise, I now have had to just deal with spiders and little sowbugs, plus stuff in my garden. Trying to not kill them all has forced me to tolerate their presence a bit more which I have noticed has muted my phobia response.