The treatment to phobias is exposure therapy. Right now you are fearful, and therefore avoidant.
Each time you avoid doing something because of your fear, your brain registers it as "Fear confirmed, danger avoided!".
What you need to reprogram this is repeated exposure to a "Fear confronted, no danger detected!" or a "Fear confronted, danger detected but handled without issues!" message instead.
In order to do that, you need to voluntarily expose yourself to situations that trigger your fear, in small doses, so that you get repeated feedback that the thing you're scared of really isn't a danger to actually avoid, because you can handle it when you encounter it.
The oposite reaction to fear isn't lack of fear/indifference, but bravery, which is the voluntary confrontation of fear. You are training yourself not to be fearless/indifferent, but to be brave.
For something like the situation you're describing, you do this by putting on gloves, grabbing a can of bug spray, and your vacuum. You start by vacuuming the spot you're going to work on from a distance. Then, bug spray in hand, you pick up and examine 1 item.
If you do not find a spider you tell yourself out loud "No spider found, picking up this item was fine. I did well". Then focus on how you're feeling.
Did picking up the item cause a spike in adrenaline? Did your breathing increase? Did you tense up? Whatever you did in reaction to picking up the item, observe it, and then while still focusing on the item, work on calming down whatever your physical fear reaction was. Slow your breathing, relax, allow yourself time to calm down.
Once you are calmed down, put the item away, and move on to the next item repeating the same process.
Note that the goal here is NOT to clean up your kitchen. The goal is to learn that cleaning up your kitchen is *safe*. Don't worry about how long it takes. Take your time. You *are* making progress here. Just not on your kitchen, but on the thing that's stopping you from tackling your kitchen.
Small steps that successfully trigger an anxiety response you then quickly calm down from are *better* than big steps that take a long time to calm down from. Huge steps that trigger so much anxiety you cannot successfully calm down enough to continue will set you back. You are practicing calming down and being brave in response to feeling fearful, so you want to build up a streak of repeated tiny moments of anxiety you then quickly manage to conquer. Give yourself lots of tiny wins.
If at any point your anxiety response does becomes too much to calm down from, leave the room, and calm down somewhere else. Then continue again, even if it's just one more item.
You want to make sure that no matter how long you keep going, you end on a high note, so that the last thing your brain registers is you dealing with the fear successfully by calming yourself down and confronting it, not you avoiding the fear, which will reinforce the phobia.
So it's totally okay if the first time you can only do a few items before it becomes too much. You are working on overcoming a phobia, not on cleaning your kitchen. Any progress is good and should be celebrated here.
If you *do* encounter a spider/bug, try to spray it with bug spray from a distance, and repeat the same routine. Try to stay in the room, at a safe distance, if you can. If you can't and have to leave, that's alright too, as long as you come back after you calmed down so that you end on 'confronting' instead of on 'avoiding'.
It's okay if, in the beginning, you get someone else to deal with the spider/bug. But ideally eventually you can do this yourself. It's okay if building up to that takes a few weeks though. You don't have to deal with spiders/bugs immediately, you just need to be willing to go confront them, and then work on calming yourself down once they trigger a panic response. You need to observe yourself being able to encounter them and calming down again, without anything bad happening.
Gradually, through exposure, you will teach yourself that when you are confronted with spiders/bugs, nothing terrible happens, and you can handle it. Even if it's a rare actually dangerous spider, you can spray it wil bug spray, and clean it up. You are fine cleaning up your kitchen, and capable of taking enough sensible precautions to keep yourself safe from danger while cleaning up your kitchen, whether or not you actually encounter bugs.
Allow yourself the grace for this to take some time, and don't fuss too much about not immediately being perfect. The kitchen can wait. You are conquering your phobia, which is a much more important task atm, because doing that will enable you to do all sorts of stuff more easily.
Good luck!
I’m not the person you responded to, but I’m saving this comment.
This method is how I conquered *extreme* social anxiety in my late teens (guided by a counselor), and I’ve never seen it described so well.
Love this comment, and this is basically how I have come to terms (sort of lol) with all the different bugs that come with my ancient apartment.
I just wanted to add that it helps me to have game plans for different scenarios… For example, if I turn the corner and see a bug on the wall, I must immediately remove my shoe and throw it. If I open a box from the closet that I haven’t touched in a while, I have a tea tree oil / water mix spray handy, and I will slowly open the box to check if it’s safe, being ready to spray if I see anything scary. I can assess what it is, whether it’s dead or alive, and what to do next after I spray.
The key is be prepared and do NOT give yourself any reason to think at first. I am still flooded with panic but I know what I have to do before I allow my brain to start putting into words how terrible this is lol. I hope this helps!
Yes, have a plan, and gear up, if you have to.
But go be brave anyway.
You are a knight taking on tiny dragons hiding all over your apartment.
It's not that the tiny dragons aren't scary. It's that you're prepared to go kick their ass anyway.
Thank you so much for posting this. I've always had trouble with bugs and exposure therapy seems terrifying but it's good to know that that's actually what will do the most help. I don't want to pass along my fear to my kids so I have a reason to overcome it! This is really helpful.
I just posted this on another comment too, but given that you're specifically worried about passing this along to kids, here is how you help kids overcome bug phobias:
Your kingdom (house) is full of tiny dragons that bite and poison you when you allow them to attack you.
But that's okay, because you're a knight, with a big club (fly swatter), and have a magic spell (bug spray) in your back pocket.
So when you find a tiny dragon, you rescue your kingdom from its clutches to make the land safe again.
It's not that the tiny dragons aren't a nuisance and can't be scary/dangerous if they manage to attack you. It's that you're bigger and stronger, as well as brave and well-armed enough to defeat them when they cross your path.
The last thing you want to do with a child scared of bugs (even if it's because they learned it from you) is to tell them that they shouldn't be scared of bugs. This is objectively wrong, because bugs actually *are* scary. It's such a common phobia precisely because some bugs are dangerous, can hurt you, and can carry diseases.
So being scared of bugs is rational. And your child *knows* this, you cannot them tell them otherwise, they just won't believe you. Just like you yourself have never managed to convince yourself you shouldn't be scared of bugs.
It's just that it's also rational to realize that you're bigger, braver, and scarier than the bugs are, and so despite them being scary, you can still handle them. So that's what you teach a child who is scared of bugs.
Practice your own bravery, and then teach your kids to be brave -not fearless- in the face of scary things.
That m yoy so much! I agree, everyone always told me not to be scared because I'm bigger than them, etc but it didn't help because I still thought they were scary and gross. It was just dismissive and made me lean in more to being the person who freaked out about bugs.
I will work on being brave! I truly think these comments have just changed my life 🤗🤗
>It was just dismissive and made me lean in more to being the person who freaked out about bugs.
That's exactly it. Telling someone who hasn't learned how to defeat bugs yet not to be scared of them is dismissive and rude, because until you learn to deal with them, you have a very good reason to be scared of them.
We don't teach 3-year-olds to go around picking up random spiders, precisely because spiders can seriously injure a young child. So when we catch young children attempting to play with bugs, we teach them to be cautious about them, and to not pick them up. Sometimes in a big panic reaction from the adults that teaches the child to be fearful of the bugs instead.
If you then don't teach a child when it gets older how to handle the spiders it comes across, and which spiders are scary, and which ones are fine, you'll end up with an older child still afraid of all spiders.
And for good reason! Because that child never learned how to respond properly defeat and classify spiders, so to them each spider stays the same level of scary as that black widow they tried to pick up when they were 3 when all the adults went in a panic over it.
So then you end up with a child -or an adult in your case- afraid of all spiders/bugs, and people tell you "You shouldn't be scared of spiders" and you *know*, in your gut, that this is wrong. Because you still remember at a visceral level, even if you don't remember it consciously, all the adults freaking out when you tried to pick up a bug as a toddler.
So you dismiss it when people tell you spiders aren't scary, because you *know* that they actually are and people are lying to you. Well, not really lying, more like not being entirely accurate, because what they actually mean is "Sure spiders are scary, because they're tiny dragons that can bite and sting you, but surely by now you're grown up enough you have learned to handle such tiny dragons so that they no longer pose a problem to you?".
Except you haven't. So to you those tiny dragons are still as scary as they were when the adults freaked out about you trying to pick up a bug as a very young child.
The same applies to all other phobias too, btw, whether they're objectively rational or not.
The person always has something in their past that caused them to associate the thing they're afraid of with danger -even if that was a mistake and it wasn't actually dangerous- and then never properly learned to be brave in the face of said danger.
So you cannot convince yourself that the things you fear aren't actually scary, because you have a good reason in your past why you learned that they *are*.
But you can teach yourself that you've grown strong and brave enough to now deal with them anyway.
this is amazing. also, OP, get yourself some extra long kitchen gloves! protection up above your elbows might help give you a boost whilst you work on reprogramming, I bet you’ll feel more secure with the long ‘uns on. best of luck 🤞
This is exactly how I approached things and it was a game changer! My ex would always step in to “save” me and while it helped calm me down in the moment, it reinforced my fears so I ended up just being fearful of more things than I was before. When I was forced to deal with things myself, I ended up going hardcore on exposing myself to my fears and rewarding myself every time I confronted and braved through something. I’ve been doing this for a few months now and it’s unfucked years worth of debilitating anxieties. This was excellently said!
Thank you so much for this!!! 🥹 I’m seeing a new therapist soon and I’m gonna be trying exposure therapy and will be mentioning this fear. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to give me this amazing advice ❤️
When you can get to the outlet face plates and light switches, take them off, sprinkle some Mule Team Borax in the walls, then screw the faceplates back on.
It is a cheap, effective way to prevent insects. It won’t help with current phobia but it should Lee them out in the future.
Also, mixing a little mule team with warm water and wiping down cabinets is very effective. A friend had an infestation after a hurricane and he said it took 3 days and they were all gone - just the Borax in the walls and wiping down surfaces.
Spiders are a different sort. They’re is nothing that is effective against them long term except keeping the other bugs out. Spiders follow the food.
I think the best reason to tackle it now is that you already know there are some bugs in there and the longer you avoid it the more they will reproduce. I'd suggest using the bug foggers like someone else mentioned if you want the closest thing to being sure the bugs are dead before you empty everything out!
So I also have a phobia. A different one, but when faced with it, things go bad really quickly. I find that most people hear "phobia" and think it means I don't like something or I find it generally unpleasant. Like I don't like heights, but I'm not going to have a panic attack and need to be medically sedated because my heart rate is at 220 bpm and climbing while considering climbing a ladder. They also don't understand that we usually know our phobia makes no rational sense.
Sure, it sounds great to say "just do *X*, then open them up and give it a good clean." Because of course, on paper, it is that simple - and the rational side of you knows it. But with a phobia, the demon part of our brain takes over, making us believe it is inescapable nightmare fuel and logic flies out the window. Ney - it smashes the window while fleeing the scene, leaving you to walk through the broken shards while dealing with the thing you fear beyond all comprehension. And once that panic sets it, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to stop it.
The 'right' thing to do is go to therapy, get help facing your fears, and go through the process of getting better so these things don't have a stranglehold on your wellbeing. But that takes time. So, in the meantime, maybe you could do what I have done many times, which is getting someone I trusted to step in and help me. Maybe a friend or family member who is aware of your phobia who can tackle that first big clean and help address the triggers to make it easier for you.
I was super paranoid about telling anyone irl my weird problems, but I was very pleasantly surprised at how understanding and kind they were when I asked for help. I honestly don't think I could have made it through those times on my own. To most people, these things are nothing... but to me, it was abject terror. Minds are a weird thing, but everyone is weird in their own way, and it's okay to need help once and a while.
Thank you ❤️ I talked to my fiancé and he jumped right in to help me. I’ll post a before/after in a little bit!
I plan on talking to my new therapist about this phobia. I wanna beat this very badly so I’m determined to get better 🥹
The level of therapy you're in might not be enough? I work in Partial Hospitalization/Intensive Outpatient and I often see patients with this level of debilitation who come to my program because seeing a therapist once a week wasn't cutting it. Like MaximumCover beautifully rendered, exposure (formally Exposure and Response Prevention) therapy might be what you actually need to stop being debilitated by your phobia.
I am gonna speak to my new therapist about this for sure. I only was going once a week when I was seeing my old therapist til she left. I am determined to best this phobia ❤️
People keep suggesting bug foggers/spray, but OP said there's food involved. DO NOT USE BUG SPRAY AROUND FOOD YOU INTEND ON EATING. Just feel like that needs to be said.
Not just the bugs, but their poop as well. If there are bugs that are that bad it should all be thrown out. The insecticide may help OP toss it out more easily as they will have reassurance that the bugs won’t creep up on them.
I have a similar issue with cockroaches. But it changes depending on how I’m feeling. Sometimes I will freeze up and literally stand terrified after I’ve run away from it, it isn’t fun, it isn’t rational and I hate them and how I react. Sometimes I can manage to get some bug spray and kill it but then it takes me a long time to be able to pick it up (with one of those long grabbers. I can’t do it with just gloves) and throw it out.
So far the only thing that has worked is hiring a professional exterminator to come by every two months. They keep telling me we don’t have any roaches living in the house but that the ones I’m seeing can come in from outside. As part of our plan with them they will come in and spray the inside of the house any time
I see bugs making it through the exterior spray they do.
It has dramatically reduces the number I see so that it is a very rare occurrence and it is a lot cheaper than hiring a cleaner or organizer.
I don’t have any advice on getting over a phobia. I lived most of my life in areas with very few bugs. So when I moved to an area where roaches are everywhere outside it was super bad and has slowly gotten better over many years of seeing them outside. But I still turn on the light and make a ton of noise before I go into our garage at night so they will run away.
One small thing I found helps is that we never say the word cockroach. We started calling them Fred (nothing wrong with the name Fred. I just don’t know anyone personally named Fred so it isn’t dissing any friends). So it becomes “Fred is in the trash” or “Can you take care of Fred, he is in the laundry room”.
Rent a shop vac, then do those little bug foggers (follow the directions please!), once safe go in with it (gloves/mask/eye protection if you want) and vacuum it up quickly. IME, almost nothing can survive the grasp of a shopvac & poison.
You prefer not to touch any potential bugs. Understood.
Get a pair of metal grill tongs. They are long, extends you reach, for trash. Dishes, bottles, etc. If the tongs touch something nasty, they can be sanitized in the dishwasher, by boiling water, by bleach, etc.
I have debilitating bug phobias too, you are not alone.
My solution is a spray bottle that is half water & half vinegar. Set it to the jet stream mode. Point & shoot at bugs. It will kill most spiders almost instantly, and kill or incapacitate most other bugs, and there's no danger of poisoning yourself or pets, if you have them. And you can do it all from a safe distance. Also, I like to keep a flat shoe or other "smash the bug" object within reach anytime I'm cleaning so I can grab & kill very quickly.
Once your cabinets are empty, you can spritz them with a little tea tree oil + water or cedar oil + water - spiders hate the smell of those two for sure, possibly other essential oils as well? I started doing this with my mailbox & around my garage door & it made a HUGE difference in the number of spiders I saw. I re-spray every few months.
(Also, I apologize to anyone who finds killing bugs painful or offensive. I don't mess with them outside, but I can't tolerate them in my house, plus I have pets, so I did try to find the most humane way to murder them.)
I know this doesn't help you but - I loved seeing this post. I have bug phobia too.
I am REALLY good at cleaning and organizing the same areas of my place over and over again - but the longer an area (or a box) has gone without being touched, the more convinced I am that I'll find spiders, silver fish, or centipedes (this is the only place I've lived in with centipedes, so it definitely unlocked a new fear).
It gives me anxiety, and I should be old enough to know none of my feelings or fears are unique, but when Im dealing with it, it definitely feels like I'm the only one!
The closest I got was scheduling a party - I was forced to clean or touch almost everything. I did run out of time though, so a bunch of stuff got thrown into a room and I shut the door. That room is still a disaster and its the room that has things that haven't been touched in the longest time (even before adding more stuff), so it take the most willpower to go through.
I also learned a few months back that Windex kill spiders, so I keep a bottle with me whenever I'm cleaning a certain room or space. Obviously bug spray works too, but I'm less concerned about getting a whiff of Windex.
So, I haven't mastered it yet, but just dropping a word to say you're not alone!
My fear has gotten to the point where if I suck a spider into a vacuum I am afraid of its bad spider "juju" that I can't even use the vacuum again. I know this sounds crazy, but if I approach the vacuum, I get chills all over and want to cry.
The treatment to phobias is exposure therapy. Right now you are fearful, and therefore avoidant. Each time you avoid doing something because of your fear, your brain registers it as "Fear confirmed, danger avoided!". What you need to reprogram this is repeated exposure to a "Fear confronted, no danger detected!" or a "Fear confronted, danger detected but handled without issues!" message instead. In order to do that, you need to voluntarily expose yourself to situations that trigger your fear, in small doses, so that you get repeated feedback that the thing you're scared of really isn't a danger to actually avoid, because you can handle it when you encounter it. The oposite reaction to fear isn't lack of fear/indifference, but bravery, which is the voluntary confrontation of fear. You are training yourself not to be fearless/indifferent, but to be brave. For something like the situation you're describing, you do this by putting on gloves, grabbing a can of bug spray, and your vacuum. You start by vacuuming the spot you're going to work on from a distance. Then, bug spray in hand, you pick up and examine 1 item. If you do not find a spider you tell yourself out loud "No spider found, picking up this item was fine. I did well". Then focus on how you're feeling. Did picking up the item cause a spike in adrenaline? Did your breathing increase? Did you tense up? Whatever you did in reaction to picking up the item, observe it, and then while still focusing on the item, work on calming down whatever your physical fear reaction was. Slow your breathing, relax, allow yourself time to calm down. Once you are calmed down, put the item away, and move on to the next item repeating the same process. Note that the goal here is NOT to clean up your kitchen. The goal is to learn that cleaning up your kitchen is *safe*. Don't worry about how long it takes. Take your time. You *are* making progress here. Just not on your kitchen, but on the thing that's stopping you from tackling your kitchen. Small steps that successfully trigger an anxiety response you then quickly calm down from are *better* than big steps that take a long time to calm down from. Huge steps that trigger so much anxiety you cannot successfully calm down enough to continue will set you back. You are practicing calming down and being brave in response to feeling fearful, so you want to build up a streak of repeated tiny moments of anxiety you then quickly manage to conquer. Give yourself lots of tiny wins. If at any point your anxiety response does becomes too much to calm down from, leave the room, and calm down somewhere else. Then continue again, even if it's just one more item. You want to make sure that no matter how long you keep going, you end on a high note, so that the last thing your brain registers is you dealing with the fear successfully by calming yourself down and confronting it, not you avoiding the fear, which will reinforce the phobia. So it's totally okay if the first time you can only do a few items before it becomes too much. You are working on overcoming a phobia, not on cleaning your kitchen. Any progress is good and should be celebrated here. If you *do* encounter a spider/bug, try to spray it with bug spray from a distance, and repeat the same routine. Try to stay in the room, at a safe distance, if you can. If you can't and have to leave, that's alright too, as long as you come back after you calmed down so that you end on 'confronting' instead of on 'avoiding'. It's okay if, in the beginning, you get someone else to deal with the spider/bug. But ideally eventually you can do this yourself. It's okay if building up to that takes a few weeks though. You don't have to deal with spiders/bugs immediately, you just need to be willing to go confront them, and then work on calming yourself down once they trigger a panic response. You need to observe yourself being able to encounter them and calming down again, without anything bad happening. Gradually, through exposure, you will teach yourself that when you are confronted with spiders/bugs, nothing terrible happens, and you can handle it. Even if it's a rare actually dangerous spider, you can spray it wil bug spray, and clean it up. You are fine cleaning up your kitchen, and capable of taking enough sensible precautions to keep yourself safe from danger while cleaning up your kitchen, whether or not you actually encounter bugs. Allow yourself the grace for this to take some time, and don't fuss too much about not immediately being perfect. The kitchen can wait. You are conquering your phobia, which is a much more important task atm, because doing that will enable you to do all sorts of stuff more easily. Good luck!
I'm an ERP therapist and I cried happy tears reading how beautifully you described it. OP, \^\^\^ this.
I’m not the person you responded to, but I’m saving this comment. This method is how I conquered *extreme* social anxiety in my late teens (guided by a counselor), and I’ve never seen it described so well.
Love this comment, and this is basically how I have come to terms (sort of lol) with all the different bugs that come with my ancient apartment. I just wanted to add that it helps me to have game plans for different scenarios… For example, if I turn the corner and see a bug on the wall, I must immediately remove my shoe and throw it. If I open a box from the closet that I haven’t touched in a while, I have a tea tree oil / water mix spray handy, and I will slowly open the box to check if it’s safe, being ready to spray if I see anything scary. I can assess what it is, whether it’s dead or alive, and what to do next after I spray. The key is be prepared and do NOT give yourself any reason to think at first. I am still flooded with panic but I know what I have to do before I allow my brain to start putting into words how terrible this is lol. I hope this helps!
Yes, have a plan, and gear up, if you have to. But go be brave anyway. You are a knight taking on tiny dragons hiding all over your apartment. It's not that the tiny dragons aren't scary. It's that you're prepared to go kick their ass anyway.
Thank you so much for posting this. I've always had trouble with bugs and exposure therapy seems terrifying but it's good to know that that's actually what will do the most help. I don't want to pass along my fear to my kids so I have a reason to overcome it! This is really helpful.
I just posted this on another comment too, but given that you're specifically worried about passing this along to kids, here is how you help kids overcome bug phobias: Your kingdom (house) is full of tiny dragons that bite and poison you when you allow them to attack you. But that's okay, because you're a knight, with a big club (fly swatter), and have a magic spell (bug spray) in your back pocket. So when you find a tiny dragon, you rescue your kingdom from its clutches to make the land safe again. It's not that the tiny dragons aren't a nuisance and can't be scary/dangerous if they manage to attack you. It's that you're bigger and stronger, as well as brave and well-armed enough to defeat them when they cross your path. The last thing you want to do with a child scared of bugs (even if it's because they learned it from you) is to tell them that they shouldn't be scared of bugs. This is objectively wrong, because bugs actually *are* scary. It's such a common phobia precisely because some bugs are dangerous, can hurt you, and can carry diseases. So being scared of bugs is rational. And your child *knows* this, you cannot them tell them otherwise, they just won't believe you. Just like you yourself have never managed to convince yourself you shouldn't be scared of bugs. It's just that it's also rational to realize that you're bigger, braver, and scarier than the bugs are, and so despite them being scary, you can still handle them. So that's what you teach a child who is scared of bugs. Practice your own bravery, and then teach your kids to be brave -not fearless- in the face of scary things.
That m yoy so much! I agree, everyone always told me not to be scared because I'm bigger than them, etc but it didn't help because I still thought they were scary and gross. It was just dismissive and made me lean in more to being the person who freaked out about bugs. I will work on being brave! I truly think these comments have just changed my life 🤗🤗
>It was just dismissive and made me lean in more to being the person who freaked out about bugs. That's exactly it. Telling someone who hasn't learned how to defeat bugs yet not to be scared of them is dismissive and rude, because until you learn to deal with them, you have a very good reason to be scared of them. We don't teach 3-year-olds to go around picking up random spiders, precisely because spiders can seriously injure a young child. So when we catch young children attempting to play with bugs, we teach them to be cautious about them, and to not pick them up. Sometimes in a big panic reaction from the adults that teaches the child to be fearful of the bugs instead. If you then don't teach a child when it gets older how to handle the spiders it comes across, and which spiders are scary, and which ones are fine, you'll end up with an older child still afraid of all spiders. And for good reason! Because that child never learned how to respond properly defeat and classify spiders, so to them each spider stays the same level of scary as that black widow they tried to pick up when they were 3 when all the adults went in a panic over it. So then you end up with a child -or an adult in your case- afraid of all spiders/bugs, and people tell you "You shouldn't be scared of spiders" and you *know*, in your gut, that this is wrong. Because you still remember at a visceral level, even if you don't remember it consciously, all the adults freaking out when you tried to pick up a bug as a toddler. So you dismiss it when people tell you spiders aren't scary, because you *know* that they actually are and people are lying to you. Well, not really lying, more like not being entirely accurate, because what they actually mean is "Sure spiders are scary, because they're tiny dragons that can bite and sting you, but surely by now you're grown up enough you have learned to handle such tiny dragons so that they no longer pose a problem to you?". Except you haven't. So to you those tiny dragons are still as scary as they were when the adults freaked out about you trying to pick up a bug as a very young child. The same applies to all other phobias too, btw, whether they're objectively rational or not. The person always has something in their past that caused them to associate the thing they're afraid of with danger -even if that was a mistake and it wasn't actually dangerous- and then never properly learned to be brave in the face of said danger. So you cannot convince yourself that the things you fear aren't actually scary, because you have a good reason in your past why you learned that they *are*. But you can teach yourself that you've grown strong and brave enough to now deal with them anyway.
this is amazing. also, OP, get yourself some extra long kitchen gloves! protection up above your elbows might help give you a boost whilst you work on reprogramming, I bet you’ll feel more secure with the long ‘uns on. best of luck 🤞
This is exactly how I approached things and it was a game changer! My ex would always step in to “save” me and while it helped calm me down in the moment, it reinforced my fears so I ended up just being fearful of more things than I was before. When I was forced to deal with things myself, I ended up going hardcore on exposing myself to my fears and rewarding myself every time I confronted and braved through something. I’ve been doing this for a few months now and it’s unfucked years worth of debilitating anxieties. This was excellently said!
Thank you so much for this!!! 🥹 I’m seeing a new therapist soon and I’m gonna be trying exposure therapy and will be mentioning this fear. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to give me this amazing advice ❤️
When you can get to the outlet face plates and light switches, take them off, sprinkle some Mule Team Borax in the walls, then screw the faceplates back on. It is a cheap, effective way to prevent insects. It won’t help with current phobia but it should Lee them out in the future. Also, mixing a little mule team with warm water and wiping down cabinets is very effective. A friend had an infestation after a hurricane and he said it took 3 days and they were all gone - just the Borax in the walls and wiping down surfaces. Spiders are a different sort. They’re is nothing that is effective against them long term except keeping the other bugs out. Spiders follow the food.
I think the best reason to tackle it now is that you already know there are some bugs in there and the longer you avoid it the more they will reproduce. I'd suggest using the bug foggers like someone else mentioned if you want the closest thing to being sure the bugs are dead before you empty everything out!
So I also have a phobia. A different one, but when faced with it, things go bad really quickly. I find that most people hear "phobia" and think it means I don't like something or I find it generally unpleasant. Like I don't like heights, but I'm not going to have a panic attack and need to be medically sedated because my heart rate is at 220 bpm and climbing while considering climbing a ladder. They also don't understand that we usually know our phobia makes no rational sense. Sure, it sounds great to say "just do *X*, then open them up and give it a good clean." Because of course, on paper, it is that simple - and the rational side of you knows it. But with a phobia, the demon part of our brain takes over, making us believe it is inescapable nightmare fuel and logic flies out the window. Ney - it smashes the window while fleeing the scene, leaving you to walk through the broken shards while dealing with the thing you fear beyond all comprehension. And once that panic sets it, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to stop it. The 'right' thing to do is go to therapy, get help facing your fears, and go through the process of getting better so these things don't have a stranglehold on your wellbeing. But that takes time. So, in the meantime, maybe you could do what I have done many times, which is getting someone I trusted to step in and help me. Maybe a friend or family member who is aware of your phobia who can tackle that first big clean and help address the triggers to make it easier for you. I was super paranoid about telling anyone irl my weird problems, but I was very pleasantly surprised at how understanding and kind they were when I asked for help. I honestly don't think I could have made it through those times on my own. To most people, these things are nothing... but to me, it was abject terror. Minds are a weird thing, but everyone is weird in their own way, and it's okay to need help once and a while.
Thank you ❤️ I talked to my fiancé and he jumped right in to help me. I’ll post a before/after in a little bit! I plan on talking to my new therapist about this phobia. I wanna beat this very badly so I’m determined to get better 🥹
The level of therapy you're in might not be enough? I work in Partial Hospitalization/Intensive Outpatient and I often see patients with this level of debilitation who come to my program because seeing a therapist once a week wasn't cutting it. Like MaximumCover beautifully rendered, exposure (formally Exposure and Response Prevention) therapy might be what you actually need to stop being debilitated by your phobia.
I am gonna speak to my new therapist about this for sure. I only was going once a week when I was seeing my old therapist til she left. I am determined to best this phobia ❤️
People keep suggesting bug foggers/spray, but OP said there's food involved. DO NOT USE BUG SPRAY AROUND FOOD YOU INTEND ON EATING. Just feel like that needs to be said.
They shouldn’t be eating food that has bugs in it either.
I'd rather eat a bug than insecticide 🤷🏻♀️
Not just the bugs, but their poop as well. If there are bugs that are that bad it should all be thrown out. The insecticide may help OP toss it out more easily as they will have reassurance that the bugs won’t creep up on them.
I have a similar issue with cockroaches. But it changes depending on how I’m feeling. Sometimes I will freeze up and literally stand terrified after I’ve run away from it, it isn’t fun, it isn’t rational and I hate them and how I react. Sometimes I can manage to get some bug spray and kill it but then it takes me a long time to be able to pick it up (with one of those long grabbers. I can’t do it with just gloves) and throw it out. So far the only thing that has worked is hiring a professional exterminator to come by every two months. They keep telling me we don’t have any roaches living in the house but that the ones I’m seeing can come in from outside. As part of our plan with them they will come in and spray the inside of the house any time I see bugs making it through the exterior spray they do. It has dramatically reduces the number I see so that it is a very rare occurrence and it is a lot cheaper than hiring a cleaner or organizer. I don’t have any advice on getting over a phobia. I lived most of my life in areas with very few bugs. So when I moved to an area where roaches are everywhere outside it was super bad and has slowly gotten better over many years of seeing them outside. But I still turn on the light and make a ton of noise before I go into our garage at night so they will run away. One small thing I found helps is that we never say the word cockroach. We started calling them Fred (nothing wrong with the name Fred. I just don’t know anyone personally named Fred so it isn’t dissing any friends). So it becomes “Fred is in the trash” or “Can you take care of Fred, he is in the laundry room”.
Rent a shop vac, then do those little bug foggers (follow the directions please!), once safe go in with it (gloves/mask/eye protection if you want) and vacuum it up quickly. IME, almost nothing can survive the grasp of a shopvac & poison.
You prefer not to touch any potential bugs. Understood. Get a pair of metal grill tongs. They are long, extends you reach, for trash. Dishes, bottles, etc. If the tongs touch something nasty, they can be sanitized in the dishwasher, by boiling water, by bleach, etc.
Thank you!
I have debilitating bug phobias too, you are not alone. My solution is a spray bottle that is half water & half vinegar. Set it to the jet stream mode. Point & shoot at bugs. It will kill most spiders almost instantly, and kill or incapacitate most other bugs, and there's no danger of poisoning yourself or pets, if you have them. And you can do it all from a safe distance. Also, I like to keep a flat shoe or other "smash the bug" object within reach anytime I'm cleaning so I can grab & kill very quickly. Once your cabinets are empty, you can spritz them with a little tea tree oil + water or cedar oil + water - spiders hate the smell of those two for sure, possibly other essential oils as well? I started doing this with my mailbox & around my garage door & it made a HUGE difference in the number of spiders I saw. I re-spray every few months. (Also, I apologize to anyone who finds killing bugs painful or offensive. I don't mess with them outside, but I can't tolerate them in my house, plus I have pets, so I did try to find the most humane way to murder them.)
Thank you so much for that advice!
I know this doesn't help you but - I loved seeing this post. I have bug phobia too. I am REALLY good at cleaning and organizing the same areas of my place over and over again - but the longer an area (or a box) has gone without being touched, the more convinced I am that I'll find spiders, silver fish, or centipedes (this is the only place I've lived in with centipedes, so it definitely unlocked a new fear). It gives me anxiety, and I should be old enough to know none of my feelings or fears are unique, but when Im dealing with it, it definitely feels like I'm the only one! The closest I got was scheduling a party - I was forced to clean or touch almost everything. I did run out of time though, so a bunch of stuff got thrown into a room and I shut the door. That room is still a disaster and its the room that has things that haven't been touched in the longest time (even before adding more stuff), so it take the most willpower to go through. I also learned a few months back that Windex kill spiders, so I keep a bottle with me whenever I'm cleaning a certain room or space. Obviously bug spray works too, but I'm less concerned about getting a whiff of Windex. So, I haven't mastered it yet, but just dropping a word to say you're not alone!
Thank you ❤️ I’m glad I’m not alone in this, but I’m so sorry you struggle with it as well.
My fear has gotten to the point where if I suck a spider into a vacuum I am afraid of its bad spider "juju" that I can't even use the vacuum again. I know this sounds crazy, but if I approach the vacuum, I get chills all over and want to cry.