Ever since I remembered, I always had a phobia towards insects. I call them “Anything that has more than 4 legs”. “Entomophobia” or “Insectophobia” are the scientific words.
I have no idea where it came from, nor how it happened. Any type of insects would give me the creeps. I could not watch TV if there was an insect on the show. I couldn’t even touch a magazine if there was a picture of an insect on the cover or inside.
Every time I traveled to Africa, I had to bring a pair of tongs in my luggage. I call them my “Bug Tongs”. As you can imagine, there is an “abundance” of insects in Africa. They are everywhere, including in your hotel room. An insect in sight was a disaster for me. I had to immediately use my bug tongs to pick it up, throw it into the toilet bowl and flush it. Many times, I had to call the hotel staff to come help me getting rid of a spider on the ceiling or an insect so grotesque that I didn’t even dare to touch it with the tongs.
After I moved to Hong Kong, I had to face new trouble in my daily life – cockroaches. I don’t remember how many times I had to scream bloody murder when I saw a cockroach in the house.
I love traveling. But one place I thought I probably would never be able to go, was the Amazon jungles, knowing that the number of insects is even worse than in Africa!
I lived with this phobia all of my life. It created certain restrictions in my life and I just had to deal with it. I always thought it was something “permanent” that could never be cured.
When I first learned Animal Communication, my teacher talked about insects. Of course, they are also animals! They are part of nature. They are life. They also have feelings – pain, fear, hunger… They have intelligence. Just look at bees, ants, etc. There are no “good” or “bad” insects. We judge them only by human standards.
Sure, I understood and accepted the concept, but talking with an insect? No way!
I continued practicing communicating with cats, dogs, rabbits, birds, snakes, turtles, lions, elephants, whales, zebras… The list got longer and longer, but no insect was included.
It was a hot summer night in Africa, I walked into the outdoor shower of my chalet. Suddenly, something black quickly flashed through my peripheral vision. I looked and saw it was a big black spider. As usual, I was startled and instinctively gasped. I instantly reached for the water tap and turned it on. That had always been my standard reaction in Africa… to run the water and flush the insect down the drain.
At that moment, a frozen feeling suddenly passed through my whole body. I experienced a horror. That horror, that I was all so familiar with, was the kind of terror I experienced in my nightmares when running for my life while being chased by aliens. Yes, my “theme dream” accompanied me since my childhood. In my dream I was running for my life, trembling with terror.
Now, this feeling was not the same phobia feeling. I knew it. My feeling of terror was quite different. This horror was much stronger than the fear and disgust I’d typically feel when seeing insects. Why, I wondered?
I suddenly understood. I shivered. I was feeling the horror that the spider was feeling! It was not my own feeling. “Oh my God!” I screamed in my heart. I quickly turned off the water. By then, the poor spider was already soaking wet and was helplessly sliding towards the drain. Fighting to crawl away from the drain, when the water stopped, he stopped sliding but was too weak to move.
I told the spider, “I am sorry. I did not mean to kill you…Well, actually, I did, but I am sorry. I won’t do that anymore.”
I then felt more sadness. I went back into the room and didn’t use the outdoor shower that night. I hoped the spider would eventually dry up and be able to leave. The next morning, I checked. There was no dead spider in the outdoor shower. The spider was saved.
For many months that sadness stayed with me. It came whenever I saw an insect. It was the sadness and regret I felt, thinking about the hundreds of insects I had killed before realizing the huge horror they felt. I felt bad for every insect that I had killed.
Since then, I never kill insects any more. Not even cockroaches. Miraculously, from then on, my insect phobia was gone, forever…
I now watch TV shows about insects. I learn about them. I communicate with them. There are so many fascinating things about insects! I appreciate nature’s beauty. All lives are created equal, aren’t they?
Learning Animal Communication may cure your phobia too. Contact me today to learn Animal Communication!