Many people dislike insects, some are afraid of them. But there are people who feel real horror in front of them. This phenomenon in psychology is called insectophobia and is one of the varieties of zoophobia - fear of animals.
Let's figure out what kind of disease this is, what types it has and how it manifests itself.
Insectophobia – panic fear of insects
Insectophobia is a mental disorder characterized by an intense fear of insects. Another name for it is entomophobia. As a rule, a person suffering from this disorder is frightened not by all creatures in a row, but by certain types of them, for example, bees, wasps, cockroaches, flies, ants, fleas, spiders, bedbugs. Some patients have a fear of all insects.
Manifestations of a phobia can range from hostility and disgust to panic horror at just the sight of a flying or crawling insect.
Treatment
Entomophobia is a poorly documented and underestimated mental disorder. It often goes beyond most scientific categories and other phobias. Many phobics are known to visit many different doctors and specialists, often without any resolution of their condition. Therefore, it becomes necessary to employ a multidisciplinary approach to diagnosis and treatment.
A combination of healing methods, including medication, desensitization, and psychotherapy, has been found helpful in relieving fear of insects. An entomologist may also be needed to teach the patient how to correct misconceptions that may worsen entomophobia.
Types of insectophobia
In psychology, there is a whole list of names for various manifestations of fear of insects. We list the most famous of them:
- acaraphobia, scabiophobia - fear of ticks;
- apiophobia – fear of bees, wasps, bumblebees, hornets;
- millipodaphobia - fear of centipedes;
- arachnophobia – fear of spiders and arachnids;
- dipterophobia – fear of flies;
- isopterophobia – fear of termites and the like;
- cnidophobia – fear of various stinging insects;
- myrmecophobia – fear of ants;
- Scoleciphobia – fear of worms and larvae;
- parasitophobia – fear of parasites;
- phthyriophobia – fear of lice.
There is also a fear of mosquitoes, which has not yet been given a separate name.
Where does fear of insects come from?
The underlying reasons that give rise to panic fear of certain types of living beings have not yet been fully studied. However, psychology identifies two theories that explain the mechanism of fear.
Freud's psychodynamic theory
World-famous psychologist Sigmund Freud, trying to get to the bottom of the causes of phobias, put forward a theory according to which the human psyche displaces stimuli from consciousness, acting as a defense mechanism when encountering danger. A person is trying to take control of nature, so he ignores the danger signals that his psyche gives.
As a result, the mental defense mechanism is disrupted, anxiety from the conscious level passes to the unconscious and gives rise to strong fear of completely ordinary objects. This fear is in the unconscious, so a person can neither realize nor control it. Only a psychotherapist can help in getting rid of a phobia, who will work through these fears and “pull” them to the surface.
At one time, Freud's theory was quite popular in the scientific community, but over time, many psychologists recognized it as untenable.
Behavioral theory
According to this theory, a person develops a phobia in those moments when he experiences strong fear. There are two ways to form fear: conditioned and modeled.
- Conditional path. The cause of fear is negative impressions experienced in childhood. A small child, who is still learning about the world around him and has not seen much, may unexpectedly encounter an insect and be afraid of it. And if an insect bites a child, then his fear will only intensify. Subsequently, this fear is fixed in his psyche and turns into a phobia. A person cannot stop being afraid on his own. In the same way, a phobia can arise in an adult who has experienced a traumatic experience associated with insects, for example, after a tick bite, a panic fear of ticks may appear.
- Modeled path. Here, the roots of the phobia also lie in childhood. The child copies the behavior of his parents and other adults around him. If one of them is terribly afraid of insects, the baby adopts this model of behavior and also begins to be afraid.
Behavioral theory is very common among psychologists. Many experts explain the causes of various phobias from this position.
What to do if a child is afraid of insects? 3 important steps from horror to curiosity
Few people like insects (even Pushkin didn’t particularly like them). At best, all these crawling and flying creatures arouse exploratory interest in children, at worst - violent hysteria and screams of horror (and, to be honest, they can be understood). If your child is so afraid of insects that it is interfering with your summer vacation, then here is how you can help him with this.
First, let's quickly figure out what doesn't help overcome the fear of bugs and spiders.
- The phrase "Don't be afraid" . People experience fear for a variety of reasons, and in most cases they are not dependent on desire. If your child is afraid of something (and talks about it), there is no point in forbidding him - he does not control his fear, and prohibiting certain emotions will only make the situation worse.
- The phrase “He is more afraid of you than you are of him . This phrase sounds reassuring, but when there's a nasty spider crawling up your leg, it's completely useless.
- Tactics “knock out wedge with wedge . Perhaps the idea of putting a spider on the clothes of a child who is afraid of insects to tears may seem like a good joke or an effective method of dealing with fears, but in reality it is not such. Healing fears by confronting them head-on rarely helps anyone, and such methods also undermine the child's trust in you as a reliable source of safety.
A delicate approach will help to deal with the fear of insects much more effectively, in which the child will get to know insects better, study them, get used to them and, if he does not love them with all his soul, then at least stop jumping up in horror every time.
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Posted by Aleksandr Fedulov (@my_collection_of_beetles) Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12 am PDT
Keep calm
You can tell your children as much as you want not to be afraid of insects, but if you flinch every time you see a wasp flying past, your words will not sound convincing. Demonstrate to your child by personal example that there is nothing scary about insects, and even those that can be potentially dangerous (like wasps or bees) attack only if they are threatened - which is why it is important to act as calmly as possible around them.
It is also important to treat insects without being too harsh. You shouldn’t kill them “just for fun” or torture them for educational purposes - a respectful attitude towards all living beings is laid down from childhood.
Watch
First, get to know the insects from a distance. Watch the caterpillar eat a leaf. Head to the lake and watch the dragonflies as they hunt. Listen to the grasshoppers chirping. Stock up on small interesting facts from the life of insects to interest your child and let him understand that all these nasty bugs are good for more than just panicking them with a slipper.
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Publication from the “Pharmaceutical Garden” of Moscow State University (@hortus_ru) August 12, 2020 at 10:32 PDT
Get an illustrated book about insects so you can study them in the safety of your own home, hidden behind mosquito nets. Insects frighten children because they are unusual, incomprehensible and unpredictable. The more your child knows about insects and their behavior, the less creepy they will seem.
Collect and care
The next step for the budding entomologist is to try taking a few insects under your wing and observing them up close. To do this, you will need professional equipment: a plastic container with a tight lid and ventilation holes in it, a magnifying glass and a small net.
Fill the container with soil, twigs and leaves to make your future tenant feel right at home. Catch a few flightless insects (flying ones like butterflies or dragonflies will be uncomfortable in a confined space and may die) and put them in a container. You should also avoid spiders - they are predators and will not be able to get along with their neighbors.
Use a magnifying glass to get a closer look at the insects. Try sketching what you see, or making copies of insects from plasticine or salt dough.
Another way to get to know the world of insects better is on an ant farm. They are sold ready-made, and through the transparent walls you can observe the life of these little workers in real time.
Even if you follow these steps consistently, there is no guarantee that your child will suddenly develop a love and affection for insects—some people find them unpleasant on some deep, instinctive level, and no encyclopedia can fix that. In this case, parents are left to do the same as with other childhood experiences: acknowledge, accept, sympathize, hug and protect.
More to read
Ticks and other troubles: what you need to know when traveling with your family out of town
How to help your child with bites from mosquitoes and other flying creatures. Pediatrician Sergei Butriy says:
Other causes of insectophobia
In addition to those discussed above, there are several more factors that provoke panic fear of insects.
- Parents forbade the child to touch insects and frightened him with stories about painful bites and terrible diseases that they could carry. As a result, the child begins to feel that these are very dangerous creatures that need to be feared.
- Horror films that show huge scary insects that attack people.
- Increased impressionability in some people who, having heard enough stories about how someone was bitten by insects, begin to be afraid of them themselves.
Causes of fear
Some suggest that the reason for the fear of “creeping things” lies in ancient times. Allegedly, this is due to self-preservation instincts. However, people's reaction to dangerous animals is less pronounced or absent altogether. Children may not be afraid, but love predators: bears, wolves, lions. Unlike insects, the sight of which causes hysterics.
Perhaps the child had an unfortunate incident with a representative of the “many-legged”: a bite that got into the ear, nose, under clothes. A common phenomenon is an inexplicable fear that the insect will do something scary or disgust at the sight of it.
Symptoms of fear of insects
Insectophobia, like any other phobia, is accompanied by a number of specific symptoms:
- nausea, dizziness, headache, increased blood pressure;
- cardiopalmus; chest pain, shortness of breath;
- muscle tension, trembling of arms and legs;
- paleness or redness of the skin, increased sweating;
- psychomotor agitation, disorientation;
- panic attack, desire to run away from the insect or immediately kill it.
These symptoms appear at the moment when the patient sees an insect, hears its buzzing or rustling wings. If the phobia is very severe, then even thoughts about the object of fear trigger a similar reaction.
To protect themselves from meeting creatures that cause fear, insectophobes do not go out into nature, do not go to the forest or park. During the warm season, they try to be outside as little as possible.
How to behave correctly for parents at the moment of hysteria
Some parents do not know what to do and how to behave when their baby is hysterical. There are several recommendations that young parents should adhere to.
At 1 year old
If a baby becomes hysterical at the sight of an insect, you must immediately calm him down. To do this, the baby is picked up and interacted with so that he can get distracted.
At the age of 2 years
When hysteria appears at the age of two, the child must be immediately taken away from the object of fear and calmed down. So that the child stops worrying and being afraid, they communicate with him or give him a toy to distract his attention.
At 3 years old
From the age of three you can fully communicate with a child, and therefore if he often has hysterics, you need to have conversations with him about this. You should also take him for walks in nature more often to show him insects and explain that they will not harm him.
