I have always hated roaches of every kind and everything about them would disgust and scare me. The very sight of a crawling or flying roach would make me bring the entire roof down.

I don’t remember why I felt this way about it or what caused me to develop this phobia. I suppose most people don’t know how they developed their phobias either.

Follow up:

Over the years, quite a few therapies have been designed to help people overcome their phobias.

However, a majority of people do not seek professional assistance to overcome their phobias, especially if it does not affect them severely. I would probably encounter a roach once in a month or so and I was definitely not itching to find a cure for it.

There is a less exhaustive process to curing most phobias, although it requires practice and patience. You need to cure this phobia with your mind.

It is not the phobia, but your mind that has to be conquered. If you have a fear of darkness, it probably is because your mind is playing nasty tricks with you. There really isn’t anything to be afraid of in the darkness, especially if you are in a familiar place. The funny thing is, you probably already know this fact!

Yet, when you step into absolute darkness, you tend to think of the scariest and most dreadful possibilities. We have the tendency of turning fiction into fact, even if it sounds absurd.

So, how do you overcome this phobia? Simple. Stand in a brightly lit room for a few minutes and look around you. Look around you can and tell yourself there is nothing to fear in this room. Then, switch off the light and remain standing. If you feel fear creeping in, tell yourself there is nothing in this room that can scare you, loudly and confidently.

When you do this a few times, you will realize that your mind is programming itself to accept the fact that this room is indeed safe. Initially, you may not have to remain in darkness for more than 20 seconds but with each time you practice this exercise, increase the duration until you are absolutely comfortable even when you are left in the room for more than 30 minutes.

Conquering your mind is not easy but neither is it impossible. That phobia has been manifested from your subconscious mind. You have to train your subconscious mind scientifically to overcome this fear.

I still feel disgusted when I see a roach but I realized that I don’t turn on the panic button anymore. Instead, I trained my mind to accept that it is only an insect and that I do not have to be afraid of it.

Don’t give your brain reasons to develop new phobias. If watching horror flicks scare you but you sit through them anyway, you have no one to blame but yourself for imagining a floating apparition standing in front of you when the lights go out!

That phobia is inside your head and not on the outside. Allow yourself to look at the situation from the exterior and you will know that there really is nothing to worry about….