Cockroaches don’t have many fans.

They are associated with filth, and squalor and disease and most people think they are pretty disgusting.  You don’t have to actually like cockroaches, but it’s quit OK not to be absolutely terrified of them. Like all insect phobias, and most other phobias, this particular fear is generally easy and rapid to recondition using the powerful and direct methodologies of NLP and hypnotherapy.

Where does my fear of cockroaches come from

Well you probably became phobic of them following some unpleasant and scary incident involving the little beasts. In fact, some people ‘learn’ this kind of terror simply from watching a horror film. The point is, though, that it doesn’t matter where it came from, you don’t even need to know. All we are dealing with here is an acquired pattern of thinking, a sort of mental knee-jerk response, basically a bad and automated ‘habit’ in your mind

How will you cure my phobia?

Directly, as we have said, and typically in one session though occasionally it takes a little longer.  We get you to access very positive resource states, times when you felt just wonderful, and map these states over the top of the fear response. This has the effect of cancelling the phobia (don’t worry, it won’t make you like cockroaches!)

Case Notes From Therapy – Steve Tromans

The first person I saw with this phobia, some ten years ago, was a seventeen year old girl who arrived with her mother. We always see minors together with one of their parents or guardians in any event, but there was a special reason her mother accompanied her. The girl was worried that I may have forgotten why she was coming to see me because she was unable to say the word ‘cockroach’ out loud. In fact, she couldn’t even write it down. So I guess we would have had to play ‘charades’ or something to find out...

This was the first time I had ever seen someone who couldn’t say the name of the thing they were scared of, though there have been many since. This girl had learned her fear whilst on holiday in Tenerife. She, her mother and sister had been walking down an alley between two buildings at night and suddenly a swarm of hundreds of the insects swarmed over their feet. And they were wearing flip-flops.  The women, that is, not the cockroaches.

I think that would faze anyone…

I simply used the NLP Fast Phobia Cure, massively disassociated her from the experience, applied stacks of resource anchors (got her laughing a lot), and attached the ‘humour’ feelings to thoughts and memories of the insects. It took 20 minutes. By then she was singing about cockroaches, which I later learned had slightly disturbed the yoga group in the room below.  This was the first time I had used this technique with someone this terrified, and I was almost as amazed as she was that she was totally OK as a result.’