Phobias: More insurmountable when autistic?

I seem to have another insect anecdote! 

So I' about 9 or 10 walking along a ditch at the bottoom of the village, liek you do, and I see a mouldy looking big orange ball in the ditch and decide to gve it a kick. 

It breaks rather than flies, most unsatisfactorily, and I continue my walk until I realise that I am being attacked by a bunch of wasps who's nest it seems I have just punted.

Fortunately, although I am a lightweight when it comes to drugs and alcohol, it seems I could tolerate 11 stings as a kid well enough.. 

That experience of being stung sounds horrible. I remember my dad telling me about a time a wasp got up his shirt sleeve on a bus (when he was in his twenties) and it stung him all the way up from wrist to shoulder. Nightmare fuel! 

Whilst I feel it would be an exaggeration to say I have a phobia of all flying insects, I do find it irritating when they are flying around me, and straight at me, and seem intent on using my body as a convenient place to rest. It's annoying at any time of the day, but particularly when I'm in the process of drifting off to sleep.

Out of all the flying insects I can think of, I do have an intense dislike of wasps, after being stung by one when I was in my twenties. I remember the occasion well. During an unbearably hot summer's evening whilst I had been ironing, a wasp had flown in through an open window. I had paused the ironing and left the room, closing the door behind me. When I returned to the room some time later, there was no sign of the wasp. I thought it had taken the hint and flown off back out of the window, so thought nothing more about it and carried on ironing.

Fast forward to several days later. Within seconds of putting on a clean pair of jeans, I felt a stabbing sensation in my thigh. After promptly removing my jeans, I discovered that pesky wasp hadn't flown out of window, but had decided to take up residence inside the leg of my jeans... Jeans that I had been in the process of ironing when I had initially encountered it.

When I encounter wasps now, I do find it incredibly difficult to at least create the illusion of appearing outwardly calm. I find it requires considerable effort to not react to wasps in a manner that will antagonise them and increase my chances of getting stung.

In answer to your question Shardovan, I do think autism can make phobias seem more insurmountable. Some years back I had CBT (exposure therapy) in an attempt to overcome a couple of phobias. It probably won't surprise you to know that I didn't find it to be as effective as I'd hoped.

Flippin eck - I’m glad I drive a car! 

My feud with the jaspers started in 1973 when one landed on me, I ignored it and it very deliberatley stung me, ended in about 2007 when I machined gunned my last one to death with an electric BBgun (I sold them at computer fairs at the time.) and my O/H got upset about the little dents I left in the bread bin and aluminium blinds whilst doing it... Shortly after I "befriended" our wasp colony.

I’m allergic to insect bites so I’m scared of flies and midges. But I love butterflies and moths and bees. You can stroke bees you know. They’re little flying teddy bears and love it when I feed them sugar water. I let them crawl on me and have never been stung. I hate wasps though as they will attack you. My method for them, and the reason why I’m posting, is because when they get in the house I have a very long stick (about 2 meters) with the sticky side of duct tape wound around it. If there’s a wasp you can stick a plastic cup to the end and catch them, even when they’re high up. Then you can slide it down the wall, cover it with paper and chuck them out or kill them if you must. Don’t kill the darling bees though, they are our friends. I hope this helps?????

I still have nightmares about it (in between laughing at the absurdity) so I'll let you be the judge.

Me and Phil Reynolds were travelling down the hill towards Showell green lane on an RS250 doing about 80 when this bob-owler came out of nowhere and smashed into where the "third eye" is traditionally located. I had no chance, the (large) wings were fluttering in each of my eyes and the juices were running down the side of my nose... 

To be fair, I bought the bike to a fairly decent emergency stop and departed as soon as the back wheel touched the ground, I believed shouting "catch the bike, Phil!" All he recollected was me leaping off the bike squealing EEEEEEEeeEE! in a shrill voice and hurling my helmet across the road... 

And that's how I was almost killed by a moth. 

Dare I ask for the specifics or would I have nightmares?!

Yikes. 

Until the year before last, I lived in harmony with the wasps (and I think some bees) who nested in our cavity wall which separates the garage from the end of the house.

I get plagued periodically by small flying biters (Gnats?) who seem too small and stupid to respond to my animal whispering, "don't mess me, and I won't mess with you" deal which works well with most mammals and colony type insects. 

Eventually when the bites at the back of my neck were becoming too numerous to bear, and the bloody things settling on my screen or disctraing me by buzzing in my ear etc, I lost my patience and deployed "the chemical weapon"...

 Teh chemical wepoan was purchased in greece back in the early 1990's IIRC and is a little plug in heater that you load a cardbaord lozenge onto and it makes the air smell slightly odd (pleasnat, but odd) and slaughters insects up to SIX INCHES IN LENGTH, whch impressed me greatly in Greece back then.

Oh yes, it soirted out my midge or gnat problem licketty split, but later on I noticed something missing from my life. A vague susussuration that I used to hear lying in my bed when the traffic and noise of the day was not there...

Yes there are small rectangular holes in the garage wall it seems, probably for ventilation or damp control purposes. My attempt to fight the midges cost me my wasps.

I really came to like "my" wasps, they didn't come in the house, went about their business without bothering me including when I was working up on the staging next to their entrance / exit hole.

I'm quite guilt struck as I feel we had a happy co-existence which I accidentally destroyed.  

I once remember invasion of the daddy long legs. It was something like 23 in one sitting. There was nowhere to hide.

I was much younger then. They don't bother me now. Although I wouldn't want one dangling in my face in the small hours.

Might well be necessary, especially after the culprit (once I found it dead on my bedspread) turned out to be a mosquito. Explains that really itchy bite as well. Never encountered them this far north of the equator! Climate change, I suppose. What's super weird is how low and loud its buzzing was. It sounded like a giant hornet, not a 1 cm in length little pest. Though I won't pretend it wasn't going to be two nights on the sofa either way. 

I was almost killed (literally) by a big moth once...

I feel your fear... 

We have a mesh blind thing for our back door that closes with magnets, and pins to the wooden door frame.

I suspect that could easily be adapted for a window. As designed, the magnets don't always close the thing properly, BUT if you add some springiness pulling the centre join upwards at the top (I used a wire spring with the looops on the ends, and a nail) then they become wonderfully, and reliably, self closing.

truly...! 

My instinctive reaction to ANYTHING is well over the top, any thing I'm a bit wary of, phobic of, worried about, any situation really.

Im also the same physically, everything seems more intense to me than I think is "normal".

I put it down to my general hypersensitivity from my autism. That way I can say it's not me being soft, over emotional or a drama queen.

All I've learnt to do is keep the response under wraps a bit so nobody notices (I should probably say "most of the time" In case my wife ever reads this )

That undead aspect is thought-provoking. I suppose there is that disturbing dimension of a slow death from something that forced its way, against all reason, into an environment where its distress becomes an amplifying empathic loop. On the other hand, there are spiders lounding in indoor corners calmly waiting for prey that will almost certainly never come. I try to release them, at least, via my spider grabber, into the outdoors where at least a passing fly or several may give them some hope...

You mentioned moths. Also very, very freaky. All that manic flapping and batting at solid objects. And their elastic shadows.Truly horrifying. 

Totally irrational thinking I know!

Interesting. So you experience at least a momentary jolt? For me, that jolt becomes a sustained note of terror and only stops when the oscillating buzzing itself (and its cause) are gone from the vicinity. There's a disturbingly sinister vibe to such manifestations too. Given how careful I am, the appearance of a wasp or similar in home is basically a locked room mystery, and it feels like some horrible omen or something. 

Recently I've been having a think about the largely unbalanced amount of nursery rhymes dedicated to spiders. AS IF the human population developed a strange fear of them when moving from farming to a more modern world... hmmm... 

I've thought a great deal about how unnatural it is for insects to be inside the home. Outside, I might be quite interested in said spider or moth. But in doors, they're trapped and it's a different story. Do we pick up on their frustration and assume it our own? Is the mismatch in surrounding a bit like the idea of 'the undead'?

CBT doesn't work when coupled with Neurotypical motivations and drives. But technically, it should work from an Autistic therapist where there's no loss in translation, when they understand the differences in motivations and are able to clear up misperception and provide practical and sensible principles which one can re-build on. 

As for bugs, I keep trying to envision a mesh net design for our windows. The paint in this rental is cheap and the sticky end of a net velcro doesn't stay.