Until five years ago, I used to be terrified of cockroaches! I would never travel alone if I had to stay in someone’s house, I would always get my wife Hema to go with me. I would wake her up in the middle of the night to inspect the bathroom before I could use it! In my childhood, my father and I would both jump up on the bed and scream until my mother comes to pick up the cockroach and throw it out or kill it. Luckily both my mother and my wife were totally cool with these insects.

Surprisingly this fear is exclusively for cockroaches alone. I had no problem with any other insect. If I find a spiders crawling over my skin and I would quietly let it go away or gently brush it away with a cloth as I would never kill any insect.

Did it go away now?

The irrational fear still exists but I don’t think the phobia exists anymore. In my experience,

Phobia is a body thing not just a mind thing.

Previously, just the sight of a cockroach in the same room as me would make my skin crawl, my entire body stiffen and freeze and my mind go blank. I lived with it for fifty five years and used to do everything possible to ensure they don’t cohabit wherever I sleep, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sleep!

I knew it was completely irrational. Even scorpions or snakes wouldn’t bother me at all. I have had experience of sitting in the remote places outdoors and snakes crawling beside but it wouldn’t make me get up and run or shoo it away. But knowing that the fear is completely irrational was of no use in healing my phobia. Even pictures of cockroaches or visuals on videos would have almost the same effect in my body.

What happens now?

It is very unlikely that I ever encounter a cockroach in my life nowadays. I have a feeling that somehow my aura makes them go away because I still sometimes have my wife or kids tell me that they have seen one but I don’t. But on rare occasions when I do find myself looking at a cockroach I would just walk away. In a bathroom, I would simply trap it under a mug and finish my work there. It doesn’t have any effect in my body anymore.

I think it all changed when I learnt grounding and started practicing to cultivate the habit of returning back to the earth energy connection. When the vibrational frequency of our energy field gets into sync with the earth’s field of electromagnetic energy like a tuning fork, we come back into presence in the here and now, we shift into our aware mind from being habitually lost in our busy analytical, rational, logical mind that I call our thinking-mind.

I think it is pointless to tell ourselves that our fear is irrational. It is pointless to attempt to change our deep beliefs and fears. I did if for forty five years and nothing happened. We can instead begin to cultivate a habit of living in our body more often rather than exclusively living in our mind all our life.

One could learn and cultivate this practice into a habit, it is simply skilful living. I mentor a course on this and have written a book on it. You can find the details on my website.