How to Sleep After Seeing a Bug? (9 Tips)

In this brief guide, we will look at how to sleep after seeing a bug, as well as other related topics like Entomophobia, fear and anxiety.

How to Sleep After Seeing a Bug?

To sleep after seeing a bug you can try the following things:

• Try to trap it and get it out
• If it’s hiding clean out some of the hidden places in your room
• Spray some bug spray in your room and stay out of it for a while
• Cover yourself up properly and close the windows 
• Listen to some music to distract yourself
• Watch something dull and not that interesting 
• Listen to a sleep podcast
• Get up and walk around for a bit
• Engage in a repetitive task
• Talk to someone on the phone or around you

Seeing a bug in your room is not always a cause for concern, because most bugs are not harmful and they don’t seek out humans and unless you have an allergic reaction to them, even their bites don’t really hurt very much.

Most people that get bitten by a bug don’t get more than an itch, and in most cases where someone is scared of a bug they are scared more because they are weird and they elicit a fear of the unknown, and people experience disgust when they see them.

You might be scared to sleep after seeing a bug because your mind is melting down thinking “what if the bug gets on me when I’m sleeping”, and the only way to not spiral out of control like that is to give in to that thought.

When you start feeling like you can’t sleep because there’s a bug in your room, start thinking through why you can’t sleep; ask yourself what you are scared of, and list all the absolute worst things that could happen if the bug stayed where it is.

Once you have done this, list all the possible ways that it could be alright, all the good things like it could leave the room on its own, it could avoid you because it’s scared of you, even if it got on you you might move and it could go away.

Once you have considered everything, compare and contrast the possibilities and ascribe a percentage or probability to all of them.

This exercise will give you concrete answers about the lack of reason to worry so much that you can’t sleep, and the chances are that if it’s just a harmless bug to which you are not allergic, you won’t even remember this worry 2 days from now, so why not just sleep?

If you do have a number of other allergies, just make sure that you have cleared the room, turn down your bed and remake it, clean out some of the more shadowy corners of the room, and if you don’t see it, it’s probably already gone, so you can sleep.

Entomophobia

Entomophobia is a crippling and irrational fear of bugs, and this condition is a type of specific phobia.

Entomophobia is fairly common, compared to many other types, and it is not the same as just a basic fear of bugs, which may be based in something rational.

In entomophobia, the person may not be afraid because they have been bitten or have had any problems in the past, they may be afraid for any unknown reason.

The Diagnostic and Statistical manual defines the following criteria for Specific Phobia like Entomophobia:

• “Marked fear or anxiety about a specific object or situation (e.g., flying, heights, animals, receiving an injection, seeing blood).

• Note: In children, the fear or anxiety may be expressed by crying, tantrums, freezing, or clinging.

• The phobic object or situation almost always provokes immediate fear or anxiety.

• The phobic object or situation is actively avoided or endured with intense fear or anxiety.

• The fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context.

• The fear, anxiety, or avoidance is persistent, typically lasting for 6 months or more.

• The fear, anxiety, or avoidance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

• The disturbance is not better explained by the symptoms of another mental disorder, including fear, anxiety, and avoidance of situations associated with panic-like symptoms or other incapacitating symptoms (as in agoraphobia); objects or situations related to obsessions (as in obsessive-compulsive disorder); reminders of traumatic events (as in posttraumatic stress disorder); separation from home or attachment figures (as in separation anxiety disorder); or social situations (as in social anxiety disorder).”

In addition to these points, the DSM 5 also lists the various types of phobias commonly seen in the form of codes that are ascribed to them by clinicians, which are as follow:

“300.29 (F40.218) Animal (e.g., spiders, insects, dogs).

300.29 (F40.228) Natural environment (e.g., heights, storms, water).

300.29 (F40.23x) Blood-injection-injury (e.g., needles, invasive medical procedures).

300.29 (F40.248) Situational (e.g., airplanes, elevators, enclosed places).

300.29 (F40.298) Other (e.g., situations that may lead to choking or vomiting; in children, e.g., loud sounds or costumed characters).”

Fear Vs Anxiety

The difference between fear and anxiety is very important when one is trying to understand why they are not able to sleep after seeing a bug, because if you are just scared of the bug it’s alright, and it can be reasoned with, but if it is anxiety, you may want to look into getting therapy.

Fear is the emotional response to real or perceived imminent threat, whereas anxiety is anticipation of future threat. 

These two states can overlap, but they also differ, and the primary difference tends to be that where fear more often associated with surges of autonomic arousal necessary for fight or flight, thoughts of immediate danger, and escape behaviors, and anxiety may be often associated with muscle tension and vigilance in preparation for future danger and cautious or avoidant behaviors. 

The level of fear or anxiety may be reduced by pervasive avoidance behaviors, and it has been seen that when the person constantly avoids their feared situation, it can turn into a phobia and anxiety may result from the stimulus the next time one encounters it.

If you’re facing this, it may be a good idea to seek the help of a therapist or other mental health professional. You can find a therapist at BetterHelp who can help you learn how to cope and address it.

How to Sleep after seeing a Spider

To sleep after seeing a spider, relaxation techniques and some visualization that involves imagining calm things may help.

Listening to some guided meditation podcasts may also help, and these are easily available everywhere, so you should definitely try these the next time you are trying to drift off to sleep without trying too hard.

You can also get out of bed and look around the room, especially in corners, and either you will see the spider, in which case you can capture it and take it out, or you can finish it off (although there is really no need to), or you won’t see it, in which case you can be sure that it has retired for the night, and so can you.

If you feel that the spider has run inside the bed or has hidden away in some corner, then you don’t need to worry about it, because spiders hide when they don’t want to come out, which means that you won’t be seeing it anytime soon, and now that it knows where you are resting, it will avoid that place itself.

If you have seen a spider in your room and now you are not able to sleep because you are afraid of spiders, you can also try to get in control of the situation, try to get back in a position where you feel safe; you may do this by cleaning a little or turning down your bed.

Conclusion

In this brief guide, we looked at how to sleep after seeing a bug, as well as other related topics like Entomophobia, fear and anxiety.

Sleeping after seeing a bug in your room or worse, in your bed, can be difficult for anyone who is afraid that bugs will hurt them, and it can be downright terrifying for someone who is not just afraid of bugs, but actually has a phobia of them.

While seeing bugs in your room may not be a common occurrence for many people depending on where they live, for some people it may be more common, and in some weathers bug sightings may be more common, like in when it rains too much or when it gets too hot.

If you don’t have a phobia and just find bush repulsive and weird, you need to remember that not all bugs are harmful, and all of them are more scared of you than you are of them, so if one has somehow found a way into your room, just get them out and they won’t come back once they know that it’s where you sleep.

If you’ve enjoyed the ”How to Sleep After Seeing a Bug? ” mentioned above, I would recommend you to take a look at ”Trypophobia Test’‘ too.

If you have any more questions or comments about how to sleep after seeing a bug in your room, please feel free to reach out to us.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): How to sleep after seeing a bug?

Citations

https://www.terminix.com/blog/science-nature/entomophobia-why-you-may-be-afraid-of-bugs/

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/easing-bedbug-anxiety

https://www.auntyflo.com/magic/cockroach#:~:text=The%20cockroach%20crawling%20on%20you,that%20are%20not%20supporting%20you.