Many people are afraid of wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, bumblebees, and other winged insects of the order Hymenoptera (that is, insects with transparent wings). The reason for this is that this order of insects has a fearsome reputation. Wasps and many bees have a painful sting, and many people have been startled as children by painful stings. Some are allergic to wasp stings. In this case, their wasp phobia is reasonable, since the wasp can threaten their lives. However, there are many more people who are not allergic to wasps, but still start screaming and running for their lives whenever some kind of buzzing flying insect appears in their vicinity. This reaction is out of proportion to the actual threat the wasp or hornet presents to them.

Wasp Phobia

The Latin word to describe this irrational and excessive terror of wasps is spheksophobia. Unless you are allergic to the venom of hornets, yellow jackets, or bees, this unnecessary fear will seriously interfere with your life, especially if you plan to spend any time outdoors during the spring and summer months. The fact is that the most common varieties of wasps will not sting you without provocation. The only way they are likely to sting you is if you directly attack them or their nest. In fact, spheksophobia can even increase the chances of getting stung. If a bee or wasp lands on you and you panic and shake your limbs, the insect can also panic and sting you.

Causes of extreme fleksophobia

What causes some people to overreact to the sight of wasps, without being allergic to these insects? The phobia can have any number of causes. One of the most common is, of course, being stung by a bee, wasp, or hornet as a child. What can make these early experiences so traumatic is how sudden and surprising bee and wasp stings can often be. Most people who are stung do so because they accidentally disturbed the flying creature, for example by accidentally stepping on it while running barefoot through the grass. Others develop these fears because of repeated and emphatic warnings from parents or guardians.

Effective techniques to stop the fear of wasps

Whatever the cause, the fear itself tends to follow a predictable pattern in most people. This means that victims of this phobia respond well to treatments that involve mental reconditioning, such as hypnotherapy and NLP (neurolinguistic programming). These techniques teach victims to analyze and discover for themselves the harmful thought patterns they wish to change.

Because a phobic person’s terror tends to follow a predictable pattern, these patterns can be recognized and changed. Think of how Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate “instinctively” at the sound of a bell, even though they were born without such an instinct. Similarly, using a combination of NLP and hypnotherapy, he can learn to “instinctively” experience a clear conscience in response to the wasps (despite the fact that his “natural” reaction had previously been total panic). In this way, he can use powerful psychological techniques to quell his fear of wasps.