I’m scared of bugs so I did a Facebook live video of me and a bug

Social media as therapy

Yesterday, I woke up to find a huge bug in my tub. It was big. Too big. I couldn’t deal. I had an important meeting with a client so I screamed, washed up in the sink, packed a bag, and headed out for the day.

I’ve lived in New York for 15 years, which means I’ve had my fair share of pests: water bugs, cockroaches, ants. I also had a rat once. This has not made me any less scared of any of them, and often I’ve dealt with them by enlisting the aid of significant others or supers.

(Or by screaming, packing a bag, and heading out for the day.)

Here’s the thing. I don’t have many phobias, but this is a real one. I have minor panic attacks when I see roaches: I start to cry, my heart races, and I lose my breath before I can even intellectually process that a bug really isn’t that big a deal. And so I recently started doing some work in therapy around that fear as well as some others that have been triggering panic attacks — and what I’ve discovered has been really helpful and has actually helped me understand a lot about anxiety and fear.

But I never imagined that social media would be part of my therapy process.