Re: Fear of cockroaches in 12 yr old girl
I don't think that helping her to accept her feelings as "normal" would be helpful here. After all, while being disgusted by cockroaches is typical, that level of intensity certainly is not. Also, even if she learns to accept her feelings, she's still stuck with insufficient coping skills to deal with those feelings.
Given that the patient is highly motivated to extinguish or reduce this fear, why not offer this as the therapy goal and move forward with some exposure techniques? I'm sure you know the drill -- work with the patient to develop a hierarchy of situations that cause the undesirable reactions, and work through them. Start with mental imagery, and work your way into the "real thing". Maybe you could contact a local exterminator to get hold of some specimens.
It's always tough to offer advice based on (necessarily) limited information available in a forum post, but I'm curious as to why you'd even consider the "help her accept her feelings as quite normal" option the first place? Am I missing some important information? Perhaps I'm just inexperienced and am not seeing something that would be immediately obvious to a seasoned therapist.
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