Why am I afraid of cockroach?

Basically you are scared of them because they are move fast and unpredictably, so your brain cant predict their movement (its in our DNA to be scared of sudden movement), also they look kinda gross.

The whole thing is better explained here: Vsauce. What can possibly be the scariest thing?

I love them...they're fun to squish...but then Creepshow didn't freak me out, so...

Everyone has a fear of something. I have fear of all type of insects except ants. Why? I don't know.

If that makes you feel better they're scared of you too. :)

I can't say I'm afraid of it, more like very disgusted by it.

I feel you. But i overcame mine.

Curiosuly i know exactly how i got my fear- when i was too young i grabbed all kinds of insects up close and had a interest in then, beetles most of all, some very ugly looking- from what people tell me i liked to feel then struggle\try to escape, i recall liking feeling their legs (no animal torture btw, just their amusing design. to this day i hate to kill even insects). And im told i looked funny at cockcroachs.

That until the day one got in the bathroom with my mom- who has a terrible phobia. I never had saw her scream with anything, much less with such true horror in her face. I got screaming too. And then everytime i saw a cockcroach.

Our brain makes associations. Yours certainly involves the shoe episode. My stepfather has a spider phobia in a similar vein, he didn't had any fear until one day as a kid he was toying one around with a stick until he decided to pick, and only then what appeared to be a large bum was actually dozens and dozens of baby spiders sleeping freezed on her back. He tells me he froze in fear as he watched dozens of baby spiders crawl up his arm until they got to his face. Voila, a phobia was born

What helped me win mine, besides recognizing it and how irrational it was (like you just did) was living with mom- despite the fear i learned from her her panic was so much bigger and often there was no one around to help her but me, i started killing the roachs. Very funny looking and full of fear myself, but some years of roach killing, each time telling myself to let go of my gut reaction, and now i can 'calmly' look at one crawling about as i hurry to get something to kill it. I say 'calm' because i have none of the signs of stress and fear i had, but unlike any other animal (flys aside) i still feel pressure, a urge to klill it asap, with fire if i could.

Oh yes, i also had one seriously hardcore episode that helped things out. I was already way out of my fear, but i still acted erratically and too nervous with cockcroachs.. until the day i had to kill a army of then. Seriously. We were noticing roachs too frequently so we called bug killers, who found out it had to be a nest somewhere nearby and pumped poison at all possible places. The next night it was like a horro movie scene, like the movie birds but cockcroachs. We had to close our windows and watch in horror they covered with cockcroachs as if they wanted to come in eat us alive. Lovely. They were already kinda weakened i guess, and i would have waited they die out - but i lived with mom. You know, so much fear of then she couldn't stop screaming for us to kill them... and thats how i spent a night with dad smashing roach after roach. Felt they crawling for days, ugh.
But after that- i never was freaked out killing then.

Short of it: face it. No easy way around it. After the initial reaction and getting away, arm yourself, think how its the irrational part of brain screaming, put the tought aside and go after it. Think positive, how good it will feel to smash that horrible creature out of existence and your home, clean everything asap and done. Repeat every time.

If it makes you feel any better, theres a reason its a often feared bug- they're disgusting and to our animal brain scary. I mean everyone as someone pointed out. Snakes, spiders and cockcroachs were all found to have instinct roots in our mind as a species. Something that could be hiding, crawl upon us, move so quickly and crazily its hard to follow- if it were somtething that could bite and poison us would be a major 'predator' to us (like snakes are). So our brains are hardwired to fear it, rightly so.

Now, i know it doesn't help what you told but... they're not harmless. Besides how they can poison food, they can actually pose a threat to disabled people. There are some very few cases of know people killed by then, bite by bite, because they were too weak or disabled to get away, shoosh then much less smash then. Just like how ants can sometimes start working on a dying animal thats still badly breathing, to then its like 'dead already', no reason to waste time if theres no threat.
Babies for instance are prone to their attack. I think one of the cases ive read about was a baby, but more often ive read of cases of neglect where the children were found with their bites (alive, but its bad none the less). If you live somewhere with too many or such, don't ever leave a kid without a bug net around their crib or something like that.

According to Freud it is because they are COCKroaches. Tell me about your childhood.

only when they fly
it's weird psychology lol

Blame Kafka

Show them who's boss and do the same job as me: pest control

Excellent, now I feel like something's crawling over me every few seconds.

replace cockroach with spider, and I'm the same way. they make my skin crawl and I can't put my boots or shoes on without checking for spiders lol

You better not enter my kitchen at night then - I don't think your heart handles a few dozen cockroaches. :/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sQtDGRWEpM

this is the reason some fear the cockroachs.......

Only the giant flying ones, (water bugs) which actually aren't really cockroaches, technically. For some reason, whenever I've encountered one, it always decides that the best way to escape me is to fly directly at my face.

My neighborhood has an infestation of Japanese Cockroaches, and they burrowed their way into our garage. So whenever we see one, we grab a blowtorch and fry the suckers just to make sure they are done for, because they love to play dead a lot. Also one time I left my work boots out in the garage and a few of them took a liking to the insoles...yeah.

Song for you, put it on repeat for 24 hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfka9m6NhzE

I never saw one in real life, but I don't blame you for your phobia lol. They look hideous.

Because you know that one day we will send them to Mars for a failed terraforming experiment resulting in humanoid super-strong and super-intelligent lifeforms killing humans left and right. Wait, that was a manga. I wonder how that story ended ....

Maybe play this game as exposure therapy. :P

I once was eating at my grandmom's house and as I was lifting my hand to eat from the spoon I saw one moving on my right shoulder. Since then I became disgusted and scared from them. Their smell is also VERY bad

if there's something I can wash my body around later, I'm not afraid of them. I'll gladly CRUSH 'EM UP