Q: How can I fear insects less? How did you learn to fear them less?
A: Exposure, knowledge, and understanding that insects are tiny animals with a light on inside. You can see that they are thinking and considering their options if you watch them. They do things for a reason (to live, to avoid pain, to eat, etc.) and many have no interest in antagonizing you.
It also makes sense for you to recoil if a separate, unknown being suddenly touches or motions toward you. Even after paying attention to and studying insects for a couple years, I still do not want to touch them or have them touch me.
It helps to have a basic idea of how to identify what order (see this insect ID key) an insect belongs to and what species can be found in your area (filter for insects when searching your geographical area on iNaturalist). That way, you can have a general idea/good guess for what they eat, what they need to live, what defense mechanisms they may have, etc.
Some insects are parasitic, carnivorous, disease-carrying, or have defense mechanisms that can genuinely hurt us. It's good to know, then, what kinds of insects are genuinely *harmless* can help you react proportionally to the actual threat an insect poses.
Q: What do you do with insects that encroach on your space?
A: in principle, do the same as you would with any other animal. Use the least amount of force to prevent them from accessing you. However consider what's going on for the insect. Understand what kind of insect they are and the reasons they are acting. Are they just investigating you? Are they defending against a perceived threat? Are you encroaching on *their* space?
The situation is different if someone is deliberately trying to take something from you (a bloodmeal, warm flesh in which to lay an egg) or perhaps constantly treats you as a threat no matter what you do. Then you may consider whether you can truly co-exist. You are not obligated to support someone else's life at the cost of your health and life. You also may have the ability to leave a situation or alter the environment before resorting to killing individuals or categorical extermination.
My wish is that you will honor the insect's life and self-determination such that killing is an absolute last resort, when it really is either you or them.
A: The fact that you can never actually know whether insects suffer is a good enough reason to abstain from causing suffering unless it really is a matter of your survival versus theirs. Also for reference, here are some articles about science being done on insects to understand insect interiority:
Discover Magazine - Do Insects Have Feelings and Consciousness? [archive.org link]
Scientific American - I’ll Bee There for You: Do Insects Feel Emotions? [archive.org link]
Science Alert - There's Growing Evidence That Insects Feel Pain, Just Like Us [archive.org link]
Smithsonian Magazine - Study Finds Insects Can Experience Chronic Pain [archive.org link]Note that experiments on insects involve forcing them into situations where humans finely control their brief little lives. To look for proof that insects feel pain, humans inflict injury and look for outwardly visible cues and suggestions.
However insects experience the world, they have feelings that are relevant and immediate to them, even if their biological mechanisms and outward behaviours don't look anything like ours.
Q: But if insects are tiny animals who think and feel, then the way we destroy them for fun/profit/convenience/overblown fear responses is unconscionable!
A: Pretty much yes. Private property, nationstates, and business as usual all depend on ideological refusal to cherish insects and basically any "lesser" animal that the economy depends upon. If humans do not act upon these animals as expendables and renewable resources, there can be no grocery stores or gas stations.
As humans we have immense power over insects particularly because they are so small and reviled. We can justify doing nearly anything to them and they cannot stop us.
Q: Isn't it easier to give space and respect to insects by default?
It's as easy as doing nothing at all.
How are you exercising power over those who have less than you?