I have a fear of crickets, too. Unfortunately, I once bought an anole at a fair only to discover the vendor lied (go figure) about its diet and it needed live crickets for food. So, for two years (the anole just had to live its whole life expectancy!) I kept live crickets in my house (OK, closet) and fed the anole every couple of days. Fortunately, some genius developed a special cage for feeder crickets that has removable hollow tubes the crickets crawl into so I never actually had to touch the crickets (unless they fell out of the tube while I was transferring it from their cage to the anole's cage--boy, was it funny when that happened what with all my screaming and jumping around!). Also, I have a fear of heights, which came in handy on my recent visit to Yosemite and Big Sur. I once tried to get over this fear by bungee jumping from 150 ft. but I guess systematic desensitization really is the best/only way to get over a phobia.