Arachnophobia (Spider Phobia)

Cosmos

Cosmos

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I have a rather strong spider phobia, several minutes ago a rather big spider appeared on my wall to the right of me.
first she was disappearing from my sight wich stressed me out very much, then I went to call my grandma to take care of her (wich I always do in such cases), but she was sleeping so I went back and thought of what I could do.

I couldn't find the spider anymore and that stressed me even more.
then I found her on a different place and absorbed her into the vacuum cleaner wich needed much conquest.
I struggled to get any closer to the spider and the run away instinkt was very strong.
but I had to do it becouse otherwise I wouldn't be able to sleep in my bed (it was in my bedroom).
the fact that she was in another place when I saw her the last time makes me axious that there were actually two spiders and the other one is still running arround :O :O

but anyways what I would like to know is why so many people have such a strong Phobia against Spiders ?
what could be the origin of this Phobia ?
normally I can't even watch them and when they move the Phobia goes up.

well in my case there could be two reasons why I am so afraid of Spiders.
there were two rather strange happenings in my childhood wich could be the reason for this Phobia.
I'll elaborate on those incidents tommorrow.
 
My grandmother lived in the country and was never a big fan of cleaning or cooking (even her oven had cobwebs). On one evening a HUGE one was on the wall, which I squished with a newspaper. I opened the door to go upstairs, and there was another (husband?), almost the size of my hand, black and hairy.
A week later another did a dance all around me, like it knew I was sacred. Someone was having a laugh behind the scenes.
And yes, I hate the way they they move, the way they'd eat their own children. I'd better stop or somehow another will show up.
"But they won't harm you!" :mad:
 
Pashalis said:
well in my case there could be two reasons why I am so afraid of Spiders.
there were two rather strange happenings in my childhood wich could be the reason for this Phobia.
I'll elaborate on those incidents tommorrow.
Click to expand...

when I was a kid I was in Greece for holiday with my parents and my brother.
one day we were at a place with a big tap with a diameter of several inches and a relatively long neck.
somebody decided (I don't remember who but I guess my father) to test the tap if water comes out.
so the tap was opened and all a sudden a huge spider jumped out of the neck of the tap.
then to the left a rat appeared and the spider and the rat began to fight. the sight was simply fascinating but also quite scary.
the spider and the rat fought for a while and in the end the spider won and the rat went away.
spooky. I still get goosepimples when I think about it :shock:

the other incident was at home here in germany. I think it was in summer. I was outside when all a sudden a huge spider ( bigger then myself) appeared not very far away suddenly I realized that all the surrounding was covered in huge spiderwebs. all rooms I could see with my eyes were complitly covered with big spiderwebs. the Spider began to run into my direction, scared as hell I began to run away from her through our terrace into our living room then into the bedroom of my mother and then finally into the bathroom were I closed myself in. all the while I was running the Spider was relativly near behind trying to ketch me OSIT.
what then happened I don't really know anymore but I think the Spider came through the keyhole into the bath.

till this day I don't really know what this incident was. all I know is that it felt very real. I think it is possible that it was a bleed through from another reality or something like this. or a very vivid dream.........

Edit: spelling
 
I'm confused with the second story where you say a "huge spider ( bigger then myself) appeared not very far away" and then you said you thought the spider came through the keyhole in the bath. I've never seen a spider as large as a kid, let alone one that can shrink itself to fit through a keyhole. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you wrote, this story has dream like qualities to it. Could this memory actually have been a dream?

I had an intense fear of spiders when I was young, although I wouldn't consider it intense enough to be considered a phobia. Our cottage had a small outhouse that had spiders in every corner. Each time we went to the cottage, I would avoid the outhouse as long as possible, as I feared there would be a spider under the toilet seat that would bite me, or worse, grab me an pull me down into the hole.

I ended up getting desensitized to spiders by initially playing with daddy long legs, a non-biting spider that I would let walk over my hands. I then moved to letting small spiders walk over me and eventually the intensity of the fear disappeared. However, I still have a strong fear of walking into a large spider web and having the spider bite me in the face. Even thinking about it gets my heart rate up. I can't imagine desensitizing myself by intentionally walking into spit webs or allowing spiders to walk on my face, so I understand if the thought of desensitization is terrifying for you. However, have you tried to take some of the intensity of fear down through desensitization?

Gonzo
 
Phashalis,

but anyways what I would like to know is why so many people have such a strong Phobia against Spiders ?
what could be the origin of this Phobia ?
Click to expand...

i tend to think that because spiders don't have "faces" that people can understand / gain insight into the mood of the creature / try to foresee what it might do next, it makes the animal very unpredictable.
also, they move in ways and rhythms that are foreign to us.
but i know that's just one factor.. maybe the possibility of it being poisonous is another factor.
most people can't tell which spiders are poisonous just by looking at them.

i do know that part of Exposure Therapy for severe arachnophobia is learning to discern which spiders are poisonous and which aren't, in addition to slowly being exposed to them in order to familiarize and reduce fear.

just some thoughts..
 
I do not know if I have arachnophobia but I'm afraid of spiders very much, especially if they are black and hairy. Probably the biggest spider I saw was 3-4 centimeters. If I see a spider at least 2 times bigger, I do not know what my reaction will be but I would be very scared. Where I live, we don’t see big spiders around. I am also very afraid of snakes. I can tell you for sure that my wife has a phobia of snakes. Even when she sees a picture or watches some movie in which there is a snake, she just cannot look at them. It is even hard just to imagine a snake for her because it is very scary.
I do not remember anything that could cause me a fear of spiders in the childhood(maybe it's because I don't remember my childhood clearly). But by wife remembers that when she was 3 to 4 years old and lived in Nairobi, Kenya, she was sitting on the back seat of her car when a cobra approached her open window. Her father, who was driving closed the window just in time. She recalls not feeling any fear at all- just curiosity. Then she remembers some small animals(snakes, reptiles, etc.) living behind the back-yard, but she only remembers her curiosity. A couple of years later she had the phobia. (Her dad also shares the same phobia, but is also afraid of any insects and heights too.)
Here's an interesting article I just reading http://www.earthlife.net/chelicerata/arachnophobia.html
 
Gonzo said:
I'm confused with the second story where you say a "huge spider ( bigger then myself) appeared not very far away" and then you said you thought the spider came through the keyhole in the bath. I've never seen a spider as large as a kid, let alone one that can shrink itself to fit through a keyhole. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you wrote, this story has dream like qualities to it. Could this memory actually have been a dream?
Gonzo
Click to expand...

It was a very big spider several meters I guess.
from what I can remember, it could be possible that she tried to, or entered the bathroom through the keyhole. so it is possible that she had the ability to change her size.
but this part I can't remember very good anymore.

the thing is that I can't really remember what happened before and after this .
but I'm quite convinced that it was not a dream while I was sleeping at night.
I was outside the house during the day and then it happened. maybe it was a vivid daydream or a reality bleed through . all I know is that it was very real to me.

the thing is that we actually don't have a keyhole in the bathroom door. but again this part is not very clear in my memory anymore.
our brain can twist actual happenings throughout time so I'm not very sure what happened in this last part .

Edit: spelling
 
Pashalis said:
but anyways what I would like to know is why so many people have such a strong Phobia against Spiders ?
what could be the origin of this Phobia ?
Click to expand...

I've also wondered about this a few times. I have a certain type of fear of the big ones, too, but only when they're in my apartment, or close to me in any type of room. What's really mind-boggling is the intensity of my fear reaction (and yes, a big one in my bedroom is the worst case scenario) - what however doesn't make sense to me is that I find them interesting when they're out in nature: then I even get close and like to observe them.


Gonzo said:
However, I still have a strong fear of walking into a large spider web and having the spider bite me in the face. Even thinking about it gets my heart rate up.
Click to expand...

:shock: A spider biting you in the face?! Have you actually ever experienced this? This would definitely be too much for me. :nuts:


The way I currently see it is that a spider with its web is a representation of the matrix, 4D prison, the Cunning, Dangerous Predator Archetype. We're in its net, we're its prisoners, it feeds off us..

Your visionary type experience, Pashalis, or whatever it really was, struck a chord with me, especially when you described how everything was covered in spiderwebs. It reminds me of a dream I had when I was processing the break-up of a dysfunctional relationship: there was a room in that dream where there was a huge spiderweb (as a remnant of that r-ship, osit), and it was clear that whatever spider used to live there, it was very big (another dream character then burned this web down, btw). Then, as a kid, I also had some sort of visionary experience: I was lying in my bed in the dark and was afraid to sleep, because on the walls of my room there were many very big spiders (not real life spiders, though).

Perhaps the Spider is similar to the appearance of a Lizzy: its appearance and nature is most similar to what an energetic critter would be translated to in the human psyche?
 
Gonzo said:
However, I still have a strong fear of walking into a large spider web and having the spider bite me in the face. Even thinking about it gets my heart rate up.
Click to expand...
This made me think of the ending of the film The Fly in the original 1958 version (_http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051622/) where the transmogrified hero, a fly with human head and arm, gets caught up in a spider's web and finds himself unable to escape - while the spider (a very large one on the big screen) is menacingly approaching ever closer. The film then fades with a still of the protagonist's head continually screaming out loudly over the endtune. Very creepy when I first saw it (I was about 15 yo at the time) and I apparently never forgot this scene.
I don't have spider fobia, though.
 
I was actually pondering this question myself recently,

I would definitely say in part it's a natural human fear relating to a poisonous creature, but I would also guess that possibly their is also a deeper
theological reason for this phobia in some people. Being deeply arachnophobic myself I've never been able to clearly identify the source
of this phobia & I sometimes have dreams where I'm fighting or running away from rather large human size spiders.

I have also noticed a pattern in that when I have dreams of spiders they often seem to relate to the presence of STS forces
in my waking environment & usually relates to a particular type of hidden predator.

Maybe I read to much into things, but Id have to guess that the spider is possibly an archetype for certain types of STS forces at a higher
level of reality and possibly one reason why it's form seems to strike such an unnatural fear into people.

I think I would definitely agree with the following comments from Enaid which I think has pretty much summarised what I've just said from a theological perspective.

Enaid said:
The way I currently see it is that a spider with its web is a representation of the matrix, 4D prison, the Cunning, Dangerous Predator Archetype. We're in its net, we're its prisoners, it feeds off us..
Click to expand...
 
The interesting aspect of the spider (despite having man eyes and many legs) is that it doesn't bite its victim, it paralyses it and keep it alive to eat it later. Maybe the dreams about spiders express that fear of being incapacitated and controlled. A human-size spider may represent a person in the dreamer's life who has that controlling power. It may also express the feeling of being in a trap and not being able to escape.
 
I don't know what it is. I remember playing with bugs all the time as a child. I once captured a spider with my little brother and we put it in a jar, then fed it a dead fly or bread... As I got older, I got afraid of bugs; spiders, bees, etc. I think they look cute sometimes on a picture, but when I see them IRL it's either, run for your life, or call someone for help...

I once had a dream about bugs. I was walking around in my house, and out of every corner hundreds and hundreds of bugs were coming out and going all kinds of places. When I woke up and thought about it, I understood the meaning of it: something was bugging me. It made sense because something was bugging me all the time before I went to bed, and I guess somehow I just tried to forget about it. Well, it seems that dreaming about literally "being bugged" was a sign to me that it's better to deal with whatever was bothering me. So I started writing in my Journal about it in order to clear my mind on it, and it helped...

Well, just thought I'd share!
 
Some interesting replies. I wonder if the innate phobia of spiders has to do with our fears of seeing aspects of ourselves (the predator) that we would rather remain hidden, reflected in the world around us. Not much different from our own recoil and horror when "it" is seen. So when we look at a spider, maybe what we're really reacting to is a type of visceral denial of a part of ourselves.
 
I also have a rather strong arachnophobia. It's a completely irrational fear and I wondered too what could cause this. Somewhere I read that such fears can be inherited by parents and society. Maybe my fear is explained by the fact that my great-grandmother chased my grandmother with a spider in her hand and she ran away in terror.
 
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