March 14th, 2007
arachnophobia
Several days ago, in a post about an interesting spider, I asked readers:
How many of you are nervous of spiders? Are you bothered by looking at spiders? If you’re bothered by the sight of spiders, do you think it is tied to a particular incident, or do you feel you picked up a dislike or fear of spiders from something someone said? Would you describe your fear as arachnophobia? If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, do you find that seeing photos of spiders up close has changed your view of them a bit? If not spiders, are there any other creatures that you fear or dislike intensely?
Several of you obliged with descriptions of your attitude toward spiders and/or other creatures. Thank you one and all who left a comment.
Today, I wanted to pick up this thread and carry it a little further. I’ve done more reading up on arachnophobia, and discovered some interesting information. Paul Hillyard’s The Book of the Spider, gives a very brief summary of results from some surveys of what are known as “specific phobias” (fear of a certain creature or object). Here are a few bits and pieces:
* In the 1950s, the BBC posed the question, “Which animal do you dislike most?” Of the 18,000 school children who replied, 27% named the snake, 10% named the spider, and 4.5% named the lion. In 1988, the survey found that the rat had replaced the snake in the top position, but the spider was still next in line. (p 7)
* In the early 1980s, the American Fish & Wildlife Service conducted a survey in schools and found that spiders were hardly mentioned — it seemed that cockroaches were more disliked. (p 7).
* Over a period of 12 years, Theodore Savory, a teacher (who was also an avid arachnologist), asked his students at a women’s college in England: “Are you afraid of spiders and why?” Apparently most said that they were afraid, and that their fear fell into one of the following three groups: 1.) fear of large spiders; 2.) fear of black spiders; 3.) fear of long-legged spiders. Fear of being bitten was not one of the fears expressed by the students. (p 7).
I searched around online for a credible source of statistics on arachnophobia. Unfortunately, most of the references seem anecdotal and lacking in a citation. On a number of websites, I came across the statement that 50% of women and 10% of men have, to some degree, a fear of spiders. However, this Wikipedia page on arachnophobia sets the number at an estimated half of all women, and one quarter of all men in the United States experiencing it in some degree (again, no citation). Those numbers seem high to me as I’ve encountered more people with an almost deathly fear of snakes — a number of whom were men – and a few of whom were sons of fathers who also shared their level of fear.
Based on the comments received on my previous post, and from what I’ve read on various websites, it appears that fear of spiders has little to do with any perceived fear of being bitten or poisoned. Instead, it is more the appearance of the spider that causes a fear reaction — the sight of a large spider, or the thought of one being in close proximity. Some of you mentioned that you didn’t mind seeing spiders if they were outdoors, but you felt differently about them when they were indoors. One of you said that even the sight of a photo of a spider could trigger a fear response. Online, I found similar responses — for example, I found an arachnophobia support group where members post about the type of fear that they experience, and the kind of incident that might trigger a fear response. One poster wrote quite an interesting account of how she conquered her fear. Her method was to look at galleries of spider photos online – as many as she could stand to look at, and then to touch the spider photos (a desensitizing strategy). Quite interesting! Perhaps it even explains why my spider photo galleries on Pbase often have huge numbers of hits on a particular day.
So, what do people do when they wish to overcome their fear of spiders? I found a couple of interesting leads.
At the Laboratory for the Study of Anxiety Disorders (LSAD) in the Department of Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, in one strategy, the LSAD team frequently use an exposure-based treatment to help the client to not only face his or her fear, but to also obtain evidence that weakens the false sense of threat that maintains the fear. Through a series of exposure sessions, clients gradually become desensitized to the object of their fear.
Technology is also being used to help arachnophobes conquer their fear. At the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Lab and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, a strategy using virtual reality simulators is having success.
Patients wear a VR helmet or glasses and a virtual reality glove. A computer-generated spider moves across the screen, and the patient sees it as a three-dimensional spider. The patient moves the VR glove closer and closer to the spider during the therapy sessions until the patient is able to “feel” it crawl across his hand. The Norwegian project uses spiders because it is relatively simple to generate a realistic computer image of a spider. The Washington project also uses a small machine toy spider so patients actually feel resistance to the glove.
The above webpage describes how, 12 one-hour VR sessions helped one patient to conquer her fears. Before the sessions, the patient was intensely frightened – so much so that she scrubbed her car twice a day and left a burning cigarette in the car’s ashtray because she believed the smoke would keep spiders away. She examined her room thoroughly every night, would duct tape her windows shut, and stick a towel in the crack under her door before she would go to sleep. She washed her clothes and immediately ironed them and put them in Ziplock bags to make sure there were no spiders in her clothing.
So, it seems that there are strategies that can help one to overcome arachnophobia. Comments anyone?
Tags: arachnophobia, Oblong Running Crab spider, Tibellus oblongus
March 14th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
I would say I definitely have arachnaphobia and my fear reaction is only somewhat related to fear of being bitten. I know that the ‘smarter’ a spider seems, the more I fear it. I get a completely irrational sense that the spider is out to get me…maybe to bite me, but just to ‘get’ me.
When my kids were babies, I mustered the strength to kill a few spiders in the house that were in the babies’ room or near their play area…but it was very anxiety-producing. Otherwise, I cannot kill them without much mental preparation. Part of the reason is that I really do love spiders and think they are fascinating animals…and I don’t want to kill them out of fear. The only time I ask my husband to dispatch one is when it is near the children’s beds, and I do ask him to gently take it outside if possible.
Since I’ve been viewing the spiders on your site, and your fantastic pictures, I have been able to soften the fear reaction. The hunting spiders in particular have scared me (and they do seem like they know what they are doing, don’t they? The way they turn to look at any movement?), but your photos and explanations of their behavior have helped so much. When we see a spider now, my kids and I first wonder what kind it is and usually admire it. I still get a little creeped out, but hopefully I’m not passing the irrational fear down the family tree.
One last note: When I was a kid I wasn’t crazy about spiders, but they did not cause such a fear reaction. I spent a lot of time camping and fishing and although I tried to avoid the spiders, their presence did not preclude my having fun. My sister and I used to catch daddy long legs and even what we called ‘banana spiders’ in our back yard…which were fairly big and scarey looking. I was not very afraid then.
As for strategies to overcome? I am still wary of touching or letting a spider crawl on my hand. I’m not sure if I want to even try that one. But I know that looking at pictures and learning more about their ways has helped me make HUGE progress toward neutralizing my fear.
Sorry for the length of this post. I have always been dismayed about my fear of spiders, and especially because that fear has something to do with their intelligence and beauty.
March 14th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
crow – No need to apologize over the length of your post — I’m very interested in hearing what everyone has to say about this subject — well, any subject for that matter. I find it very interesting to read that you feel a different level of fear that somehow relates to the appearance and intelligence of the spider — the hunting spiders being more fearsome. You are right that some of them are more aware of their surroundings than others. Many spiders have poor eyesight, so are probably barely, if at all, aware of us. Others, such as the jumping spiders, see us, but are no threat to us. I think the thing that might help many people is being aware that most spiders are very frightened of us and not too interested in a confrontation. When they advance toward us, it’s usually because they don’t really know what we are — sort of like the Praying Mantis that climbed over Sabrina last summer. Unless pinched or squeezed in some way, most spiders will try to escape once they realize that they’ve climbed onto a living thing.
Anyhow, I agree that knowing more about a creature can help us to overcome our fears. As mentioned recently, Don didn’t like snakes at all when I first met him. Now, he’s very comfortable around them, even the larger ones like the Water snakes and Black Rat Snakes that we occasionally encounter when out hiking or paddling.
It’s great that you’re trying to pass along a fascination of spiders and other creatures to your children, even if you have some fears. I expect they’ll grow up with the confidence not to be afraid.
March 14th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I feel more empathy toward the wolf spiders, and I think it’s for the same reason humans tend to feel empathy towards predators and young prey animals – we respond to behavior that reminds us of human behavior. Predators and younger prey animals play in ways that look a lot like human kids’ play. The wolf spiders seem more like us because they respond to our presence by turning towards us. I also recall seeing a slow-motion video of a wolf spider leaping onto a fly. It was amazing. It looked just like a lion jumping on an antelope or something. The spiders that lie in wait for their prey seem less like humans, although I suppose most deer hunters do something like that.
March 14th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Mark – I feel that way toward the many female spiders (and also insects) that guard egg cases, or carry young around with them. To me, it shows a level of intelligence that many people do not credit to invertebrates. They do some interesting things as well. A couple of years ago, I photographed a large female orbweaver (probably Araneus trifolium) clearing fallen leaves off of her web. It was almost heroic how she lifted each leaf and tossed it off to the ground. I also have a short piece of video footage which I must dig up some time — of a female Argiope aurantia doing the oddest thing with a leaf — she was holding it with her front pair of legs and somehow snipping away at it while turning it in a circle…snip…turn…snip….turn… until it was a little disc. All of a sudden, it slid out of her grasp and fell to the ground. She froze for a second, looking down to the ground, then slowly turned and stomped away up the web. There was no doubt about the body language — she looked *very* annoyed!
March 14th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
I have never been afraid of spiders. I have shared with you my extreme aversion to snakes. I did not want to pass on this fear to my daughters and allowed them to watch documentaries on snakes, have books about them and even play with a rubber snake. (I could not touch it!) Interestingly, I have found my fear has diminished somewhat to the point where I can look at a photo or observe a snake at a zoo without feeling ill and anxious. Your observations and photos of spiders and snakes have increased my respect for them and their place in nature.
March 14th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Ha! You need to have “Boris the Spider” by the Who for your background music…He’s come to a sticky end….
March 14th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
The capacity for phobia is hard-wired into each of us, some more than other. Activation requires a trigger, which usually occurs in early childhood, but could occur with any experience associated with heightened emotion. This is consistent with crow’s note that they were not phobic about spiders early in life. It’s also consistent with the shifts in species over time: More children growing up in urban areas, spending less time outdoors, let alone in natural areas, are more likely to encounter rats than snakes.
The progress in desensitization techniques has been one of the great success stories in psychology. There’s no need to dig deep to understand the “roots” of the phobia. Symptoms can be reduced, controlled, and alleviated by gradual “escalation”: mental images, verbal descriptions, images, physical presence at decreasing distances, and even physical contact. The application of “virtual” techniques is just the latest advance. And it sounds like many of your readers are practicing virtual desensitization on their own: by viewing images of their trigger critters.
March 14th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
I honestly don’t think I could handle a snake without major anxiety. That page you linked to with one hand holding a spider and the other a snake . . . Oh boy, don’t make me choose. I’ve heard that tarantulas can bite, but they only do so if bothered. I just figure they’d be bothered by the angle I was holding them or the temperature of my sweaty skin or just the pulse throbbing away beneath them. Nope couldn’t do it without some huge incentive and I can’t imagine what that would be :0) This was all very interesting. I really have sympathy for those poor souls with the debilitating phobias.
March 15th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Want to thank you for erasing a lot of my fear of spiders. Previously I had progressed from being someone who would hurt themselves when surprised by a spider to someone who could live with them,just not closely. Then I started visiting your blog and have discovered thru the safety of your photography that some of them are actually beautiful. Haven’t progressed to someone who will let them crawl on me yet but have progessed to someone who thinks they are of interest, not to be feared but observed. Thanks so much.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:07 am
Cathy’s comment about tarantulas reminded me of driving out in the Southwest. Surely the tarantula is the largest native US spider. They are so big you can easily see them crossing the road from a hundred feet away.
March 15th, 2007 at 9:05 am
It’s odd about the caressing of photos of spiders, since way back I can recall turning the pages of an Audubon guide *very* gingerly, trying not to touch any of the images of spiders. Now I have no trouble with that, and it’s entirely possible that years of running through guides has desensitized that issue for me.
Going back, though, to the original polling questions: In the 1950s, the BBC posed the question, “Which animal do you dislike most?”
Granted, I don’t know what the format was, who the target audience was, or if there were only a few choices offered, but I wonder that there weren’t any selections done by subjects along the lines of “humans”?
At the age of 51 I’ve conquered most of what small fears I’ve had of creepy crawlies, but the one that has loomed larger and larger is that of humans. And no, it isn’t simply intellectual. I periodically encounter people and their assertions who cause me to refocus on them and see them, not as fellow human beings, but as the most monstrous of animals. If I were to encounter their images on the pages of an Audubon Guide to the Mallrat, for instance, I’d feel the same revulsion in turning the page.
March 15th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Ruth – It’s good to hear that you have managed to resist passing on your fear of snakes to your children. It takes a lot of self-control to try to act nonchalant when we are experiencing strong feelings.
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Celeste – I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard that song — I guess I should check it out!
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Xris – I very much agree with all that you’ve written — especially about how it is not really necessary to dig too deeply into the cause of phobias in order to covercome them through exposure and desensitization exercises. I also think our fears are often seated in our instincts – perhaps the shape of a certain creature triggers an alarm because we once had to watch out for that creature — perhaps a venomous snake — at some point in our distant collective past.
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Cathy – I must admit that I might have a difficult time with having a tarantula sit on my hand. That said, I was once at a nature workshop where one of the people giving a demonstration had his pet tarantulas in a little box. Several children held the spiders for awhile and they seemed quite docile. The fellow said that this particular spider was very calm and used to sit on his knee in the evening while he watched television.
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Patti – I’m quite glad to read that you and others who have posted here, have said that this blog and the photos have helped you to become more comfortable about spiders, snakes and other creatures. I really do feel that the route to overcoming our fears is getting to know more about these creatures.
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Mark – Recently, someone told me of meeting up with what must have been some kind of “migration” of tarantulas on an Arizona backroad. I would be thrilled by such an encounter!
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Wayne – I’ve been trying to recall whether I was ever twitchy about touching an image. If so, it was probably that of the mouthparts of a lamprey eel as I find them a bit gross. As for creatures most feared, I have to say that humans would also top my list. I have had more than a couple of scary encounters with people who have made me nervous of such things as hiking alone in certain places, etc… Oddly enough, dogs would probably be in the second spot. I used to do a lot of jogging on the backroads in our area, but was chased by aggressive farm dogs several times and finally got so that I just couldn’t enjoy running as I knew I would have to pass farms where I might be chased. I’m very nervous of encountering stray dogs that are aggressive when I’m out for walks in the woods, especially when I have Sabrina with me as some dogs really love to attack other dogs — as in the case of the sled dogs in the first post I ever made to this blog.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Re: “perhaps the shape of a certain creature triggers an alarm because we once had to watch out for that creature”
There’s some support for certain objects entailing a greater genetic pre-disposition for activation, snakes being an excellent example. I think of it as a knob that’s turned up just a little bit more for those targets.
On its own, the target component of the genetic capacity for phobias doesn’t explain phobias with no “rational” explanation, since the targets are not themselves dangerous. Per our evolutionary history, we view rats more as a food source than dangerous adversaries. Viewing rats as “dangerous” is a cultural innovation of the past few hundred, at mose thousand, years. And I can’t imagine a genetic component for coulrophobia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulrophobia] unless there is a general capacity for activation independent of the target object.
Phobias are a type of anxiety disorder [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety_disorder], which include OCD and PTSD. I was thinking about this some more last night after I left my first comment. After 9/11, certain ordinary occurences could trigger a startle response in me. A low-flying plane is an obvious example, but also certain burning smells, the sight of ash. Even, because that’s what we had on that day, a perfectly clear blue sky.
March 16th, 2007 at 8:38 am
I remember vividly as a very small child standing near the corner of our street and feeling a spider spin it’s web around my legs. This was in the late 1940’s, certainly no later than 1950; I could not have been more than 5 years old. There was a stop sign beside me and I thought the spider was trying to bind me to the post. I screamed and screamed for my mother until a neighbor picked me up and carried me home (those were the times when a child could ride her trike up and down the block with out mom or dad watching). I was with my best friend Butch who was also crying. Even now at 60 I can feel the touch of the filament on my bare legs when I see a spider. Despite knowing in my rational mind it could not have been a spider, I cannot eradicate this image from my mind and I can see that little girl crying in fear.
I know I have passed this fear on to my daughter although I have not told her the reason for my phobia. Other than this fear of spiders wildlife holds no fear for me. I will pick up a worm, pet and hold a snake and handle other small creatures but no spiders please.
March 17th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Bev,
There is a great article about spiders in a recent New Yorker magazine. I don’t think you can see the whole thing online, a stubs at:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_bilger
But surely the local library has a copy or a friend or neighbor. Worth rooting out.
Best Regards,
David
March 17th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Xris – Thanks for posting some more thoughts on arachnophobia — and other phobias as well. You’re quite right.. there couldn’t be much evolutionary reason for a fear of clowns. I’m always interested in hearing how people describe the development of a fear — for example, Barbara’s description of her fear of spiders that follows your comment. When I was a teenager, I became severely agoraphobic for several years. The first “attack” happened when I was in the audience at a performance of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” The arguing during the performance made me sort of flip out and I had to leave. I couldn’t go back into a room that I couldn’t leave again immediately for about 5 years — and this applied in the case of planes, trains, etc… too, so it was quite debilitating. I’m over it now, although I still experience twinges under certain circumstances — town council meetings where people get mad and start to shout, etc… These kinds of fears can be come very intense and difficult to overcome.
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Barbara – Thanks for writing an account of your fear of spiders. It’s quite fascinating – particularly as it seems unlikely that a spider was actually involved in the original incident. It’s almost more as though the fear was of being separated from or prevented from returning to your home — a fairly common childhood anxiety. Isn’t it amazing how we can carry certain fears with us for decades though?
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David – Thanks for posting the link to the NYT article. I’m just going to check it out!