How to cure fear of spiders?

Question

How do I cure my fear of spiders?

Please Help

I need some info, I have always been afraid of them.

Answer 1

Systematic desensitization --- This is a process in which a person with a phobia is gradually exposed to the feared item, in your case, a spider. You would first be asked to think of a spider when in a calm state and would stop thinking about it the minute you get scared. Then you would move on to seeing a spider - maybe even just a picture of a spider. Again, you would stop as soon as you get scared. Then you'd move on to seeing a spider in person. Then you'd see someone else close to the spider. Then you'd see the other person touching the spider. Then you would get closer to the spider. Eventually, you would be asked to touch the spider.

The good news is that treatment of specific phobias is often highly successful.

Answer 2

Get a rubber spider and play a prank on family and friends with it.Hard to be afraid of something that gets a a laugh from time to time. This is not a cure all but it's a step in the right direction.

Answer 3

Between 10 and 11 percent of people have a specific phobia, and approximately 4 percent of the population have arachnophobia. Like other phobias, it manifests itself as a persistent and irrational fear of the phobic stimulus, resulting in avoidance of places and situations associated with the stimulus, and overwhelming anxiety about encountering such a situation. Never knowing when one might encounter a spider may cause impairment in a variety of situations.

If you are restricted by arachnophobia, you may benefit from virtual reality therapy. Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) places you in a computer-generated environment where you can be safely exposed to spiders, thereby reducing your anxiety in stages, at your own pace. You wear a head-mounted display with stereo earphones that immerses you in the VR environment by providing you with both visual and auditory cues.

In this type of therapy, you will be exposed to a hierarchy of phobic situations designed to reduce your anxiety in gradual increments. This format ensures that anxiety at each level dissipates before you move to the next level. In this way, the connection between the stimulus and the phobic response is dissolved. If an increase in anxiety does occur, you may simply return to a previous stage and repeat it until you are able to progress successfully to the next stage.

The entire process lasts 8-12 sessions on average. The graded experience might include: standing across the room from a spider, standing next to a closed jar containing a spider, holding a closed jar containing a spider, holding an open jar containing a spider, touching a spider. These steps are customized for each individual.

Answer 4

I personally don't know anyone that likes them including myself but I have no choice but to respect spiders as they have purpose. I'm gardener with years of experience on what the "bad" bugs can do. Spiders are on the "good bug" list and are considered vital to the ecosystem of a successful garden. If one takes a Master Gardener course or reads a good bug vs bad bug book one can understand what seems bad sometimes turns out to be a blessing in disguise.

The same goes for gardener snakes.... which are actually called garter snakes. Around here they're called "George" and told to get back to work and stop bothering me ;D

Answer 5

Immersion therapy. Look on the net at pictures of them, read all about them...learn all you can about them. After awhile, they won't be so scary anymore because your brain and self are so used to them they will be as common as potato chips.

Seriously, can you imagine being afraid of potato chips? Well you would be if you didn't know anything about them and their purpose...and spiders are the same way.

Hope this helps!

Answer 6

Arachnophobia is, in many cases, the result of a traumatizing encounter with spiders in one's early childhood, though the experience may not be remembered.

An evolutionary reason for the phobias, such as arachnophobia, claustrophobia, fear of snakes or mice, etc. remains unresolved. One view, especially held in evolutionary psychology, is that sufferers might gain some survival edge, by avoiding the dangers.

Spiders, for instance, being relatively small, don’t fit the usual criteria for a threat in the animal kingdom where size is a key factor, but most species are venomous, and some are lethal.

Arachnophobes will spare no effort to make sure that their whereabouts are spider-free, hence reducing sharply the risk of being bitten.

The alternative view is that the dangers, such as from spiders, are overrated and not sufficient to influence evolution. Instead, inheriting phobias would have restrictive and debilitating effects upon survival, rather than being an aid. For example, there are no deadly spiders native to central and northern Europe that could exert an evolutionary pressure, yet that is where the strongest fear for spiders began, suggesting cultural learning.

In contrast, many non-European cultures generally do not fear spiders, and for some communities such as in Papua New Guinea and South America, spiders are included in traditional foods.

Another suggested cause of arachnophobia is that it is a disorder of face perception in the affected individuals. In this theory, a person's brain is accustomed to the facial and body features of humans and vertebrates, including the abstract positions, shapes and numbers of eyes, nostrils, mouth, and the face of the wider recognizable body as a whole.

In non-vertebrates, and particularly so with spiders, the functions of eyes, mouth and legs may be recognized, but as they appear in the "wrong" shapes, sizes, amounts, locations, etc., the sight of a spider can trigger the brain to perceive a scary and disturbing image, triggering the release of hormones that produce an immediate and compelling fight-or-flight response.

As most sufferers of arachnophobia come from parts of the world where spiders are rare, then this theory reasons that young children who frequently encounter spiders are less likely to associate them as scary or disturbing sights, and are less likely to develop arachnophobia.

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Answer 7

Try living without them... as in live with other bugs that spiders eat. Or better yet, just think about what it would be like in a world without spiders.

Answer 8

Get a pet spider.

Answer 9

study up on spiders. the more you know about something the less fearful you become

Answer 10

You can't cure that. Is a disgusting insect with 8 legs and can bite us and also some of them have poison. Well in my country they don't, but they are big and horrible.

Happy New Year! And new changes in your life for 2007 :)