Spiders and other Phobias

Spider (and other) Phobias such as Travel phobia

Fear of spiders, like many other phobias, is remarkably common. Men and women can be so scared of spiders that they cannot bear being in the same room as them or even see pictures of them. For spider phobics, spiders invariably seem much bigger than they do to other people. They are also sometimes described as being evil, unpredictable, and likely to “jump” onto the fearful person! The principles relevant to spider phobia are similar for all other phobias.

Avoidance

All phobias or fears are fuelled by avoidance. Our in-built fight-or-flight reaction, a defensive system that protects us from harm, determines that we have to either run away or fight any danger. In our forebears danger usually implied things such as wild animals or warlike tribal neighbours wanting to take our land or food, kill our loved ones and/or us. Running away (avoidance), meant survival.

Does avoidance help for spider phobia?

The short answer is no, it makes it worse. Every time we leave a situation/place where there is a spider, we become more fearful of the next time when such an encounter takes place.The simple, but not necessarily pleasant, solution is to remain in the presence of the spider until the anxiety is distinguished. This type of approach is called exposure and is based on the knowledge that, whenever we are in (benign) situations where we feel fearful, our anxiety will increase to the extent where it may even feel unbearable. We may feel an overwhelming urge to run, get away, and escape so as to get away not only from the fearful object (the spider) but also from our fear and intense unpleasant emotions. If we stay however, the anxiety/fear/distress will plateau out and then start to diminish. Repeated exposure will “extinguish” or remove the fear.

Nowadays there are trained psychological therapists who, with the phobic person’s permission, have an extended 3 hour session which allows the person to leave without their fear.

More traditionally, exposure to feared objects (such as spiders) or situations (such as travelling by car again after an accident), usually takes place over a number of sessions  (6-8 hours) and is highly successful.

What makes this type of treatment fail?

Exposure fails when the person believes that they are being made worse by the treatment, as they grow more fearful and possibly become exceedingly tense and/or upset during the exposure sessions. They then resort to avoidance, invariably fuelling the phobia again.In some cases, the phobic person has got so used to being phobic, that they derive “secondary gain” from being the person who cannot drive or cannot handle spiders e.g., as this may result in receiving special treatment from loved ones or not having to travel to a job they do not like.

What makes exposure succeed?

If the phobic person understands the principles of exposure therapy, trusts their therapist, and can subscribe to the “no pain-no gain” school of thinking, they are likely to succeed if they practice as often as agreed with their therapist.Tackling a phobia is actually much easier, shorter in terms of time and effort, and satisfying, than living with it. Whereas living with a phobia can have serious long terms effects of one’s quality of life.

Read the recently published academic article reporting successful treatment of travel phobia in the largest published sample of travel phobics in the world. Research conducted by Moving Minds. Link here

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