Arachnophobia: The Irrational Fear Of Spiders

Arachnophobia is one of the most common types of fear in humans. This is striking considering that spiders are one of the most common animals in the home. It is strange that so many people are actually afraid of them.

Poisonous spiders are really rare, and yet people with arachnophobia are convinced that these animals can greatly harm them. Of course, this is not a rational fear, as these insects are mostly harmless.

Arachnophobia is so extreme that some people experience panic just at the thought of spiders. Others are not so extreme, but the fear of this animal’s presence near them limits their quality of life. Why is this happening? Is there a way to fix it?

What is arachnophobia?

As many people know, arachnophobia is the irrational fear of spiders. A phobia is basically a disorder characterized by extreme fear of a particular object or situation. It is more than a normal fear, and in some cases, its intensity significantly limits a person’s life.

Estimates indicate that phobias are the most common mental disorder in women and the second most common in men over the age of 25. The irrationality of this fear also lies in the relationship between the feared object or situation and the level of threat that the object represents.

The interesting reasons for this phobia

The general perception among researchers is that arachnophobia begins in childhood and is a learned fear, depending on threats and inappropriate behavior in adults.

In this context, Sigmund Freud believed that all phobias are an unconscious shift. That is, the child’s real fear is transferred to a harmless object because the child denies the existence of the original fear.

Recently, an interesting theory about fear of spiders was published. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, developed it and published it in the journal Frontiers in Psychology .

According to these researchers, fear of spiders is genetic and is passed down from generation to generation. To test this theory, the researchers took a group of babies and presented them with different pictures. The goal was to measure the level of anxiety each image evoked in the babies (they assessed the degree of dilation of their pupils).

The result was that the babies showed greater signs of anxiety when presented with images of snakes or spiders. Fish and flowers reassured them, however. Thus, the researchers concluded that arachnophobia occurs when a negative experience with these animals increases this natural repulsion.

Manifestations of arachnophobia

The symptoms of arachnophobia are similar to other phobias and include:

• Increased heart rate.
• Palpitations and sweating.
• The tremor and a feeling of pressure for the chest.
• Nausea, dizziness and fainting.
• A feeling of suffocation and unreality.
• Goosebumps.
• Shaken breathing and temporary paralysis.
• The fear of losing control and dying.

Possible solutions

All indications are that the most effective treatment to overcome this irrational fear of spiders is exposure therapy. Thus, the help of a psychologist is necessary to perform this therapy. The first thing they do is come up with a subjective anxiety scale. This measure allows them to determine the degree of phobia.

The psychologist usually asks the client to assess the degree of anxiety caused by different situations, from 1 to 100. Here are some of the situations they asked about :

• Read the word spider in a book.
• Talk to someone about spiders.
• Seeing a spider in a movie.
• Take a walk in the countryside.
• Know that there are spiders nearby.
• Seeing a spider far away.
• Seeing a spider nearby.
• Finally holding a spider.

As you can see, exposure to fear begins based on the scoring of each situation. The goal is for the person to tolerate the object of their fear until he or she overcomes the fear. Then they will do the same, but with real exposure with the goal of achieving the same result.