Arachnophobia, The Irrational Fear Of Spiders

Arachnophobia is one of the most common fears in humans. This is striking if one takes into account that spiders are one of the animals that are present in most homes on a daily basis. Still, many people fear them.

Although dangerous species of spiders are very rare, for those who suffer from arachnophobia, all these animals are cause for apprehension. Obviously, this is not a rational fear, since these insects almost never create risk.

In some people, arachnophobia reaches such an extreme that they can panic just thinking about these animals. Others do not reach that degree of fear, but their quality of life is limited by the presence of these insects. Why is this happening? Is there a way to fix it?

What is arachnophobia?

As many know, arachnophobia is an irrational fear of spiders. Phobia  is defined as a disorder characterized by extreme fear of a specific object or situation. Due to its intensity, it goes beyond a normal fear and, in some cases, significantly limits a person’s life.

Phobias are estimated to be the  most common mental disorder in women and the second most prevalent among men over the age of 25. What is irrational about this fear lies in the disproportion between the object or situation that is feared and the level of threat they represent.

The interesting causes of this phobia

The general opinion among scientists is that arachnophobia is established in childhood  and that it is a learned fear, based on threats or inappropriate behaviors of adults. Sigmund Freud, for his part, considered all phobias to be an unconscious displacement; that is, the child’s real fear is transferred to a harmless object because it rejects the existence of the primordial fear.

Recently, an interesting theory has emerged around the fear of spiders. It was developed by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig -Germany- and published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology .

According to these scientists, the fear of spiders is genetic and is transmitted from generation to generation. To test this theory, the researchers took a group of babies and presented them with various images. The objective was to measure the level of anxiety that each image caused them, through the dilation of the pupils.

The result was that the babies showed greater signs of anxiety  when images of snakes or spiders were presented to them. Instead, the fish and flowers soothed them. It is believed that if a negative experience with these animals is added to this natural repulsion, arachnophobia is generated.

Manifestations of arachnophobia

The symptoms of arachnophobia are similar to those of other phobias. They include, among others:

• Heart jerks and / or increased heart rate.
• Palpitations and sweating.
• Tremors and a feeling of tightness in the chest.
• Nausea, dizziness, and fainting.
• Feeling of suffocation and unreality.
• Chills or suffocation
• Heavy breathing and temporary paralysis.
• Fear of losing control or dying.

Ways of solution

Everything indicates that the most effective treatment to overcome this irrational fear of spiders is exposure therapy. To carry out this therapy the help of a psychologist is needed. The first thing it does is develop a subjective anxiety scale; This is a measure that allows to establish the degree of the phobia.

Typically, the psychologist asks the patient to rate the level of anxiety caused by various situations, from 1 to 100. The situations for which it is investigated are the following:

• Read the word spider in a book.
• Talk to someone about spiders.
• See a spider in a movie.
• Go out for a walk in the field.
• Know that there is a spider nearby.
• See a spider from afar.
• See a spider one meter from us.
• Hold a spider in your hand.

Based on the score of each situation, an exposure to fear begins, first in a virtual way. The goal is for the person to tolerate the fear, until it disappears. Then, the same will be done, but with a real exposure and the same result will be sought.