As someone who has always dealt with anxiety on some level or another, fear, in many different forms, has always been a part of my life.
Some fears can be faced, and others can’t, and no matter the situation, no matter how outlandish they may seem, being afraid of something is always valid.
Often times, though, I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit for the fears we overcome. So today, I’d like to talk about mine.
On my most recent day off, I was scrolling through Hulu, and saw they had a movie available to watch that I’ve really been wanting to see for the past few years: Arachnophobia.
I find the poster for this movie to be the most relaxing, beautiful, serene image. And I was super excited to see the spiders featured in the movie!
But it wasn’t always this way.
Before about 2010, a movie that so predominantly featured spiders would have sent me into a massive panic and possibly have made me physically.
At one time, I was, quite literally, the very definition of ‘arachnophobia’.
I’m not sure at what point in my childhood I realized I was bothered by spiders, but it goes back about as far as I can remember. And believe me when I tell you, I was terrified of everything even vaguely relating to spiders. I couldn’t handle fake ones, even if they were meant to be cute and cartoony. One year on a family vacation, there was a claw machine full of these spider plushies in different colors, wearing a sneaker on each leg, and my relatives kept winning different ones and trying to give them to me, and couldn’t understand why I would scream, cry, run, and hide whenever I saw them. (In hindsight, they were actually freaking adorable and I so wish I had them now!) There was also an instance where my Aunt Trish sent me into a total panic by jokingly throwing a spider Beanie Baby at me in a store. (He turned out to be worth a lot of money years later!) The more realistic fake ones were worse, though...and nearly impossible to avoid as a young Halloween fanatic. I’d literally work out strategies to avoid them in the Halloween aisles of stores, sometimes going so far as to ask whoever I was with to bring me the things that were too close to the spiders so I could look at them. One year while trick-or-treating, I completely froze in fear when a fake spider was attached to someone’s doorbell. My aunt eventually had to come up and ring it for me, because I was terrified to touch a plastic spider. Any sealed treat bags I received on Halloween night had to be inspected for toy spiders because I would absolutely lose my shit if I opened a bag up and found one.
That’s how arachnophobic I was, and that’s not even touching on any encounters I had with real spiders! Many nights were spent on the couch if I’d seen a spider in my room and my parents were unable to find it and get rid of it. And playing outside was not an option once I saw even one spider scurry past, or even got a glimpse of a web, in some cases. This continued even into my adult years, as I once went outside to take pictures behind our old fenced in back patio, and went into a massive panic about getting back inside when a daddy long legs appeared several feet away from the door. In many ways it was irrational, and it truly ruled my life at some points in time.
This is all slowly started to change in 2010, though, when I saw a giant spider prop in a Halloween store and felt inspired by him. A whole story, in which this spider was the protagonist, started to form in my head, and I realized how truly emotionally attached I was getting to a spider! I wrote it off as a one-time thing at first, just something random; it’s not like this giant prop even looked really real, but something wouldn’t let me leave the thought alone that, if I could feel this strongly about a spider of any kind, maybe there was some chance that I could just stop being afraid of spiders altogether. Honestly, the older I got, the more ridiculous I actually did find it, the idea of someone who loved Halloween so much, being absolutely terrified of spiders. And in that moment, it just kind of hit me.
I didn’t want to be afraid of spiders anymore.
It wasn’t exactly easy to overcome...a lifelong phobia (I would’ve been twenty-three at the time) that almost everyone in the world treats as some kind of universal norm is a hard thing to break. There were many methods involved, such as handling toy spiders of varying sizes and details, to looking at pictures and videos, visiting tarantulas in pet shops, even simply saying a friendly “hello” to the real spiders that passed me by, and of course, learning more about them. But I think what helped the most, was ultimately just stopping to think about my fear, and question it. What exactly was it about spiders that scared me? Was it the way they look? And was it really fair to judge them for that? Spiders didn’t ask to look the way that they do. The more I thought about it, the more similarities I actually found between myself and spiders. As someone who spent much of my life being bullied simply because of the way I was, it somehow didn’t seem fair to do that to anyone else, even if the being in question was, in fact, a spider. Spiders, in most cases, do a lot more good than harm, despite perhaps being a little creepy looking.
By about two Halloween shopping seasons after starting my journey to beat arachnophobia, I surprised myself by actually starting to prefer decor that featured spiders in some way. Seeing spiders, real or fake, became a joyful experience, more and more each time, and at this point in time, I feel as though I not only conquered arachnophobia, but somehow reversed it into a genuine interest, and I dare say a love for, spiders.
And I think that’s something to be proud of.
Now, I’m not invalidating anyone who may be afraid of spiders. It’s a perfectly valid fear, and one that not everyone is going to be able to, or even necessarily want to be able to, overcome. I’m simply sharing my own personal triumph, and I hope that maybe someone reads this and, if they’re struggling with any sort of fear they’d like to get past, be it spiders or something else entirely, might feel inspired and encouraged to work through it. I actually don’t consider myself very good at facing or overcoming my fears, but turning a lifelong phobia into something so positive is definitely not a small thing, and sometimes, I just like to look back on it and remember that I could do it, did do it. Can do it.
So yes, if you’d told me as a teenager that one day I’d be super excited to watch a movie about spiders, and be oohing and aahing over how adorable they are and hoping they weren’t hurt in the process of filming (they weren’t, I checked) I would have either laughed in your face or gone into a complete panic at the thought. But instead, here I am, silly as it may sounds, doing something I never would’ve thought possible during another part of my life.
Stay spooky, my friends. It just may help you overcome your fears one day.
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