what causes arachnophobia?

Factual Questions
1

I am writing a natural history book on spiders, titled Spider: from arachnophobia to obsession. Partly the title reflects my own journey, but also refelcts the contents as the book covers the natural history through the people who fear them through to those who are obsessed by them - such as the zoologists who are helping with the book. It will also include myths and legends, which often reflect, and maybe even fuel, arachnophobia.

I don’t think asking questions for research for a book breaks any SD protocols, but if it does, could the moderator please act accordingly and accept my apologies?

I am intrigued by what causes arachophpbia and would be keen to hear any theories as well as personal anecdotes. My case started as an adult - I had never liked them, but it became full blown arachnophobia through ongoing nightmares of huge spiders crossing my bed. It got to the stage I could not even touch a picture of them. When it started really disrupting my life, I started studying them to overcome what I knew was an irrational fear. I overdid the cure. I am now obessed by them.

Last week, I was wearing my spider jewellery as usual (I said I was obessed) and a teenage girl went pale and started shaking. I removed the jewellery, and asked if she could define what scares her so much. It didn’t seem to be any fear of being bitten. She could only define it as to do with them being ‘spidery’, which was a tad vague.

Could I please ask that there be NO gleeful stories about torturing or killing spiders. I am now so obssessed with them that such stories really upset me.

Lynne

2

You can’t “torture” a spider. They don’t have feelings.

3

I am assuming that is a joke, but in case you were serious, they would starve if they couldn’t feel things - I am not talking emotions! The web builders detect prey by the vibrations of their webs. Blowing very gently on a spider will always cause a reaction. When tin rooves get hot, spiders will drop off them. They have a nervous system. From all that I assume they can feel pain.

Lynne

4

It’s not a joke. I’m sure your zoologist friends will tell you the same.

A nervous system is not enough. You need Nociceptor - Wikipedia.

5

When I was 3, we lived in an apartment building that was completely surrounded by fields (it didn’t really “join” the rest of town until a university campus was built in between). One of the families there had three daughters: one my age, one a year older and the eldest, only two years beyond me.

One day, us youngest were watching a spider build its web, fascinated by the way the pattern came to life and by how the sun shone on it (it was very early in the morning so there was dew). The middle sister came up to us and started telling us these horror stories about spiders being poisonous; the eldest sister tried to get her to shut up but she would have had to slug her to get any results. I think there must have been a documentary on tarantulas or something… anyway, she left us terrified for years.

For some time, I hated them. I remember one particular instance when I’d been lying on my bed, reading, and when I sat up there was a spider very close to my face, hanging from the ceiling and heck, I’m still surprised I didn’t eat it when I took breath for that scream :o

Sometime during my 20s I decided that this was a stupid fear and I was going to get over it, period. And I did. When I saw a spider, I would just remind me that it was not poisonous and not catching me by surprise, yes, I have it right in front of me, no surprises.

I’m still not fond of them, even after spending half a year in Costa Rica (where they’re seen as a sort of domestic animal, since they eat mosquitoes and the mosquitoes give you dengue, which kills several people every year) but I can be in the same room as one, thanks. Still wouldn’t go to see Arachnophobia, though, but I just don’t like that gender of movies.

I’ve never had a problem with them in effigy, just with the real thing.

6

I have no idea what kicked mine off, I think it was as a child when it must have been the shock of just seeing them appear almost from nowhere and then run across the bed (when I was sitting on it). Since then, I’ve had an utterly irrational fear of them although I used to make myself dispose of the ones I found in the house. It was a long time before I could bear to do the glass and paper method of disposal though, and as a child I used to get my dad to go and check my room every night to make sure there weren’t any in there.

A while ago, I went to a local zoo that ran an arachnophobia session with the help of a zoologist and a hypnotist. That’s where I met Geri

7

There’s the theory that arachnophobia is an innate, evolved reaction, learnt way back in human history when any small dark scuttling things were a potential venomous threat, which makes sense if humans originated in Africa.

I feel that there is something sinister about spiders’ behaviour - their seemingly calculated stop-start movement, that of a predator, is inherently more threatening than the workaday rambling of a woodlouse for instance.

8

I, too, sense that they are in fact sinister. The fact that they aren’t as evolved as other predators gets me to thinking that they can run on your face and body when you’re lying in bed and not think about what they are running on. Then when the person flinches they can bite you as a defensive measure.
I hate spiders. Don’t know exactly where it comes from, but it’s very real. I have no problem looking at pictures or even live spiders as long as I know that they are either contained or a certain distance from me.
The same goes for centipedes. I don’t know if you guys have ever grown up with giant centipedes, but I have. And it sucked. Those bastards were even worse than spiders. They were hard to kill, fast and packed a helluva punch if provoked. Spawns of evil. I think another factor is how much you come into contact with said arachnids. If you see them once in a blue moon, like I did, you get shocked. Where as if you see them daily you’ll eventually learn to live in some sort of strained symbiosis with them.
Enough said.

9

One of my favourite typos of the year! Sorry, Nava, I don’t mean any offence and I only mean it in a friendly way. I just love the mnd-twisting concept of movies have a gender. Because, in a way, they do, don’t they? We all know of movies that are definitely either a ‘chick flick’ or a ‘toys for the boys’ action movie.

(I think you meant ‘genre’.)

10

Thank you for raising this - it does not match the way my zoologist friends talk about spiders nor why they are so careful to avoid ‘hurting’ them, but I will certainly check it out with them. Wikipedia specifically says that “Scientifically, pain (a subjective experience) is separate and distinct from nociception[1].” and defines pain as “Pain is an unpleasant sensation, ranging in intensity from slight through severe to indescribable.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain

Spiders will run and avoid being blown on. Doesn’t that indicate it is unpleasant sensation? I am not trying to be pedantic, and am well aware that my obsession has reached irrational levels and I must be scientifically accurate in the book, but I am still not convinced by what you say. I am willing to be - then I don’t need to worry about hurting them!

Lynne

11

(Yes, thank you… they’re both mistranslated into Spanish as género)

12

Just because they have a different nervous system makeup than us doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings (of course, it doesn’t mean they do, either.)

Assume it were possible to create hardcore artificial life out of silicon - actual living thinking beings as intelligent as humans. Would you deny their emotions just because they didn’t use the exact same setup as you?

13

If they had a different system that allowed them to feel pain, you would be right. My biology text book said that they don’t, though. Let me see if I can find a cite.

Here is one

14

Spiders have emotions. Exactly two: terror and glee. You can see the glee in their spidery little faces quite clearly when they yell “gotcha-ya!” while licking your nose until you wake up. You can see the terror in their spidery little faces a few moments later.

I know exactly where my phobia came from. When my mom was little she had a natural aversion to spideys. Her two older sisters picked up on that and, sibs being sibs, commenced to chase her around with spiders, drop spiders on her, hide them in her clothes, etc. That gelled pretty quickly into a full on phobia. When I was little I didn’t mind the little critters so much–they were just those bugs with 8 legs instead of 6 (or 5 :evil smiley: ). Sometimes the garden spiders would place their webs inconveniently across a path at head level, but I never thought there was anything particularly sinister in their motivation to do so. But as far as I can remember Mom was openly scared of the things. I guess that’s wher I fist learned my distrust of them–like any other kind of prejudice that gets handed down from parent to child. So by the time I was maybe 10 I still didn’t hate them, but I sure felt better when they weren’t around. then my brother started in on the pranks, the defining moment of which involved my bed and two of the biggest damned house spiders I have ever seen. Close physical contact with the things in a place as vulnerable as “under the sheets” pretty much did the trick for me. No bites, just the thought of those little horrors possibly engaging in some kind of combat with my skin…I can barely type this I’m so creeped out just thinking about it. I don’t have an aversion to women though, and they’ve caused me more and longer lasting trouble under the sheets than spiders ever could, so maybe this isn’t the real reason.

Anyhow, I’m not so scared of them that I climb the walls to get away from an image on TV, but if I want a case of the willies they are quite effective as villains in movies (Arachnophobia and there was another one where this house was being attacked by spideys–bad things…). I know they are in my house, but as long as they stay in the basement, away from my bed and out of my way we get along just fine. Rather like my relationship with my wife, actually. So maybe there is a connection after all. As for how I deal with them when they break the rules, well, judgement is swift and punishment is consistent and brief.

15

I too know exactly where my distaste came from…when I was a teenager my friends and I thought it would be a good idea to walk on a catwalk that was suspended on a bridge over the CT river…what we did not realize is that noone had done this in quite some time and spiders had taken over the area, I am talking 1,000’s of them…We were all literally coated in spiders by the time we reached the other side anhd had to strip down and brush them off of our bodies and hair…ever since then I cannot stand a spider being near me…I can look at them from a distance but cannot kill or touch them (my wife calls me a sissy) and I get really freaked out if one is able to get to close to me without my knowledge…to me thay are just very sneaky insects who can drop down on you silently from above without notice and it just really curls my toenails…

16

Ugh. Spiders. They’re fast, silent, hairy, evil looking. Where I grew up, some of them were dangerous (black widows, brown recluses). Part of it for me is the web. If you’re walking in the woods or whatever and run into a web, there it is all wrapped up and sticky on your face and skin and where the hell is the spider!?!? How big is the spider that is probably *crawling all over you * as you try to get it’s sticky web off your body?! Yeah, not my favorite insect.

It is something I would like to get over, though. I do know that it’s irrational. Lynne, you say you researched them. How long did it take for the horror to go away?

17

I had it beaten into me at school, so now it’s your turn! Spiders aren’t insects. :slight_smile:

18

Well, this second one is technically true, then: since it’s not an insect, it can’t be Renee’s favorite insect, can it?

19

I think it’s a basically innate thing that we can learn our way out of. I remember handling “daddy long-legs” when I was a kid because my mom and sister were calm about them and explained rationally that the critters couldn’t hurt me if they wanted to, and they didn’t even want to.

I also don’t mind the little bitty grey ones at all, since I know they kill nasty things like flies and mosquitos. And especially since the day I found a wasp caught in a spider web in my baby’s room. How much nicer to have a sweet little living bug trap than a horrible wasp!

But that was before I met the GIANT hairy spiders that we sometimes find in the basement. Those just give me a completely irrational shudder of panic through my entire body.

20

So are you talking about actual phobias, or just the general ‘spiders are icky’ feeling?

Phobias are caused by abnormal linkage in sections of the brain. Through trauma or imprint or whatever, X gets linked with Y, when it normally wouldnt. Since its a fear and not just another bit of information, the link is especially strong.

If its just the normal greeblies everyone has about spiders, Ive always been in favor of the ‘not us’ explanation. Theyre just so different from us. Also we’ve been told all our lives that spider are poisonous, and we have that little ‘poisonous = bad’ thing hammered into us as kids.

I like spiders. Ill toss a really big one outside, but thats about it. My coworkers freaked out when we found a little green crab spider in the bathroom in our office, and I picked it up and carried it outside in my hand. It was smaller than a dime and bright freakin green. I thought it was cute.