Arachnophobia

Whenever I tell someone that I am intensely afraid of spiders, I often get, "Not Charlotte, too?" Yes. Even Charlotte. Just because she's in children literature doesn't make her less scary. Cartoon spiders in Garfield kind of creep me out, too.

Even the word "spider" scares me. The only way I can tolerate it is if I break the word up in my mind and have the letters float around meaninglessly. When someone else talks about spiders, I try not to visualize it as I do with nearly everything else.

This one time...at band camp...ok, not at band camp, but I once fainted at the sight of a spider in a camp cabin. Or maybe I fainted because I screamed so loud and hard and that I forgot to breathe.

Another time, I was in class at UBC when a large spider came crawling very quickly into the classroom. Spiders must have spidey senses for who is the most scared because of the twenty-three students in the room, it came straight toward me as I sat in the second row, third seat from the window. I screamed, stood up on my chair, and when the spider didn't stop sprinting toward me, I started to throw chairs and desks at it until a large man stomped on it and two female students hugged me until I stopped shaking.

Still, the worse story was in my first year of teaching. I had a delightful student who was curious about everything and would stop at nothing until her curiosity was satisfied. She, and the rest of the class, knew that I was afraid of spiders, but they all respected my fear until one day. During a time when the students worked at stations to explore and learn several topics at once, the OCD student found a two-page spread photo of a spider, possibly a black widow or wolf spider, in a magazine. My back was turned and when she called out, "Ms. Chan" and I turned to look at her, she jumped at me with the magazine in her hands and shoved the picture in my face. Instinctively, I reached out and struck the magazine out of her hands, then turned and sobbed. While some of the students came to console me, I could hear the other students admonish the student who had the magazine. I forced myself to stop crying to turn to all the students and say that it was not her fault. When I turned to face her, I saw that she was crying, too. She choked out, "I'm sorry, Ms. Chan! I just wanted to know how you would react. I promise I will never do it again." All the female students came and hugged me and hugged her and never again did she do something to purposely scare somebody else.

Up to this point, I realized only two times when I have seen spiders and not let my fear overtake me. The first time was when I went rock-climbing outdoors. I guess fear of falling while being over 100 ft. above ground trumps fear of spiders. I literally looked at the spider and said to it, "I don't have time for you right now" and found space to move away from it. The other time is when I'm gardening. I freeze up when I see the spider(s), but then my goal of tending to my flowers was more important than running away and screaming like a banshee. Then, somehow I find a way to continue my gardening and try to avoid the spiders. They eventually disappear into the dirt, which is fine by me.

I have tried all sorts of methods to get rid of my fear of spiders. I have even sought the help of a counselor. I haven't tried hypnosis or acupuncture, but I'm not ready to try them out yet. I have done research on phobias and I think I have found a reason why I'm afraid of spiders (phobias almost always stem from a psychological reason, one that was started by a life experience that often has nothing to do with what is feared itself). Despite knowing all that and investigating my own life, I cannot get rid of my arachnophobia.