I'm really scared of spiders and it's annoying. Where I live, there are no really dangerous spiders. I'm an adult, I should be able to approach a scared little animal without losing it.
Are there people on here who like spiders, maybe even whose special interest they are, and who can tell me funny, cute fun-facts about spiders, so I hopefully start to find them cute and interesting, rather than alien-like and terrifying?
I really appreciate it! But please no photos
When I was a little boy I had a terror of spiders. When I was maybe 5 or thereabouts, I saw an episode of Ben Casey or something similar where a little boy got bitten by a black widow spider and almost died. Then I remember seeing the 60s monster movie
Tarantula. I was thoroughly traumatized. I also had a large spider crawl across my face while I was asleep and that freaked me out.
People have an instinctive fear of snakes. This has been well documented. There is also possibly an instinctive fear of spiders. This is less well documented.
There was a common house spider next to a hose valve in the basement, and I was so frightened that I could not bring myself close enough to kill it, let alone turn on the water.
As I got a little older, this fear became a burden as I lived in an old rural house, and everywhere one went, inside or out, there were spiders. I also understood they were beneficial and that I'd never seen a dangerous one in my entire life. This was beyond a five-year-old's brain but started to seep into a ten year old brain. In my autistic and wanna-be Vulcan way, I decided that fearing spiders was irrational.
If I see a spider, I can instantly determine if it is dangerous. If it is dangerous, I can avoid it; rendering it not dangerous. If it is somewhere I might brush up against the web; I can kill it, also rendering it not dangerous. If I don't see it, come into contact with it, and nothing happens, it is still harmless. (Even widows do not want to bite you. You are not edible. Usually only do so if they get squished.) If I don't see it, come into contact with it, and get bit,
being afraid of it did me no good. Just accept it.
Little Vulcan me reasoned away the worst of the fear.
Or at least I refused to surrender to it. I learned everything I could about spiders. There was a place where trauma had been, and I replaced it with knowledge. I used that knowledge to slowly convert fear into fascination. There was still residual nervousness, so I deliberately forced myself to be near spiders. Nothing bad happened, and I grew to enjoy observing them with a magnifying glass and feeding them flies. Over time the phobia went extinct. Spider in the bathtub, and I'd let it crawl onto my hand and take it outside. (Flies get unceremoniously swatted.)
And then I moved to California and there are bloody widow spiders everywhere. Since I had already decided that being afraid served no purpose, I once again overcame my nervousness. I will kill a widow if I see it where my granddaughter might get into it, but otherwise, there's no point to it.
I draw the line at letting a medically significant spider onto my skin. And even though I know they are relatively harmless, the large fangs of a tarantula make me nervous. (If I handled a few, that would no doubt go away.) However, I have no problem taking photos from a few inches away.
My suggestion is to overcome any phobias you might have. They take away your agency. I personally believe that having one phobia makes it more likely others will enter your life. Overcoming them makes you more resilient in general. There's a kind of confidence that comes from beating a phobia. If I can do this, I can do other difficult scary things.
Fun spider fact: The Brown Widow is far less dangerous than the Black, yet the invasive species is replacing the Black in urban areas because people reflexively kill any black spider they see, giving them a survival advantage.
Fun spider fact: The Brown Recluse almost never bites anyone. One house had thousands of them, and a family lived in it for years without incident before they were discovered. Unless you have a high sensitivity, a recluse bite rarely amounts to serious damage.
Fun spider fact: Daddy longlegs (Phlocidae) are completely harmless to humans but have been known to hunt down and kill widows and other spiders
in their own webs. They are my favorite spiders.
Fun spider fact: Baby spiders of web-spinning species leave the nest by ballooning. They climb to a high point, raise their abdomen, and let loose with a strand of silk; the wind catches it, and off they go. Some have been found thousands of feet in the air.
Fun spider fact: Almost all spider bites are actually staph infections. We like to blame them on spiders for some reason.
For some reason, this actually works:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
There are lots of good spider videos on YouTube. "There are the spiders in your house" is my favorite. There is also a lot of clickbait with impossibly large spiders designed to freak out people with spider phobias.
