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Hollywood made a pretty bad movie about it - "Arachnophobia", but for some the movie was excruciating - if they even went to see it. The cast certainly was amazing: John Goodman ("Roseanne"), Kathy Kinney ("The Drew Carey Show"), and Jeff Daniels ("Dumb and Dumber").
Arachnophobia is the extreme, debilitating, and persistent fear of spiders. It is not the rational fear of spider bites, not the sensible caution of avoiding old wood piles where the brown recluse like to lurk, not the refusal to handle a pet tarantula, but the panic attack brought on by the thought of spiders, the heart palpitations and trouble breathing experienced when a spider is in the room...an anxiety level that may require treatment in order to function without debilitating obsessive/compulsive spider clearing or avoidance rituals.
It's typical for all people to experience fears, but suffering from a phobia is a more significant issue. A phobia is an extreme fear that one cannot seem to control. Phobias are categorized as a variety of anxiety disorder, and often trigger nervousness and anxiety attacks in a sufferer. When an individual has a serious phobia, they become so anxious to stay away from their fear that it interferes with their daily activities and their ability to function in life.
Athena realized what she had done, regretted her actions, and sprinkled a magic liquid onto Arachne, turning her into a spider, so she could keep her weaving skills. Arachnophobia actually has historical and cultural causes. In most of Europe during the Middle Ages spiders were considered a source of contamination that absorbed poisons in their environment (e.g. from plants). Any food which had come into contact with a spider was considered infected. Similarly, if a spider fell into water, that water was then held to be poisoned.
Since it was first diagnosed, anxiety has been seen as having negative connotations. The fact of the matter is, anxiety is a completely natural occurrence in the human psyche. As we respond to stimuli that causes anxiety, a powerful chemical known as adrenaline is released to help us cope with the issue at hand. Unfortunately, in some instances this release of adrenaline can bring about a panic attacks anxiety disorder.
According to World Book Online Research Encyclopedia, "Phobia is an unreasonable yet strong fear of a certain object, class of objects or a situation." People who suffer phobia have a compelling desire to avoid the object or situation that causes their stress.
Back in the heydays of philosophy when medicine was not a very organized curative discipline, people were often detected with such fretting disorders. It lay upon the philosophers to unwind the complications and to unearth the exact causes behind. One among the earliest interpretations (the Pythagorean interpretation) was that the phobias were 'reminiscences' from former lives (and was essentially believed to have a religious association).
It is normal for children to sense fear about certain events or circumstances like being in a school play, passing a growling dog, or sleeping in the dark. But more often than not, these fears are exaggerated and even irrational. Some children can develop a very serious irrational fear that can be clinically considered as phobia. In medical terms, phobia refers to a type of anxiety disorder. It is a strong, irrational fear of something that poses little or no apparent danger. This is form of fear does not go away as easily as the more common types of fear like seeing a monster in a horror movie. If a child has a phobia, his or her sense of security and well-being is affected.
One simple form of exposure treatment is that of flooding, where the person is immersed in the fear reflex until the fear itself fades away. The key is keeping the patients in the feared situation long enough that they can see that none of the dreaded consequences they fear actually come to pass.
We had a little excitement this morning at home. My wife came out of the bathroom and said, quite calmly, "Ed, there's a big black spider in the bathtub." Since I was watching my daughter, Ella, at the time, I carried her in there to investigate. I was a bit surprised that my wife did not call it a Brown Recluse. That's our running joke. She grew up in Brown Recluse territory, and so whenever she sees a brownish spider she says "Ed, I just saw a Brown Recluse. Go get it."
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