ARACNOPHOBIA: Meaning, Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

A phobia is an irrational fear of something, be it an object, animal, insect, etc. It is irrational in that the danger it poses to us is disproportionate to its actual danger. One of the best known phobias is arachnophobia. In psychology-online we want to explain what it consists of and give you some indications to overcome that phobia that can interfere with the normal development of your life.

Index

1. What is arachnophobia
2. Symptoms of arachnophobia
3. How to know if I have arachnophobia
4. Why do I have arachnophobia
5. How to overcome arachnophobia

The arachnophobia is a specific phobia that consists of a irrational fear of spiders and other similar arthropods. It is one of the most common phobias, however, we must distinguish between the phobia and the fact that you do not like spiders or they disgust you. When we talk about the phobia it is likely that this limit some areas of your life such as going out to the field or avoiding activities and places in places with vegetation where it is likely to find insects in general and spiders in particular.

When a person suffering from arachnophobia encounters a spider, it is very likely that they will have an anxiety attack or panic attack situational or situationally predisposed. Let's remember the symptoms of a panic attack:

• Palpitations
• Heart pounding or increased heart rate
• Sweating
• Shaking or shaking
• Feeling short of breath or shortness of breath
• Choking sensation
• Chest tightness or discomfort
• Nausea or abdominal discomfort
• Unsteadiness, dizziness, or fainting
• Derealization (feeling of unreality)
• Depersonalization (being separated from oneself)
• Fear of losing control or going crazy
• Affraid to die
• Paresthesias (numbness or tingling sensation)
• Chills or flushing

Other symptoms of arachnophobia are:

• Chest pain caused by fear
• Pain in the stomach
• Heavy breathing
• Dizziness or nausea
• Sweating
• Instant temporary body paralysis upon seeing the spider or even knowing it is nearby

If thinking about spiders or seeing them causes changes in your body. If it generates you anxiety and fear and avoid situations in which a spider may appear, you may have a phobia of spiders. To be safer or more secure, go to a professional who will assess whether your fear is disproportionate or irrational (phobia) or not. In addition, it will help you overcome it in both cases with the proper techniques.

Here you will find the differences between fears and phobias.

The fear of spiders has an adaptive component in that, throughout our evolution, avoiding contact with certain dangerous insects has allowed our survival. Our ancestors already avoided them and according to the theory of the preparation of Seligman: we would have inherited a natural tendency to avoid them for being potentially dangerous for our survival.

Another reason that may be linked to spider phobia is having had a bad experience previous. It may be that we ourselves or another known person have suffered an arthropod bite and this has generated a rejection that has ended up becoming irrational.

We can even associate images that we have not actually lived through, but have read or seen on television or in the cinema, with spiders and their potential danger, thus developing the phobia.

The therapy that has been shown to achieve the highest success rate in the arachnophobia treatment is the exposure therapy. The exhibition can be in imagination or live, the second being the one that obtains the best results. Halfway between one and the other is exposure therapy through virtual reality, which is used in cases where exposure may be difficult and / or dangerous such as the phobia of flying in airplanes (aerophobia) wave driving phobia (amaxophobia).

Next, we are going to see what the flood exposure therapy, which has proven highly effective in phobias. Either for the exhibition in imagination or in vivo the first part of the treatment consists of develop an anxiety scale subjective. We will expose situations related to phobia and we will score them with USA (subjective units of anxiety) giving them a value of 0 to 10 or 0 to 100 and then order them. Let's see it with an example:

• Reading the word spider in a book 20 USA
• Talk to someone about spiders 30 USA
• See a spider in a movie 40 USA
• Go for a walk in the 60 USA field
• Know that there is a spider near 75 USA
• See a spider from afar 80 USA
• See a spider one meter from us 95 USA
• Holding a spider in your hand 100 USA

Once we have our hierarchy complete and ordered (it is recommended that there are many scenes to be able to go little by little), we will begin with the exhibition. We can do it in imagination with the help of a therapist, or also live with a therapist or a co-therapist (family member, friend ...).

We will start with the scene that the USA has the least. When we expose ourselves we will notice anxiety, but we must stay at the scene until the anxiety subsides and / or disappears. We will go from scene to scene in the planned order and we will not consider a scene over until we notice that our subjective anxiety is reduced to around 20 USA.

The treatment ends when we finish exposing all the scenes in our hierarchy. The duration will be determined by the patient.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Arachnophobia: meaning, symptoms, causes and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

• American Psychiatric Association (1995). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Barcelona: MASSON.
• Buela-Casal, G. Sierra, J.C. (2009). Psychological evaluation and treatment manual. Madrid: New Library.