Fear Doesn’t Have to Be so Scary

It was only after a decade of friendship that some of my closest friends learned of a phobia of mine. On a visit to me at my college, my friends and I were looking through pictures of Melissa’s recent trip to Ecuador. Melissa sat in the middle with a laptop, scrolling through the Facebook images, while the rest of us sat on either side of her on my bed. Luckily, I was sitting at the end, because I didn’t expect what was coming next: A picture of a tarantula appeared on the screen. Before I knew what was happening, I had screamed, jumped off the bed, and started hysterically crying in a chair catty-corner to the bed. My friends looked at me, perplexed, and cautiously asked what on earth had just happened.

I’m not sure when this phobia arose in me. I know I wasn’t born with it. There are two movies I know to feature a tarantula in one or more scenes: Jungle 2 Jungle, and Home Alone. I recall watching both of these movies early in my youth without particularly paying any mind to these scenes. However, I have since seen each of these movies and been terribly disturbed by the tarantulas’ presence.

In the past couple of years, I think the fear had become it’s most severe. It would cross my mind on almost a daily basis: I would fear walking across my bedroom in the dark on my way to bed because I was plagued by the compulsion to check that my bed and my room were free of tarantulas.

The fear didn’t seem healthy, but it seemed pretty unchangeable. I’d heard of exposure therapy, but the thought of seeing a tarantula in real life was too horrifying to think of approaching — the image in my head was hard enough to deal with. And even saying the word out loud was something I dreaded. I worried that this fear would prevent me from traveling to areas of the world where tarantulas live — places I otherwise longed to see. Worse yet, this phobia was adding stress to my daily life here in New York City, where the odds of encountering a tarantula are pretty low.

How could my anxiety keep getting worse over time? Particularly without any exposure to the object of my fear?

A few months ago, I listened to an episode of the podcast, Invisibilia about thoughts. The episode tells the story of a man (called “S” for anonymity) who has thoughts about killing his wife. He has no desire to do her any harm, and is horrified by his own thoughts. After trying a variety of solutions to no avail, S comes across a therapist with a bold approach: the therapist asks S to hold a knife to his throat. He seeks to show his patient that he won’t actually harm a human being, even when explicitly given the opportunity. The episode reveals that this man’s thoughts — no matter how intense — were not representative of his true desires. And the thing he feared — that he would harm his wife — he had built up in his head.

I was thinking of my phobia when I heard this episode: Thoughts that haunted a person, despite a logical basis? Yep. That sounded like what I had. I found comfort in this man’s story. I concluded that maybe someday I would be able to overcome my fear. This progress was enough for today though—I’d leave actually taking any steps to overcome my fear for another day.

A couple of weeks later, I attended a 10 day silent meditation course. The course taught Vipassana meditation, in which I was asked to observe my physical sensations with equanimity. I was taught that thoughts would arise, distractions would occur, and I would find myself placing judgements on the sensations (an itch is bad, or a feeling of warmth is good). However, I was to return to simply observing my sensations when I noticed any of these things happening.

During my meditation sessions, thoughts or mental images of tarantulas popped up often. It was sometimes tempting to open my eyes to make sure one wasn’t around, or to place my hand on a body part to make sure there wasn’t one on me. Luckily, given the length of the course, I had many opportunities to practice not acting on these impulses and finally dealing with the feelings that caused them.

As I practiced, I saw what was happening inside me more closely. The thought would arise — tarantula! — and my body would physically react: Muscles contracted, pulling me towards a fetal position, my heart raced, and my breathing became shallow. I had never really looked at these sensations before. In the past, I knew I felt this thing I called fear. But I was always so busy trying to run away from the unpleasantness that I didn’t really observe what was happening.

Over and over, I looked at these physical manifestations of my fear. The more I observed them, the more quickly they would fade.

On the last day of the meditation course, we had the opportunity to discuss our experiences with other students. After gaining so much comfort dealing with my phobic thoughts, I was excited to take the next step: to try saying the word out loud.

“I have a phobia of tarantulas,” I told one of my classmates. As I said the last word aloud, my body seized up, and I felt all the sensations I’d felt while meditating. But then they faded. And I had lived through the experience! This was exhilarating. And for the most part, it’s gotten easier to talk about each time I’ve done so.

Now, I’m sure I’m a long way from seeing one in an image or in real life without having some kind of breakdown. But my day to day anxiety on the matter has almost disappeared. I never imagined I’d even get here!

This phobia was something I built up in my head. Overcoming it made me realize that other fears I had were excessively built up too. When I choose to face the object of such a fear, I find it’s not nearly as scary as I’d made it out to be.

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