How To Deal With Fear of Spiders or Arachnophobia?

Posted by Nicola Preston Bell in Questions & Answers | 0 comments

Question

My son’s girlfriend is suffering from fear of spiders. She will cry if she sees one. It is affecting her work, she works in a pub – cellar is full of spiders. She is intelligent girl, she knows spiders can’t hurt her. Still she can’t explain why she is so frightened of them.

I am willing to pay for her treatment. I would like to know if there is a hypnotherapy treatment for such phobia and if it really can be cured.

Nicola’s Answer

Arachnophobia or the fear of spiders is the most common phobia in the world. The word Arachnophobia is derived from the Greek word ‘arachne’ meaning spiders. Initial symptoms of arachnophobia or the fear of spiders may appear in one’s childhood or adolescence.

The reason she cannot control her reaction is because her unconscious survival system is triggered by spiders, so she goes straight into fight or flight. Hypnotherapy can bring a new view on the little beasties and suggest to the subconscious that it no longer needs to set off alarm bells. Usually there is an old memory about spiders being scary that we need to work on.