As our next rental inspection approaches, it’s time to pull out the dust feathers and start tidying up and making everything spiffy and smelling as new. As part of all this, we’ll have to reach into web-infested nooks and crannies to retrieve Curly’s stuffed animal collection inspired by the Woolworths’ Aussie Animals campaign and that may have fallen behind the bed. By ‘we’ I mean the Scientist, because I very much dislike spider webs. Not afraid of spiders, just their webs.
So I’m not touching a damn thing that looks like it’s connected to another object by a string of web!
If I got caught in a spider web while, let’s say walking through bush, I would madly wave my hands and hysterically wipe the web from my face and body, to remove as much of the web as possible, even the bits that I can’t see but that I think are there!
I try my best to get (the Scientist to get) all webs out of our house. If I see one hanging in a corner I yell out for him to get rid of it! If I’m asked to sit down at a cafe or someone’s house, I will make an excuse not to sit or will secretly clean it while no one’s looking if I see a web (or dust, I hate dust!) on the furniture.
If I’m off to bed in another house or in a hotel and have no option but to sleepover, I will turn the light off before I get into bed so that I won’t see if there is a web above me. Otherwise, the Scientist would be asked to get rid of it. I’d be like “It’s going to get me! It’ll fall in my mouth/on my face/in my hair as I sleep!”
I don’t think there is a name established for the fear of spider webs. I have looked and found none. I think it’s a variation on arachnophobia but not quite a phobia. Like I said earlier, I’m not afraid of spiders. It’s just their webs. So definitely not arachnophobia.
On the Insight series on SBS TV, they had an episode on phobias. The experts said there is a difference between fear and phobia. Here’s the part where the host asks a psychologist about the difference:
JENNY BROCKIE: Yeah, Rocco, you’re a clinical psychologist, so what is the difference between a fear and a phobia? What’s the dividing line between a fear and a phobia?
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ROCCO CRINO, CHARLES STURT UNIVERSITY: Well most us have fears, they’re evolutionary significant, they help us to survive as a species, et cetera, but with a phobia I think that the fear is such that it stops the individual functioning. It’s a panic attack in other words [...] So avoidance is a key features but it’s not avoidance just of the phobic stimulus when they see it.
I don’t have panic attacks and I don’t stop functioning. So mine, I self-diagnosed as fear.
This fear is not something that bothers me. Just thought I best get it of my chest… No pun intended! It doesn’t affect my social life, I don’t lose sleep over it.
I don’t remember what made me afraid of webs. I don’t remember NOT being afraid. I also don’t remember when it happened, where I was when it started or how it started. I just know that touching a web, that feeling, it just freaks me out. TOTALLY! I won’t run away screaming like a girl, but I would feel icky, like I want to throw up.
Again on Insight, there are many reasons why someone develops a phobia, but usually it’s from an event – not something you’re born with.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ROCCO CRINO: About 8 percent of the population have specific phobias. They’re more prevalent in younger individuals say between the ages of 10 and 17, the prevalence would about be about 16 percent, and they tend to drop off as people get older. [...] A number of factors as we’ve heard tonight. There could be a particular event that occurs that triggers the overwhelming anxiety response. It could be learnt from other people, seeing someone else have an overwhelming anxiety response.
What I do know is that my mom is scared shitless of lizards and my brother used to be scared of fluttering cockroaches. With my mum, she would NOT EVER get close to a lizard even if it was just a tiny baby. So if there was one in the kitchen sink she will not do the dishes until the creature was gone. Whether or not these two people taught me how to fear something if I dislike it, I can’t agree or disagree. It’s the only ‘thing’ I fear, other than the fear of getting physically hurt (as in I hate pain from, for example, falling off rollerblades, bikes and stairs).
Who knows, maybe as a little girl I had a bad experience with webs?
How about you? Do you have a fear or phobia? Do you know why or how it all started?
This post was inspired by a recent episode of SBS’ Insight series on ‘Phobias’. – Watch it on YouTube.
Photo credits to OrangeAcid
