Feel the fear! Arachnophobia is the most common of all phobias. Approximately
50% of women and 10% of men suffer from it. Sophie Bradley has a problem ...
Read and listen.
Feel the fear! Arachnophobia is the most common of all phobias. Approximately 50% of women and 10% of men suffer from it. Sophie Bradley has a problem with spiders, but she’s been to a specialist for help.
I hate spiders. A lot of people dislike spiders, but I’m really terrified of them, and it’s a problem. If I see a spider I have a panic attack and I can’t move or breathe. I’ve stayed at a friend’s house three times this summer, and every time it was because there were spiders in our house. My friend and her family know about my problem, but they haven’t got any phobias so they can’t really understand. So two months ago I went to a specialist. He has helped a lot of people with phobias. Some of them were ‘common’ phobias, like dogs or the dark, and some of them were more unusual. There are people with phobias of buttons, for example, or eating in public. These phobias all affect people’s lives – one of the specialist’s patients hasn’t been to her local supermarket in the last ten years because there are fish there. The last time she went she was actually sick when she saw a fish.
Anyway, the specialist has done a lot to help me. At our first session we talked about spiders, and later we looked at photos of spiders, and then DVDs. Then he gave plastic spiders to my family and they hid them around the house. That was terrible, but it was a good idea because in the end you aren’t so scared or surprised when you see one. I’ve looked at hundreds of spiders with Mark. That’s the idea of this ‘exposure therapy’. When you’ve seen a thousand spiders, they’re not scary. Next week Mark says that I have to touch one, and I’m worried about that. I’ve never touched a spider and I don’t know if I can. We’ll see…
Some phobias and their names aerophobia fear of flying brontophobia fear of thunderstorms claustrophobia fear of being in a small space ephebophobia fear of teenagers dentophobia fear of dentists ophidiophobia fear of snakes
