Friday dip - a note on fear; part 1
Thoughts to wash over you for the weekend
Ciao!
This week I am on holiday in Puglia with my family, hence my lack of content..but as always the thoughts are streaming from my brain and are currently causing an M20 style ‘operation stack’ as they queue to be released from my fingertips so..
..here is a mobile phone one-finger-typed piece which I shall do in two parts: part today and part next Friday, to save the RSI.
Facing fear?
Earlier this week I overcame a combination of my greatest fears: - well perhaps not overcame; perhaps faced.. or not even..
The fact is I did something which for me is the stuff of nightmares, but I’m never fucking doing it again. So did I overcome?
I don’t think so. More on this later..
The impact of phobia
Some years ago I properly overcame a fear. Having been severely arachnophobic for as long as I can remember (and no, I won’t post any spider pics because I can clearly remember how that used to affect me), my fear reached fever pitch in my mid-30s.
I’ll never forget the day I was at home with my post meningitis mini-baby-bel. She was about 9 months old, and crawled out of the front room as I watched adoringly, inwardly celebrating her gross motor progress.
As I went to follow her out of the room, I saw it. There, in my peripheral vision. The beast. Watching me with its thousand eyes.
As she crawled away towards the bathroom and the dreaded ‘cabinet of death’: home of bleach, drain unblocker and all things fatal, I stood literally paralysed (and I am not one for misuse of the word ‘literally’.
When my maternal instinct broke the spell, I still could not pass the beast, instead running back in to grab the landline - remember those? - dialling my firefighter husband at work in hyperventilating panic.
‘There’s. A. Spider. *cry sob* HELP ME. Baby. In. Bathroom!!’
I could almost hear the eye roll as I heard him gently but frustratedly sigh; ‘Flower (which he calls me even when he’s cross with me), I’m 40 miles away. You’re going to have to work this one out’. Roughly translating to: ‘Flower: get a fucking grip and get the baby out of the bathroom. I have actual lives to save’. It’s not the first time I’ve called the emergency services over a spider 😳.
Still with the impenetrable barrier of Shelob between me and my baby (don’t ever entrust me with a mission to Mordor - #justsaying), I rang my neighbour who descended like a superhero. Spider vanquished, spell broken, baby saved.
Overcoming
Afterwards, I realised that I simply could not carry on like this, and while people might have called my fear ‘ridiculous’; to me it was real. And more than that, it activated my limbic brain, and sent my body into ‘freeze’ mode. This was a fact. Telling me to get over it would not change that. So, what to do?
Having done some research, I found a ‘fear of spiders’ course at London Zoo, which I see they have now renamed ‘The Friendly Spider Programme’!! Genius.
Within one afternoon, along with my equally arachnophobic sister, we attended a talk, with some CBT and a group hypnotherapy session, and just a few hours later, not only was I HOLDING A TARANTULA (basically a warm, furry tennis ball with legs), but actually more significantly, I had bastard big house spiders running over my hands and up my arms. I can’t say I loved it, but it’s no understatement to say it changed my life, in a small but highly significant way.
Not only do I no longer experience the paralysis, but I try to save spiders, catching and releasing them. I can save my arachnophobic second daughter from them until she’s old enough (or chooses) to address it herself. Ironically she wasn’t born until after I overcame my own fear - is there such a thing as genetic memory?
Types of fear
It makes me think of the different ways fears manifest - those that are real, those that are from deep within our psyche, those that we somehow enjoy and experiment with, those that we want to overcome but aren’t sure how…
From fears we address by choice such as my teenage daughters watching horror films, and what I voluntarily confronted here in Italy (will explain next week), to those that come at us unbidden, we build resilience by facing such situations. By becoming our own tiny hero when we can, and also by knowing when to run and hide!
There is so much to say on this, I will write next time on what I experienced this week, what open water has done for me in overcoming fear and how it feels when your worst fear is realised..and you survive. In the meantime I’m going to give my poor finger a rest and get back to my book 💕📚
How is it for you?
What fears have you overcome?
What fears are you not sure how to confront?
Do comment below and enjoy the wisdom and support of this brilliant community 🙏
Love & lemons 🍋
Em x
I still have the biggest phobia of spiders - there is no way in the world I could even imagine doing the course 😳
I used to be phobic of spiders to a similar degree to your description when I lived in England. Then I moved to New Zealand... 2 weeks after I arrived, I was bitten by a white-tail spider IN MY BED, requiring a trip to the emergency doctor to get the poison lanced out! A few years later I wound up living in a suburb that's famous for housing the enormous spiders featured in the movie Arachnophobia (which I've never watched!) All the close-contact seems to have worked its magic and over the years my phobia has faded. Now, like you, I try not to kill spiders, gently remove them with a glass and have even been heard talking to them softly and calling them 'darling' 😂 Exposure therapy really does work!! Looking forward to part 2 of your story