Arachnophobia is defined as a morbid, paralyzing fear of spiders. This sort of fear is often the material of jokes

and comedy, but if you suffer from any kind of

phobia at all, you are not going to be laughing very

much.

Phobias may sound funny, but they are common

reasons for people seeking help from hypnotherapy so

they can get some normality into their lives

again.

Probably, nobody’s done any formal research on this, but empirical observations

suggest that arachnophobia is one of the more common phobias in Australia. People from other countries often notice that Australians in general tend to be a bit

more jumpy around spiders in general. This does make

good sense.

After all, Australia has a number of highly poisonous

spiders, such as the red back and the funnel web, so being a little nervous about

spiders does make good sense. Arachnophobia goes

beyond the usual commonsense precautions

that keep us and our families safe from a visit to

the emergency ward.

To be classified as a phobia that requires professional treatment via hypnosis or some other method, the

fear has to be abnormal and interfere with daily life.

Forget the comic stuff about people turning into jelly and

screaming

if they see some tiny little creepy-crawly –

arachnophobia can make people afraid to carry out common activities such as

gardening or cleaning because the fear of

encountering a spider is too great for them.

Arachnophobia goes well beyond simply experiencing

terror and panic when confronted with a spider or

the possibility of encountering a spider. In

extreme cases, people with arachnophobia can

experience panic attacks even when exposed to

things that look vaguely like spiders.

And a number of everyday things can look like spiders to a terrified mind – leaves,

other insects, swastikas and the like. It’s not

beyond imagining that arachnophobia could ruin

relationships

imagine what could happen if a woman with

arachnophobia discovers that a nice guy who seemed like Mr Right has a tattoo of a spider? This is why people

seek help from hypnotherapy for treating

phobias.

Why do people suffer from arachnophobia? This is quite a good question and the answer

can vary, as everybody is different. For some people, the

problem may stem back to a traumatic childhood

experience – perhaps they were bitten by a redback when they were small and had to be

rushed to the emergency ward, complete with parents

panicking and the like

Or perhaps the need to be cautious about spiders has

been impressed on somebody since childhood and this need for caution

has grown out of proportion and has turned into a full-blown phobia, especially if

the sufferer has a personality type that is

more prone to phobias and anxiety disorders.

Culture plays a role – arachnophobia is much less common in ethnic groups

where spiders are considered food, e.g. in

Cambodia. Gender also has an effect, as women tend

to suffer from arachnophobia and seek help from hypnosis more

often than men do.

One of the things that hypnotherapy aims to do in treating phobias is to tease

out the deep reasons behind the irrational fears so the deep-seated beliefs

can be altered at this primary level of the

subconscious.

Hypnosis is a gentler way of treating arachnophobia – or any other kind of phobia –

than older methods used. A lot of people who suffer from arachnophobia and want to overcome this

disorder dread the idea of “desensitization”,

which was a common method of treating phobias.

During a course of desensitizatio treatment,

the person with the phobia would be exposed gradually

to whatever they were afraid of

For example, the therapist would begin by showing

the person with arachnophobia pictures of spiders. Once the person

was comfortable with pictures of spiders, he or

she would progress to more exposure, such as

watching films of spiders, watching people handling

spiders,

being in the same room as spiders and eventually moving onto handling

harmless spiders and even tarantulas (which are large

spiders that are fairly harmless). The key thing

there is “once the person is comfortable”. And that’s the problem. One of the

key traits of any phobia is that it is an irrational fear

even though the rational part of your mind knows

that the little house spider spinning its little web in front of you is harmless

and it can’t hurt you, your emotions are screaming at you that you are in danger

and triggering all the physical responses that produce a panic attack.

It’s this emotional side of things that often makes desensitization

unsuccessful in a lot of cases. While desensitization does have some success if the person with

the phobia has the will to succeed, the process of being

exposed to the thing feared can be so traumatic that the sufferer

may not continue with the programmed of therapy and seek help from other sources

such as hypnotherapy Gold Coast.

To be successful, any programme of therapy that

deals with deep seated emotions should work on the

person at the right level of the psyche. Possibly, trauma in the

past needs to be addressed and resolved, or some deeply held beliefs – held at the level

of the subconscious so that the person with the beliefs is unaware that he or she has

them.

If you have problems with arachnophobia and have not

yet started any treatment for the problem, via

hypnosis or some other method, it may help you to repeat some spider facts to

yourself if you are in a situation where you may

encounter spiders. This can help you to relax and stave

off an impending panic attack:

Most spiders are not poisonous to humans.

- Spiders usually only bite in self-defense if they feel cornered. Usually, they will run away from you rather

than attacking you.

You are a lot bigger than a spider and it’s more afraid of you than you are of it –

you can kill it with one quick stomp of your foot or

a whack with a fly swat.- Spiders can’t bite you

through clothing, rubber gloves or shoes.

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