February 25, 2004 Features e the other press © On Conquering Fear —Or Not Carly Reid OP Contributor Lately, I’ve been thinking about fear. Fear is what blocks our progress, yet the determination to plow through it is often what propels us forward. I'm a very fearful person, but I’ve always figured my strength lies in my self-awareness and willingness to tackle those fears. One of them, though, I carft bring myself to plow through, I don’t even think I want to. Fact is, I’m scared of spiders. Actually, it isn’t just a fear. It’s a pho- bia. What is a phobia exactly? According to the American Psychiatric Association, you can divide phobias into three categories: agoraphobia, the fear of being alone in a place or situation from which you feel you cannot escape; a social phobia, fear of being humiliated in front of others; and a specific pho- bia, fear of specific objects or situa- tions. My arachnophobia falls into the last group. Phobias common. The Canadian Psychological Association claims one in every ten Canadian suffers from a phobia, and women are more prone to phobias than men. They are also disruptive to your daily life. I live on the North Shore, home to many huge trees with huge spiders. If there is a large spider in my room, I make alternate are sleeping arrangements. I can’t kill it or shoo it out because I can neither move nor breathe in its presence. | freeze, dizzy and disoriented, and my heart feels like it’s pounding through my skull. My breathing becomes shallow, and I think I’m going die. Which leads into another charac- teristic of the phobia—ir’s irrational. The fear is not proportionate to the situation. Obviously, I know I’m not going to die, but my body reacts as though I’m in extreme danger. People with phobias know the dan- ger is imaginary, but they are unable to control their fear. The exact cause of phobias is uncertain, and probably varies from person to person. Experiencing, wit- nessing, or even hearing about a scary event in which one is con- fronted with the source of their pho- bia can be enough to develop a pho- bia. That explanation doesn't do it for me, though. Other fears (fear of failure, fear of intimacy, fear of Hannibal Lector) I can trace back to certain times or events (being physi- cally restrained by “friends” on my 14th birthday and forced to watch Silence of the Lambs, for example). Most of us, if we dig deep enough, can relate our present fears to past experience. But this spider thing, I cannot. As far back as I can remember I’ve hated them—the way they creep and skulk, then scurry into dark recesses. I’ve tried to reframe how I see them. I know they are generally harmless and obviously essential to our delicate ecosystem. I realize they are capable of creating beauty, and that they rid us of many unwanted pests. I’ve tried personifying them a la Charlotte’s Web. Nothing works. It’s ridiculous, absurd, laughable. It’s a phobia. So, unable to connect my revul- sion back to anything specific, I fig- ure phobias operate quite differently from regular fears. Some people believe we're biologically wired to react with fear in certain situations. We may have a gene that was once useful in alerting us to danger and thus was favoured by natural selec- tion. Like the appendix, it’s now a useless feature that can cause serious problems, but we're stuck with it. What is it then, this terror that seems to scream from every cell in my body? To my mind, such an intense feeling can't be explained away by something so mundane as a gene or one bad experience. | won- der if this phobia is more than it appears. Is it a fear so huge, so dark and deeply buried, that I can’t let myself feel it in its true form? The spider, then, has become a stand-in for this unnamable source of terror. Then again, maybe it’s more than a stand-in. It could be a symbol. What does the spider represent to me? The alien, the unknown, the “other?” Darkness and solitude? Maybe these are my true fears. After all the time I've spent on phobias over the years, analyzing and theorizing, I've recently discov- ered that specific phobias are easily treated. In fact, of all the anxiety disorders out there, specific phobias are the most treatable. A common successful method, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), involves exposing the person to the feared stimulus or situation in a slow and safe manner. Apparently, one session of a couple of hours is sometimes enough to cure the person. It’s a miracle! In a matter of hours I could soon be a new, phobia-less woman! The thing is, I can't do it. I don’t care how “slow” and “safe” the expo- sure is. There’s no way in hell I’m letting anyone get a spider anywhere near me. Yes, I’ve weighed the pros and cons, and no, I won't do it. Last spring, wandering through the Royal Ontario Museum, I sud- denly found myself in the dimly lit, creepy-crawly part of the animal sec- tion. And behold, there, in front of me, was a tarantula. | instinctively drew back, but I recalled learning about phobia therapies years ago in Psychology 100, and decided to give myself my own little CBT-like ses- sion. I moved slowly and deliberate- ly toward the case. At about three feet away, I froze. I couldn't move closer. I couldn't move. All the usual symptoms over- whelmed me. I felt I was in a dream—a nightmare, actually. I stared at the spider, mesmerized. She stared right back, the two meaty legs propped against the glass holding her bulbous body partially upright. I remember schoolchildren racing around me, screaming delightedly and moving on to the next display. I desperately wanted to move with them, but I couldn’. I was in a vor- tex that was pulling me closer and closer to her, and I knew it would eventually suck me right in. Finally, my lightheadedness close to the WINNERS WILL C LIFT PASSES FOR HEM. SK/ RESORT, EMA/L YOUR ENTRY TO: hundredmedia@hotmail.com ING ENTRY, E TWO FULL OCK VALLEY http://www.otherpress.ca NEED A BETTER WAY TO SPEND THE OTHER PRESS Cartoon by J.J. McCullough point of fainting, I was able to tear myself away and stumble dazedly through the rest of the museum. The point of the story is: Been there, done that; won't do it again. Of course, that is my own person- al choice. I wouldn't necessarily advise others to do the same. Someone with a phobia that persists into adulthood will generally require therapy to get rid of it. I’m making a conscious decision to keep mine around for the time being. I’ve kind of gotten used to it. Plus, I figure I've still got enough regular fears to keep me busy. Basically, then, this is one fear that’s motivating to...do absolutely nothing, except maybe sit me back on my ass and be grateful for some of the phobias I don’t have: chorophobia, fear of dancing; sitio- phobia, fear of food; or clinophobia, fear of going to bed. These are all things I love, and maybe one day I'll enjoy a similarly satisfying relation- ship with spiders. I dont know if I look forward to that day or not. YOUR TIME? al a Page 19