Arachnophobics - I want to understand. DSis is leaving holiday.

[Dollywilde]

Ok first off I hate spiders. I really do. Once got a randomer off my local FB to remove one.

But we are on holiday. First family holiday since baby was born. My sister has left after one night because she can’t cope with the spiders.

I paid for and organised it. They’re not huge (nothing bigger than a 5p piece). She’s severely arachnaphobic, I get that. But I’m cross, we have activities planned and she wanted to come and I can’t believe she’s letting this ruin the holiday.

It’s her thing, she’s going, I get it doesn’t affect me aside from the fact we all wanted a lovely holiday together. And I know it’s a real phobia.

Basically, can people shake some sense into me to stop me being cross? I don’t want to be cross with her. But walking out half way through a holiday I paid for is making me sad. We were having such a lovely time and this has basically made the entire break a waste of time and ££££.

Thanks for the warning never to go to centre parks.

It is peak spider season, DH is annoyed at how many times I have to cower while he saves me (I’m not as phobic as your sister but the fear is awful)

@PumpkinsGalore thanks - I'm more interested in deterring them from coming in the house in the first place tbh. PP say Indorex has that magic power so curious to know more.

Sorry but IMO it’s unreasonable! My friend has twice been horrible to me because I wouldn’t fly (first for her holiday and then to her hen party! Though I did get a boat for that one, at the expense of being horrendously travel sick and fined 100 euros for spilling water in the taxi) but making a phobic feel guilty about their phobia just will not make it any easier I’m afraid, just adds to guilt they put on themselves!

I don't think you should try to understand it, just accept it. Its no worse than lots of irrational fears. Clowns - that's weird too but I accept other people have different feelings..

[quote PuppyMonkey]@PumpkinsGalore thanks - I'm more interested in deterring them from coming in the house in the first place tbh. PP say Indorex has that magic power so curious to know more.[/quote]
Its not a magic power, its a powerful insecticide that has a residual effect for days to weeks. They will still come in and then they will die.

Wow, this must be taking over her whole life. I’m gobsmacked she agreed to go on holiday to a forest in the first place! Hopefully she can get some help for this.

I'm just wondering why there are so many spiders in the holiday park. Surely, the accommodation should be at least as clean as your own home would be. I occasionally see a spider at home but not as many as you have described.

Presumably your sister in law felt, like me, that this would not be a problem in fairly upmarket accommodation such as Centre Parc.

I don't suppose there is any solution but I would mention it to the company.

I don't get it, I am archnophobic. But I can put up with small spiders.
I can manage meduim ones, I have had to adapt to them, as my partner works evenings, so when we have a spider, I have to deal with them.
If bigger I get my partner to deal with them, or if them come towards me, they get flattend, I wouldn't leave a holiday because of spiders, I would get rid of as many spiders as I could. I haven't had a holiday in 4 years, so I am getting desperate for one and no spider would get in the way.
When I deal with a spider, it does make my skin crawl, then every tickle I feel on my skin, I think is the spider back. Which can be annoying, but I wouldn't let it ruin a holiday.

I understand but it is better since I got a spider catcher and I can take them out. Daddy longlegs are worse as they fly. I can't think of anything else with a biggish spider or a DLL in room

I was cured overnight of my arachnophobia about 25 years ago. I was in my flat and a massive spider was in the bedroom. I was sweating, hyperventilating- the lot. I was that desperate I asked my neighbour who was 8 months pregnant at the time to get it for me. She eventually gets it after much sweating, climbing on furniture etc, looked at me with narrowed eyes and told me in a withering tone ‘‘to fucking grow up’ Weirdly this cured me. My fear of spiders was replaced by a fear of being made to feel that small again by a heavily pregnant woman. I am thinking this could be a kind of therapy, I am still scared of a pregnant woman with little patience to this day.

I understand the spider bit. But have you gone to a country where it's known for its spiders. But if they're climbing around your bedroom walls I'd be off too. Maybe just away from that particular area.

Go to the pet shop in the nearest town and buy some little flea bombs. You set them off with the windows closed and food packed away, leave the chalet for X number of hours and when you come back everything that was in the apartment is now dead. Spiders are really bad this year.

I'd be demanding money back from the organisation that rented out a spider-infested shithole.

Two words:

Insect Spray.

And most of you on this thread should never ever ever contemplate travelling to Australia, New Zealand, anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line, anywhere south of the equator basically.

It's a weird phobia, and I suspect one that is fostered by living in a country (UK) where people's experiences of insects, arachnids etc are very limited. It's a way of being special, but it's really silly to let such a fear rule your lives.

She eventually gets it after much sweating, climbing on furniture etc, looked at me with narrowed eyes and told me in a withering tone ‘‘to fucking grow up’

I think I love your neighbour @Libraryghost - she's one of the few grown ups making an appearance on this thread.

100 years ago women were supposed to be scared of mice. Now t's spiders. It's just embarrassing.

have the people who are saying its embarassing, weird, silly got any phobias of their own?

Why not ask yourself why, when you knew your sister was phobic of spiders, you booked a holiday in a forest???

I used to be very badly phobic and the point about people minimising is true, it really doesn't help. Thankfully DH has always been great about it and now I'm ok and can sleep in a room with a (small to medium sized) spider.

From your sisters POV she's now seen so many spiders that she knows at any moment there could be another one, when she wants to sleep, use the shower, toilet etc. It's really stressful. There's no way she can enjoy the holiday now because she'll be constantly on edge, at least she can relax and enjoy her leave at home. I'd have a moan at centre parcs and see if you can get any money back but I think its you that's not been thoughtful here.

i would be gone too!! thats a LOT!

Too many spiders for me. Can't you ask reception to do spring clean of cabin or move you elsewhere. To be honest I would have to go home seeing that many because in my head there are hundreds I don't see

I was going to say YANBU but then started thinking about it properly.

It’s a real and genuine phobia.

I’m not particularly scared of spiders but I am completely petrified and phobic of wasps.

DH, DD and I one booked a cheap caravan weekend away about 10 years ago. When we got there they had a plague of wasps. Hundreds of them. You could walk past a bin and there would be 30-40 swarming round them. A kid had dropped an ice cream on the floor and it was covered in wasps.

I spent a full day having constant panic attacks and crying before we had to go home early. There was no way I could have lasted the weekend.

So please have some compassion. We can’t control our phobias.

Oh that’s it, everyone @KaycePollard and PP’s neighbour think we’re embarrassing and should just grow up and stop setting women back years. Problem solved. Wow, that’s it - I’m completely cured now.

I would ask to move rooms I don't expect to share with multiple spiders

@Dollywilde

To those who say it’s a bit much… maybe 10 of the 16 (and all the big ones) were on arrival yesterday. Which I guess makes sense since they asked for windows to be open on exit. The others (all small) have been since our initial entrance.

I think this update, that CP are currently requiring windows to be left open between guests (which makes sense for covid reasons) is quite important. I would guess your sister didn't know this, and it's made her terrified that the place is full of them hidden in corners. I can see how it's pushed a lodge holiday in September from 'a bit risky for an arachnophobe' to 'absolutely no way'.

I also find it a bit hard to fully understand your sister, OP - I don't have any phobias (obviously I have things that frighten me but nothing at that level) and it is very hard to understand if you don't. But I would say that you don't have to understand it to be kind about it (which it sounds like you are doing), and it might be best to think of it as her being ill. You might be disappointed and sad if she'd got food poisoning and left the holiday but you wouldn't be cross.

The one thing I do find a little difficult to accept about people with this kind of phobia (and I realise this might be total ignorance) is that they think spiders are too terrifying to contemplate but they always expect others to do it for them. I had a housemate many years ago who had quite a long list of things - spiders, bees, wasps and other insects, anything very mouldy or filthy, anything involving going into a small space (specifically our attic) - that she deemed completely beyond her as she found them all too frightening and unpleasant, so she expected me to deal with them all - I did end up resenting the fact that these things were all apparently too unpleasant or dangerous for her to put herself through, but they were all ok for me to have to do. I find it hard to imagine finding something that terrifying but merrily sending others off to deal with it so I didn't have to. But as I said, perhaps this is something you can't understand if you don't have a phobia.

People who are saying they have arachnophobia but can deal with medium sized spiders don't have arachnophobia 🤷🏻‍♀️ They might be a bit scared of spiders. I'm a bit scared of cockroaches, but I don't have a phobia. They freak me out and give me goose pimples all over my body, but I can deal with them and get them out of the house, even though I'm scared. I do have arachnophobia and in the situation you are describing I would leave. I broke my iPhone screen once because I scrolled onto a photo of a spider someone had posted on FB. I can't even touch a photo of a spider. It's a real fear. Same as you wouldn't expect someone with claustrophobia to go potholing or someone with a phobia of heights to stand on the edge of a cliff, you can't expect someone with a phobia of spiders to stay, abs especially sleep in a place knowing they're are spiders running around.