Therapy for phobia

[Daisymae55]

So I’m looking for advice/ peoples experiences with getting therapy to deal with a phobia?

I have a very generic phobia of spiders. But it’s hardcore. Like I can’t get near them, have panic attacks. Which up until the last few years hasn’t been too problematic as I always had someone to deal with them.

However, I’m now living in a very rural area (like opposite a farm in the countryside), with a husband who’s frequently away with work and a 5 month old baby. We are surrounded by false windows and giant spiders and basically I am living in my own personal hell (we are a military family living on base so it’s not like we had a choice in living here btw)

Anyhow. Tonight was the breaking point for me. I was in the kitchen while daughter napped in her cot in the lounge. What’s above the door between the kitchen and the lounge? A massive spider. It’s late at night so can’t get a friend to help, and after phoning my parents for moral suppport and half an hour of just blind panic, my daughter starts crying. This was the push I needed to “deal with it” but it invoked a lot of screaming, hyperventilating and just was very unpleasant for both my and bubba.

anyhow I can’t go on like this. This is the third big spider I’ve had recently and i can’t have this blind panic and fear everytime, not with a baby to care for.

has anyone had success with this? What’s the process like? Am I being stupid to consider this? Does this kind of help even exist? Any advice/info/support would be really appreciated as I can’t have another night like tonight. My daughter took ages to settle because of my panic attack and crying and I don’t want to put her through that again.

Google the Friendly spider programme at London Zoo. There is a waiting list. I'm petrified of them too and as a single parent I cannot keep feeling faint when there is a spider about so I've made a reminder to book a slot when it comes to November and they have more dates.

Apparently it's really good and people have overcome their fear of spiders.
Also the website doesn't have any pics of spiders so it's ok to go on there

See a good local hypnotherapist. Quickest way to deal with it.

I got over my awful needle phobia in two sessions. I couldn't go for blood tests etc before, it was so awful I'd be shaking and crying, once I fainted in the drs and another time I vomited. Then I just avoided anything involving a needle, but I knew that wasn't a long-term solution.

The hypnotherapist regressed me back to seeing my baby sister get her baby jabs and changed my interpretation of that and the phobia was gone! It was life-changing, really.

Thank you both for your advice! When I told my parents/husband tonight that I wanted to go down this route they all thought I was being dramatic :( I just don’t want to upset my daughter again by having a panic attack.

and that’s really good to know the London zoo page doesn’t show pictures of them - it limits my research when I get flooded with pictures >_<

It's a phobia that responds very well to hypnosis. Generally 2-3 sessions are sufficient.

Hello @StickywithSuncream - was your hypnosis session expensive?

No, not really. It was £90 a session, with the first being a bit more because it was a bit longer. I’m in London, so it wasn’t out of line with what you’d pay for other stuff here.

As I only went twice it didn’t work out to be too expensive at all, seeing as it solved or for me. Well worth it!

Would hpno work with other phobias, do you think? My teenage ds is scared of dogs, even little ones, and I'm terrified he's going to jump in the road to avoid one one day on way home from school etc

@StickywithSuncream oh ok that's ok I guess. The London Zoo programme is £150 and that's only one day.
I'll see what hypnotherapists I can find near me. Thank you

@Yerroblemom1923 - it should do. Hypnosis works by finding the underlying trigger (normally from early childhood) and reserving/negating it by talking to the subconscious mind that developed the fear in the first place.

@Eyesopenwideawake but what if you don't know/ remember the underlying cause/trigger? My mum remembers what triggered me (I don't, I was 2!) And I could hazard a guess at 2 barking dogs running at me and ds when he was little (about 18months) but I know he doesn't remember it but guessing the fear has stayed with him.

I had hypnotherapy for fear of flying and it really worked for me. I'll never love flying but I can do it without getting really worked up now and I stay very calm.

@Yerroblemom1923 - it doesn't matter if he can consciously remember it, the underlying memory is still there.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).. Have you considered this? Ive treated lots of people with phobias and spider phobia successfully.. If your child is under 1 you can priotised with local services, speak to ur GP if interested or you can self refer

This is what I was initially considering. I had it previously for social anxiety and it was life changing. A woman I used to work with also did it for her fear of dogs. Going to look into options for cbt and hypnotherapy but I think I’m going to go private, purely because it’s taken over 4 months for my gp to sort out a pretty serious wrist problem (as in I couldn’t pick my daughter up and spend most of my time on our own) so I can’t imagine they’ll be rushing to help me with my spider phobia

Is your daughter under 1? Or have u been pregnant in the last 12 months (includes miscarriage and termination)? If yes you could be priotised with your local Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) Service.. You can also self refer but waiting lists in lots of parts of UK are long.. Good luck 😊

Yeah she’s about to hit 6 months. I’ll have an ask but from what I recall last time the wait lists here are a nightmare and that was pre covid so I can imagine they’re worse and I want to get it sorted asap. But thank you, I didn’t realise that having a baby would get me prioritised so I’m definitely going to look into it and see if that’s an option 😊

I'd recommend The Thrive Programme rather than Hypnotherapy or CBT because there's always something else going on if you've got a phobia like that. With phobia's it's about control ... or rather not being able to control a situation. With spiders you can't be sure where they are so you're out of control. It is genuinely not that hard to fix.