Help! Here come the spiders

I’m a huge fan of September. There’s a real sense of new beginnings that comes with the back to school season. Plus after a busy summer it’s always nice to get back into a regular routine. Yet with September comes the start of the spider season, and I can think of nothing worse.

We live in the sort of house that seems to attract huge black hairy spiders. It’s an old building with lots of holes and hiding places and it backs onto an allotment, which I think helps explain why every autumn spiders descend on our house en masse.

Last year we spent half of autumn living in the kitchen while a small army of spiders camped out in our living room. Already this year I’m creeping round the house first thing in the morning, wary of being caught off guard and coming face to face with one unexpectedly.

I’m certain that spiders make eye contact and follow our every move. Their behaviour seems very calculated and it’s this intelligence that really disturbs me. So in the battle of human versus spider, they win every time.

It’s not just me

Susanna at A Modern Mother has written about her own fear of spiders. Her husband has even remarked that she was teaching their daughters to be unnecessarily afraid of them.

Men are not exempt from this fear either, as Tara Cain from Sticky Fingers explains – her husband recently panicked at the sight of a spider by their fireplace, only to discover it was in fact a tomato leaf.

A learned response

According to clinical hypnotherapist Russell Hemmings, who has worked with patients with Arachnophobia, a fear of spiders is a 'learned' response which can just as easily be 'unlearned'. It is usually brought on by an unpleasant experience or an instance of panic or anxiety during an encounter with a spider and so a phobia is born. Your unconscious mind is telling you to be afraid so it doesn't matter how much you try, you still have that innate fear within you.

Spiders are, of course, substantially smaller than humans. The ones we have in the UK are harmless and, in fact, spiders are very beneficial to the ecosystem. Without them the world would be overcome by insects, yet many of us are afraid of them and that fear is often passed onto our children.

Anxious children of anxious parents

When I see a large spider I freeze, then tremble slightly, which has led my daughter to behave in exactly the same way. Children may be born with an innate disposition to be wary of dangerous creatures, but it is our input that will nurture this fear to an unnecessarily high level.

In our case a fear of spiders is one I have clearly passed on, just as I passed on my fear of dogs. If I didn’t react so negatively, then my daughter would not believe there was someone to fear.

It’s just a spider

For me, the solution has to be to calm down and take a more relaxed view of all things creepy-crawly, which is what I’m hoping to do this year. I’m doing my best to keep my fears to myself and not to overreact. After all, it’s just a spider as this clip reminds us.

How will you coping with the spider season? Are you scared of spiders or do you not mind their company? Do your children react in the same way?