Ask HN: Have you beaten extreme arachnophobia?

1 point·yrcyrc··5 comments

Ruining my life. In Europe so I only get the “giant house spiders” common here. Used to think I would only need to decline invites to go to Australia. But I just had an opportunity to go to Senegal for an NGO and after inquiring, had to decline. Any CBT that works? Time I do something about it …

View on HN

CBT with exposure therapy. They’ll probably just start by getting you to look at pictures of spiders, and then get you used to being in the same room as one etc etc until you can hold one.

I’m a little bit scared of spiders. Especially large ones. I have been to Australia a few times, and I personally think snakes are actually worse than spiders… especially the snakes that just leave behind their skin, so you know they’ve been there… but you can’t find the actual snake.

Thank you. Been reading about all that but exposure… can’t even see a picture, or when watching documentaries I get so scared I have to leave the room… So extreme.

I’m sure there are therapists that are used to helping people even in the most extreme cases.

get slightly drunk, with a low dose of amphetamines (u can be sober too) and make them your friends. start with little ones. talk to them, observe them, be gentle. repeat until you're ready to let them let you touch them. easy peasy. i did the drunk version. worked like a charm

Neither of those things work for me for insects or spiders in general. 5 g of mushrooms worked on my fear of bees for the duration of the trip. I let one land on my hand which usually would have me running.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com