Essay

Arachnophobia

When people today hear the word, "Arachnophobia", they think of a preposterous Hollywood movie, but arachnophobia is a very real, serious problem for many people and also for me. It can become an obsession, affecting their everyday lives in unimaginable ways. There are historical and cultural reasons for arachnophobia’s beginning.
In most of Europe during Middle Ages spiders were considered a source of evil. Any food or other things which come into contact with spiders were considered as infected. Spiders were believed to be messengers of the Black Plague and death. Europeans believed that spiders were poisonous and their bites caused many diseases. However, most of Europeans diseases were caused by completely different sources than spiders. The reasons of it were rats which carried the plague. Furthermore, non-European cultures believed that spiders were symbols of good luck or wisdom.
In addition to this, there is a traditional medical treatment of arachnophobia and it is called “systematic desensitization”. A person who has arachnophobia writes down the list of the situations with spiders from least frightening to most frightening. After that, he learns relaxation techniques which help him to deal with these situations from the list’s bottom to it’s top. Next step is to move on real situations accompanied by therapist. When a person is able to hold a live spider without fear he has overcome his phobia. Course, there are more treatments for arachnophobia, because our technology is going up every day.
To sum up everything, arachnophobia is one of a lot of phobias and nowadays it is curable and not so frightening than in the past. So, many people who have this phobia can take a breath easily and have a hope to get it off.