First Time Universal Visitors...and the whole family are arachnophobes (no pics please)

[NashSmartGuy]

Have you considered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to address your arachnophobia? Life is too short to live with this sort of fear. The spiders at Universal are not real. They cannot hurt you. I am not judging your family, because everyone has issues. It's important to seek out the help of qualified individuals to work through these. It's like having high blood pressure or diabetes. Left untreated, it could hurt you. There are treatments available and caring healthcare providers who can help.

 

[Teamwalker]

Have you considered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to address your arachnophobia? Life is too short to live with this sort of fear. The spiders at Universal are not real. They cannot hurt you. I am not judging your family, because everyone has issues. It's important to seek out the help of qualified individuals to work through these. It's like having high blood pressure or diabetes. Left untreated, it could hurt you. There are treatments available and caring healthcare providers who can help.

I appreciate your thoughts and suggestions! I did undergo exposure and response prevention therapy in my early 20s as an attempt to resolve my underlying trauma from my early teens (an interaction resulting in bites and a near-death experience). My wife, who is a psychologist, says that patient phobias improve 94% of the time. The other 6% are at risk for increased severity of the phobia. Unfortunately I fell in the 6%.

 

[Disxuni]

I appreciate your thoughts and suggestions! I did undergo exposure and response prevention therapy in my early 20s as an attempt to resolve my underlying trauma from my early teens (an interaction resulting in bites and a near-death experience). My wife, who is a psychologist, says that patient phobias improve 94% of the time. The other 6% are at risk for increased severity of the phobia. Unfortunately I fell in the 6%.

I never tried therapy, but mine has gotten less intense over the years, so I am lucky, but it's still quite there. For example, I couldn't even kill spiders being so stunned with fear, but now I can. This might be triggery, but I can understand how your phobia came about, as when I was a kid it was a simple dislike of spiders, not really that much fear, however my mother got bitten by a brown recluse and was in the hospital for quite sometime. She is better now, but it was that which ultimately triggered my phobia of spiders. I have a phobia of death as well, which "lucky" me, is something we cannot avoid, is inevitable to us, and can be caused by multiple things. So, it's kind of a tango of two different phobias into one.

 

[Miffy]

As someone who is yicked-out by spiders and most insects . . . since this isn't affecting my daily life, I wouldn't even consider therapy for it. What would be the point? This thread has also convinced me that Universal is definitely not for me. So, thanks, everyone!