I Can't Even Feel Sorry For Baby Spiders With Birth Defects

Once upon a time, I am really terrified of spiders. And I know it's kind of a thing that girls are afraid of spiders or something, but here's the thing. I AM SERIOUSLY TERRIFIED. As in I get paralyzed when I see one, start to shake/cry, and scream as if an ax-murderer is attempting to ax-murder me.

AND THAT IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION.

Sometimes (almost all of the time) I get freaked out even by the mere mention of spiders.

And sometimes I'm sitting in my friends' room and blogging about how much I hate/am afraid of spiders and it's kind of like I can feel them on my person and I want to burn my clothes because maybe they're laying eggs in my clothes, so that their future offspring can continue the rein of terror at a later date.

Okay. Here's another story titled "I Had to Stop Writing My Post About Spiders Because I Couldn't Handle it and it Might as Well Be My Life Story."

It's okay. I'm back.

One time I was sitting in an intro to psychology class and we were talking about types of treatment for phobias and the differences between flooding and systematic desensitization. For those who don't know...

"Flooding: A therapeutic technique for treating phobias in which the patient is exposed to painful memories or frightening stimuli until he or she ceases to be anxious.

Example: An arachnophobic patient is locked in a room full of spiders after discussing the treatment with her therapist and consenting to it. She is initially terrified, but eventually relaxes when she realizes that nothing bad is going to happen to her." -sincerely the Encyclopedia of Psychology

(Note: LIES LIES LIES LIES SHE NEVER FEELS SAFE AGAIN)

and...

"Systematic desensitization is a behavior therapy developed by Joseph Wolpe (1915–1997) for fear and anxiety. Treatment begins with an assessment that describes the objects and/or events that elicit fearfulness. It continues with three basic procedures: The therapist teaches the patient to relax the voluntary muscles. At the same time, the therapist and patient develop detailed descriptions of personal encounters with the objects and/or events that provoke fear and arrange them in order of increasing fearsomeness. Then the therapist instructs the patient to visualize the encounters in increasingly fearsome order while relaxed. The therapist also encourages the patient to confront the fearsome objects and/or events sometime after relaxed visualization of them." - sincerely Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology

So, back to the story. We were learning about these behavior therapy methods and my friend tells me that what I need is some serious flooding and I proceed to essentially hyperventilate at the thought until she decided that maybe I'm crazy and can't handle hypothetical situations like that, so she suggested systematic desensitization instead. 

However, I am a poor college student and can't afford to pay for that and so I settle with avoiding my problems and ensuring that I always have a friend around who's braver than I in case a "piece of death wrapped in scary" decides to make an entrance in my life. 

Thanks Lindsey/CC/other friends!

Here's the thing, though. I'm pretty tired right now and so I'm not sure how coherent this blog post is. And this blog post was actually intended to a) tell you just how I feel about spiders and b) do that by linking another blog that describes perfectly how I feel about spiders. Part of that plan included giving you some background, but that ended up being quite long. 

I formally apologize for that because the blog post I plan on linking in my blog post is also kind of long (compared to a shorter blog post). 

So, here it is, the blog post that describes my feels to a t.