Naked Spider
How a 7-year-old overcame her severe fear of spiders
Olivia’s mother told me it started after a nightmare.
Just thinking of a spider would trigger strong physical reactions. Not just a flinch. We’re talking shoulders and upper body jerking involuntarily. In disgust.
This would happen 10 – 30 times every day. Tough to watch.
When I first worked with this child, we simply called the spider “thing”.
I had her close her eyes and tell me more about the feelings when she thought of “a thing”.
She described it as a brown patch of fear in her forehead and red disgust all over her shoulders.
This was exactly where her body had stored the feeling of disgust, which explained the involuntary shoulder jerking every time she thought of a spider.
I knew from the intake form that Olivia loved Disney’s Frozen. Her favorite character was Bruni who can ignite and set things on fire.
Next, I had Olivia imagine herself stepping into her nightmare. With Bruni for support.
Inside her nightmare she delivered an ultimatum to the spider.
In spider language of course.
“Leave this nightmare now. Or Bruni will burn off every hair on your body”.
The spider didn’t leave. So Bruni puffed purple fire toward the spider and fizzled off all the spiders hair.
The spider sat there naked and ashamed, covering itself with all eight legs.
Olivia laughed out loud. I joined in, as this cute girl described the scene taking place in her imagination.
Here was this creature that had been taking over control of her nervous system for months, now small, naked, ashamed. And suddenly harmless.
A powerful change of perception.
We still had to work on the involuntary jerking, so in the second part of the session, I had her visualize interacting with a friendly spider. She imagined holding him in her hand, gently stroking him. She said his name was Fritz, and that he was a loving parent to two spider children.
They had a long conversation about how spiders are often misunderstood. He didn’t understand why humans are afraid of them when they are about 100 times smaller — from his perspective, it’s the other way around.
Olivia spoke with Fritz the spider without jerking, convulsing, or showing any signs of disgust. That’s what a shift in perspective can do.
On the way out, she proudly told her mother:
“Mom, I’m not so afraid of spiders anymore.”
To prove her point we found a real spider on the way out.
A real spider is only inches away, and she’s still smiling.
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