I also have a terrible phobia of spiders. Like you I have no idea where it came from but I've always been terrified of them. It's crazy and I know it's totally irrational, but I can't control it. It's so bad that I tired to jump out of a moving car once that was going about 60 miles per hour because there was a spider. Luckily the other person in the car grabbed me before I jumped.

Last summer it was horrible. I worked at a camp all summer so I lived with spiders. It was really hard for me. I had to work really hard to not think about how many spiders were around and when I had to face one I had to concentrate on my breathing and talk myself into calming down. I always had a can of spider spray with me so I could kill them. I can't get close enough to squish them without having a complete panic attack so spraying them is the only way I can kill them. So I made it for 2 months living and working at camp with spiders and I was pretty proud of myself. But once I got back home things got crazy bad. I saw one spider in the house and completely freaked out. Then I saw another one a few hours later and I was convinced that the house was infested. I was in complete panic and very hypervigilent. I would search each room before I would feel comfortable to stay in there for a long period of time. I would scan the ceiling to make sure that there were no spiders and then I'd look in the cornors. If I found a spider I would have to leave the room and I couldn't go back in there untill it was killed. I would have a "safe place" where I felt like there was no spiders and I felt safe there. I was almost paranoid. At one point I seriously started to think that the spiders where out to get me because everytime I found a "safe place" a spider would show up there and it was no longer "safe". I couldn't sleep because I would think that I felt spiders crawling on me. When trying to go to bed I wouldn't be able to cover up with blankets even if I was really cold because whenever I covered up I felt the spiders. Then I thought that spiders had contaminated my bed so I couldn't sleep there. So I went to sleep on the couch in the livingroom, but then I saw a spider on the ceiling. I would sit on the couch and stare at the tv all night trying to distract myself because I couldn't sleep. I went for almost a week without sleeping at all. I was always in a state of panic, I was exhausted, but I couldn't sleep. I knew it was rediculous but I couldn't stop it. The terror was so real for me. It lasted for a little over a month. Luckily after I went back to college for the school year it ended. I still have a horrible phobia but it's not as psychotic as it got last summer.

I'm going back to work at camp in 2 weeks and I'm really nervous. I'm so afraid the psychotic episode or whatever it was that happened will happen again especailly since I really will be around a lot of spiders at camp.

-Mandy