(no subject)
Jul. 24th, 2017 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatDifficult day, most of the days have been difficult of late...work feels like an unending obstacle course.
Tomorrow I'm coordinating and chairing/facilitating a site tour of an electric rail yard, with over fifty people attending. With any luck it will not rain.
I find the world tiring at times. Everybody thinks they are right, about everything. Too many spiders spinning their webs in the world, methinks, and not enough fireflies...
Scrolled through reading list, and got lost in the fluffy happiness and comfy escapism of the smartbitches book and film reviews...resulting in multiple book purchases at Amazon...all for $1.99-$2.99. One was about a woman with ausperger's syndrome who travels to Paris, France as a codebreaker to unlock a mysterious journal. It looked intriguing. And a few...just hit some of my story kinks rather hard. One was about a journalist who infilterates a BDSM club, and has to use an old lover as a means of entry. I rather love smartbitches...they are nice and fluffy...reading their entries feels a bit like looking at pictures of kittens.
I also joined a laughing yoga meetup group...now let's see if I actually get myself to go to it.
The concept of laughing yoga makes me smile.
Rather enjoyed a few postings on nature on reading list. Mai and peasant both did one. But, alas, I split ways on the whole spider bit. Luckily they didn't post pictures and just wrote about them. I have no issues reading about spiders. Actually, I do appreciate them on a certain level. As long as I do not have to see them, come into contact with them, or deal with them in any way. They can exist out there, away from me.
I'm afraid of spiders. Actually that is an understatement. I'm phobic. Downstairs neighbors in my old building liked to put a huge fake spider in the entry way, into the building. It looked real. I was convinced it would fall on my head and eat me. Irrational, I know, but phobia is an irrational fear of something. I used to have anxiety attacks just getting in and out of the building. Screamed when I first saw it.
And there was this time that I opened one of those huge chocolate Italian Easter eggs. I'd bought as a treat for myself. There was a spring-time gift inside. Silly me expected to find a flower or something. But no...it was a huge pink spider. You laugh. Go ahead. It's funny. But I had nightmares for weeks and threw it out, uneaten. Traumatized.
CW, a friend of mine, is also phobic.
CW: I don't know why I'm afraid of spiders.
Me: Oh I know why I am. It was reinforced by various and sundry sources over a lengthy period of time.
As I child I had no problems with them. Then someone dumped a jar of Daddy Long-legs on my head. And when we were playing a game, we had to stop it, because when I almost put my hand on a wolf spider, my babysitter, who was six years older than me, screamed, they were right behind me. Next, Space 1999 and Night Gallery had evil huge spiders that ate people. And then there was that time in Girl Scouts when I learned all the reasons why you need to avoid brown recluse spiders while camping. (They bite you and all the skin around the wound begins to slowly dissolve...the spider's venom eats your flesh, leaving an open festering wound. I knew someone in law school who got bit by one. Nasty buggers.)
Later, my brother told me a story about a spiders erupting from his friend's face, she'd run through a spiders web and the tree branch cut into her face, the eggs fell into the wound. And there was that time that I had to vacuum a million baby spiders off my bedroom ceiling in the middle of the night, because they'd hatched from a nearby web. In college during a camping trip, I stumbled upon a monster tarantula, as big as my foot. One of the guys with us, decided to pick it up in his hat and chase me with it. My terror intrigued him. He'd never seen anyone so frightened in his life. He relentlessly teased me the entire trip. I remember checking my tent every five minutes to be certain he didn't put it in there.
One friend was convinced that because I was terrified of spiders that I didn't know anything about them. Not true. If you are terrified of something -- you know a lot about it. I've seen a black widow up close. Someone flicked it on my back-pack. Tiny thing. About the size of small pebble. Packs a wallop. Dead in minutes, if it bites you in certain places. Saw it in New Mexico, along with dozens of tarantulas.
I fail to understand the appeal of spiders. My niece considers them fascinating. My family is aware that I'm terrified of them. My brother has warned me off more than one movie...due to the spiders. I skipped Something Wicked This Way Comes...because of the spider scenes. And when I saw Lord of the Rings, my mother kindly would inform me when I could open my eyes during the nasty spider sequences.
Over time, I've gotten slightly better. Tiny spiders no longer bother me. Or small house and garden spiders. Anything smaller than a pebble, as long it isn't a black widow. But whenever I see them, I have this irrational suspicion that they are going to leap up and grab my face.
And I can't look at pictures of spiders, without my blood-pressure sky-rocketing and having an anxiety attack.
Are there any other arachnophobes out there or am I the only one?
Off to bed. Hopefully to sleep. Long day ahead.
Tomorrow I'm coordinating and chairing/facilitating a site tour of an electric rail yard, with over fifty people attending. With any luck it will not rain.
I find the world tiring at times. Everybody thinks they are right, about everything. Too many spiders spinning their webs in the world, methinks, and not enough fireflies...
Scrolled through reading list, and got lost in the fluffy happiness and comfy escapism of the smartbitches book and film reviews...resulting in multiple book purchases at Amazon...all for $1.99-$2.99. One was about a woman with ausperger's syndrome who travels to Paris, France as a codebreaker to unlock a mysterious journal. It looked intriguing. And a few...just hit some of my story kinks rather hard. One was about a journalist who infilterates a BDSM club, and has to use an old lover as a means of entry. I rather love smartbitches...they are nice and fluffy...reading their entries feels a bit like looking at pictures of kittens.
I also joined a laughing yoga meetup group...now let's see if I actually get myself to go to it.
The concept of laughing yoga makes me smile.
Rather enjoyed a few postings on nature on reading list. Mai and peasant both did one. But, alas, I split ways on the whole spider bit. Luckily they didn't post pictures and just wrote about them. I have no issues reading about spiders. Actually, I do appreciate them on a certain level. As long as I do not have to see them, come into contact with them, or deal with them in any way. They can exist out there, away from me.
I'm afraid of spiders. Actually that is an understatement. I'm phobic. Downstairs neighbors in my old building liked to put a huge fake spider in the entry way, into the building. It looked real. I was convinced it would fall on my head and eat me. Irrational, I know, but phobia is an irrational fear of something. I used to have anxiety attacks just getting in and out of the building. Screamed when I first saw it.
And there was this time that I opened one of those huge chocolate Italian Easter eggs. I'd bought as a treat for myself. There was a spring-time gift inside. Silly me expected to find a flower or something. But no...it was a huge pink spider. You laugh. Go ahead. It's funny. But I had nightmares for weeks and threw it out, uneaten. Traumatized.
CW, a friend of mine, is also phobic.
CW: I don't know why I'm afraid of spiders.
Me: Oh I know why I am. It was reinforced by various and sundry sources over a lengthy period of time.
As I child I had no problems with them. Then someone dumped a jar of Daddy Long-legs on my head. And when we were playing a game, we had to stop it, because when I almost put my hand on a wolf spider, my babysitter, who was six years older than me, screamed, they were right behind me. Next, Space 1999 and Night Gallery had evil huge spiders that ate people. And then there was that time in Girl Scouts when I learned all the reasons why you need to avoid brown recluse spiders while camping. (They bite you and all the skin around the wound begins to slowly dissolve...the spider's venom eats your flesh, leaving an open festering wound. I knew someone in law school who got bit by one. Nasty buggers.)
Later, my brother told me a story about a spiders erupting from his friend's face, she'd run through a spiders web and the tree branch cut into her face, the eggs fell into the wound. And there was that time that I had to vacuum a million baby spiders off my bedroom ceiling in the middle of the night, because they'd hatched from a nearby web. In college during a camping trip, I stumbled upon a monster tarantula, as big as my foot. One of the guys with us, decided to pick it up in his hat and chase me with it. My terror intrigued him. He'd never seen anyone so frightened in his life. He relentlessly teased me the entire trip. I remember checking my tent every five minutes to be certain he didn't put it in there.
One friend was convinced that because I was terrified of spiders that I didn't know anything about them. Not true. If you are terrified of something -- you know a lot about it. I've seen a black widow up close. Someone flicked it on my back-pack. Tiny thing. About the size of small pebble. Packs a wallop. Dead in minutes, if it bites you in certain places. Saw it in New Mexico, along with dozens of tarantulas.
I fail to understand the appeal of spiders. My niece considers them fascinating. My family is aware that I'm terrified of them. My brother has warned me off more than one movie...due to the spiders. I skipped Something Wicked This Way Comes...because of the spider scenes. And when I saw Lord of the Rings, my mother kindly would inform me when I could open my eyes during the nasty spider sequences.
Over time, I've gotten slightly better. Tiny spiders no longer bother me. Or small house and garden spiders. Anything smaller than a pebble, as long it isn't a black widow. But whenever I see them, I have this irrational suspicion that they are going to leap up and grab my face.
And I can't look at pictures of spiders, without my blood-pressure sky-rocketing and having an anxiety attack.
Are there any other arachnophobes out there or am I the only one?
Off to bed. Hopefully to sleep. Long day ahead.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-25 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-25 08:34 am (UTC)My mother is arachnophobic, and probably slightly worse than you and with less reason. She certainly can't look at pictures - I have to go through newspapers and magazines and cover over any pictures of spiders with a plain piece of paper with a smiley face drawn on it. If I forget the smiley face, the mere fact she knows there is a spider underneath worries her. I once experimented on her to see how close I could get to a drawing of a spider before she freaked. The answer was as soon as a plain circle had more than four straight lines added as legs, she wouldn't look at it. The knowledge it was theoretically going to be a spider was enough. And there is no known source of her phobia, she has never been near a dangerous spider, there are no dangerous spiders in the UK and the largest spiders we have are only about two inches across. The only possible source is her parents used to run the village shop and a tarantula once crawled out of the bananas and my grandmother had to kill it with a broom - but Mum wasn't even in the building at the time, she just heard about it later. So I reckon it is atavistic rather than having a specific source.
For myself, I dislike it when spiders run across unexpectedly, but otherwise I am fine with them. And ones that make intricate webs or have interesting lifestyles are fascinating and often beautiful. I had to draw them for biology classes and would happily paint them now except Mum would freak if she saw the picture by accident.
I hope your rail yard visit gets good weather :)
no subject
Date: 2017-07-30 11:23 pm (UTC)My husband also tells me when I can look (during a movie) and I can't look at photos of them, even drawings.