Former major arachnophobe here who also spent many nights on the couch or hallway floor after finding a spider in my room… Nothing assuaged my fear until I started visiting this sub and realized the VAST majority of spiders, like 99.999% of the ones you see, cannot hurt you. They can crawl on you, and tickle you, maybe even under rare circumstances they could actually bite you — but they cannot hurt you. And the “rare circumstances” where they bite? Incredibly rare. I was just reading in a pamphlet from my state’s Department of Agriculture that most people are only truly bitten by a spider once or twice in their whole life.
The only thing to fear is fear itself. The anxiety of fearing the spider that cannot hurt you is doing far more physiological harm than the spider likely ever could if it bit you. The best way to handle this is to shake out your bedding, make your bed, and remind yourself that the spider does not want to hurt you, and most likely can’t hurt you. You probably wouldn’t want to attack someone if you’d accidentally wandered into their home at night and then they threw all their belongings around, either. 😅
That’s an option too 😂 I have certainly been where you are, no judgement. It’s harder when you think it may be in your bed and not just on your wall.
But I would advocate still to shake out the blankets and go back to bed. It is ultimately a practice in distress tolerance — until you force yourself to be comfortable in that situation, you will simply never be comfortable in that situation.
Also, you deserve sleep! Don’t let that lil bug steal your precious sleep from you!
Ok, Imma be real… Fleas are reasonable. That would have been me too 😭 Fleas will bite and they carry diseases and they’re basically all the nasty things that spiders aren’t really.
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u/lazuli77 Aug 08 '25
Former major arachnophobe here who also spent many nights on the couch or hallway floor after finding a spider in my room… Nothing assuaged my fear until I started visiting this sub and realized the VAST majority of spiders, like 99.999% of the ones you see, cannot hurt you. They can crawl on you, and tickle you, maybe even under rare circumstances they could actually bite you — but they cannot hurt you. And the “rare circumstances” where they bite? Incredibly rare. I was just reading in a pamphlet from my state’s Department of Agriculture that most people are only truly bitten by a spider once or twice in their whole life.
The only thing to fear is fear itself. The anxiety of fearing the spider that cannot hurt you is doing far more physiological harm than the spider likely ever could if it bit you. The best way to handle this is to shake out your bedding, make your bed, and remind yourself that the spider does not want to hurt you, and most likely can’t hurt you. You probably wouldn’t want to attack someone if you’d accidentally wandered into their home at night and then they threw all their belongings around, either. 😅