My Phobia is Out of Control!

Last night it was late and I was sitting on the sofa pootling around on my laptop when something caught my eye. To my horror I saw a huge black spider scuttling under the dining room table. It stopped when I turned the main light on and my horror turned to absolute fear as I approached said spider to ascertain the situation. 

I am absolutely terrified of spiders. I'm not scared of anything else - heights pose no problems neither do bees, moths, enclosed spaces, speaking in public or even Daddy Long Legs (Crane Flies) It's just spiders. I can barely even say or write the word I'm so scared of them.

Now I know that this is an irrational fear and they won't hurt me and are 'probably more scared of me than I am of them' blah blah, but a phobia by definition is an irrational fear of something  so it doesn't make any difference. I was literally shaking inside as I sat back down and tried to ignore it. There was no way I could have even gotten close enough to kill it and even the suggestion of trapping it under a glass filled me with fear. I simply cannot get close enough to do this and I can feel a rising terror inside me now just thinking about attempting it. As soon as it moved I would run off 

I couldn't stop thinking about it and I know that at this very minute it could be under the table I'm sitting typing at. Again, I am filled with dread even contemplating this and cannot even get the full thought formed in my head before the fear makes me stop thinking about it. So I'm just going to type and not think about it.

I crept off to bed and simply couldn't stop thinking about what was lurking in the living room.  In the night I actually threw my covers off and jumped out of bed thinking it was on me. This is not an unusual occurrence for me- I have done this many, many times over the years and it was some time before I realised I was seeing it in my head and that it wasn't really in the bed.
When I go around the flat cleaning I often find them. I usually suck them up the hoover but I believe they can climb out again. When I go into the en-suite I imagine a big one in the sink even though I've never seen one there. It's the sort of sink they like and I am confident that one day I will see a big menacing one there.

My first memory of them was sitting on the carpet as a very small child and seeing my Mum and Great Grandmother (my 2 main care-givers) scream then kill a huge spider that had just run past me. I wasn't scared but it's probably how it all started. My Mum is very scared of them as well and makes a loud scene when she sees one.  But this is not the only run-in I've had:

• I came home from school once (I was a teenager) and turned on the TV. What I thought was static running up my arm was in fact a huge house spider that then ran across my face into my hair.
• When I woke up one morning (I was a about 9) I saw a big spider on the ceiling over my bed. As I stared in horror it fell on to me...
• As a child I took a shortcut through a hole in a hedge, broke an egg sac in a web and hundreds of baby spiders emerged and ran all over my face.
• A few weeks ago a huge one was on the dishes in the sink and ran at me when I unknowingly turned the tap on.

I can think of many more horror stories but I can't actually go on. I'm feeling very stressed now. I would really like to not be scared of them and even tried calling them 'Bernards' for a while in case I'd associated the word with terror. But to no avail. I don't even want to go on a therapy course because I know it would mean being near one.

You will notice there isn't a photo of a spider to accompany this post. This is because I'd never be able to look at my blog again!