Everyone has their own preferences and fears but not all of them are phobias.
Technically speaking, phobias are “irrational” fears of an animal, item, place, or event. The keyword is “irrational” because more often than not, one shouldn’t be afraid of something but for some reason, fear gets the better of the person.
Phobias can range from mild to intense and the severity of one’s reaction will determine how much a particular phobia will affect a person’s quality of life. If one’s phobia is mild and one rarely has the opportunity to come into contact with that phobia, then there shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Watch this little boy enjoying having a spider on his body.
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Video credit: Rumble
But let’s say one has intense agoraphobia (the fear of wide-open spaces) and lives in a farm in the plains, one may need to be sedated just to get out of the house.
And then there’s arachnophobia or the fear of spiders.point 157 | Earlier, we mentioned that phobias are irrational fear reactions but when one looks at a spider, one must wonder how one does not react in fear to the creatures.point 290 |
Maybe it’s the monster-like protrusions when you look at them really closely, as if from your deepest nightmares, or the fact that they look scary, but being afraid of them doesn’t sound irrational at all.point 183 | 1
Of course, not everyone is afraid of spiders including one three-year-old who even laughed with delight as he allowed a spider to crawl all over him.
Little Wade Astbury was being made ready to go to bed when a large domestic house spider suddenly made an appearance in their bathroom in Rotherham, South Yorks.
Wade’s dad Dave also didn’t seem to be afraid of the critter and even filmed the spider crawling all over his son.
Dave said: “Wade actually played with the spider for about five minutes.
“I noticed it and shouted him to come to look at it.
“He wanted to pick it up but I just put him in the bath instead.
“Wade absolutely loved being with the spider.”
The footage quickly went viral, gaining 1.4 million views in short order. But if there were that many people were fascinated by the sight, Wade’s mom April was definitely not one of them.
Dave said: “When she came to see what Wade was doing, she absolutely freaked out and ran back into the bedroom.
“Wade was shouting her to show her how friendly the spider was and not to be scared, so she shouted how much of a big and brave boy he was even though she couldn’t bring herself to watch him again.”
Replaced!