????? ?? ??????A 58 year old woman came to me last week with a completely debilitating fear of spiders.  When she saw a spider she would jump up and down, waving her arms in the air and shouting: “Mommy!  Mommy! Mommy!”  It was a childish, out-of-control reaction.  She knew it was irrational behavior and felt embarrassed and humiliated every time she did it.

When I asked her to describe what came to her mind when she thought of spiders, she said “creepy-crawly” while she rubbed her hands through her hair and over her shoulders as she shuddered.  She then said “Blaaack” with the word prolonged.  I asked her if she thought that spiders were black and she looked confused for a moment and said “No”.   It was an interesting response, so I filed it away.

I asked her if she had a memory of a traumatic experience with spiders.  She replied that there were so many girls in her house that she had had to sleep in the closet.  She was always terrified because there were spiders there.  When she expressed her fears to her mother, the response was not sympathetic.  My client said her mother’s response was: “Don’t be such a bloody baby, for Christ’s sake!” in a very harsh voice.

   After several more negative comments about her mother and how abusive she had been, a light bulb went off in my mind.  I asked my client: “Is it possible that you think of your mother as a spider – as a Black Widow Spider?” 

Immediately tears welled up in her eyes and started running down her face.

  Her fear and resentment of her mother was the cause of her phobia about spiders.  Using Emotional Freedom Technique, also called EFT or Tapping, within ten minutes that phobia was gone!

Because I’m not particularly fond of spiders myself, I wasn’t prepared to go find a large spider to test her but I did use my laptop and found a video, showing a variety of spiders: crawling, jumping, spinning, etc.  My client was able to look at the pictures with a smile on her face and no negative response at all.  She stated that before the session she would not have been able to stay in the same room as the video.

It was an amazing experience!   Do you  have a fear or phobia that is interfering with your quality of life?  There are many different kinds: fear of flying,  fear of heights,  fear of snakes, fear of elevators, fear of the dark, fear of public speaking, fear of being in crowds, fear of doctors, fear of dentists, fear of needles,  fear of dogs and the list goes on and on.   It doesn’t matter what the fear is.  It can be easily eliminated using the powerful tool of Emotional Freedom Technique.