Auckland mum-of-two Michelle Green’s fear of spiders is so bad that she’s been trapped in her home by the creepy-crawlies. Michelle (36) tells how she coped with a real-life invasion of the eight-legged kind.
Pinned in the corner of my tiny laundry, fighting for breath and feeling as if my heart was going to jump out of my chest, I began to scream for help.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it, as it hung there, only a few feet away from me. Every movement it made sent a new wave of horror through my body. It was blocking my escape route and the only thing I could do was hope someone had heard my screams.
The seconds felt like hours. Suddenly, the door opened and my son owen (17) came in. He knew exactly what to do and, with a quick sweep of his hand, he grabbed the spider and flicked it into the garden.
It took me several minutes to calm down and find the courage to walk out of the laundry on wobbly legs, my eyes darting everywhere looking for the culprit. That’s how terrified I am of spiders. In fact, my fear gets so bad that these eight-legged creatures virtually take over my house.
I’m not the best at housework, being a student and busy solo mum of two teenagers, owen and my daughter Sam (13). If an area gets grubby, it attracts insects and that attracts spiders. I’ll avoid cleaning that area, then more insects and spiders come.
I like to be at least three metres away from any spider that I spot and sometimes there isn’t a room in the house that I can relax in. Even when I find one, I have to work out an escape route just in case. If a spider is too close to the door, I’m trapped.
oy fear of spiders has a huge impact on my life. For example, the other night I was helping Sam with some homework on her PC and I saw a tiny money spider on the keyboard. Immediately, I jumped up and refused to go near it.
Sam was able to remove it but it took a while before my heart rate went back to normal and I was able to sit down and touch the keyboard again.
Sam can deal with the little spiders and daddy-longlegs, but she is frightened of big black house spiders. When she was younger, I used to try and hide my terror, so it wouldn’t pass on to her. But when even the smallest spider sparks a huge panic attack, it was not easy to keep it from her. I’m glad that it’s only the big ones that affect her.
oy mother says I didn’t like spiders as a child but I certainly didn’t have a phobia like I do now. I can remember as a teenager, my grandfather putting a rubber spider on my shoulder. I jumped up, screaming and shaking. That’s the first big panic attack I can recall.
It doesn’t have to be a real, live spider either. Just talking about them or seeing pictures sends shivers down my spine and starts my heart racing. There’s no way I could see any of those films like Arachnophobia or Eight Legged Freaks. I can’t even go to see the Harry Potter movies because one of them has a giant spider in it.
I’ve tried everything to get spiders out of the house by myself – sprays, long feather dusters, brooms – but it means getting closer to them and I can’t stand that. When Evon Blackwell-Chin and Carolyn Jones, the “grime busters” from TV one’s How Clean Is Your House? came to my home, they thought I liked spiders at first – there were so many of them!
When I explained my fear, Evon came up with a way of sweeping the spiders away with a sock on a stick, but I couldn’t do it. I stood and cried but Sam gave it a go. The team cleaned the whole house and the spiders were gone. It was wonderful. I had a clean slate and knew what I had to do to keep them at bay.
As time’s gone by, I’ve had a few creeping back in. I get my son to remove them but, as he has pointed out, he’ll be leaving home soon. My neighbours are nice and help out but I can’t call on them all the time and Sam is only able to remove small spiders.
I will try to keep the cleaning under control as much as I can, so insects don’t come in to feed – followed by spiders. If I see a cob-web, I’m not too bad. I keep a close eye on it. It’s when the spider starts wriggling and crawling, that the panic sets in.
I thought my fear would get better as I got older but, if anything, it’s gotten worse. I would love to get proper therapy for it. However, that’s too expensive for me and besides, it would mean facing my fear and I don’t know if I’m really ready for that.
When people say to me “it’s just a spider” I try to explain what it feels like. I know most are harmless and have more reason to be scared of me than I do of them. It’s difficult for others to understand and often I don’t bother explaining.
one day, I want to be free of my spider fear but at the moment, I don’t know when that will be. As told to Sharon Course Photograph by Frances oliver
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