A while back, I subscribed to a daily email called the Shankman Report. It lists stories that various reporters are working on for which they are seeking sources. I sometimes email a reporter looking for info on a topic I feel reasonably knowledgeable about.

Yesterday a reporter in Canada was looking for sources on phobias, on where they come from and how to get over them. She specifically requested sources in Canada, so when I emailed, I made it clear I wasn't in Canada but hoped my thoughts on phobias might be useful to her, and she wrote back to thank me.

Here's what I wrote.

I had a phobia of spiders from childhood through to my 20s. I'm now in the personal growth business, so I help people with similar issues. I've come to believe that a phobia has something to tell us, and once we find out what that is, the phobia will go away of its own accord, or can at least be treated much more easily, because the "purpose" of the phobia is gone.

In my case, I had a phobia of spiders because my mother was acting like a spider, and although I sensed that something was hurting me, I couldn't see or understand it until much later in life. When I say my mother was acting like a spider, I mean that she would placate me with subtle flattery, so that I let my guard down, and then she'd "sting" me with a subtle but devastating criticism or dismissal. As with a spider bite, however, I wouldn't realize for some time that I'd been bitten -- I'd feel terrible but not know why, because the sting had been so subtle. The whole process was so hidden, it was like getting caught in spiderweb, which is almost invisible but surprisingly strong.

I didn't come to this belief until my 50s. In my 20s, I was living in Florida, and a very large spider (4" diameter) entered my apartment. My phobia had always made it impossible for me to remain in the room with a spider, much less kill it. Usually I had to leave a room and ask someone else to kill it. But I was alone with no one to ask, and it was in the kitchen where I had no way to avoid it. I managed to throw a phone book across the room to land on the spider and kill it. And I left that phone book there until I moved out of the apartment about a month later, I believe, without ever picking it up or looking underneath. It seemed like a huge breakthrough to me at the time, that I'd been able to kill a spider, and I'm certain that the phone book was the only way I could have done it, because it meant I could kill it remotely without making any physical contact with the spider (as I would have if I'd used a broom, for example), and also because the phone book landing on the floor made a loud enough noise that I couldn't hear the horrible sound of the spider being crushed. From that time until my 50s, I found I could kill spiders when I needed to.

I figured out the mom connection about 5 years ago (I'm 57). Since then, I've become less and less afraid of spiders, until today I'm not afraid of them at all, with the exception that I'm not very happy about them crawling on me. When I see them in the house, I generally say hello, trap them and take them outdoors. In fact, I've come to believe that the more I spare the lives of spiders, the more writing energy I have, because the spider is really my totem as a writer/author. I think a writer "weaves a web" for a reader to fall happily into. A spider is one of the most creative beings in the animal kingdom: many species of spiders spin a new web every day. The dark side of spider energy is the kind of manipulation my mother was doing (probably because she was manipulated in the same way as a girl). But the positive side of the same energy is a good kind of manipulation that a writer uses to "spin" a good story, to "trap" the reader in a wonderful story or in suspense, and the reader can "fall into the web" to escape the world for a little while.

What I would add is that it would have been too risky for me as a child to see my mother as doing anything negative and that's why my fear of "spider energy" manifested instead as a phobia. It makes sense that I wouldn't be able to kill a spider, since that would symbolize killing my connection with my mother.