Response to Kathy

I found these awesome quotes from Kathy's blog:

“Phobias can cause anxiety disorders,they can change behavior to a point of being disruptive.
Can cause post traumatic stress disorder. A compulsion is feeling like you absolutely have to do something, and an obsession is a constant unwanted thought. “

When I see something other than the regular cats, dogs, birds, and goldfish, I totally freak out. Whenever I see a spider or scary bug within a radius of ten feet with me, my whole body jumps out of control and I get chills across my body. I may even scream out of fear if I see one too close to me. My eyes widen, and I quickly ask for help or find the easiest way to kill it. I may look for a spray bottle to poison it, or maybe just a towel, or ten, to squish it depending on its size. After destroying it, I am so scared of it that I will have to flush it down the toilet. I fear that it contains a lot of babies, and they come out inside the trash can. I fear this because I saw it happen in my house in Australia. My mom used a broom to squish a spider in the bathroom, but more than a hundred tiny spider babies ran all over the place. Luckily, there was a drain on my bathroom floor, and my mom was fast enough to dump enough water on the floors to suck them all in. Just thinking about creatures like spiders makes my skin tingle and a little bit itchy. My body also shivers as I think about them.

"Exposure pushes a person with a fear to face that fear head on. People who go into exposure therapy in the early stages of an undeveloped phobia can stop it."

I agree that being exposed a lot to an animal helps build confidence and trust towards it. For example, I played with ants ever since I was tiny since they seemed harmless and were everywhere. On the other hand, I only saw spiders staring at me in the corners of rooms or on the walls creeping towards me. I also fear spiders because of how my friends and family would react to it. My brother would always ask our parents to kill the pest for us, probably creating a image in my head that all spiders, even daddy long legs, are dangerous and should only be handled by adults.