Alright so here’s the thing... I love nature/wildlife and think it’s mind-blowing, and it’s only gotten cooler as I started a more rigorous science class in school. Except, I’m deathly afraid of snakes and worms (snakes less so, actually..), but I still think snakes are beautiful in their own right. Do you have any tips on how I can get over this fear? Thank you so much!
Hey, I’ve been there! I mean, kind of? I love nature and wildlife, but still… have a Thing about spiders. When I was growing up, my dad would throw the BIGGEST FITS if he saw a spider. Hell, he still does that. So, naturally, I learned to fear them too.
Like you, I eventually realized this wasn’t the right attitude to have. How could I care about nature when I hated/feared this large portion of it? I started studying spiders. Like not on a serious academic level, but just on a level of ‘hey, this is actually pretty neat!’ wiki-walk level stuff. Once I could read about spiders, I started seeking out pictures. (ngl, starting out with super cutesy ones like jumping spiders was a HUGE help). Once I could handle that, I moved onto the scary ones. Once I could do THAT, I looked for spiders in the wild.
Thankfully, I live in the woods so I have like… SO MANY SPIDERS. Like an unreasonable amount of spiders. I’d just watch them. I’m not gonna lie; if they made an sudden movement, I’d still freak out and run, but I’d come back and you know what? The spider would JUST BE THERE. It’d just be chilling out. It didn’t attack or chase or anything.
I also made an effort to talk to spider experts. You want to take away the fear? You learn it. While I always knew on an intellectual level that most spiders are harmless, it was still a huge help to actually SEE people handling spiders. And now I can personally handle them. I don’t LIKE to do it, at least not for very long, but I can at least remove them from my vicinity.
So here’s what you can do, just to recap:
1. Read, read, and read some more.
2. Find cute snakes to start with (I personally think arabian sand boas are a good place to start because they look like a snake muppet). Just study the pictures.
3. Move onto “scarier snakes”. Again, study them.
4. Find clips and movies about snakes. Nature documentaries are great because they don’t really sugar coat things, but they also don’t really blast the message of ‘LOOK AT THIS SUPER FUCKING DEADLY THING THAT IS TOTALLY RIGHT BEHIND YOU RIGHT NOW’.
5. Follow a lot of reptile blogs. It’s really hard to fear an animal if you follow enough enthusiasts. Like I got to the point where I’d look at a spider and go, “aww, isn’t that [bloggers] favorite species? Haha, they’re funny because they don’t spin webs very well! They are too clumsy for it!”. Familiarity helps SO MUCH. You stop seeing them as super scary and see it through another person’s eyes.
6. Zoo and living museum visits can be hugely helpful here too!
