Getting Rid of the Fear of Spiders

My teenage nephew, Daniel, is quite knowledgeable about the reptiles and arachnids . Ever since he was a little boy, when my husband, Steve, taught him how to be really still and catch a lizard he has been able to be fearless with snakes and spiders. Recently, he had a big scare with a tarantula. What had happened was that he was recently in a pet store in Redding and he was holding a large tarantula in a plastic container. He wanted to see what would happen if he blew on the spider's butt. Well to his surprise, the tarantula moved in a way that scared Daniel. Even though the Tarantula was in a plastic container, the unpredictable way in which the spider moved scared him.

I asked Daniel to close his eyes and to imagine holding the spider in the plastic container and feeling the fear when the spider moved. I asked what level of fear hew was feeling right now, and he said his emotional intensity level was a 7 out of 10.

The set-up phrases that we used were Even though I:nn *the animated spider scared the fricking hell out of me...nn *am knowledgeable of spiders and I still got scared of a spider...nn *felt like running...nn *got really scared of that spider...

After a few rounds of tapping we got his emotional intensity level down to a 3. I asked him a few more questions and found out that he felt the strength of the spider when he moved, and that had scared him. He realized that it wasn't a wise move to blow on the tarantula—that it wasn't respectful of it.

So, he tapped while alte
ating statements like:nn *the strength of the spider had really scared and surprised menn * it wasn't a good idea to blow on a tarantula next time I'll be more respectful of a spider

This brought his emotional intensity level down to a zero. The next time I saw Daniel, which was several months later, he said that he didn't feel scared of spiders, and that when he thought of them that he felt calm, and that he hadn't blown on any tarantulas lately.