I had 2 options; burn the house down or move to another room

Fear, it's a scary one isn't it.

An emotion few of us like to give any time to.

Whilst some of us will share similar fears, others will have new, 'unusual', uncommon fears.

Some will be irrational. Some will have reason.

My reason for writing this article today is this;

Last week, I was still awake at 1.30am, my brain was in over drive from having a relatively mentally active day (as mentally active as one can get in lockdown). I had been in bed chatting on Facetime to my boyfriend for several hours when I suddenly spotted a spider running along the ceiling opposite the bed.

Spiders, an irrational fear?

Spiders are my 'irrational' fear. Some spiders are worse than others. The bigger and quicker they are, the worse my fear gets. Usually any spider that I find in the house, sees it's end via the vacuum. I don't like to kill things, but spiders I'm afraid just have to go. It's either me, or them.

Since my emergency surgery 2 weeks ago, I have been in lockdown at my parents house so I can be looked after. And I was feeling proud of myself recently for ignoring a rather large but spindly spider that was residing on the ceiling of my bedroom. He disappeared some days and then came back. I even named him George (they say give your fear a name). It took a lot of courage for me to allow him to stay there. But he didn’t move fast and he was skinny so he didn't scare me too much. He has however been AWOL for a while, I'm hoping some spiders hibernate...

The visitor last week on the other hand was moving quickly and was on the larger side. As it was 1.30am in the morning and my parents were asleep, the hoover wasn't possible. I decided he was instead going to get the shoe.

To cut a long story short. I climbed on the bed to reach the ceiling, I hit the spider, the spider jumped off the wall towards my face, I fell off the bed and woke the whole house up, the spider disappeared, I found a leg, I turned the bedroom upside down looking for it, couldn't find it and decided I only had 2 options; burn the house down, or move to a different room. I didn't burn the house down.

I then spent the next 1.5hrs wide awake, googling whether spiders die if their legs fall off. I eventually fell asleep at 3am.

My boyfriend stayed on Facetime the whole time, and at one point he said to me "why are you freaking out, you know it can't hurt you". My reply was that I knew the spider couldn't hurt me but they still frightened me. Perhaps it was the way it looked, maybe how fast it runs, or the thought of it on my skin.

But it got me thinking.

Why do we get scared of things that we know can't hurt us?

Right now, mid pandemic we have seen all sorts of behaviours from dismissal, to acceptance, panic buying to awareness of needs, fear for our families, fear for ourselves, ultimately fear of a virus we cannot see but we know COULD be deadly.

In the midst of all of this, many of us have been scared of losing our jobs, scared we won't be able to pay our bills, scared we may lose our homes - I have had all of these fears. And for someone with anxiety, this has been incredibly hard to manage.

I am scared of things that haven't happened yet. I am scared of things that may not even happen.

With fear, comes courage.

I have come to accept that there are things that I no longer control, so I shouldn't allow fear to be a valid emotion for these. I should instead have the courage to manage the things I can control.

Like job hunting. Or writing. Or learning.

All these things give me a distraction, but also allow me to develop and benefit. Turning fear into a positive.

If I can land a job at the end of this it will mean I never needed to have fear about losing my house or not paying my bills. It was worry that never needed to happen.

I have told myself I only need to be worried about these things once my money starts to run out, but even then I will always have options, they may just be a different path to what I had planned. I will not lose my home, and I will always pay my bills.

What fears do you have that you have been able to rationalise? What are your coping mechanisms? Do you have any fears that really take over your life?

I believe we can always learn from others, so if you have overcome a fear, please do let me know.