So I was just about to lay down in bed to watch TV, when I saw a spider—a big one—on the wall next to my bed.
This was just eight days after Hurricane Helene destroyed my city; eight very stressful days without power, wifi, cell service, or running water. After eight days without access to any of my normal creature comforts or coping mechanisms, my nervous system was a hot mess. But our power had finally just come back on, and all I wanted to do was lay in bed, zone out with Netflix, and relax… when out of the corner of my eye, I saw this fat black spider skittering up the wall.
Now, when I’m alone and find spiders in the house I generally take a “just squish them” approach, but my wildlife-loving partner Drew prefers a catch-and-release method, so I called out to him to please go grab a “spider cup” and come relocate this spider outdoors.
I should probably mention here that I used to suffer from debilitating arachnophobia.
As a kid, something about spiders just set off a bizarrely intense primal fear response in my body. It’s not that I ever thought they were going to hurt me. Like, I’ve never been afraid a spider would bite me or anything like that, I just… don’t like the way they move. I don’t know, to be honest, but this is the thing about phobias: they’re not rational.
So despite being consciously aware that spiders aren’t dangerous, and that my fear response to them wasn’t rational or appropriate, I would still get so overcome with panic when I spotted one (or more accurately: when I spotted one and then it disappeared, which means it could be anywhere), that I had to have my mom come pick me up from a sleepover on multiple occasions, because my friend’s parents didn’t know what to do with a completely hysterical child.
Even as a kid I was always “working on” my phobia, trying to be brave and “take my power back” (as my mom used to say whenever we were scared), and sometimes I found I could control it enough to at least not look like a person with a debilitating and irrational fear of spiders.

Little me all cute and happy (cuz there were no spiders around lol)
Once, when I was around ten or eleven, I even managed to calmly scoop up a spider that was upsetting my sensitive and anxious baby brother, and carry it outside with my bare hands. I took my responsibility as an older sibling very seriously, and I knew that if my brother saw me go to pieces over a spider, there was a pretty high chance of accidentally transmitting my phobia to him, and I couldn’t let that happen.
Moments like that always made me feel proud and hopeful, like maybe I was finally getting over my fear, and the reign of spider tyranny was over! And sometimes I was ok for a while. Sometimes I not only acted like a “normal person” around spiders, but I actually kind of felt like one.
But the phobia always came back eventually.
In high school, during one of my attempts to “get over” my fear, I let a spider live on the ceiling of my bedroom, in the corner, for months. Mind you, I didn’t go into what I had come to think of as “the spider’s half of the bedroom” for that whole entire time, but I think I was doing a sort of intuitive exposure therapy thing, because every time I entered the room I would immediately look to see if it was still there, and then try to consciously relax my body as I talked myself through a series of familiar talking points, like:
“Spiders are harmless, and actually beneficial, because they keep the house free of bugs and flies!”
“I’m a lot bigger than the spider, so it’s probably more scared of me than I am of it.”
“Spiders are fascinating, and even kind of beautiful!”
My bedroom spider mostly just stayed in its own little corner, which I took as a sign of mutual respect and agreement to be cool, but I remember spending hours one night with the lights on, because it was crawling around the ceiling. (I couldn’t sleep, obviously, because I needed to keep an eye on it and make sure it didn’t pull a disappearing act… keep your enemies close, and all that.)
One day I proudly told my older brother (who did not take his older sibling responsibility to heart the same way I did, and was teasing me about my fear) that actually I had been cohabitating with a spider for months, so clearly I wasn’t scared of them after all! He immediately went into my room for proof of my new roommate, and told me that he saw an egg sac on its back, so my room was probably going to be filled with hundreds of baby spiders soon.
I lost my fucking mind. (Literally. I was crying so hard when I tried to tell my dad about it that he assumed I had sustained a serious injury, and started freaking out and trying to figure out what was broken.)
None of my attempts to overcome arachnophobia ever worked, until I spent a few weeks in the Peruvian jungle doing a handful of Ayahuasca ceremonies (Ayahuasca is an indigenous plant medicine used for deep inner healing work) for my thirtieth birthday.
The ceremonies took place in an open-air building called a “Maloca,” which is a round thatched roof structure with mosquito netting to keep the bugs out. And while I lay on the mat and prepared to trip my face off and heal my inner child or whatever, I remember looking out at the netting and seeing dozens of spiders the size of my hand.
Terrified of what Ayahuasca and arachnophobia might do to me if they teamed up, I immediately launched into a desperate bargaining process with my brain.
“Please brain,” I pleaded. “Please don’t bring spiders into this experience. I promise to bravely face all of my other fears and traumas, but just please please please… just anything but spiders.”
My brain didn’t listen, of course.
People say ayahuasca gives you the experience you need, rather than the experience you want, and that was definitely true for me. As the plant medicine hallucinations started kicking in during my final ceremony, I was ushered into another dimension by (you guessed it!) fucking spiders.
These weren’t scary spiders, though; they were actually incredibly warm, sweet, happy, and loving. They extended so much kindness and empathy to me, telling me that they knew all about my fear, and they were deeply sorry for having caused me so much distress all those years. They explained that my phobia was actually just a big misunderstanding, because they couldn’t speak my language to explain things, but that all this time they actually loved me.
The spiders and I laughed together about how silly the whole thing was. It was the deep, healing laughter of best friends, reveling in the sheer pleasure of finally being wholly connected, understood, and accepted. Then the spiders stayed with me for the rest of the experience, gently guiding me where I needed to go, and providing me with an unconditional source of strength, comfort, and love.
I hadn’t had an arachnophobic episode since that night.
My relationship with spiders has gone up and down, ranging from moments of the warm and fuzzy feeling I had in Peru to feelings of alarm, anxiety, or disgust, depending on the situation. It’s probably fair to say I still have a bit of an aversion to spiders, but for almost eight years I hadn’t felt anything even remotely close to my old phobia until the other night.

A cute little spider-themed sourdough I made recently.
So back to that moment in my bedroom…
I was staring intently at the spider on the wall, my whole body tense, waiting for my partner to come capture it in his “spider cup.” I was standing up, although I didn’t remember getting out of bed, and telling my partner to hurry, because it’s moving! I was a bit surprised by the intensity of my reaction, but after such a stressful week I was just desperate to fully let go and relax, and I knew I couldn’t do that with a spider around.
Drew, who had clearly been rushing due to the urgency in my voice, hurried into the bedroom with an unopened piece of mail, instead of a spider cup.
This did not seem like a good or safe plan to me, since my “spidey senses” (lol) were telling me that a crafty little spider could easily escape from a flat piece of mail. Plus, I could tell from my partner’s body language (which was just a bit too casual and relaxed) that he was completely unaware of what a high-stakes situation he was in.
For context, the spider was positioned on the wall directly above a pile of my most precious day-to-day stuff. My favorite hoodie, which was still clean. My backpack, which I had been using to transfer my belongings back and forth from my mom’s house, where we had to drive every couple of days to take a shower because we didn’t have running water. My phone charger and vitamin bottles.
This was my pile of sacred and essential comfort stuff. And while I feel like this is stating the obvious, comfort stuff should never be tainted by spiders.
I anxiously watched Drew chase the spider around the wall for a few seconds (or maybe it was minutes, or hours), and then I suddenly realized a few very important things in rapid succession:
I’ve never expressed the full intensity of my past arachnophobia to my partner, so he has absolutely no idea the level of panic I’m capable of.
My nervous system is so strung out right now that if the spider falls into my piles of comfort stuff and disappears, I will lose my fucking mind.
That spider is going to fall.
If I could have made words come out of my mouth, I would have said all this. I would have been all calm and chill, and said something like “hey Drew, I’ve probably never made it clear what a big deal spiders used to be to me, and given the stress of the last week, I don’t think I have the resilience to deal with it if that spider falls, so please be careful and don’t let that happen.”
Instead, I watched as Drew scooped the spider up, and I watched as the spider fell, escaping into my pile of sacred stuff and disappearing forever.
My partner looked through my stuff for a while, sort of half-heartedly picking up items of clothing and shaking out my backpack, but the jig was up, and the spider was gone. Drew– who had no idea what was going on inside my brain and body– eventually gave up and left with assurances that the problem was resolved, and the spider wouldn’t come back to bother me.
For about twenty minutes I sat completely frozen on my bed, arms wrapped around myself, knees against my chest, eyes glued to the spot where the spider had disappeared, primal panic overtaking my body. By the time I could get myself to “call out” to Drew (I’m putting that in parentheses because I couldn’t form words, so it was actually just a series of guttural noises), I was shaking so violently that I thought I was going to pull a muscle.
Drew came into the room again and was… alarmed.
I’ve had panic attacks in front of him before, but this was something different, and he’d never seen me like that. The next half hour is a panic-fog blur, but when I could eventually choke out the words “arachnophobia… attack,” he understood the assignment, and handled it beautifully.
He talked about how the spider was probably just trying to rest and relax after the hurricane too, just like me! He helped me stand up, and did a little panic-attack slow-dance shuffle thing to help me get unfrozen. He reminded me that despite this reaction, the spiders and I still have a special understanding, and he assured me that the spider was probably feeling very guilty and embarrassed for having upset me so much.
When it was over, it was over. The experience was shocking (to both of us), but maybe it shouldn’t have been, because this is just how it goes sometimes. We can heal and move forward, but when shit really hits the fan— when stress levels get really high, and our coping strategies get taken away—some of that old stuff can just… come back.
It doesn’t mean we’ve relapsed, and it doesn’t mean we’ve failed. It just means we are way the fuck outside our “window of tolerance,” and that, at least in this one moment, we are not ok.
Healing is nonlinear, and, if I’m being totally honest, even a bit nonsensical.
My arachnophobia was never rational, so it makes a certain kind of sense that the experience that helped me finally overcome it wasn’t rational, either. It was whimsical, magical, and metaphorical; making a spiritual truce with spiders is absurd and ridiculous and it wouldn’t work for everyone, but it’s exactly what I needed.
But after eight days of crisis, where my stress levels were pushed past their breaking point, it also makes sense that an old phobia would resurface for a minute, and throw a fucking tantrum.
Interestingly, when I told this story to my therapist, she reflected that spiders might be a bit of a “spiritual guide” as it were, and that maybe they have another lesson to teach me, all these years later. I’d been frustrated by finding spider after spider inside the house over the last few weeks, and assuming it was because the storm ruined their homes.
But given the choice between seeing spiders as unwelcome hurricane refugees, or compassionate spiritual guides, I know which one I prefer… and I’ve found myself wanting to explore my unwilling-but-unavoidable connection to spiders through art (and bread design, lol) ever since.
Sending you a big hug today,
Jessi

My painting of a happy spider showing off its smile.
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