Today, my son was crying and refusing to sleep in his room because a spider ran along the wall, and it's now hiding somewhere. He’s 19. FML
Collection
Fall
Dead leaves, the first cold of the season and an umbrella flipped inside out: fall, the season of grace.
Today, my 18 year old son asked me to check if there were any monsters under his bed. FML
Today, I had to drive 40-odd miles to my grown-ass son's house to kill a large spider on the wall. It had him trapped in his bedroom because his wife had already gone to work. How did I ever raise such a wuss? FML
Today, my son wanted to be Spiderman. He found the biggest spider he could outside and let it bite his hand. He's staying overnight in the hospital. FML
Today, my son nearly burned the house down with a lighter and an aerosol. His excuse? He was killing a massive spider carrying an egg sack. My wife hates spiders so she refuses to punish him and gave him £20. But sure, dear old Dad will spend money replacing the wallpaper and curtains, no problem. FML
Today, my son told me he was afraid of monsters under his bed. When I poked my head under to show him nothing was there, the family cat sprang out and clawed me in the face. Now I have a gash on my chin, and my son refuses to go anywhere near his bed. FML
Today, I was reaching into the floor vent in my toddler's room to retrieve some toys she'd dropped. What I found instead was a clump of large dead spiders. FML
Today, I was fined because my son pushed the alarm button in the elevator. Why? There was a spider in there. FML
Today, I walked into my son's room only to be attacked by a swarm of flies. I'm afraid to go back in there. FML
Today, knowing that I have severe arachnophobia, my brother brought over his friend's tarantula. One hour later, the spider got loose. It's been 5 hours and I'm afraid to go to sleep. FML
Today, I spotted a huge spider in my bedroom. I freaked out at first, but I managed to confront my arachnophobia and killed it with a book. I was ecstatic and went to tell my boyfriend. By the time I returned to my room, the "dead" spider had vanished. Now I'm too scared to sleep. FML
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Top comments
julfunky 29
Seems like a completely legitimate reason.
A Frenchy in Eire 31
So? A phobia is a phobia. You cannot control them, and people of all ages and, genders and sizes can have them.
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Comments (18)
bluhbluhbluh 14
can you really blame him though?
Eric Henning 7
Sounds like a perfect way for you to get him our of the house... just put w bunch of spiders in his room and tell him to get an apartment lol
BigSissy 14
Once I saw a big black spider run underneath the cushions on my couch. I gave away the couch that very day. I knew I could not relax if I sat on it again.
Sara Niemantsverdriet 12
I'm 31 and would do the same thing, so yeah.... I can't even look at photos or videos of them. Which I know is really stupid when I think about it later, but I see them and my body just goes into a panic mode I can't control.
Two liter of coke 8
That's a fine reason
KittyMack 13
Why mention his age, do you think mental illnesses only occur in children and magically evaporate at adulthood's onset? I had an extreme phobia for years & did a lot of reading. A phobia's a "pressure relief valve" to vent anxieties the person is unable to vent in the proper way. One case study involved iirc a cartographer or some other early European explorer of North America, who had a terror of honey. Since he refused to show fear at work he bottled it up and it had to come out somewhere. My own phobia was likely due to verbally abusive parents. Being unable to fight back or leave, as a minor, I had to repress my misery, and it came out as phobic attacks. So (assuming you aren't the problem, OP) if you want him to improve, help him face whatever's making him stressed. After addressing the underlying cause, the phobia will likely remain, due to, well, habit is too condescending a term. It's kind of like how a musician's hands can play a well rehearsed song without their mind engaged- repetition trains the body to follow a certain procedure. So the second part of getting cured is retraining his body to not gush adrenaline upon seeing a spider. Exposure therapy is what worked for me but I beg you, do not try some harebrained version of it! Locking a claustrophobe in a coffin overnight is NOT exposure therapy, nor is dumping spiders onto an arachnophobe or throwing someone in a lake who has a terror of drowning. That shit just worsens the phobia, maybe adds PTSD. Proper exposure therapy is done in a safe, supportive environment, with the phobic in control of how far they push their limits. It should never be scary. In my case, due to difficulty finding a useful shrink, I got desensitized with a non-shrink. A geek in love with the thing I feared. His enthusiasm for the topic helped create a positive energy for the sessions that a shrink just could not have offered. It was great. Six weekly sessions of one hour was all it took! I wish I'd done it sooner!