REFLECTIVE JOURNAL ENTRIES: CHILD SPIDER PHOBIA WITH SECONDARY GAIN

From Tracy Jones, with thanks

I had a child client who presented with a phobia of spiders. Her mother told me how she would scream hysterically if she spotted a spider, refusing to go to bed on the evening until she had seen that the spider had been completely removed from the house. The child also reported that she had nightmares about spiders walking over her face while she slept at night.

I used a heavy hand light hand induction and used language appropriate to her age. I used the fast phobia cure technique and found that the results were immediately very good. Her mother reported that she slept well that night and the next day there was a spider in the house, she shouted for her dad to get it out but rather than being hysterical, she was calm, watching her father remove the spider. She told her mum that she still didn’t like spiders but her mother told me that the difference in her behaviour around spiders was much more like she just didn’t like them rather than being terrified as she appeared before.

However, after a couple of months the problem returned. After discussion it became clear to me that I had not spotted and addressed secondary gain. The child told me that she became very scared of spiders again when there was a spider at school and her friends had all been screaming and running away from it. After some gentle questioning, it seems that she had felt that she no longer fitted in with her friends as most of them had a spider phobia!

She told me how they all tell each other stories about dangerous spiders and when they see one at school they all look after each other.

Having heard this I feel that in order to continue to fit in with her friends, the unconscious decided that having the spider phobia was a good way to ensure the friendships remained strong and without it there was danger of her losing the friendships if she no longer conformed to the normal. This made me realise the importance of identifying and addressing secondary gain in all instances, maybe something I’d overlooked as this was a child client.