This Is Not a Story About Spiders

Sometimes it’s a story about snakes, or salamanders, or something else, but today it’s a story about spiders. 

I love spiders. Genuinely. I love what they do for the world, I love the beautiful things they create, and I love that they keep undesirable critters out of my home. 

I know that most of them are just going about their little spider lives doing little spider things, but occasionally, a spider might lunge at me and do some serious harm. 

Like most women, and a lot of men, I’ve had some bad experiences with spiders in the past. 

I am also decidedly not an arachnologist, and so I am understandably cautious with all spiders. I don’t always know the difference between a shy, benevolent wolf spider and a brown recluse spider that could cause me to lose a limb, or worse. 

Occasionally, I’ll get used to a spider being around. It seems like it’s doing its little spider things, living its little spider life, and generally not bothering me, so I let my guard down. 

But then one day recently, at work, on an important day, an innocuous little spider lunged at me, seemingly unprovoked. 

It did not bite me. It did not even touch me. But it lunged. While I was alone. And it was blocking my only exit. And it surprised me. 

Our human brains and nervous systems are incredible evolutionary vehicles. They allow us to feel and think and rationalize the world around us, including ourselves. That’s amazing! They also have a tripwire for emergency situations. 

Our human brains have a cute little lizard section that evolved first, allowing us to reach safety, find resources, and breed. It determines the priority in the moment based on the information it has from our five senses. How cool. Over (a lot of) time, our human brains developed their cute little mammalian sections, which allow us to do the higher-functioning things like rationalize, reason, and respond to situations thoughtfully. 

Let’s be generous and say the mammalian brain is online for most of us, most of the time. However, when we get stressed, startled, or scared, the reptilian brain snaps to the forefront and overrides anything the little mammalian brain might try to say. 

When we live in chronic stress, have active trauma in our systems, and/or are highly sensitive, that reptilian brain tends to be extra protective. 

When that spider lunged at me, my reptilian brain snapped into place to protect me. I was unable to make helpful sentences, unable to explain why I was crying and could not stop, and unable to have a conversation with the spider about how its actions impacted me. 

I felt embarrassed. I felt exposed. I felt a little bit crazy, or at least scared that other people would think I was so. 

I also felt a lot of shame for being the sensitive one. Again.

It took days for me to identify what actually happened: the spider scared me. 

It took even longer to mull over what to do next. Do I tell the spider it scared me? Will it even care? Will it believe me? Do I refuse to be in the same room as the spider again, since trust has been breached? Do I pretend nothing happened? Do I stop trusting all spiders? Do I get angry at the first spider that ever lunged at me?

I’m still in the inquiry. But I do wish that spiders understood the impact they have. I know it’s usually not their fault, that they’re usually just living their little spider lives and doing little spider things. 

But I do wish they understood that how they act – especially when alone with a woman, especially when she’s physically small, especially when they’re blocking the exit, especially when they do something surprising – has an impact. It might even create a response that they don’t understand. 

I hope that someday we can have open conversations like this with the sweet little spiders in our lives. I hope we can create more understanding, connection, and appreciation between those spiders and me.