I BELIEVE this is the third time I’ve been featured on this very page, harping on about my spider phobia. But this time, dear readers, it’s different.

Yes, I have finally conquered my irrational (and ridiculous) fear.

For those readers who don’t remember, Steve Cohen featured me in his Editor’s Chair column a year ago when I made a show of myself in his office after I spotted a spider hanging above my head.

A few months later I wrote my own article for the paper about arachnophobia and it took me by surprise when a flurry of emails of solidarity – plus offers of help – arrived.

One such offer came from Dawn Lankester who offered to use Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) – and I signed up there and then.

Dawn, a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and Accredited Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist, plus a Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy at Bucks New University, invited me to meet her for treatment at her office in Great Missenden.

We started by discussing exactly what made me feel scared. I told her even the top of a tomato has made me jump before, so there was probably no hope for me.

We wrote down all the scenarios: handling a toy spider, seeing a photo of a spider, viewing a video of a spider, touching a dead spider… then touching a real spider – eek!

We rated them from one to ten, to outline how scared I would be. I gave them all high ratings, although the ‘touching’ were definite tens.

CBT is generally used to help people change how they think and act, and thus I was asked to describe how I felt when she brought out a toy spider. My heart raced and she told me to breathe deeply, like a balloon being inflated and deflated.

I started feeling a bit daft that I had to go through all this rigmarole but she told me phobias came in many guises – indeed the most common are fears of being sick, and of baked beans – and I didn’t feel quite so silly.

Dawn patiently waited for me to move closer to the toy spider and I kept breathing deeply until I worked up enough courage to touch it.

When I was certain the plastic shape wouldn’t attack me, we moved on to the photos. We whizzed through the photos and the video, came across a little stumbling block with the dead spider, but we had done well. I rated them all for a second time, on how I felt out of ten and most were just a ‘one’.

Dawn handed me the offending items to keep on my desk at work (including the dead spider in a cup, which my colleagues found quite amusing) and she told me to keep looking at them and prodding them. She also asked me to use the photos as a mat to eat my lunch off to get over the sickness.

Easy!

Then the big day came to meet a live spider and, although it was a small one, it took me around a whole hour session to let it crawl on my hand. It was a Eureka! moment.

But it was time to up the ante.

Widmer Feeds in Lacey Green came to the rescue as they allowed Dawn and I to visit their Chilean Rose Tarantula. And my, was it big!

Chris Impey from the store had the patience of a saint as he described the species.

I worked up to gently touching the spider on her back and finally summed up the courage to hold her. Chris put the tarantula’s front two legs on my hand to make sure I didn’t freak out (and accidentally throw her at the ceiling) and he finally sat her in my palm. It was incredible, but she felt lovely – warm and furry – and didn’t move an inch, which was a great relief.

When Chris tried to take her back, she didn’t want to move and I surprised myself when I felt a bit sad when she’d gone.

I’m not sure anyone can totally get over their fear of spiders and say they actually LIKE them. House spiders particularly still make me anxious with their speed and gait, but I feel I can certainly tolerate them now and I no longer walk into a room actively looking for them.

On the contrary, I have developed a soft spot for tarantulas.

Indeed I got back from my encounter and asked my husband if he fancied a new pet?