by Giselle La Brec
Since childhood, I’ve had a phobia of snakes. My first memory of being afraid of them was when I saw a wooden toy snake at a store. Fast forward to high school, and we did a project in biology where my teacher put a bunch of images of snakes on the board. My best friend told me when it was safe to look at the board again because I couldn’t look at pictures of them. When I was in California on vacation, someone was holding a beige snake on the street. I looked to my right and saw it right as we were passing by. I started to panic; my breathing changed, and I may have had tears in my eyes.
Another time when I went to a pet store, I specifically asked where the snakes were so I could avoid that section at all costs. Does this sound silly and excessive? Yes, but I didn’t want to take any chances. More recently, when I saw some snakes on books at the library, I slowly was able to keep looking at the picture and I was fine. That doesn’t sound like a lot of progress, but the fact that I could look at it without turning away was huge.
Additionally, this semester in one of the classes I took, we had to learn how to treat snake bites. When I saw there was a video lecture for it, I emailed the professor and asked her if they showed any snakes. If they did, I asked what time they were in the video so I could look away. She told me what times to skip, and she sent me an article to read instead. It’s important to mention that she found an article that had no pictures of them, for which I was extremely grateful.
There are so many other phobias that people can have besides snakes, like spiders, heights, drowning, and enclosed spaces. According to Verywell Health, one recommendation to help conquer a phobia is to “desensitize yourself.” This is when you take small steps to expose yourself to your phobia, so it doesn’t have as much of an impact on you.
Although I’ve made a lot of progress, I think I should take some more small steps, so my phobia doesn’t have such a big impact on me. I also don’t want to go to extremes because that will most likely have the opposite effect on me and would potentially cause me more fear. If you know someone who has a phobia, be respectful because it’s not something we want or choose. If I could choose to not be afraid of snakes, I would, but unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
