I have no phobia of spiders and bugs. They can walk on me if they want to, I don't care. But I have a phobia about crushing bugs. I never kill them, and I ask people not to kill bugs when I am around. When I spot one in our flat, I carefully capture it, and let it go outside. It is not that I care for them this much, but I don't want them to lose their tiny legs and other body parts. Maybe the most irrational thing about my phobia is that I love eating shrimp. Probably it would be trivial to treat my phobia with some ad hoc desensitization session, but it doesn't affect my quality of life at all, so I am fine with it.
This sounds a lot like signalling of some kind, like motherliness of capability of compassion or the like.
Okay, so for several years, I've been doing a fairly good job of excising out most of my irrational beliefs and fears.
The one that remains, however, is my fear of bugs and spiders. I'll SCREAM if I see one, dead or alive. And if there's one in my food, then I'm going to throw the entire plate out.
Is it common for LWers to have irrational reactions to bugs and spiders?
I know that there is "desensitization therapy", as highlighted by a Scientific American Frontiers episode a decade ago (where gradual exposure to the stimulus - a spider) - can desensitize a person with arachnophobia over time. But this can really only happen in controlled settings. In uncontrolled settings, such interaction can give you nightmares.