This has helped me stamp out the last vestiges of my arachnophobia. It's a window with a realistically moving spider that follows your cursors. The reason it helped me is because I knew I could close the window with a single click at any time and the fact that I had complete control over its movement. This amount of control gave me enough self confidence to deal with real life spiders.
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.