Dreams are helping me to face my fears. If I can face my fears in dreams or in my dream homework, then maybe I can do it in my waking life. This theory got tested this morning as I woke up. As I opened my eyes I saw something tiny and dark moving above me. As my eyes focused in, I could see a spider dropping down towards the bed. Spiders have always scared me. It is a common fear for sure but its still a fear. A big one for me. The house I grew up in backed up to woods and so we always had plenty of them around. The biggest, scariest ones were in our basement. I would always hesitate when Mom would ask me to go get something out of our freezer down there. I’d slowly creep down the concrete stairs looking right and left, all the time feeling terrified that I would see one of those huge black spiders. Whenever I did see one, I would let out a scream and run. My parents would try to reassure me saying that the spider was more afraid of me than I was of it. Rationality had nothing to do with this. This was pure fear without reason. The fear generalized to any spider, no matter what size or color.

My fear got handed down to my daughter Julia. When she was about three, we were coming down the stairs together. Sitting on the floor at the bottom of the stairs was one of those big, black, huge spiders. I screamed just like I used to as a kid. I climbed over the banister and lifted Julia to safety. Unfortunately, what I did in that moment was to pass my fear on to Julia. From that day onward, she has had the spider fear as well.

In the “fear turns to excitement” dream, I noticed an interesting spider. Such a small detail of the dream, but so significant to me. With the animus near by I was able to look at the spider without fear. That is what I thought of as I saw the spider on its web coming closer to me this morning. I watched in interest. Yes, my heart was beating faster and I was on the edge of fear. But it was ok. As I watched, it was like the spider was playing with me. Moving up and down on its web like a show. I laughed out loud at it and then watched as it climbed back up and walked on the ceiling over to the other side of the room. It may seem like kind of a silly example, but for me this is big. If I can laugh at a spider coming towards me on its web, who knows what fear I can face.