Are YOU scared of spiders? A cure for arachnophobia and other commons fears are ‘just a heartbeat away’

• Common phobias, such as a fear of arachnids, could be tempered by timing
• University of Sussex researchers found syncing to the body’s rhythms can help 
• Current treatment is often prolonged and involves a graded exposure to stimuli

If you’re scared of spiders, you’re definitely not alone.

But scientists now claim a cure for arachnophobia is ‘just a heartbeat away’.

Researchers discovered exposing people to their fears reduces their anxiety – if it’s timed with the exact beat of their hearts.

Sussex University experts, behind the study, also believe their findings could apply to other common phobias. 

Face your fears: Current therapies are based on directly confronting the feared stimulus, which can cause young people to experience significant emotional distress

The findings, published in the Psychosomatic Medicine journal, could form the basis of a new treatment for irrational fears.

Current treatment is often prolonged and involves a graded exposure to stimuli, according to the NHS.

But the new research shows they can be treated more effectively by linking computerised therapy to the patients’ own bodily rhythms. 

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Professor Hugo Critchley, chair of psychiatry at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) and principle investigator, said: ‘Many of us have phobias of one kind or another – it could be spiders, or clowns or even types of food. 

‘Treatment usually involves exposing the person to their fear, but this can take a long time. 

‘Our work shows that how we respond to our fears can depend on whether we see them at the time our heart beats, or between heartbeats. 

New treatment? Common phobias, such as a fear of arachnids, could be tempered by timing

‘You could say we’re within a heartbeat of helping people beat their phobias.’ 

The same researchers had previously revealed how bodily arousal signals that occur with each individual heartbeat can change the emotional impact of potential threats.

For example, when experienced during a heartbeat, they can appear greater.

In this proof-of-concept clinical trial, a computerised exposure therapy for spider phobia was combined with online measurements of heartbeats.

For one group of patients, pictures of spiders were presented in-time with heartbeats.

While for another patient group, pictures of spiders were presented in-between heartbeats.

A third control group saw spiders randomly in the therapy sessions.

Although there was some improvement among all patients, individuals exposed to spiders in-time with their own heartbeats showed a greater reductions in self-reported fear of spiders, anxiety levels and their physiological responses to spiders.

These improvements were also shown to depend on differences in how well an individual patient can accurately feel their own heart beating in their chest, suggesting a further way of tailoring the treatment to benefit each patient.

IS FEAR OF SPIDERS IN OUR DNA? 

Research in 2015 claimed that a fear of spiders is a survival trait written into our DNA.

Dating back hundreds of thousands of years, the instinct to avoid arachnids developed as an evolutionary response to a dangerous threat, the academics suggested.

It could mean that arachnophobia, one of the most crippling of phobias, represents a finely tuned survival instinct.

And it could date back to early human evolution in Africa, where spiders with very strong venom have existed millions of years ago.

Study leader Joshua New, of Columbia University in New York, said: ‘A number of spider species with potent, vertebrate specific venoms populated Africa long before hominoids and have co-existed there for tens of millions of years.

‘Humans were at perennial, unpredictable and significant risk of encountering highly venomous spiders in their ancestral environments.’

  

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