🔗 Share this article

I maintain the conviction that it is always possible to transform. I believe you truly can teach an old dog new tricks, on the condition that the experienced individual is open-minded and willing to learn. As long as the person is prepared to acknowledge when it was in error, and work to become a improved version.

OK yes, I am the old dog. And the skill I am attempting to master, despite the fact that I am set in my ways? It is an major undertaking, something I have struggled with, repeatedly, for my all my days. I have been trying … to become less scared of the common huntsman. Apologies to all the other spiders that exist; I have to be pragmatic about my potential for change as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is imposing, in charge, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. Including three times in the last week. Inside my home. I'm not visible to you, but I’m shaking my head and grimacing as I type.

I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “fan” status, but I’ve been working on at least attaining a standard level of composure about them.

An intense phobia regarding spiders from my earliest years (in contrast to other children who adore them). During my childhood, I had ample brothers around to make sure I never had to engage with any myself, but I still became hysterical if one was clearly in the general area as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family unconscious, and facing the ordeal of a spider that had ascended the family room partition. I “managed” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, nearly crossing the threshold (lest it ran after me), and discharging half a bottle of pesticide toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it managed to annoy and annoy everyone in my house.

As I got older, whoever I was dating or cohabiting with was, automatically, the least afraid of spiders between us, and therefore tasked with handling the situation, while I made whimpers of distress and fled the scene. If I was on my own, my method was simply to exit the space, plunge the room into darkness and try to ignore its presence before I had to return.

Not long ago, I visited a companion's home where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who lived in the sill, primarily hanging out. As a means to be less fearful, I conceptualized the spider as a her, a one of the girls, part of the group, just lounging in the sun and overhearing us gab. It sounds rather silly, but it was effective (a little bit). Put another way, actively deciding to become less scared worked.

Be that as it may, I've endeavored to maintain this practice. I contemplate all the logical reasons not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I understand they prey upon things like buzzing nuisances (the bane of my existence). I am cognizant they are one of nature’s beautiful, benign creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to move like that. They move in the most terrifying and somehow offensive way imaginable. The appearance of their multiple limbs transporting them at that frightening pace induces my primordial instincts to enter panic mode. They ostensibly only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I am convinced that multiplies when they get going.

Yet it cannot be blamed on them that they have scary legs, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – possibly a greater claim. My experience has shown that taking the steps of working to prevent immediately exit my own skin and run away when I see one, trying to remain composed and breathing steadily, and consciously focusing about their beneficial attributes, has begun to yield results.

The mere fact that they are furry beings that dart around at an alarming rate in a way that haunts my sleep, is no reason for they warrant my loathing, or my girly screams. It is possible to acknowledge when fear has clouded my judgment and fueled by unfounded fear. I doubt I’ll ever make it to the “scooping one into plasticware and escorting it to the garden” phase, but one can't be sure. A bit of time remains for this veteran of life yet.