🔗 Share this article

I am someone who believes that it is never too late to change. I believe you truly can instruct a veteran learner, on the condition that the experienced individual is receptive and eager for knowledge. Provided that the person is ready to confess when it was mistaken, and endeavor to transform into a better dog.

Alright, I confess, I am that seasoned creature. And the trick I am trying to learn, although I am decrepit? It is an significant challenge, an issue I have struggled with, repeatedly, for my all my days. I have been trying … to become less scared of those large arachnids. My regrets to all the remaining arachnid species that exist; I have to be pragmatic about my capacity for development as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is large, in charge, and the one I encounter most often. This includes a trio of instances in the recent past. In my own living space. I'm not visible to you, but I'm grimacing at the very thought as I type.

I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “enthusiast” status, but my project has been at least attaining a baseline of normalcy about them.

I have been terrified of spiders dating back to my youth (in contrast to other children who adore them). Growing up, I had ample brothers around to guarantee I never had to engage with any myself, but I still freaked out if one was clearly in the same room as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family still asleep, and attempting to manage a spider that had crawled on to the lounge-room wall. I “dealt” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, almost into the next room (for fear that it chased me), and emptying a significant portion of pesticide toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it managed to annoy and disturb everyone in my house.

In my adult life, whomever I was in a relationship with or sharing a home with was, as a matter of course, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with dealing with it, while I produced frightened noises 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 erase the memory of its presence before I had to enter again.

Not long ago, I visited a friend’s house where there was a notably big huntsman who resided within the casement, for the most part lingering. In order to be less scared of it, I imagined the spider as a her, a gal, part of the group, just lounging in the sun and overhearing us gab. It sounds extremely dumb, but it worked (a little bit). Alternatively, actively deciding to become less phobic did the trick.

Whatever the case, I’ve tried to keep it up. I contemplate all the logical reasons not to be scared. I am aware huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I recognize they consume things like insect pests (my mortal enemies). I am cognizant they are one of the world's exquisite, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to walk like that. They propel themselves in the deeply alarming and borderline immoral way conceivable. The vision of their numerous appendages propelling them at that alarming velocity causes my caveman brain to enter panic mode. They ostensibly only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I am convinced that triples when they are in motion.

Yet it is no fault of their own that they have frightening appendages, and they have just as much right to be where I am – possibly a greater claim. I have discovered that taking the steps of making an effort to avoid have a visceral panic reaction and run away when I see one, trying to remain still and breathing, and intentionally reflecting about their positive qualities, has begun to yield results.

Simply due to the reality that they are fuzzy entities that scuttle about extremely quickly in a way that invades my dreams, does not justify they warrant my loathing, or my shrieks of terror. I can admit when fear has clouded my judgment and fueled by unfounded fear. I doubt I’ll ever reach the “catching one in a Tupperware container and taking it outside” phase, but you never know. Some life is left for this seasoned learner yet.