🔗 Share this article

I maintain the conviction that it is forever an option to evolve. I believe you truly can teach an old dog new tricks, provided that the experienced individual is open-minded and eager for knowledge. As long as the individual in question is prepared to acknowledge when it was in error, and endeavor to transform into a more enlightened self.

Alright, I confess, I am the old dog. And the trick I am attempting to master, although I am set in my ways? It is an significant challenge, an issue I have grappled with, often, for my all my days. I have been trying … to become less scared of huntsman spiders. Apologies to all the remaining arachnid species that exist; I have to be grounded about my capacity for development as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is large, commanding, and the one I run into regularly. Encompassing a trio of instances in the last week. Inside my home. Though unseen, but I'm grimacing with discomfort as I type.

I doubt I’ll ever reach “admirer” status, but I've dedicated effort to at least attaining Normal about them.

I have been terrified of spiders since I was a child (as opposed to other children who adore them). In my formative years, I had plenty of male siblings around to make sure I never had to engage with any directly, 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 attempting to manage a spider that had ascended the living room surface. I “dealt” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, practically in the adjoining space (for fear that it chased me), and discharging a significant portion of bug repellent toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and annoy everyone in my house.

As I got older, whoever I was dating or sharing a home with was, by default, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore in charge of dealing with it, while I made low keening sounds and ran away. In moments of solitude, my strategy was simply to vacate the area, douse the illumination and try to erase the memory of its presence before I had to return.

Not long ago, I visited a friend’s house where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who lived in the sill, primarily lingering. In order to be less scared of it, I imagined the spider as a 'girlie', a gal, one of us, just lounging in the sun and eavesdropping on us yap. This may seem extremely dumb, but it worked (somewhat). Put another way, the deliberate resolution to become more fearless proved successful.

Regardless, I’ve tried to keep it up. I reflect upon all the logical reasons not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I know they eat things like flies and mosquitoes (creatures I despise). It is well-established they are one of the world's exquisite, benign creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to move like that. They move in the deeply alarming and borderline immoral way possible. The appearance of their multiple limbs propelling them at that alarming velocity induces my ancient psyche to go into high alert. They claim to only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I am convinced that triples when they are in motion.

But it cannot be blamed on them that they have unnerving limbs, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – if not more. I have discovered that employing the techniques of making an effort to avoid immediately exit my own skin and flee when I see one, working to keep calm and collected, and consciously focusing about their positive qualities, has begun to yield results.

Simply due to the reality that they are fuzzy entities that scuttle about with startling speed in a way that invades my dreams, doesn’t mean they warrant my loathing, or my high-pitched vocalizations. It is possible to acknowledge when I’ve been wrong and fueled by irrational anxiety. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it to the “catching one in a Tupperware container and escorting it to the garden” phase, but one can't be sure. Some life is left within this veteran of life yet.