🔗 Share this article

I am someone who believes that it is always possible to transform. I think you absolutely are able to instruct a veteran learner, as long as the experienced individual is open-minded and ready for growth. Provided that the individual in question is willing to admit when it was in error, and work to become a improved version.

Alright, I confess, I am the old dog. And the skill I am working to acquire, although I am set in my ways? It is an major undertaking, something I have battled against, frequently, for my all my days. The quest I'm on … to develop a calmer response toward huntsman spiders. My regrets to all the remaining arachnid species that exist; I have to be realistic about my possible growth as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is sizeable, dominant, and the one I run into regularly. Encompassing on three separate occasions in the last week. Inside my home. Though unseen, but I’m shaking my head and grimacing as I type.

I doubt I’ll ever reach “fan” status, but I’ve been working on at least attaining a baseline of normalcy about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders since I was a child (in contrast to other children who are fascinated by them). During my childhood, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to guarantee I never had to handle any myself, but I still became hysterical if one was visibly in the same room as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family still asleep, and trying to deal with a spider that had made its way onto the family room partition. I “dealt” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, practically in the adjoining space (for fear that it pursued me), and spraying a generous amount of insect spray toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and disturb everyone in my house.

In my adult life, whoever I was dating or cohabiting with was, automatically, the bravest of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with dealing with it, while I made frightened noises and fled the scene. When finding myself alone, my method was simply to vacate the area, douse the illumination and try to erase the memory of its existence before I had to enter again.

In a recent episode, I stayed at a friend’s house where there was a notably big huntsman who lived in the window frame, primarily hanging out. To be less scared of it, I imagined the spider as a female entity, a one of the girls, one of us, just relaxing in the sun and listening to us yap. This may seem rather silly, but it was effective (to some degree). Alternatively, making a conscious choice to become less scared did the trick.

Whatever the case, I've endeavored to maintain this practice. I reflect upon all the logical reasons not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I recognize they consume things like flies and mosquitoes (my mortal enemies). It is well-established they are one of nature’s beautiful, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Alas, they do continue to walk like that. They move in the deeply alarming and almost unjust way conceivable. The sight of their multiple limbs propelling them at that frightening pace induces my caveman brain to enter panic mode. They claim to only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I maintain that triples when they are in motion.

However it is no fault of their own that they have scary legs, and they have just as much right to be where I am – perhaps even more so. I’ve found that implementing the strategy of trying not to immediately exit my own skin and run away when I see one, trying to remain still and breathing, and consciously focusing about their beneficial attributes, has begun to yield results.

The mere fact that they are hairy creatures that scuttle about with startling speed in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, is no reason for they merit my intense dislike, or my high-pitched vocalizations. I can admit when my reactions have been misguided and fueled by unfounded fear. It is uncertain I’ll ever attain the “scooping one into plasticware and relocating it outdoors” level, but one can't be sure. Some life is left left in this old dog yet.