Here's an Tiny Fear I Want to Defeat. I Will Never Be a Fan, but Is it Possible to at Least Be Normal Concerning Spiders?

I am someone who believes that it is always possible to transform. I think you truly can train a seasoned creature, provided that the old dog is willing and ready for growth. Provided that the individual in question is willing to admit when it was in error, and endeavor to transform into a improved version.

Alright, I confess, I am that seasoned creature. And the lesson I am attempting to master, even though I am a creature of habit? It is an major undertaking, something I have struggled with, repeatedly, for my entire life. I have been trying … to develop a calmer response toward the common huntsman. Pardon me, all the other spiders 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 imposing, commanding, and the one I run into regularly. Including three times in the previous seven days. Inside my home. You can’t see me, but I’m shaking my head at the very thought as I type.

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

An intense phobia regarding spiders since I was a child (in contrast to other children who find them delightful). During my childhood, I had ample brothers around to make sure I never had to engage with any directly, but I still freaked out if one was visibly in the same room as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family slumbering on, and attempting to manage a spider that had ascended the living room surface. I “dealt” with it by standing incredibly far away, nearly crossing the threshold (lest it chased me), and spraying half a bottle of insect spray toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it did reach and irritate everyone in my house.

As I got older, whoever I was dating or sharing a home with was, automatically, the bravest of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with managing the intruder, while I produced low keening sounds and fled the scene. In moments of solitude, my method was simply to leave the room, plunge the room into darkness and try to ignore its presence before I had to return.

Not long ago, I stayed at a pal's residence where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who lived in the sill, for the most part lingering. As a means to be less fearful, I conceptualized the spider as a female entity, a gal, one of us, just relaxing in the sun and listening to us gab. Admittedly, it appears extremely dumb, but it worked (a little bit). Alternatively, making a conscious choice to become less phobic proved successful.

Be that as it may, I've made an effort to continue. I think about all the sensible justifications not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I recognize they eat things like insect pests (creatures I despise). I am cognizant they are one of the world's exquisite, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Alas, they do continue to walk like that. They propel themselves in the utterly horrifying and almost unjust way possible. The vision of their multiple limbs carrying them at that terrible speed causes my ancient psyche to enter panic mode. They claim to only have a standard octet of limbs, but I believe that triples when they get going.

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. My experience has shown that employing the techniques of making an effort to avoid immediately exit my own skin and flee when I see one, trying to remain composed and breathing steadily, and deliberately thinking about their good points, has begun to yield results.

Just because they are fuzzy entities that move hastily at an alarming rate in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, does not justify they merit my intense dislike, or my girly screams. I am willing to confess when I’ve been wrong and fueled by baseless terror. I’m not sure I’ll ever attain the “scooping one into plasticware and taking it outside” level, but miracles happen. Some life is left left in this old dog yet.