🔗 Share this article

I maintain the conviction that it is always possible to change. I think you can in fact instruct a veteran learner, as long as the mature being is receptive and willing to learn. Provided that the old dog is ready to confess when it was wrong, and strive to be a better dog.

OK yes, I am the old dog. And the lesson I am working to acquire, although I am set in my ways? It is an major undertaking, a feat I have battled against, often, for my whole existence. The quest I'm on … to become less scared of huntsman spiders. Apologies to all the different eight-legged creatures that exist; I have to be grounded about my potential for change as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is sizeable, commanding, and the one I run into regularly. Including three times in the recent past. In my own living space. You can’t see me, but I'm grimacing at the very thought as I type.

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

I have been terrified of spiders dating back to my youth (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 myself, but I still became hysterical if one was clearly in the same room as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family slumbering on, and facing the ordeal of a spider that had made its way onto the family room partition. I “managed” with it by retreating to a remote corner, practically in the adjoining space (lest it ran after me), and spraying half a bottle of bug repellent toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it managed to annoy and disturb everyone in my house.

In my adult life, whoever I was dating or living with was, by default, the most courageous of spiders in our pairing, and therefore tasked with handling the situation, while I made whimpers of distress and beat a hasty retreat. In moments of solitude, my method was simply to vacate the area, douse the illumination and try to forget about its being before I had to return.

In a recent episode, I visited a friend’s house where there was a very large huntsman who resided within the casement, for the most part hanging out. In order to be less scared of it, I conceptualized the spider as a 'girlie', a one of the girls, part of the group, just chilling in the sun and overhearing us gab. It sounds extremely dumb, but it worked (to some degree). Put another way, making a conscious choice to become less scared proved successful.

Whatever the case, I've made an effort to continue. I reflect upon all the sensible justifications not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I understand they consume things like buzzing nuisances (my mortal enemies). It is well-established they are one of nature’s beautiful, non-threatening to people creatures.

Alas, they do continue to walk like that. They move in the utterly horrifying and borderline immoral way imaginable. The sight of their multiple limbs carrying them at that terrible speed triggers my primordial instincts to enter panic mode. They ostensibly only have a standard octet of limbs, but I maintain that multiplies when they move.

However it isn’t their fault that they have unnerving limbs, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – perhaps even more so. I have discovered that implementing the strategy of making an effort to avoid immediately exit my own skin and retreat when I see one, working to keep composed and breathing steadily, and deliberately thinking about their beneficial attributes, has begun to yield results.

Just because they are furry beings that dart around at an alarming rate in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, doesn’t mean they deserve my hatred, or my high-pitched vocalizations. I am willing to confess when I’ve been wrong and fueled by irrational anxiety. I’m not sure I’ll ever reach the “scooping one into plasticware and escorting it to the garden” phase, but one can't be sure. There’s a few years left in this seasoned learner yet.