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I am someone who believes that it is always possible to transform. I think you can in fact teach an old dog new tricks, provided that the mature being is receptive and eager for knowledge. So long as the old dog is ready to confess when it was in error, and work to become a better dog.

Alright, I confess, I am that seasoned creature. And the skill I am attempting to master, although I am set in my ways? It is an significant challenge, an issue I have battled against, often, for my whole existence. I have been trying … to become less scared of those large arachnids. Apologies to all the other spiders that exist; I have to be grounded about my capacity for development as a human. The focus must remain on the huntsman because it is sizeable, dominant, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. Encompassing on three separate occasions in the last week. Within my dwelling. You can’t see me, but I'm grimacing with discomfort as I type.

I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “admirer” status, but I’ve been working on at least achieving a baseline of normalcy about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders dating back to my youth (unlike other children who are fascinated by them). Growing up, I had ample brothers around to ensure I never had to handle any personally, but I still panicked if one was visibly in the immediate vicinity 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 “handled” with it by retreating to a remote corner, practically in the adjoining space (lest it chased me), and discharging a significant portion of pesticide toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it did reach and irritate everyone in my house.

In my adult life, whomever I was in a relationship with or cohabiting with was, as a matter of course, the bravest of spiders in our pairing, and therefore responsible for managing the intruder, while I emitted frightened noises and fled the scene. When finding myself alone, my strategy was simply to exit the space, douse the illumination and try to erase the memory of its being before I had to enter again.

Recently, I was a guest at a friend’s house where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who resided within the casement, for the most part stationary. To be less fearful, I conceptualized the spider as a her, a gal, part of the group, just lounging in the sun and eavesdropping on us yap. It sounds rather silly, but it worked (somewhat). Put another way, actively deciding to become less phobic proved successful.

Be that as it may, I’ve tried to keep it up. I think about all the logical reasons not to be scared. I am aware huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I understand they consume things like buzzing nuisances (creatures I despise). I know they are one of the world's exquisite, non-threatening to people creatures.

Alas, they do continue to walk like that. They move in the utterly horrifying and almost unjust way possible. The appearance of their numerous appendages carrying them at that frightening pace triggers my primordial instincts to kick into overdrive. They ostensibly only have a standard octet of limbs, but I am convinced that increases exponentially when they are in motion.

Yet it cannot be blamed on them that they have frightening appendages, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – possibly a greater claim. My experience has shown that taking the steps of making an effort to avoid have a visceral panic reaction and flee when I see one, working to keep still and breathing, and consciously focusing about their good points, has actually started to help.

Just because they are hairy creatures that scuttle about extremely quickly in a way that haunts my sleep, is no reason for they merit my intense dislike, or my shrieks of terror. I am willing to confess when I’ve been wrong and fueled by baseless terror. I’m not sure I’ll ever attain the “trapping one under a cup and escorting it to the garden” stage, but one can't be sure. There’s a few years within this old dog yet.