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I am someone who believes that it is forever an option to change. My view is you absolutely are able to train a seasoned creature, provided that the experienced individual is open-minded and eager for knowledge. As long as the person is ready to confess when it was mistaken, and work to become a more enlightened self.

Alright, I confess, I am that seasoned creature. And the lesson I am working to acquire, although I am decrepit? It is an significant challenge, an issue I have struggled with, frequently, for my all my days. The quest I'm on … to develop a calmer response toward those large arachnids. Apologies to all the remaining arachnid species 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 imposing, dominant, and the one I encounter most often. Encompassing three times in the recent past. Inside my home. You can’t see me, but I’m shaking my head with discomfort as I type.

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

An intense phobia regarding spiders dating back to my youth (unlike other children who adore them). During my childhood, I had plenty of male siblings around to ensure I never had to engage with any directly, but I still became hysterical if one was clearly in the immediate vicinity as me. I have a strong memory 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 “handled” with it by standing incredibly far away, almost into the next room (for fear that it chased me), and discharging half a bottle of bug repellent toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and irritate everyone in my house.

As I got older, whomever I was in a relationship with or living with was, automatically, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with managing the intruder, while I emitted whimpers of distress and ran away. When finding myself alone, my strategy was simply to leave the room, plunge the room into darkness and try to erase the memory of its existence before I had to enter again.

In a recent episode, I stayed at a pal's residence where there was a notably big huntsman who made its home in the casement, primarily hanging out. To be less scared of it, I envisioned the spider as a her, a girlie, part of the group, just relaxing in the sun and overhearing us gab. It sounds extremely dumb, but it worked (to some degree). Alternatively, actively deciding to become less scared did the trick.

Regardless, I’ve tried to keep it up. I think about all the logical reasons not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I know they prey upon things like insect pests (my mortal enemies). It is well-established they are one of the planet's marvelous, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to move like that. They move in the deeply alarming and almost unjust way imaginable. The appearance of their numerous appendages propelling them at that alarming velocity induces my caveman brain to kick into overdrive. They are said to only have eight legs, but I believe that increases exponentially when they get going.

However it is no fault of their own that they have frightening appendages, and they have just as much right to be where I am – possibly a greater claim. My experience has shown that employing the techniques of working to prevent have a visceral panic reaction and flee when I see one, trying to remain still and breathing, and consciously focusing about their beneficial attributes, has proven somewhat effective.

Just because they are hairy creatures that scuttle about at an alarming rate in a way that haunts my sleep, is no reason for they merit my intense dislike, or my girly screams. I am willing to confess when I’ve been wrong and fueled by unfounded fear. I’m not sure I’ll ever reach the “trapping one under a cup and escorting it to the garden” stage, but miracles happen. Some life is left left in this seasoned learner yet.