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I maintain the conviction that it is always possible to evolve. I think you truly can instruct a veteran learner, provided that the experienced individual is receptive and eager for knowledge. As long as the person is ready to confess when it was mistaken, and work to become a improved version.

OK yes, I am that seasoned creature. And the trick I am working to acquire, even though I am set in my ways? It is an major undertaking, a feat I have struggled with, often, for my entire life. I have been trying … to become less scared of the common huntsman. Pardon me, all the other spiders that exist; I have to be realistic about my capacity for development as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is sizeable, dominant, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. This includes a trio of instances in the recent past. In my own living space. I'm not visible to you, but I'm grimacing and grimacing as I type.

I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “fan” status, but my project has been at least achieving a baseline of normalcy about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders since I was a child (in contrast to other children who adore them). In my formative years, I had ample brothers around to guarantee I never had to confront any directly, but I still panicked if one was obviously in the general area 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 ascended the living room surface. I “dealt” with it by retreating to a remote corner, practically in the adjoining space (for fear that it ran after me), and discharging a significant portion of pesticide toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and disturb everyone in my house.

As I got older, whoever I was dating or living with was, as a matter of course, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with dealing with it, while I made low keening sounds and ran away. If I was on my own, my strategy was simply to exit the space, douse the illumination and try to erase the memory of its being before I had to re-enter.

Recently, I stayed at a friend’s house where there was a very large huntsman who made its home in the window frame, primarily hanging out. In order to be more comfortable with its presence, I imagined the spider as a female entity, a gal, one of us, just relaxing in the sun and listening to us chat. It sounds quite foolish, but it worked (to some degree). Put another way, making a conscious choice to become less phobic proved successful.

Be that as it may, I've endeavored to maintain this practice. I think about all the sensible justifications not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I recognize they consume things like insect pests (the bane of my existence). It is well-established 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 deeply alarming and borderline immoral way conceivable. The sight of their many legs propelling them at that alarming velocity induces my ancient psyche to kick into overdrive. They are said to only have eight legs, but I am convinced that triples when they get going.

However it cannot be blamed on them that they have frightening appendages, and they have an equal entitlement 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, attempting to stay composed and breathing steadily, and intentionally reflecting about their beneficial attributes, has begun to yield results.

Simply due to the reality that they are furry beings that scuttle about with startling speed in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, is no reason for they deserve my hatred, or my high-pitched vocalizations. I am willing to confess when my reactions have been misguided and motivated by irrational anxiety. I’m not sure I’ll ever attain the “catching one in a Tupperware container and taking it outside” phase, but miracles happen. A bit of time remains left in this veteran of life yet.