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I firmly hold the belief that it is never too late to transform. My view is you can in fact teach an old dog new tricks, as long as the old dog is receptive and willing to learn. As long as the person is ready to confess when it was mistaken, and work to become a improved version.

Alright, I confess, I am that seasoned creature. And the trick I am working to acquire, despite the fact that I am a creature of habit? It is an major undertaking, an issue I have grappled with, repeatedly, for my all my days. The quest I'm on … to become less scared of those large arachnids. My regrets to all the different eight-legged creatures that exist; I have to be grounded about my possible growth as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is sizeable, dominant, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. This includes three times in the last week. Within my dwelling. You can’t see me, but a shudder runs through me with discomfort as I type.

I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “admirer” status, but I’ve been working on at least becoming Normal about them.

I have been terrified of spiders since I was a child (as opposed to other children who find them delightful). In my formative years, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to ensure I never had to handle any personally, but I still freaked out if one was clearly in the immediate vicinity as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family still asleep, and facing the ordeal of a spider that had ascended the family room partition. I “managed” with it by standing incredibly far away, almost into the next room (lest it ran after me), and spraying half a bottle of pesticide toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it managed to annoy and irritate everyone in my house.

As I got older, whoever I was dating or sharing a home with was, as a matter of course, the least afraid of spiders between us, and therefore responsible for managing the intruder, while I made low keening sounds and ran away. In moments of solitude, my tactic was simply to vacate the area, turn off the light and try to forget about its presence before I had to re-enter.

Not long ago, I was a guest at a friend’s house where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who made its home in the casement, for the most part lingering. As a means to be less fearful, I imagined the spider as a female entity, a girlie, in our circle, just lounging in the sun and listening to us chat. Admittedly, it appears extremely dumb, but it was effective (a little bit). Put another way, actively deciding to become more fearless proved successful.

Be that as it may, I've endeavored to maintain this practice. I contemplate all the logical reasons not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I know they eat things like flies and mosquitoes (my mortal enemies). I know they are one of nature’s beautiful, non-threatening to people creatures.

Unfortunately, however, they do continue to walk like that. They travel in the deeply alarming and somehow offensive way conceivable. The sight of their multiple limbs propelling them at that frightening pace causes my caveman brain to go into high alert. They claim to only have a standard octet of limbs, but I am convinced that triples when they move.

Yet 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. I’ve found that implementing the strategy of making an effort to avoid immediately exit my own skin and flee when I see one, working to keep composed and breathing steadily, and consciously focusing about their beneficial attributes, has actually started to help.

Just because they are furry beings that scuttle about with startling speed in a way that haunts my sleep, is no reason for they warrant my loathing, or my shrieks of terror. I can admit when fear has clouded my judgment and motivated by unfounded fear. I doubt I’ll ever make it to the “catching one in a Tupperware container and relocating it outdoors” stage, but miracles happen. There’s a few years for this seasoned learner yet.