Here's an Minuscule Phobia I Want to Defeat. I Will Never Be a Fan, but Can I at Least Be Calm Regarding Spiders?

I maintain the conviction that it is forever an option to evolve. My view is you can in fact teach an old dog new tricks, on the condition that the experienced individual is receptive and ready for growth. Provided that the person is prepared to acknowledge when it was wrong, and work to become a improved version.

OK yes, I am that seasoned creature. And the lesson I am attempting to master, despite the fact that I am a creature of habit? It is an major undertaking, an issue I have struggled with, repeatedly, for my whole existence. The quest I'm on … to grow less fearful of those large arachnids. Apologies to all the different eight-legged creatures that exist; I have to be pragmatic about my potential for change as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is large, in charge, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. Encompassing on three separate occasions in the previous seven days. In my own living space. You can’t see me, but I'm grimacing with discomfort as I type.

It's unlikely I’ll ever reach “enthusiast” status, but I've dedicated effort to at least achieving Normal about them.

An intense phobia regarding spiders from my earliest years (in contrast 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 myself, but I still freaked out if one was clearly in the same room as me. I have a strong memory of one morning when I was eight, my family still asleep, and attempting to manage a spider that had made its way onto the lounge-room wall. I “managed” with it by standing incredibly far away, almost into the next room (in case it pursued me), and discharging a generous amount of pesticide toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it managed to annoy and annoy everyone in my house.

In my adult life, whoever I was dating or cohabiting with was, by default, the bravest of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore responsible for managing the intruder, while I produced frightened noises and fled the scene. When finding myself alone, my tactic was simply to exit the space, douse the illumination and try to forget about its presence before I had to re-enter.

In a recent episode, I was a guest at a pal's residence where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who lived in the window frame, primarily stationary. As a means to be less scared of it, I envisioned the spider as a her, a one of the girls, in our circle, just lounging in the sun and listening to us chat. Admittedly, it appears extremely dumb, but it worked (somewhat). Put another way, actively deciding to become less phobic did the trick.

Regardless, I've made an effort to continue. I reflect upon all the logical reasons not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I recognize they eat 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 move like that. They travel in the deeply alarming and almost unjust way conceivable. The appearance of their multiple limbs carrying them at that terrible speed causes my caveman brain to go into high alert. They are said to only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I maintain that triples when they get going.

But it is no fault of their own that they have scary legs, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – possibly a greater claim. I’ve found that implementing the strategy of making an effort to avoid instantly leap out of my body and flee when I see one, working to keep composed and breathing steadily, and intentionally reflecting about their positive qualities, has proven somewhat effective.

Simply due to the reality that they are fuzzy entities that dart around at an alarming rate in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, doesn’t mean they deserve my hatred, or my girly screams. It is possible to acknowledge when I’ve been wrong and motivated by irrational anxiety. I’m not sure I’ll ever attain the “trapping one under a cup and relocating it outdoors” phase, but miracles happen. There’s a few years left in this old dog yet.