🔗 Share this article

I firmly hold the belief that it is always possible to evolve. My view is you truly can train a seasoned creature, as long as the experienced individual is willing and willing to learn. As long as the individual in question is ready to confess when it was mistaken, and strive to be a more enlightened self.

OK yes, the metaphor applies to me. And the skill I am working to acquire, despite the fact that I am a creature of habit? It is an significant challenge, an issue I have grappled with, frequently, for my all my days. I have been trying … to become less scared of huntsman spiders. Apologies to all the remaining arachnid species that exist; I have to be realistic about my potential for change as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is sizeable, commanding, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. Including three times in the recent past. In my own living space. Though unseen, but I’m shaking my head with discomfort as I type.

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

An intense phobia regarding spiders since I was a child (unlike other children who are fascinated by them). Growing up, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to make sure I never had to handle any myself, but I still panicked if one was visibly in the general area as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family unconscious, and attempting to manage a spider that had ascended the lounge-room wall. I “dealt” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, practically in the adjoining space (lest it pursued me), and emptying a generous amount of bug repellent toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it managed to annoy and disturb everyone in my house.

In my adult life, whoever I was dating or living with was, automatically, the bravest of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore in charge of managing the intruder, while I emitted low keening sounds and beat a hasty retreat. If I was on my own, my method was simply to vacate the area, douse the illumination and try to erase the memory of its being before I had to return.

Recently, I was a guest at a friend’s house where there was a notably big huntsman who lived in the casement, primarily lingering. To be more comfortable with its presence, I conceptualized the spider as a female entity, a one of the girls, one of us, just relaxing in the sun and eavesdropping on us chat. It sounds quite foolish, but it was effective (to some degree). Put another way, the deliberate resolution to become less phobic worked.

Whatever the case, I’ve tried to keep it up. I reflect upon all the rational arguments not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I know they consume things like flies and mosquitoes (creatures I despise). I am cognizant they are one of the world's exquisite, benign creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to walk like that. They travel in the deeply alarming and borderline immoral way possible. The appearance of their many legs transporting them at that terrible speed induces my caveman brain to go into high alert. They ostensibly only have a standard octet of limbs, but I am convinced that increases exponentially when they get going.

Yet it cannot be blamed on them that they have unnerving limbs, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – possibly a greater claim. I’ve found that employing the techniques of trying not to immediately exit my own skin and retreat when I see one, trying to remain composed and breathing steadily, and intentionally reflecting about their positive qualities, has begun to yield results.

Just because they are furry beings that move hastily extremely quickly in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, doesn’t mean they merit my intense dislike, or my high-pitched vocalizations. I am willing to confess when my reactions have been misguided and motivated by baseless terror. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it to the “scooping one into plasticware and escorting it to the garden” phase, but you never know. A bit of time remains left in this old dog yet.