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I firmly hold the belief that it is always possible to evolve. I think you truly can instruct a veteran learner, on the condition that the experienced individual is receptive and willing to learn. As long as the old dog is prepared to acknowledge when it was mistaken, and work to become a improved version.

OK yes, I am the old dog. And the trick I am working to acquire, despite the fact that I am decrepit? It is an major undertaking, something I have struggled with, repeatedly, for my all my days. My ongoing effort … 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. It also has to be the huntsman because it is large, commanding, and the one I run into regularly. Including a trio of instances in the last week. In my own living space. You can’t see me, but I'm grimacing and grimacing as I type.

I doubt I’ll ever reach “enthusiast” status, but I’ve been working on at least becoming Normal about them.

I have been terrified of spiders since I was a child (in contrast to other children who find them delightful). During my childhood, I had plenty of male siblings around to ensure I never had to handle any personally, but I still became hysterical if one was obviously 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 crawled on to the family room partition. I “handled” with it by standing incredibly far away, nearly crossing the threshold (for fear that it chased me), and emptying a significant portion of insect spray toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it did reach and irritate everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, whoever I was dating or living with was, automatically, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore in charge of dealing with it, while I produced whimpers of distress and fled the scene. In moments of solitude, my method was simply to exit the space, plunge the room into darkness and try to erase the memory of its existence before I had to enter again.

Recently, I visited a companion's home where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who resided within the sill, mostly just lingering. To be more comfortable with its presence, I envisioned the spider as a her, a gal, part of the group, just lounging in the sun and eavesdropping on us yap. This may seem quite foolish, but it was effective (to some degree). Or, the deliberate resolution to become less phobic proved successful.

Regardless, I’ve tried to keep it up. I think about all the rational arguments not to be scared. I am aware huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I know they consume things like flies and mosquitoes (creatures I despise). I am cognizant they are one of the planet's marvelous, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Alas, they do continue to move like that. They move in the utterly horrifying and almost unjust way conceivable. The sight of their many legs transporting them at that terrible speed triggers my primordial instincts to kick into overdrive. They ostensibly only have eight legs, but I am convinced that multiplies when they move.

But it is no fault of their own that they have scary legs, and they have just as much right to be where I am – if not more. My experience has shown that implementing the strategy of making an effort to avoid have a visceral panic reaction and flee when I see one, attempting to stay still and breathing, and intentionally reflecting about their positive qualities, has proven somewhat effective.

Just because they are hairy creatures that move hastily at an alarming rate in a way that invades my dreams, does not justify they warrant my loathing, or my shrieks of terror. It is possible to acknowledge when I’ve been wrong and driven by irrational anxiety. I’m not sure I’ll ever attain the “catching one in a Tupperware container and escorting it to the garden” phase, but one can't be sure. There’s a few years within this veteran of life yet.