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I maintain the conviction that it is forever an option to change. My view is you absolutely are able to teach an old dog new tricks, as long as the mature being is willing and eager for knowledge. So long as the old dog is ready to confess when it was wrong, and work to become a more enlightened self.

OK yes, I am the old dog. And the trick I am trying to learn, even though I am a creature of habit? It is an important one, an issue I have grappled with, frequently, for my all my days. My ongoing effort … to develop a calmer response toward those large arachnids. My regrets to all the different eight-legged creatures that exist; I have to be grounded about my capacity for development as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is sizeable, commanding, and the one I run into regularly. Including a trio of instances 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 “enthusiast” status, but my project has been at least attaining Normal about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders from my earliest years (in contrast to other children who find them delightful). During my childhood, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to ensure I never had to engage with any personally, but I still freaked out if one was visibly in the general area as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family still asleep, and trying to deal with a spider that had ascended the lounge-room wall. I “dealt” with it by retreating to a remote corner, nearly crossing the threshold (lest it pursued me), and discharging a significant portion of bug repellent toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and irritate everyone in my house.

As I got older, whoever I was dating or sharing a home with was, by default, the bravest of spiders in our pairing, and therefore tasked with dealing with it, while I produced low keening sounds and ran away. If I was on my own, my tactic was simply to vacate the area, turn off the light and try to ignore its presence before I had to enter again.

In a recent episode, I was a guest at a companion's home where there was a notably big huntsman who made its home in the casement, for the most part lingering. In order to be less fearful, I conceptualized the spider as a female entity, a gal, one of us, just lounging in the sun and overhearing us chat. Admittedly, it appears quite foolish, but it was effective (a little bit). Or, the deliberate resolution to become less scared did the trick.

Be that as it may, I've made an effort to continue. I contemplate all the sensible justifications not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I understand they consume things like insect pests (the bane of my existence). It is well-established they are one of nature’s beautiful, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Alas, they do continue to move like that. They move in the utterly horrifying and borderline immoral way imaginable. The sight of their numerous appendages carrying them at that frightening pace triggers my caveman brain to go into high alert. They are said to only have eight legs, but I believe that multiplies when they move.

Yet it isn’t their fault that they have frightening appendages, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – if not more. My experience has shown that employing the techniques of trying not to immediately exit my own skin and retreat when I see one, working to keep calm and collected, and intentionally reflecting about their beneficial attributes, has begun to yield results.

Simply due to the reality that they are fuzzy entities that scuttle about with startling speed in a way that haunts my sleep, does not justify they merit my intense dislike, or my high-pitched vocalizations. 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 escorting it to the garden” stage, but one can't be sure. There’s a few years left in this old dog yet.