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I firmly hold the belief that it is forever an option to change. I believe you absolutely are able to train a seasoned creature, provided that the old dog is willing and eager for knowledge. So long as the person is willing to admit when it was in error, and work to become a better dog.

Well, admittedly, I am the old dog. And the lesson I am trying to learn, despite the fact that I am set in my ways? It is an significant challenge, something I have battled against, repeatedly, for my whole existence. My ongoing effort … to grow less fearful of those large arachnids. My regrets to all the remaining arachnid species that exist; I have to be realistic about my capacity for development as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is large, commanding, and the one I encounter most often. Including on three separate occasions in the last week. In my own living space. Though unseen, but I'm grimacing with discomfort as I type.

I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “enthusiast” status, but I've dedicated effort to at least becoming a baseline of normalcy about them.

An intense phobia regarding spiders from my earliest years (in contrast to other children who adore them). In my formative years, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to ensure I never had to handle any directly, but I still became hysterical if one was clearly in the same room 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 crawled on to the living room surface. I “handled” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, almost into the next room (for fear that it pursued me), and emptying half a bottle of bug repellent toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it managed to annoy and disturb everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, whomever I was in a relationship with or cohabiting with was, by default, the least afraid of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with dealing with it, while I produced whimpers of distress and beat a hasty retreat. If I was on my own, my strategy was simply to leave the room, turn off the light and try to ignore its presence before I had to enter again.

In a recent episode, I stayed at a companion's home where there was a notably big huntsman who resided within the sill, for the most part stationary. To be more comfortable with its presence, I imagined the spider as a 'girlie', a one of the girls, part of the group, just chilling in the sun and overhearing us chat. This may seem extremely dumb, but it worked (to some degree). Put another way, making a conscious choice to become less scared did the trick.

Regardless, I've endeavored to maintain this practice. I think about all the rational arguments not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I know they eat things like buzzing nuisances (the bane of my existence). I know they are one of nature’s beautiful, non-threatening to people creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to walk like that. They move in the utterly horrifying and somehow offensive way possible. The sight of their multiple limbs transporting them at that terrible speed causes my primordial instincts to go into high alert. They claim to only have a standard octet of limbs, but I am convinced that increases exponentially when they move.

But it is no fault of their own that they have unnerving limbs, and they have just as much right to be where I am – if not more. I have discovered that taking the steps of making an effort to avoid have a visceral panic reaction and retreat when I see one, trying to remain still and breathing, and deliberately thinking about their good points, has begun to yield results.

Simply due to the reality that they are hairy creatures that scuttle about with startling speed in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, doesn’t mean they warrant my loathing, or my girly screams. It is possible to acknowledge when fear has clouded my judgment and driven by irrational anxiety. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it to the “catching one in a Tupperware container and relocating it outdoors” stage, but miracles happen. A bit of time remains left in this old dog yet.