There's an Itsy-Bitsy Anxiety I Aim to Defeat. Fandom is Out of Reach, but Is it Possible to at Least Be Calm Concerning Spiders?

I am someone who believes that it is forever an option to evolve. I believe you truly can train a seasoned creature, on the condition that the old dog is receptive and ready for growth. As long as the old dog is ready to confess when it was in error, and work to become a better dog.

Alright, I confess, I am that seasoned creature. And the trick I am attempting to master, despite the fact that I am decrepit? It is an significant challenge, a feat I have battled against, frequently, for my entire life. The quest I'm on … to become less scared of huntsman spiders. Pardon me, all the other spiders that exist; I have to be grounded about my possible growth as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is large, 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 grimacing at the very thought as I type.

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

I have been terrified of spiders from my earliest years (unlike other children who are fascinated by them). In my formative years, I had ample brothers around to ensure I never had to engage with any directly, but I still panicked if one was visibly 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 made its way onto the family room partition. I “managed” with it by standing incredibly far away, practically in the adjoining space (for fear that it chased me), and spraying a significant portion of pesticide toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it managed to annoy and annoy everyone in my house.

As I got older, my romantic partner at the time or living with was, as a matter of course, the most courageous of spiders between us, and therefore tasked with dealing with it, while I produced low keening sounds and fled the scene. If I was on my own, my strategy was simply to vacate the area, turn off the light and try to erase the memory of its presence before I had to re-enter.

In a recent episode, I was a guest at a friend’s house where there was a very large huntsman who lived in the window frame, primarily stationary. As a means to be more comfortable with its presence, I envisioned the spider as a her, a one of the girls, in our circle, just lounging in the sun and overhearing us gab. This may seem quite foolish, but it worked (to some degree). Or, actively deciding to become less scared worked.

Whatever the case, I've made an effort to continue. I reflect upon all the logical reasons not to be scared. I am aware huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I understand they eat things like buzzing nuisances (the bane of my existence). I am cognizant they are one of the planet's marvelous, benign creatures.

Alas, they do continue to walk like that. They move in the most terrifying and somehow offensive way imaginable. The sight of their multiple limbs transporting them at that frightening pace triggers my caveman brain to go into high alert. They are said to only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I maintain that increases exponentially when they move.

But it cannot be blamed on them that they have unnerving limbs, and they have just as much right to be where I am – perhaps even more so. My experience has shown that taking the steps of working to prevent immediately exit my own skin and run away when I see one, working to keep calm and collected, and consciously focusing about their positive qualities, has proven somewhat effective.

The mere fact that they are fuzzy entities that scuttle about at an alarming rate in a way that haunts my sleep, doesn’t mean they warrant my loathing, or my high-pitched vocalizations. I can admit when I’ve been wrong and fueled by irrational anxiety. It is uncertain I’ll ever make it to the “scooping one into plasticware and taking it outside” phase, but miracles happen. Some life is left for this veteran of life yet.