There's an Itsy-Bitsy Fear I Want to Defeat. Fandom is Out of Reach, but Can I at Least Be Calm Concerning Spiders?

I am someone who believes that it is forever an option to transform. I think you truly can instruct a veteran learner, as long as the old dog is receptive and ready for growth. So long as the old dog is prepared to acknowledge when it was in error, and strive to be a more enlightened self.

OK yes, the metaphor applies to me. And the skill I am working to acquire, even though I am set in my ways? It is an major undertaking, an issue I have struggled with, repeatedly, for my all my days. I have been trying … to grow less fearful of those large arachnids. My regrets to all the different eight-legged creatures that exist; I have to be grounded about my possible growth as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is sizeable, in charge, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. Encompassing a trio of instances in the last week. In my own living space. 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 I've dedicated effort to at least becoming a baseline of normalcy about them.

An intense phobia regarding spiders dating back to my youth (as opposed to other children who are fascinated by them). In my formative years, I had ample brothers around to ensure I never had to handle any directly, but I still panicked if one was visibly in the general area as me. I have a strong memory of one morning when I was eight, my family unconscious, and attempting to manage a spider that had crawled on to the living room surface. I “handled” with it by standing incredibly far away, almost into the next room (for fear that it pursued me), and discharging half a bottle of insect spray toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it did reach and irritate everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, my romantic partner at the time or sharing a home with was, by default, the most courageous of spiders between us, and therefore tasked with handling the situation, while I made frightened noises 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 ignore its being before I had to enter again.

In a recent episode, I visited a friend’s house where there was a very large huntsman who made its home in the casement, primarily hanging out. In order to be less fearful, I imagined the spider as a female entity, a gal, in our circle, just lounging in the sun and overhearing us yap. This may seem quite foolish, but it had an impact (a little bit). Put another way, actively deciding to become more fearless did the trick.

Be that as it may, I've made an effort to continue. I think about all the sensible justifications not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I recognize they prey upon things like flies and mosquitoes (the bane of my existence). I know they are one of the planet's marvelous, non-threatening to people creatures.

Alas, they do continue to move like that. They move in the most terrifying and borderline immoral way imaginable. The sight of their multiple limbs carrying them at that terrible speed induces my primordial instincts to enter panic mode. They ostensibly only have eight legs, but I maintain that triples when they are in motion.

However it isn’t their fault that they have unnerving limbs, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – if not more. I have discovered that taking the steps of working to prevent have a visceral panic reaction and run away when I see one, attempting to stay still and breathing, and deliberately thinking about their beneficial attributes, has begun to yield results.

Just because they are furry beings that scuttle about extremely quickly in a way that invades my dreams, doesn’t mean they deserve my hatred, or my high-pitched vocalizations. It is possible to acknowledge when I’ve been wrong and motivated by baseless terror. It is uncertain I’ll ever attain the “catching one in a Tupperware container and relocating it outdoors” phase, but miracles happen. Some life is left left in this veteran of life yet.