I am someone who believes that it is forever an option to evolve. I think you truly can instruct a veteran learner, on the condition that the mature being is willing and ready for growth. So long as the individual in question is ready to confess when it was wrong, and strive to be a improved version.
Well, admittedly, I am the old dog. And the trick I am attempting to master, although I am a creature of habit? It is an important one, something I have grappled with, frequently, for my all my days. The quest I'm on … to become less scared of those large arachnids. Pardon me, all the other spiders that exist; I have to be realistic about my potential for change as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is sizeable, commanding, and the one I run into regularly. This includes three times in the recent past. Within my dwelling. I'm not visible to you, but I’m shaking my head and grimacing as I type.
I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “admirer” status, but I’ve been working on at least becoming a standard level of composure about them.
A deep-seated fear of spiders from my earliest years (in contrast to other children who adore them). During my childhood, I had plenty of male siblings around to make sure I never had to engage with any directly, but I still freaked out if one was visibly in the immediate vicinity as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family slumbering on, and trying to deal with a spider that had crawled on to the family room partition. I “dealt” with it by standing incredibly far away, practically in the adjoining space (in case it ran after me), and discharging a generous amount of insect spray toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it did reach and annoy everyone in my house.
With the passage of time, whoever I was dating or cohabiting with was, as a matter of course, the least afraid of spiders in our pairing, and therefore tasked with managing the intruder, while I emitted low keening sounds and beat a hasty retreat. If I was on my own, my strategy was simply to leave the room, plunge the room into darkness and try to ignore its existence before I had to enter again.
Not long ago, I visited a pal's residence where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who made its home in the sill, primarily lingering. In order to be more comfortable with its presence, I imagined the spider as a her, a gal, one of us, just relaxing in the sun and overhearing us gab. This may seem extremely dumb, but it worked (a little bit). Or, actively deciding to become more fearless did the trick.
Be that as it may, I’ve tried to keep it up. I think about all the rational arguments not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I understand they consume things like flies and mosquitoes (my mortal enemies). I am cognizant they are one of the world's exquisite, non-threatening to people creatures.
Alas, they do continue to walk like that. They propel themselves in the most terrifying and somehow offensive way imaginable. The sight of their numerous appendages transporting them at that terrible speed induces my primordial instincts to enter panic mode. They claim to only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I am convinced that increases exponentially when they get going.
Yet 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 employing the techniques of trying not to have a visceral panic reaction and flee when I see one, trying to remain still and breathing, and consciously focusing about their beneficial attributes, has actually started to help.
Just because they are hairy creatures that move hastily extremely quickly in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, does not justify they merit my intense dislike, or my girly screams. I can admit when my reactions have been misguided and motivated by baseless terror. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it to the “catching one in a Tupperware container and taking it outside” stage, but miracles happen. There’s a few years left in this veteran of life yet.