Drag your demons into the sunlight...

'SHUT UP!! No, I will NOT burn down their houses!'

Hi kids. Hope you're looking forward to a splendid weekend full of dandelions, gin and candy-floss - I know I certainly am.

The only thing is, I'm having glimmers of our old buddy the anxiety monster on the periphery of my vision, and it's worrying me just a wee bit.

I can trundle along for weeks or months feeling splendid, and then, every so often, I start to see these ominous black tendrils on the horizon. Like somebody's inky coattails just swooshed around the corner before I got in the room. It's as if there's nothing specifically wrong AT THIS VERY MOMENT, but I get a sinking, swooping feeling in the pit of my stomach, and my skin feels a bit crawly, and I start to feel a vague, undefined sense of creeping terror. As if there's some not very timorous beastie lurking somewhere around a corner up ahead, and I feel unsettled, and gloomy, and nervous, and unhelpable, and very, very alone. As if I'm wandering through a creaking, haunted house, and I haven't happened upon a ghost YET, but my bones and bowels know it's coming.

But hey, this is amazing (and genuinely unexpected, I have to say) - but I feel about ten times better for just writing that. Really. Honestly and truly. Literally, within seconds of having put that down. Bloody hell. That's amazing.

Maybe it's the power of summoning nightmares into the open, and revealing and naming them that takes the sting out their nasty little tails?

Oh God. I can't believe this. I didn't want to have to do this, guys, but I can feel it coming, and I'm powerless to stop it...

...It's like in the Harry Potter books (GARRR, I've done it - oh the shame!) when the kids have to confront the Boggarts. The demons turn into your worst, most feared thing, and have the power to really make you lose your shit.  BUT, if you call them on it, and pluck up your courage and imagine them in some ridiculous or silly situation, they dissolve immediately in a puff of smoke.

So maybe try this, as a weekend exercise (apologies for the sudden schoolmarmish twist): write down what you're afraid of. Put this nasty crap in words. Don't shy away from it, and see what happens. Maybe it will seem ridiculous when it's out, in black and white.

Let's name these bastarding Boggarts and get them in the anti-bacterial sunlight! Let's flush them out and scrape off the mould and festering cankers! Let's wash this shit right out of our hair! Let's have an exorcism, people!     

'OUT, DAMN DEMON SPOT!'