Maybe you should know more about spotting demons and confronting them. The demon is a rational or irrational fear that you are refusing to recognise although I will have been trying to tell you. You will feel ill, sweaty, be getting unusual cramps and flickering sensations, tossing and turning at night and having terrible dreams. What can it be? Lyme disease? You might put on weight, lose weight, feel weepy, bad tempered and permanently dissatisfied. Doctors will be mystified. Your family will be perplexed and prone to yawning in your company.
‘She’s right,’ you must say at this juncture to yourself. ‘There is a demon that I must confront.’ It might be something you have committed yourself to that you can’t face; it might be someone you have committed yourself to you can’t face; it might be a course of action you have embarked upon you know is wrong; but much more likely it will be a behaviour pattern you have embraced that is self-destructive. You could be phobic. You could be pregnant. I’m not talking about grudges. Grudges are different. You can nurse a grudge for as long as you like and imagine it gives you pleasure though it will only be burning up life units
A demon I once had
When 1 was extremely small I was obsessed by murderers and used to think I could hear footsteps outside my window in the dead of night. I would imagine they were heading towards the back door and then I would hear someone trying the handle. I’d lie awake straining but never be sure. Then one night, I was sure. Definitely footsteps. The murderer had come.
I threw myself out of bed and wriggled on my stomach through the house until I reached my parents’ room. My father was in hospital so I woke my mother who, even then, was small. I told her there was someone outside and she jumped out of bed, crying ‘Stand back,’ to me and ‘Who’s there?’ to the door. God she was brave. ‘It’s me,’ someone called and indeed it was. A relative of my father’s, a little disorientated after a night out but absolutely positive that he was himself. My mother ordered a taxi and despatched the demon in a flash. I can’t remember if I stopped hearing footsteps after that but let’s say I did for the sake of the argument.
How to banish them
You can a) get help from a professional or b) decide to help yourself. I would suggest course b) first, since it is less expensive and less time-consuming and I hate it when professionals ask you about your relationship with your mother.
Courage
This is how you help yourself. First work out what’s bothering you. How easy this is will depend on your honesty which is why you mustn’t get into shoplifting or other shady habits. You will have a clue. Certain thoughts will drive you crazy. You must pursue those thoughts to their source. The source will have horns and cloven hooves.
A demon is created by failure to accept. It will be something that requires a different course of action from the one you are taking and you will need to answer a lot of hard questions honestly. An example might be banging your head against a brick man. Let’s look at that one.
An example – the brick man
He will be an unrequited love. Here your way forward is simple. You must forget him. You will say I can’t, I love him. I’m telling you, you can. Reinvent yourself as a woman who doesn’t need a jerk like that in her life. Reinvent him as the last person you want hanging about and substitute him with another interest. Why are you fixating anyway? Scared of finding Mr Right? If you want to stay single and celibate, stay single and celibate. No one will care.
An example without a love interest
Say you can’t keep a job. I will want to know why you can’t keep a job but say I’m out of the country so you haven’t had me going on and on about it in a fruitless and upsetting way. What’s going on here, you will want to know. Why is your mother out of the country?
Maybe I have a record deal in Nashville and you have gone from one job to the next, growing more and more fretful about your failure to stick. You will be thinking you are a failure, that you have antisocial tendencies, that your education was a waste of time and that if anyone has a record deal it should be you. But hang on. That’s what I would say if I was there.
You are a sensible, intelligent and worthwhile person so whatever is going on is unnatural. You must take a look at the jobs you have tried and write down why you went for them and whether you had any reservations to begin with. What were the reservations? If there were alarm bells, why did you ignore them? Describe how you felt while you were doing the job. Contented? Fulfilled? Insulted? Ask yourself why you left Were you fired? Did you stomp out? Did you slink out? The answers to all these questions will provide pointers. Oh yes they will. If you can’t see them, phone me at the studio.
Now you will have a rough idea of the problem. Either you are going for the wrong sort of job, or you are going for the right sort of job and behaving like a crazy person once there. Let’s say you are going for the wrong sort of job. Why? Are you trying to please someone apart from yourself? Are you terrified of looking unglamorous, unsuccessful, unpopular and underachieving when everyone expects you to be a juggler? Or do you want to be a juggler, no one thinks you are up to it, so you are going after the wrong sort of job and failing at it to make a point?
Let’s say you’re going for the right sort of job but failing at it. Could we have fear of commitment here? Or fear of a routine? Or resentment of structure? These are the kinds of questions you must ask yourself and answer truthfully. After that you must cure yourself.
Cure
Once you’ve recognised the problem causing your funny behaviour pattern by answering the questions you have posed for yourself, you just change the pattern.
Sometimes the problem recurs – the brick man for Instance. You might acknowledge that the man you thought was the stuff of dreams is actually a bloody nightmare and get shot of him only to replace him with his doppelganger.
If you find yourself so ensnared, you have to be very, very brave. You must wean yourself off the type for ever. Maybe It helps to know why you’re drawn to them, maybe not. Sometimes agonising over the root of a problem is unhelpful and distracting. Move on. That’s my advice. Say, ‘Demon, begone’ and move on, as slowly and carefully as you like, to become a new, stronger, less fearful you with none of the symptoms of Lyme disease.
If none of the above works, get help but leave me out of it.
Rule: Lack of fearfulness b almost as bad. There’s nothing wrong with a little fear. It keeps your wits sharp and your bowels working.
