I've noticed something about my anxiety, which in turn brings Barry back. I've noticed that it seems to return when I have a lot going on or stress happening in my life. Thinking about it now it's hardly a revelation, but previously I'd been so caught up in my thoughts that I hadn't realised and thought my anxiety was permanent and even better than that it's made me realise I can control it (yay)
Take this week for example, I am currently an agony aunt to about 3 different people, which I love as I love being there for my friends. My boyfriends ex is being a total pain and using the children as weapons again, one of his close family members is going through a break up and one of his friends has some mental health issues, we're going away for the weekend with the kids which is always quite stressful trying to get packed etc as we always end up arguing and to top it all off I am struggling to stay on plan.
I woke up the early hours on Wednesday morning to thunder & lightening and then couldn't get back to sleep as Barry was now wide awake. I decided to get up and exercise even though Barry was insisting I do it after work. I told him to shut up, I was doing it this morning. Yes I said it out loud.
I went downstairs, got the laptop fired up, Barry was still blabbing on, literally would not shut up to the point where I was crying, I was tired and usually in this situation Barry would have got his way, as I hadn't had enough sleep and I felt crap, but I was determined to do this.
After forcing myself through the warm up I realised Barry wasn't there, he'd gone! I felt like I'd won. I got through the exercises and my mind felt so much clearer so I decided to go over the things Barry was bringing up. Surprisingly I managed to come up with some rational solutions and felt a lot better for it. I decided that I'm going to take my running stuff away with me, if Barry makes an appearance I'm going to take him for a run and try and lose him.
On a side note, I found this six day challenge online that explains this all really well and you can get your own Barry
http://projectself.com.au/6-days-to-decisiveness
