I get very affected watching scary or tense films and TV programmes. My best friend loves horror and she’d laugh her arse off about what I’m about to admit to you:
The other night, I had nightmares after watching Inside Man - a relatively tame thriller on BBC iPlayer starring David Tennant.
I won’t spoil it for you if you’re watching it yourself, but there’s a lot of suspense and a bit of gore. I ended up waking in the night in a cold sweat after watching it!
When I’m watching anything scary I get pulled right into it and have trouble getting out.
I’m sure it goes back to my childhood with my brother making up awful stories about the ghosts that lived in the corridor on the way to the loo, and the hands that would reach up from the bottom of the toilet bowl and drag you into it.
He was a great storyteller, and I was a wide-eyed sponge for his terrifying tales.
He was rewarded for perfecting his craft with the hilarity of watching his 5-year-old little sister scream her way down corridor, pee as fast as humanly possible and sprint back to bed, diving under the covers, both petrified and exhilarated that she’d survived another death-defying trip to the toilet.
For a pre-internet 13-year-old boy it must have been the best fun ever!
I could probably have therapy to get me over this childhood programming, but to be honest it’s not a big deal most of the time - it’s easier to just turn the scary stuff off!
Shortly after that, I decided I needed something lighthearted, so I took Kev to the cinema to watch George Clooney and Julia Roberts in their latest comedy.
Slept like a baby after that!
But here’s a question for you:
Are you in a regular state of anxiety and overwhelm? Are you being woken up at night with stressful thoughts you can’t seem to shift?
The solution might not be as simple as replacing David Tennant with George Clooney.
You might need to permanently change some things in your life, or at least change the way you think about them.
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