Anyone want to swap homes? This one comes complete with sleepless nights, noisy local kids who kick footballs against the house at 11pm and have all night camping parties in the field behind. Otherwise idyllic.

The problem with working from home, especially at weekends, is that the neighbourhood doesn't.  And our front wall clearly resembles the side of a derelict inner city warehouse because at times it feels like every child over the age of 8 is using it for target training.  As a fellow human on this mortal coil, I have a high-tolerance level, but even martyrs have limits.  There I am, in the middle of a therapeutic regression with a horse, going back to the root of trauma, tears of empathy streaming down my face, and bang! there the ball goes against the window pane.

The thing is, I remember doing it as a kid. That's what's so irritating.  Half of me wants to go outside and join them. The other half wants to storm outside and pop their ball with my ballpoint pen. Instead I resolve to go out and articulate my feelings in the most diplomatic and motherly tones.

These rational attempts to reason with them have sometimes helped in the short term.  I'd take a deep breath, calm myself, step outside and the conversation would go much like this:

"Do you live here?"

"Err... no."

"Do you pay the insurance on this house?"

"Err... no?"

"Do you pay for repairs?"

"Um... no?"

"Well, I do," I'd smile reassuringly.  "So unless you are offering to, you might want to think twice before leaving muddy ball marks on my paintwork."

After this particular conversation, the lad looked a bit sheepish and scarpered.  And this tack works quite well when there's just one, but when there are several lads, it merely leads to much shrugging of shoulders and, "Yeah, wasn't me - it was Callum," pointing to a skinny lad running away sharpish down the road.

I find such communications intensely stressful when it has meant breaking away from a deep, trance-like therapy state and entering the world of reality in moments. My energy has been 'out there' somewhere with the horse, and although I have become experienced at drawing it back in, to a certain extent, I am still very vulnerable if suddenly I'm confronted with someone else's negative energy, anger or fear. Then when I return to my session with the horse, I now have a physical stomach pain, a headache, nausea or anxiety, leaving me unable to reconnect and having to take a break. 

Because of this, I have found myself a much less risky (and considerably more interesting and positive) way of dealing with are local lads or any other persistent distraction, just using visualisation.

Ok, so here's how it goes:

The lads start accumulating outside our house with a football.  I firstly send love to all of the lads.  Don't laugh, just bear with me ok?  I imagine being their mother (well with some of them you'd have to be) and picture them as kind, loving sons. Well, it does take a bit of practice, but being a mother of boys this is the easy bit.

Immediately I feel my energy changing from 'upset and threatened' to loving, open and giving.  When you do this, the fear goes, and it's unconscious fear or anxiety that attracts or exacerbates the problem anyway.

After this, I imagine a huge barrier of energy around the house (I put this around my car when driving).  I imagine that the moment any lad gets near this energy, he feels repelled instantly, like hitting the side of a bouncy castle. 

I then visualise them all wandering back up the road and finding somewhere better to play or more interesting to hang out.  If there are any stragglers at this point, I visualise loud, high pitched sounds as well (who knows if they work as I'm too old to hear them!). 

This, interestingly, has worked.  It doesn't work every time, but then neither do aspirin.  But I would say of all the options, it's the one with the happiest and most positive outcome. The boys find somewhere better to hang out.  I'm left in a more relaxed and comfortable state of mind.  And that leaves me in a better frame of mind to help the horse who's been waiting all this time, which can only be a good thing.

Try visualising this energy bubble around your car when you're driving.  It's especially useful when someone's driving too close behind you, and then you have immediate confirmation if and when it works.  And remember to write and let me know how you get on!

I wonder if it would work with the washing up.  Something for another blog, I suspect.