How to Navigate Addiction to Drama with Dr Scott Lyons
If you’ve ever caught yourself wondering why you keep attracting the same type of person, this episode is for you. Today I’m joined by Dr Scott Lyons, a holistic psychologist, educator and author, to talk about addiction to drama, and why we may subconsciously seek out chaos and intensity in our lives and relationships (even when we think we're trying to avoid it).
WHAT WE’LL COVER:
Understanding addiction to drama
Common characteristics of someone addicted to drama
Big emotions don’t equal vulnerability
What your “spark” really is
Finding people who know how to love
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Use the code JUNE50 for 50% off 3 masterclasses or the Higher Love Course - www.stephanierigg.com
Apply for my 6-month Homecoming Mastermind
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
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Episode Transcript
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You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge, and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment.
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In today's episode, I'm in conversation with Dr. Scott Lyons. Scott is a holistic psychologist, educator, and author of the newly released book Addicted to Drama healing dependency on Crisis and Chaos in Yourself and others. Scott's also the creator of the Embody Lab, which is the largest online learning platform for body based trauma therapies. And as someone who's taken several certifications through the Embody Lab, I am a huge ambassador of Scott and what he has created. And I'm so excited to share with you the conversation that I had with Scott today.
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All around addiction to drama and how becoming dependent on chaos often subconsciously can really dictate our lives and relationships and how we can break those cycles to create more inner and outer peace in our lives. So I'm really looking forward to sharing this conversation with you, and I hope you enjoy. Scott, hi. Thanks so much for joining me. My pleasure.
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Thank you for having me. So today we're talking all about drama and Addicted to Drama, which is the name of your new book. It is. I love a good drama. Love talking about it.
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Yeah, well, you'd hope so. By this point, I'm sure you've done plenty of talking about it. I'm glad that we're having this conversation because I think it will be relevant and will resonate with so many people. One of the most frequently asked questions that I receive from clients and from people in my instagram community is like, why do I attract unavailable people? Why do I attract X?
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And I'm always quick to gently turn that back and ask, why are you attracted to what part of me is attracted to whatever person dynamic situation that I keep coming up against in my life? Because that's probably a more honest question and certainly a more empowering question than casting ourselves as a very passive character in the story of our lives and throwing our hands up in overwhelm and wondering why these things keep happening to us. So true. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I've certainly heard the same thing.
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It's like, why do bad things always happen to me? Why do bad relationships continue to happen to me? Why do I keep attracting unavailable people or immature people? And I think the easiest way to sort of turn it back on yourself, the question is, if it's happened once, interesting information. If it continues to happen, what is the common denominator?
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It's you, boo. It's you. God love you. We all love you. And it's you. And you are part of this situation. You are not a victim to it.
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You are a participant. And the more you can identify how you are participant, the more you are empowering yourself to change it. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's right, because as much as it might feel like a hard thing to hear, and that's what I always say to people, it's so much more permissive and empowering to look at our part, because that's ultimately what's within our control. I think positioning ourselves as the one on the receiving end of all of the bad stuff with no active role in it, is not actually a very helpful story.
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Yeah. I remember by the third person I dated who was addicted to meth, I was like, this is an unusual series of events that I'm like, what are the chances? This is weird. When I really was like, okay, clearly it's not the meth addiction I'm attracted to, but the fact that they are in some type of avoidance, that they are filling the void with something else and not really able to be there for themselves, let alone be there for me. Yeah. And so it's a heart. You're so hurt, and I was so hurt. Excuse me. I won't say you. I was so hurt.
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I was so frustrated. I was so disappointed, and I couldn't possibly hold that within myself and take responsibility for that. So it's so easy to be like another one of you or this is your fault. It's not like, how was I a participant in my own suffering again? How was I contributing to my own lack of peace?
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And how might that pattern be playing itself out in other parts of my life? Which is the question for those of us who are investigating, are we addicted to drama? Yeah. So maybe we can take a step back and you can give a bit of a lay of the land of what are you talking about? When you say addicted to drama, what might that look like?
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What are the signs? How does it show up? Yeah, so we know that we don't necessarily know, but drama is essentially an unnecessary turmoil, an unnecessary chaos and crisis. And it looks like dysregulation, if you're familiar with that word, meaning there's an inefficiency of energy and attention and emotional expression. And thus, because it's so disproportionate, like, if I'm picking up a pen with the effort of picking up an elephant that's disproportionate, it's dysregulated, and it feels very performative.
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And so that's why we often think, oh, those who are addicted to drama, like, their intensity, their exaggeration is a performance for attention. It's not. It's underneath a very dysregulated ability to modulate how much energy, emotion and attention is needed to be in response to the world. And an addiction is anything that we become dependent on that both fills a void within us and masks a core pain. It helps us be avoidant to that pain.
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It helps us both create a numbness. And an addiction, if it's interesting enough, helps us rise above the threshold of that numbness to feel alive as well as distracted. So when we talk about an addiction of drama, it doesn't necessarily make sense because we're saying, wait, why would people be dependent on essentially more suffering? Like, why would anyone want more chaos and crisis in their life? And certainly why would their brain reward them for such a thing as part of any addiction?
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And the reason is, well, stress is empowering, literally. Like the first aspect of the first stage of a stress response, you get activated. It's a release of all these hormones. You feel powerful, you feel strong in that first stage and there's an endorphic release, you get a pain relief. So all of these things when you feel helpless, when you feel like a victim in life, when you feel like there's no power agency, then you're going to move towards things that give you that.
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And if stress, which is readily available, if you seek or create it or manifest, it gives you exactly that. It gives you this boost, this charge in your life. It's like drinking ten cups of coffee at any time of the day or night you want, and it's getting free. If it gives you that, you're going to become attached to it. So this is what we mean by addiction and drama.
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And it plays itself out as the pattern of all the ways we might become just avoidant, of our own stillness, of our own peace, of our own contact or relationship with ourselves. So, I don't know, you're walking down a street, nothing going on, and all of a sudden you're thinking of a story about your ex. Why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? And you might even know, like, this isn't going to make me feel better.
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But then you get on social media and you look them up and you're adding logs to that fire of drama, of unnecessary turmoil. You're sitting in a bathtub or relaxing somewhere on like, a lawn, and all of a sudden you are playing a scenario out about what's going to happen next week at work and it's the weekend. Why are you contributing to your own suffering? Why are you rushing down the street when you have nowhere necessarily you have to be? Why are you playing a song that's really sad when you're already feeling tender?
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Yeah. So there's this question we're asking, and I think in our everyday spectrum of experience, why are we contributing to our own pain? Why are we contributing to the intensification of our own emotions? And what purpose does it serve for you? Yeah, thank you for that.
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And I was going to ask exactly that because I think with all of these patterns, we have to go, okay, what am I getting out of this? Clearly there's a part of me that's meeting a need, serving some sort of adaptive purpose, or at least it has an intention to do that. Absolutely. All survival responses do. Yeah.
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They're all strategies to navigate something. And it's unfortunate that if you've ever been around someone addicted to drama, it's exhausting, it's tiring, it's energy depleting and it's annoying, it's boundary list, it's annoying. And so there's not a lot of space for empathy. And so in the lack of empathy, we typically just brush them off as needing attention or they're just some drama queen as opposed to going, oh, this is their survival adaptive strategies to something else that looks hard and painful. They are contributing more pain to themselves to mask other pain.
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What a terrible addiction to be in an awful cycle. Yeah. And is there I mean, I'd I'd love to know a little bit more about what you've found to be the origin of that. Whether there's a common origin story or whether what gives rise to this addiction to drama? When do we become dependent on that as a strategy?
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Yeah, well, there is certainly common symptoms like those who have an addiction drama often feel isolated, alone. They feel like the world is against them as opposed to for them. They'll typically say things like why is it always me? Or why is it there always something? There's a real negative bias.
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They're unable to really attend to the positives in life. They over generalise. So I had a frustrating moment in my day, I had the worst day. So you'll see exaggerated language, intensified language, lots of exclamation marks where they perhaps do not belong. You'll see them feel like there's a constant sense of urgency, like there's not enough space and time.
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They feel rushed, they feel burdened. There's a sense of disease or anxiety that is pervasive. It creates their baseline tone. So these are things that are pretty common amongst everyone who has this propensity or addiction to drama. And in terms of the origin, there are several sort of major contributors.
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We could look at transgenerational trauma and trauma as a factor of where that initial pain comes from. That's being when we have pain, it gets locked off in our body, gets sealed off. We call that oedema, essentially like it's a way of protecting ourselves from further injury. And that edemic response cuts that part of ourself from ourself. And whether it's emotional pain or physical pain, the same thing is happening.
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So we either disassociate or we cut off parts of ourself that have been hurt and that trauma stays in the body. And so as we get more cut off from ourself, we exist in a void. We are scattered or we are disconnected from the place where that pain is residing. And that becomes what's called a void. And I talked earlier about how addictions form is a way of filling the void, literally pouring into the empty vessel of where I should be residing.
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And if you grew up in a household of chaos, that becomes the normal. You have to speak at a certain decibel to be heard. That becomes the void, the decibel to which you speak. If to be heard and seen and felt, you have to be big and exaggerated or you have to always be ill or sick or something always has to be wrong. Where that becomes the currency for love, then that's what you internalise.
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If you have a parent who's addicted to drama, you have two choices. You either join the fight and rev yourself up with them, or you collapse and become very repressed and very closed off as a means of protection. And that repression ends up leading to cathartic explosions anyways. Kind of leads us down the same path. Yeah, I mean, I think that as you describe that, it's clear that this is big, right?
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This is kind of culturally pervasive. This doesn't feel like a niche problem. As I'm reflecting, while we kind of entered this conversation, talking about relationships like workplace, this feels big as well. So many of us, I think, form an identity around how busy we are and how stressed we are at work, but almost as a badge of honour. And that becomes like, oh, I've been so busy.
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And that's just like how we greet each other. How have you been? Busy but good. And we can ask like, why are you over scheduling yourself? Why is the tasks at work more complex than they need to be? Why are you overcomplicating things? Why are you engaging during work and after work? Gossip. It is throwing logs on a fire of drama.
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You're participating in it. You're either enabling it, you're participating in it or you are it's in our. And relationships become the perfect depository, the perfect place where these challenges around drama show up. Because those with an addiction to drama from attachment work, we know that this style, this stance, so to speak, or this behavioural patterns are not just the behaviour. They're also demonstrating some challenge with intimacy.
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So if you feel isolated all the time, which those with an addiction to drama do, you're already not in relationship to yourself, let alone able to then be in relationship to other people. If you're avoiding yourself through suppression, repression or some disassociation because there's underlying pain, then you are not home to be in relationship. And vulnerability, intimacy leads to vulnerability. And vulnerability means that I'm going to come closer into contact with my own self, not just someone else, but my own self. And the emotions and the pains and the joys that all reside here.
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And if there's like an allergic reaction to that, and that allergic reaction is a reflex that I call the revving reflex, which is as soon as I get too close to myself or too close to stillness, I'm going to rev myself up. I'm going to find and seek and create all those stress possibilities. I'm going to over schedule myself, I'm going to go gossip, I'm going to go doom scroll, whatever it takes to avoid contact with myself, which literally feels dangerous, because if I'm attending to myself, if I'm too vulnerable, I will not be available to address the next possible threat in my life and I will die. That is the underlying script. I will die because I will not be available.
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I will not be vigilant enough to deal with the next threat. Because those of us who've had trauma, early developmental generational, whatever it is, are always on the lookout for the next threat to protect ourselves because we weren't able to the first time. Yeah. You mentioned attachment and how that can play into it. I'd be curious to know whether and to what extent you notice trends in attachment styles and addiction to drama.
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Is there overlap there? Is there any kind of themes that emerge? Yeah, I mean, the main theme around attachment is we know attachment wounds start where there isn't the ability to co regulate. So meaning if there is not a present caregiver, and that can be community too, it doesn't have to be a single entity. But if there's not a present caregiver, who is able to be available in themselves to hold space for an infant, because we don't come into this world with the ability to regulate our own emotions and attention and energy.
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That's modelled and it's modelled through a shared experience. So it's not like a baby's watching the caregiver and going, oh, I like how they process that emotion. Nothing like that. It's literally it's like is a parent expressive? Can they be with their emotions that's felt in the room?
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Can I hold my infant while the infant is crying or upset and be present for them? That's co regulation. Oh, I'm learning through someone else's ability to be grounded and present and expressive, that I too can do that and that leads to self regulation. If I never get the opportunity to co regulate, I never get the opportunity to learn self regulation. And that looks like an inability to regulate my energy, my emotional expression and my attention.
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And those are the exact ingredients that I talked about as part of an addiction to drama. The symptoms of an addiction to drama. Yeah. So I suppose then it is kind of a common origin story, but maybe it just manifests differently for different people. Most of the people that I work with lean towards more anxious attachment patterning and I think there's certainly elements of this addiction or gravitating towards drama in a lot of those behaviours.
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But it's interesting to observe that and to also observe that. As you describe, at the heart of addiction to drama is avoiding our own stuff, avoiding that emptiness or the bigness of that void inside of us. And I think that, again, it's something that I point out to people that emotionality or loud and big emotions is not the same as vulnerability. And I think that oftentimes there can be a misunderstanding around that. People thinking, yeah, I'm good at vulnerability because of how emotional I am.
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But I think when our emotions are coming out in whether it's a performative way or a way that is a distraction or is some sort of avoidance from the tenderness that sits underneath it, I think we again have to get a little curious about what's really going on for us there. Yeah. When the emotion is disproportionate to the experience and that's a little tricky. That is tricky to navigate what disproportionate means. But if the emotion is what I call it, a secondary emotion, which is a place where all emotions, sad, happy, whatever get deposited in to become rage.
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Like, if I don't have a big emotional landscape and I feel a little disappointed, and it becomes rage, and I feel a little joyful, and it becomes gleeful, those are my only two emotions. And it feels very polar and extreme. It's like every subtle, nuanced emotion, and there are hundreds of them, get deposited in these major emotional containers or depositories. They're called secondary emotions. And if those emotions that I'm experiencing are primarily based on revving myself up from the past or the future, as opposed to what's actually happening in the present moment, it also seems performative.
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So just because you have big emotions does not mean you are in contact with your emotional truth. You might be just relating and replaying stories from the past or projections of the future to get yourself to that emotional high to which you feel something with. So again, it takes you above that level of threshold and the level of numbness that's there, and you feel alive. Great. And you feel like the burst of catharsis, which ends up just actually leaving you into withdrawal symptoms from it like any addiction, right?
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It's the plunge. Yeah. That disregulated emotional expression is not actually metabolising and processing it because often in those big experiences, you're feeding off the emotion to rev yourself up more, as opposed to using the emotion to direct and guide you towards your needs and processing and metabolising it once you've arrived at your needs, it's very different. And so for people who experience this, I'm sure by this point in our conversation, a lot of people are nodding and sheepishly raising their hand.
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So I guess the question then becomes and again, I hear this a lot from people, it's like I'm not attracted to healthy, quote unquote, stable, healthy people. When I date someone who seems really reliable and available and kind and caring, I don't feel the same spark as I do with that person over there who doesn't text me for two weeks, but then shows up and I get the rush and the hit and the spark. So what do I do? Well, first, let's name the spark for what it is. It's called a trauma single. Okay? It is Red flag. Couture, my loves. It is not attraction. It is the mistake of what intensity is misplaced for intimacy.
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You are chasing your red flags in that moment when you are following the magnetism of your Trauma Tingles. Okay, I love trauma tingles. I love it feels so visceral. It's so visceral and it's true. And there is a big difference of when you have healed and you can find the nuances and the flavours of love that do not feel escalated and intense and extreme and roller coastery.
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And when the attraction feels grounded in your body, I promise you it will not feel as exciting. Sorry. Loves that's your trauma tingles. If you need excitement, go on a fucking roller coaster.
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Maybe don't go chasing waterfalls of bad relationships to get it. But it's confusing because we often think, oh, excitement of love. Yeah, that's your stress response. It takes a couple of months to work your way into the groove of a relationship. And that's often when people are like, oh, now it's boring.
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No, now you are in the truth of relationship. If you can make it there, the first couple of months are more stress induced. They're exciting. Stress doesn't mean bad, it can also mean exciting. But it is an activated experience.
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It is a charged experience. And especially if we're following our Trauma Tingles, it is like there's a part of us that says, yay, we're back in the familiar. Yay, this feels like home. Home is great. And so it can be challenging because we're listening to these signals, so to speak, in our body.
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These signals that say, like, OOH, there's just such deep attraction. And we have to learn to discern the difference between a Trauma Tingle and a present grounded, anchored, bi directional sense of flow that does include some nervousness and some vulnerability and some topsy turvy feelings as well. But also you don't lose yourself.
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Yeah. And I think discernment is what emerges from that. It's like the thing that we so want to be able to cultivate, because I think a lot of people hear that and they go, oh, chemistry bad. Spark bad. Does that mean as soon as I feel excited about someone, I need to red flag myself the hell out of there.
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And we can get a bit extreme and not trusting of our own judgement because we know we've got a pattern. And so we're so suspicious of our own feelings that we're like, oh, no, red flags. Go, is it a red flag if I really like someone? It's like, okay, maybe just back crisis hopping. Stop crisis hopping.
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That's your addiction to drama. It takes some nuance, it takes some experimenting, and you won't know. And you don't have to go to the polar opposite of like going to a nunnery because you have traced your Trauma Tingles before. Yeah. It just takes a good coach or therapist to help guide you into the clarity and discernment of it.
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Yeah. It's that hanging out in that messy place of finding our way is really hard for people who want to believe that there's a black and white three step formula way to know. No, I was in a relationship this summer. I repeated the same pattern I've done a million times. They literally said they're not available.
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And I was like, that's okay. I'm here for you. We literally had that exchange, and I'm so grateful for it, because in this 40th time of repeating this pattern as an adult this year it's may. It's may, and I have repeated it, but it opened up a whole new access point to healing for me to have repeated it. I'm so grateful I repeated it.
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And I've gone on dates with people since, and I was like, oh, trauma tingles aren't here. Yeah. This pattern that they're doing doesn't seem sexy anymore. Oh, they're not available. That's weird.
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I don't feel turned on. Well, am I too old to feel turned on now? No. I have worked it out where I'm like, oh, it just doesn't it's not attractive anymore. And that feels like such freedom.
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Yeah. Where I'm like, I've just got up and walked out of a date. I'm like, yeah, you're great, and I just need someone who's more emotionally available. And you actually haven't asked me a single question about me, so I'm giving you some information about me now by leaving. Bye.
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You must have felt so on top of the world walking out of there. I followed up with them and I was like, hey, I just want to make sure you understood where I'm coming from and not to leave you hanging, but that was my boundary. It doesn't work for me. And I'm sure you will either read a good book called Addicted to Drama or find whoever signed copy and here's my assigned copy. Yeah, I think that's the way it can go, right?
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When we take responsibility, rather than going. I think the old way would be, why didn't they ask me any questions about me? Why would that what does it mean? What is that? Oh, yeah.
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I would say that I'm not interesting enough or like, yeah, all the internal scripts, those internal skips are like glue to the pattern. They help just seal it in, and as you remove the pattern and the trauma tingles no longer feel enticing, those scripts also just begin to drip away. It's like they didn't ask me any questions. They don't know how or they weren't interested. And that's also okay, they don't have to be interested in me, but at least I'm clear that that's not what I want.
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Yeah. I think that when we notice ourselves going into that detective mode and trying to analyse someone and make their behaviour make sense or find some sort of way to reverse engineer the outcome that we want or we are is it that they are avoidant or they have this type of trauma? And maybe also I should try this strategy to get through to them and this is how I'll make them feel safe so that they open up. It's just like, can I take all of that as feedback about what's going on for me rather than meaning anything about them? Can I deal with that first and foremost?
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Yeah. And if any of those scripts are happening, that's not relationship. That is not the foundation for a healthy, secure relationship right there. So if you find yourself in it, you got a little work to do, and that's cool. Welcome to the club of getting our shit together whenever we're getting our shit together.
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And if you're making it all about them, guess what? You got some work to do as well. And that's okay. We are an emergent experience. As humans, we are never complete.
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So get comfortable with where you are in your emergent healing journey and just rock it. Yeah. So what would you say then, when we notice that tendency in ourselves? Is there a way that we can rather than going into that urge of retreating and going into those extremes of, oh, I just have to isolate myself and do all of my healing in a very serious way until I'm healed enough to go and do this? What are some kind of tangible in between steps as we walk the path so that we can still exist in the world while acknowledging that we have some work to do?
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Yeah. Well, here's another bullshit comment like that, which is that I have to love myself before I can be loved. I've said that before. Bullshit. When you were a baby, you did not fucking love yourself.
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You didn't even know you existed really, yet you didn't have all the systems in place. So find people that know how to love friends, therapists, people who are co regulating professionals and hang out with them and just be like, what's this like? What's this like to be in an environment and ecosystem in a room where someone is present and available? Oh, that's scary. For me, whatever it is that's the experiment is, it does not have to it can be with a significant other, but it gets complex and messy sometimes when we try and do that.
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So you don't have to go retreat, go to a nunnery, you don't have to shut yourself off to the world, you don't have to stop dating, but do find the resources that are available of people who know how to be available and present with you. That is not the same thing as people who are enabling your addiction to drama. If you're talking about you're shit talking so and so and they did this and they did that, and then that friend goes, oh my gosh, and what happened next? That is not someone who's actually being present with you. That is someone who's jumping into your bonfire of drama.
0:35:12.04 → 0:35:28.98
Someone you have pulled into your crisis through your vortex of drama. Different. Very different. So. Find people who are sturdy, grounded anchor. Put a newspaper ad out there for that.
0:35:31.21 → 0:35:56.87
Looking for a sturdy co regulator in my city. Looking for a sturdy co regulator. Here's my IG information. Like a really good embodied somatic coach has hopefully done that work for themselves so that they can be available for you and you use that as a petri dish to rewire and that's so important. And then you keep dating at the same time.
0:35:56.96 → 0:36:59.03
But does it feel like when you're with that person that you've hired from the newspaper or a therapist or a coach or whatever, when you have built the place where it feels safe to feel safe I'm going to say that again. When you have built the place where it feels safe to be safe in those conditions, then you are ready to find that and use that as a beacon to be in relationship with other people who can offer you that and where you can offer them that. Yeah, that's beautifully said and I think that you're so right using. If we see relationship, intimate relationship, particularly when we've got all of those old patterns that we know are not working for us, we see that as kind of top rung of the ladder up there with maybe like family systems. It's like, can I take some in between steps that aren't going to be so heavy on my system, that aren't going to go straight to those buttons and push them frantically?
0:36:59.13 → 0:38:02.20
Because it's so familiar, there's so much muscle memory around it, it's like I could just go straight there before I even realise it. Can I take those in between steps with safe people and build up the capacity in a way that feels a bit more contained, rather than throwing myself into the lion's den and just trying to figure it out on the fly and then being exasperated and deflated when I wind up right back where I started? Yeah, it's funny you say the Lions Den, that's my last name and my family had on the garage door to Lions Den was a long lineage of drama addicts gathering in that home. So it holds special and I love that you said the hierarchy even to get to the place where you can trial these skills that you're learning with a family system. And I'm laughing at that because it's like, to me, that's the ultimate place of the ultimate adventure course.
0:38:02.65 → 0:38:45.13
That's the arena. That is the arena with the gladiators right there. If you can get through a family holiday period without the drama, my therapist says, like, your family created the buttons, they know how to push them and they're operating on an older version of you, not the healed version of you, because they haven't healed to ascend to the same level. So they are working with their familiars, which is challenging. So you're going in with all your new tools and you're like, fuck, I've done all this work.
0:38:45.19 → 0:39:16.23
I'm amazing. I even have a successful relationship now and I'm going to go practise that in my family Christmas party. And then you get there and there's things that are thrown and doors that are slammed and food fights and suitcases that are packed five days earlier than they should have been and whatever the chaos exists in that and you're like, wait, but I did all this work. I paid all this money. Why did it work?
0:39:16.40 → 0:39:38.32
Yeah, so I just want to normalise in those cases. It is about them, it's not you. Yeah. So I guess then that leads to one other limb of all of this. Which is, if you are maybe not the drama addict yourself or you have done work around it, how can you be in proximity to or?
0:39:38.34 → 0:40:15.89
In relationship with other people who maybe haven't done that work in a way that feels boundaried and where you are taking care of yourself in that space without going to extremes of cutting people off or again, going to that thing of like I can't be in relationship with you at all, which in some circumstances might be the last resort. That might be the right thing. But I think there's a lot of in between space. So how can we safely be around people who maybe are still in that mode? Yeah, well, first you got to take care of you, which is their drama is contagious.
0:40:16.55 → 0:41:04.32
I'm not just saying that metaphorically. I'm saying that from as a neurophysiologist, their stress response stimulates your stress response and part of their mechanism for feeling safe, quote unquote, safe in relationship is pulling you into their drama vortex, pulling you into the crisis, into the hurricane, the tornado that they create. And that is ungrounding, that is dysregulating to you. So you need to spend a lot of time building up the capacity to be anchored in yourself, aware of your own emotions when they start to pull you or a mesh, you're able to use different tools to say, I'm not participating in this. That means things like, I'm not enabling them.
0:41:04.85 → 0:41:17.08
I'm not going to say things like, oh, and then what did they say? How could they? How dare you? It's like, that sounds really difficult. Sounds like you had an aspect of your day that was really hard.
0:41:17.45 → 0:41:30.04
Notice I took the over generalised language and made it specific. Yeah. In that moment, I had the worst day ever. Tell me about your worst day ever. What were some of the components of your worst day?
0:41:30.73 → 0:41:59.26
Can you also tell me about some of the things that worked for you today or that were decent? So I hear you had some decent aspects of your day and some hard parts. Sounds like a really mixed bag in that way. I mean, look, I'm a therapist, that's how but those are boundaried language tools. Somewhat like, I know my aunt's coming over and she loves to gossip and she loves to just go in the realm of drama.
0:41:59.32 → 0:42:22.49
She loves to talk about her shows and what's on the news and it's catastrophe left, right and centre. It's the catastrophe games and I'm not interested in participating. That is boring to me. And for me, just a side note for me to say it's boring. That's been a lot of work to get there.
0:42:22.64 → 0:42:31.45
I was going to say, that's a sign, right? It's like, oh, thank God. It's boring to me. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
0:42:31.87 → 0:42:59.22
When I say drama play out, I just sort of giggle at this point. I'm like, Yay, I see you, I see you, it's all good. I will say, hey, I have 15 minutes for you, or if you want to talk about what's happening in your life, we're going to go on a walk. So I'm not stuck in a space with you. With limited space, I might say, oh, I'm happy to listen, but we got to play foosball while we talk or something.
0:43:01.13 → 0:43:54.68
Or, I'm happy to listen to the challenges of your day. I also, for my own preservation, need to hear some things that are not challenges, or I also need us to talk about some things that are positive in the world. If you're just going to talk and catastrophize the news, things like that, of setting boundaries, it sounds like one of the aspects of that that might feel challenging for people is that particularly in a family system, when belonging to the system has meant participating in the drama. We will have to come face to face with the fears around not belonging and going like, oh, okay, there might be consequences of this and I might just have to prioritise my well being above, I suppose, recognising what it costs me to belong in a system that is addicted to drama and chaos. Look, you will lose people.
0:43:55.53 → 0:44:19.21
That is the existential real thing of life. You will lose people. As you heal, people will not be able to use you to drama bond in the same way, so you become unavailable for them. Sorry, not sorry. That's for your own health and loss is real.
0:44:19.33 → 0:44:34.42
I acknowledge that they also meant something to you, if that's the case, and they may come back after they do their own healing too, or they may not, and that friends come and go.
0:44:37.03 → 0:44:59.48
It is a real aspect of life. Like, how many of your high school friends do you still talk to? Yeah. Like, how many of your elementary school friends do you still talk to? Yeah, I just want to kind of normalise, because the other piece I didn't say is you can walk away if you have tried all of these other strategies and they're really laid out in the book for you as well.
0:44:59.61 → 0:45:22.52
If you know someone addicted to drama and how to take care of yourself, if you have tried all these other strategies and it's a no win situation, you're locked in to their crisis. No matter what you do, walk away. It's okay. You are entitled and allowed to take care of yourself first. Just like on an aeroplane.
0:45:22.63 → 0:45:36.76
Put the oxygen over your mouth first. Yeah. That might mean walking away. Yeah. Look, I'm saying that having known people who have walked away from me in the long run, I'm glad they did.
0:45:38.35 → 0:46:11.34
First of all, they were enabling me. I'm glad they did. I'm glad they took care of themselves, because it was also a wake up call to me. At a certain point, after enough people are like, why aren't they texting me and asking me to go out with them every Friday night? I did recognise there was something I was doing that maybe was not giving them the peace that they deserve in their life.
0:46:11.52 → 0:46:25.44
Yeah. It goes back to that common denominator point that we started with, right? Yeah. Being an invitation to look in the mirror and get a bit curious and honest. That mirror is hard.
0:46:25.62 → 0:46:36.62
It is, absolutely. It's so much easier to blame everyone else. So much easier. Oh, my gosh, I wish I had the naivete to still do that.
0:46:40.29 → 0:47:26.55
Although I think, as we said, there is something really ultimately empowering and liberating about getting into the driver's seat and I suppose recognising that we are responsible and capable of taking care of ourselves and owning our part and deciding who we're going to be in relationship to others and how we're going to be realising that that is actually within our control in large part is very, very empowering when we have gone through life feeling like all of that is not within our control. Absolutely. Well said, scott, thank you so much. This has been such a great chat and I'm sure it's going to be hugely valuable to everyone listening. So thank you so much for being here.
0:47:26.59 → 0:47:37.44
We will link all of your work and your book and everything in the show notes. Where can people find you if they want to come into your world and work with you?
0:47:40.61 → 0:47:50.44
You can go to Drscotlions. So dr. Scott Lyons.com. It has some quizzes that are fun, like short little quizzes. Are you addicted to drama?
0:47:50.47 → 0:48:24.03
Do you know someone addicted to drama? It has information about my book, has links to all my trainings on the Embody Lab, the Somatic therapy platform, which I should interrupt and say, I've taken several programmes through the Embody Lab and I highly, highly recommend it. So if anyone is kind of working in this space and wants to learn more about this, I couldn't recommend those programmes more highly. Thank you. Yeah, that platform is my baby and pride is not something I had experienced for most of my life.
0:48:24.10 → 0:48:35.66
It was not something I allowed myself to feel because I wasn't feeling much besides extremes. But I really feel proud of what the Embody Lab has done in the world. Yeah. Really grateful. Yes.
0:48:35.68 → 0:48:43.15
You should. It's making its impact. Yeah, it's really one of a kind. Thank you. So.
0:48:43.19 → 0:48:54.36
Yeah. The Embody lab, drscotlines.com. I'm on Instagram, I have a very fun, spicy podcast called The Gently Used Human that launched today.
0:49:00.35 → 0:49:24.72
Other than that, I'm writing books and I'm just rocking my own addiction to drama. Well, thanks so much, Scott. We'll put all of that in the show notes for anyone who wants to cheque out Scott's work, which I can highly recommend, but otherwise, thanks so much for being here. My pleasure. Thank you.
0:49:26.53 → 0:49:49.08
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__Rigg or stephanierigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.