6 Signs You Are Addicted to Stress, According to a Psychologist | The Mel Robbins Podcast
Dr. Scott Lyons explains why some people unconsciously crave stress and drama. He identifies six signs: extreme language, gossip, replaying stories, feeling alive under pressure, and nervous-system patterns rooted in childhood trauma. Grounding techniques, naming your stress response, and therapy can help break the cycle.
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You and I are digging into the fascinating science, research and psychology of drama.
Do you use language, like, extremely, literally? Always. Very. Really? Never. Do you feel anxious or bored when things are calm? Do you end up gossiping and stirring things up? Drama's not about making sense. It's about making sensation.
Okay, I'm having a huge light bulb moment.
Oh, tell me about it.
Hey, it's your friend Mel. And welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. So you know that I believe in synchronicity. I believe in signs. I believe that you can open the portal to the universe. And I have the perfect example of how that happens. It happened to me just this morning. I'm here in Los Angeles at Sirius XM Studios, and I come out of the bathroom before I was about to step into this room behind the mic and talk to you today. And holy cow, there was all this commotion as I was walking toward the elevators and boom, this entourage of people walk in. And the person that walked in is somebody that I recognized from a Bravo reality television show. And I didn't even know his name. I just know that he's on this show called Flipping out, which is a show where he's flipping high end houses and constantly flipping, flipping out at his staff and flipping out at clients. My kids love the show. And I thought, oh, my God, of course I'm seeing this person right now, because I'm about to go interview one of the world's leading experts on the topic of being addicted to drama. And here I am looking at somebody who is on television constantly being dramatic and flipping out. And I thought, if this is not a sign from the universe that I am in the right place at the right time, having the right conversation with the perfect expert. I don't know what could be more perfect. So I came down the elevator, I walked into the studio, and I am so thrilled because I know that today's conversation is going to change your life. I know that this is exactly what you need to hear. Because today, you and I are digging into the fascinating science, research and psychology of drama. Drama in your life, drama with other people, drama in your relationships. And more importantly, you are going to get the tools that you need to remove it. You're gonna get the tools that you need to be able to diffuse it with people in your life that are dramatic or annoying or constantly about themselves. I am so excited to introduce you to Dr. Scott Lyons. Dr. Scott Lyons is a medical doctor. He has a PhD in clinical psychology and mind body medicine. He is a renowned expert on somatic healing. Healing and the connection between the mind and the body. He has a master's in clinical psychology and he is a renowned body based trauma expert. His book Addicted to Drama is filled with science and psychology and tools and strategies that will help you identify where there is unnecessary drama in your life. He's going to explain why we create drama and why we keep ourselves on edge and why we find ourselves picking fights, gossiping, and staying in these relationships where drama is present. I cannot wait to dig in. So without further ado, Dr. Scott Lyons, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.
Thanks, Mel. I'm so excited to be here.
I'm thrilled. And so I want to start with the most obvious question, which is, what do you mean when you say addicted to drama? What does that even mean?
It's the unnecessary turmoil. It's the exaggeration. It's the performative aspect of the. The use of. The dysregulated use of energy, action, emotion in the dysfunctional way of adaptation.
Like, okay, those were a lot of big words.
Those were a lot of big words. We can break them down.
But the most important word that I just heard.
Yeah.
Was unnecessary.
Yeah. The unnecessary turmoil. The unnecessary exaggeration. Intensification.
Love that. Here's what I just got from that definition.
Yeah.
I think this is super easy to spot in other people.
Yeah.
It's the person who's like the bull in the china shop and everything's about them and they're very blustery. But you just included me in the definition when you said unnecessary turmoil.
Yeah.
And I never considered myself to be a person who is addicted to drama. But I can see and admit.
Yeah.
That there are many areas and examples in my life where I create unnecessary turmoil for myself. And so for the person listening, can you just go even deeper?
Yeah.
Could you walk us through some of the questions that you might ask somebody.
Yeah.
To help them realize, wow, I am addicted to drama in my life.
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the questions you can ask is, do you use language, like, extremely, literally, always. Very. Really? Never that sort of extreme language. Do you feel anxious or bored when things are calm? I know I'm raising my hand.
Used to.
Used to. Yeah, same. Do you end up gossiping and stirring things up? Gossiping is so interesting because it makes us feel included, but at a cost.
Right. And the thing to think, remember, about gossiping is if people do it with you, they always do it about you.
Exactly. You crave extreme situations and sensations. So that might be big feelings, it might be big actions like, you know, like jumping out of an airplane and.
Or partying every night or lots of hookups or.
Yeah, absolutely. You pull people into your crisis.
This is the victim form of drama.
This is the victim, but it's also what we call drama bonding. So it's a way of feeling connection. So it's like, hey, Mel. Oh, my God, you're not gonna believe who I saw in the lobby. He gave me this weird look, and all of a sudden you're saying, oh, tell me more. And then I'm pulling you in. I'm pulling you into my vortex. So you're like an inclusive, dramatic person if you find yourself generalizing one bad situation and making it universal. So it's that, like, someone cut me off on the road today and what a terrible day it is, or everybody.
That I've met is a loser. I'm not dating. What's up with men? I can't handle this anymore. Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
Have you said those lines before?
No.
Okay.
I hear a lot of my friends say them, though.
Yes. Yeah. It's like, ooh, yeah, the catchphrase. It's always something.
Always something.
It's always something. And I have other friends who I'm like, it's always something. And I go, what's always something?
And then she'd just look at you and be like, you.
You always have something that is true. Yeah. You feel more alive under pressure. So, like, waiting to the deadline to get things done, you're preoccupied with fixing things. You play out a scenario or interaction over and over again in your head, even changing the storyline a little bit at each time and then possibly venting it to your friends as well. So if you find yourself retelling the same story more than twice, I would ask you, what about it? Haven't you processed yet? Why do you need to retell it? Because basically, you're just spreading the drama.
It's sort of like the person that talks about the breakup and then how the person has moved on, and they've been doing it for months and months and months. And by talking about it and being dramatic about it and stirring it up, they keep it at the surface, but they don't drop into the deeper feelings of loneliness and inferiority and abandonment and fear.
Yes. And so replaying it keeps you out of being in contact with those vulnerable feelings.
What are some of the signs that you might feel internally?
And it's important, again, to recognize how we view someone addicted to drama on the outside is different than how people feel on the inside.
Okay.
So from the inside, you might say Things I don't feel like I can direct my own reality. I don't have control. And my internal world has a lot of pain and wounding in it. And from the outside someone might be like. It feels like everything they're doing is being controlled, manipulated and measured on the inside. It's intense. There's an intensity, there's a sensation that you're always kind of uneased and about to erupt and that everything is urgent, like everything is an emergency. Because that's how we're viewing it from the inside. And from the outside it feels like they're bulldozing, overpowering in like this frenetic energy that just can't be contained.
This topic addicted to drama is so critical is because without understanding where you or other people that you care about are addicted to this cycle of drama in their life, you will never experience peace and happiness.
Yeah. It doesn't allow you to. Because peace, stillness, ease is unsafe.
What do you mean?
For those of us who have some propensity or have some addiction to drama, which is quite a few of us getting to that point of stillness, ease actually feels terrifying. It feels like death. Or we notice it in the reflex of our mind. So if you've ever gone to a meditation class or been in a bath or just walking through a garden, so you're in this peaceful place, the environment is right. To find more ease and stillness. And yet there's this moment where you drop down and then something happens, like an alarm goes off. We call that a revving reflex. And you start thinking about the next day at work.
Yes.
You start thinking about that X. You start getting on your phone, you start looking at people, your ex, whomever, on the phone. You start doing things that interrupt that ease and that. That stillness.
Yeah.
Why? Why when we're sad, do we go play even sadder music? Why are we rushing down the street when we have nowhere to go?
Why?
Well, part of it's this addiction to drama. This constant sense of dis. Ease and urgency that is within us. And that revving reflex helps us stay out of contact with the vulnerability of what hasn't been processed.
Okay, I'm having a huge light bulb moment.
Oh, tell me about it.
Because you know, Dr. Scott, I. When I think about being addicted to drama, I hear that phrase and I think about external things, Right?
Yeah.
When I heard addicted to drama and I hear that phrase, I think about someone who on the surface is flipping out or annoying as hell.
Yeah, yeah.
Or narcissistic or controlling or whatever. That's not Actually, what you're talking about, that's one aspect of it. Here's what I'm getting.
Yeah.
That an addiction to drama is a way to identify and label childhood trauma. The effect of growing up in a chaotic household. The effect of having sustained emotional abuse or sexual or physical abuse, or simply having this experience in your body where you feel on edge all the time. And I've heard a lot of people in my work and in the research that we do talk about the fact that I grew up with experiences where I felt like, when is the other shoe going to drop?
Yeah.
When is dad going to come home drunk? When is, you know, there going to be another shooting on my block? When is. When are we going to run out of money? When. And that your. You called it. What did you call it? A revving.
A revving reflex.
A revving reflex. That. That another way to think about this sense in your life that you have to always be ready for the next thing.
Yes.
That is the revving reflex going all the time. It sounds like.
Absolutely. It's the anticipation, the readiness for the next bad thing, for the next trauma. We trace the drama to avoid our traumas.
Okay, let's unpack that. Because you're basically saying whether you are the annoying person in your friend group, in your family, where it's all about you all the time, you can't help it, you're even sick of your own stuff. Or you're the person who is sitting quietly in the corner with no external evidence that there is drama. But you are so in your head and so either anxiety ridden or on edge or just bracing all the time that the drama is actually internal.
Yeah. That internal revving.
Got it. Oh, wow.
So that's the spectrum right there.
What. What. What made you want to call this drama?
Well, I mean, for.
That feels a little bit more accessible.
Yeah.
Like it's. It. Like in some way, if I were to call that revving or that on edge sensation in my body.
Yeah.
And having been somebody that really struggled with anxiety.
Yeah.
For 45 years until I really understood that it was in my body, not in my head. Calling it drama feels way nicer and actually more accessible than calling it something like childhood sexual trauma stored in my nervous system. Like, I like the. I kind of like the idea.
Okay.
It's just drama in my nervous system.
Yeah.
Like, why did you start to study this? Why the word drama?
Yeah. I mean, drama is reclaiming. So we have these derogatory terms like drama queen. And when most people go, they're such A drama queen or drama addict. It's usually in a very derogatory context.
That's true.
And I wanted to reclaim it and I wanted to say. Okay, so we have this familiar term that all of us or most of us know. Someone walks in, they take the air out of the room. We know that person.
Yeah.
We know that they have some, like, proclivity towards drama, some addiction to it.
Right. Or is this also the kind of person that they just can't get out of their own way?
Yes.
They get sober, then they relapse, they.
They keep dating the person that hurts them.
Yes.
Why? And it's. It's like, yeah, we can look at attachment patterns, but it all leads back to the same physiological process.
Which is what?
Which is that it helps you distract, it gives you energy, and it's a pain reliever. That is what drama does.
And drama is anything that. What.
That gives you a stress response, basically, that raises those cortisol levels that makes you revved up. And part of it is when I talk about the exaggeration and the intensification of something. Like most people think of drama addicts as performative.
Right, Exactly. This is what I'm getting at, that you're actually talking about a much larger spectrum. Like, what does it look like for somebody who is not, quote, the drama queen or doesn't, quote, suck the air out of the room, but is suffering from an addiction to drama on the inside?
Yeah. Well, it all has the same physiological response. It all gives you that revved up stress response.
Okay.
And in that. So that's one of the important things is that whatever the behavior is. So whether we're over scheduling ourselves, whether we're gossiping, whether we're getting into another fight with someone in order to feel closer to them, whatever it is, that is the behavior, it all has the same physiological. It gives us that boost of energy. It gives us pain relief. It's an anesthesia. Stress is an anesthesia. Just like when you go running, do you run?
Used to. Before bladder surgery and three children.
Or jumping into a cold pool.
Yeah.
I mean, those type of stress responses give us a flood of pain relief. Pain relief hormones. Right.
You're right. But I don't think about it that way. Because when you think about drama in your life.
Yeah.
It's. It causes a lot of pain.
Yeah. Drama's not about making sense. It's about making sensation. And that sensation gives you a sense of feeling alive when most of your internal experience is feeling numb. So it gives you enough. The decibel volume of sensations high enough to rise above the threshold of numbness, to go, I feel something. And that numbness comes from a trauma response that's protective, that survival response. Then we start to feel like we don't exist, we don't belong. And so we start to crave sensation. We start to reach for it, we start to manifest it. We start to find ourselves in scenarios or even create scenarios in our head that give us some type of experience, give us sensation. To go, oh, at least I feel something. Even if it's bad. And especially if that something gives me that heightened stress response. I feel energized. Because that's the first stage of a stress response, is it releases energy into our body. And the second part is, is it releases a flood, a cascade of hormones that gives us some pain relief or disconnection from the underlying pain and trauma that we are hiding from, from that we have to hide from as a.
Means of survival or that we don't even know is there, or that we.
Don'T even know is there but is plaguing us. Huh.
This is. So how did you, like, get into this? Why did you decide to research this?
Yeah.
How did you discover that you had an addiction to drama?
Yeah, well, I was always in the arts, and that was an indicator is I like performing in front of thousands of people. It's like that moment where you feel like, the rise of excitement and energy. I was like, oh, my God, I feel alive. And I don't feel that in the rest of my life. Interesting. And I was going through a divorce in my late 20s, and I was depressed. I was at the lowest point of my life. I had to move in with my parents. I just couldn't function. And I found that when I called my ex or got into fights with my sister or watched Bravo, whatever it was, that that created some type of tension. I felt alive again. And I started to reflect back on that and I was like, wait. So these moments of tension, of angst, of anxiety, of anger, that's when I feel alive. That's not the life I want to live. When I would watch the news and I would go call a friend and be like, did you see that? And I'd feel alive. I'd feel part of something. I'd feel like we were an in group and we had something to share, and I felt belonging. And then the moment I hung up, I felt alone again. I was like, oh, so that's. I don't want to live a life where the moments I actually feel relationship are either in fighting or in gossiping.
That's how a lot of people bond. I know, is by complaining or gossiping about other people or complaining about their life or griping about what's wrong.
Yeah. We drama bond.
Drama bond.
We throw logs on each other's fire and we feel like we're part of something.
Yes.
And I bring you into my tornado of chaos, and all of a sudden I feel a sense of connection because my internal world is matching the external world, and you're in it, and that just isn't a sustainable form of relationship.
Is it true that you even fake your own suicide?
Yeah.
So tell me that story.
Yeah. I was in high school, and I was at my wit's end. I was being bullied by teachers. I was told I was stupid by teachers, that I would never pass high school. I was being shoved into lockers, and I needed an out. I needed a way of surviving. And I didn't want to end my life, but I wanted people to feel the pain I was feeling so that they could somehow empathize. Fun finally with me and. And save me. I wanted to be saved. And so I set the scene. I wrote the note. I put the pills on the ground. I created the performance of my death. And I. What I came to understand later is what I called weaponized empathy. Even though there were people in my life who could relate to me, letting my guard down was too painful, was too scary. And so I couldn't actually recognize that there were people who could empathize with me. The only way I could understand empathy was if they were in the same pain I was in or something in close to it, proximity to it. It's like an eye for an eye.
Right?
And so many of us do that. We see these fights with partners, like, if you don't. Like, you don't truly understand my pain. And so we bully them into being in the same sense of pain we are. And so I did that as a, you know, as a young adult.
How old were you?
I was 16 the first time.
Wait, the first time?
Yeah. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't get what I needed. And part of why I didn't get what I needed is because I wasn't safe enough in my own body to receive people's love and care, validation. And we see that with those who are addicted to drama, and we say, like, I'm here for you. And they don't hear it, because hearing it would mean they have to let the drawbridge down of relationship. And that would also Let the bad things in.
That makes a lot of sense. You know, my mom has often said to me, why would I go to therapy at my age?
Yeah.
So I have to dig up all that stuff I don't want to deal with. What if I find out I don't like my life? What if I find out I don't like your father? What if I find out I don't like you? Like, I don't want to let that in. And so there's a huge part of this that I can see as you're telling this story. What I see in myself is that same busyness that trying to outrun all the things that I did not want to have to face and realizing when I finally slowed down these past couple years, that I was actively blocking the love that people were trying to pour into me.
Yeah.
Because I hadn't yet faced the stuff that needed healing.
Yeah.
And so your first attempt was when you were 16, and then did they. Like, what. How did your parents respond? What did they try to do, to intervene? Like, did they send you to therapy? Did you go inpatient? Like, what happened?
Yeah, I did inpatient.
And did it help? Did it not? Did it.
Yeah, I loved it.
Okay.
It was a place of safety.
Okay.
And so they would let me out because I was doing so well, and I'd have to go back to that school where I was being bullied and, you know, harmed by faculty. I mean.
And were you out at this point in your life?
No. No.
Okay.
So it wasn't even part of the conversation as to. I actually got more bullied because I had such severe learning disabilities.
Oh.
Than I did about my sexuality.
Gotcha.
Sometimes I'd be pushed into lockers because. And called fag or other names, but really, it was like that dumb kid.
Oh. And then they start to. That was the era where they would, like, take us out of class and put you in the special track. And so you just knew.
Yeah.
And so this continued on, this. Seeking attention and wanting to be seen, but not feeling seen.
Yeah. Seeking to be seen, not feeling seen, and not able to accept being seen. And that's the conflict right there. Because even though it's something we want, it feels too dangerous to get it. You know, so many of us. To be seen means that we're also being seen in the things that we are trying to avoid, the things that are too painful to be in contact with. And so one of the aspects of addiction to drama is to keep running away from that point of contact, which is ourselves, you know, when we have early traumas, we disconnect from ourself. We get a divorce from ourself. We call that disassociation.
Right.
And it leaves a void.
Okay.
And when we start filling that void up with anything, we become dependent on it, whether it's alcohol, whether it's drugs, whether it's sex, whether it's stress. And. And when we fill that void, what it's also doing is it's helping us stay away from what's underneath that void, underneath that hole or at the pit of that hole, which is the root of so much suffering, which is our trauma.
How do you identify that? It's drama that you're addicted to. Keeping in mind that this might be the first time that the person listening is considering. Wow. I'm always waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Yep.
I'm always stirring something up. Yeah, I do bitch with my partner.
Or pick fights or I feel closer to them after a fight than I do in moments of ease.
Yes. So wait, you're saying that we pick fights to feel closer with somebody?
It's the places where we feel safer.
Why do we feel safer when we're fighting?
Well, one of the symptoms of an addiction drama is there's always a sense of dis. Ease. There's a sense of constant urgency. And from the outside, it looks like someone with an addiction drama is like bulldozing, but on the inside, they feel out of sync, that their own sense of timing feels disproportionate to the timing of other people. And their energy, their attention, their emotion are disproportionate to other people. And I can go into the physiology.
Please, let's hear it.
The best example I can give is I was renting a Airbnb lately recently, and you know those carbon monoxide detectors, when the battery's dead, it goes beep. Yes, beep. And it doesn't stop. Yes.
It's so annoying.
So annoying. And they. Somebody hid the carbon monoxide detector in, and I couldn't find it in this Airbnb rental. In this Airbnb. And it was going, like, every 55 seconds. I timed it, and then I started to notice. Oh, my gosh. I'm actually in an anticipation state. So I'm already getting ready for the next beep. I feel my body tensing. I feel my attention zooming in onto where it could be. And that's what trauma does. So often we think trauma is just stored in the body, but trauma is also about how we get ready for the next possible trauma.
Explain more about that.
So all of our senses, the way we smell, the way we hear, start to attune, like a TV channel to the next possible danger.
Gotcha.
So we're looking for it. That is the filter of our life.
Like, it could be your boss, it could be your boss, friends, could be all this stuff.
So all of our senses are more attuned towards danger than safety. So that is what we find. So when those who are addicted to dramatic are like, saying it's always something, it's because that is the channel to which they see the world. That's the channel that's on the world that is dangerous. And so they constantly feel and are responding to that world of danger. They feel it in their whole nervous system. There's a sense of dis ease. Disease is also because they feel disconnected to themselves. There's so much suppression, repression, because they had to disconnect from the trauma that's stored in their body. And the symptom of that, that lets us know there's a disconnection is dis ease. We feel that sense of urgency because we're out of sync with the world as we know it. Our world, if we're addicted to drama, feels dangerous. The world that everyone else is in, who doesn't have that, looks dizzy. And so there's a sense of being in dissonance, out of sync with everyone.
So can I ask you another question? Because when you said. Yeah, that word, it's always something. Are there other catchphrases that people that have this addiction to drama? Like, I'm thinking about the fact that one of my daughters always says. And I used to say this too. I always feel like I'm on the outside.
Yes.
Looking in. I always feel like everybody else has it figured out, but I don't. Like, are there. Is that, like a catchphrase that you might say to yourself?
No one ever gets me.
Yeah.
No one's ever here for me. No one's got my back. And then someone next to you is like, but I'm here with you. My friend picked me up from the airport maybe a year ago, and she brought all my favorite food and my favorite water. And I had just gone through a breakup, and I got in the car, and I was like, she's like, how are you? And I was like, sad. I feel like no one loves me. And she's like, I just brought you your favorite food. I picked you up from the airport. And I was like, oh, gosh, you're right. Thank you for breaking me out of that. Yes. It's such an old script that I replay sometimes when I'm not feeling well or not feeling, you know, secure in myself. But the reality is, I know there's love out there, but I can't be. I couldn't. In my. In my childhood, I couldn't be with it. It wasn't safe.
You know, you're just helping me have a little bit of empathy for a friend of mine who I will not name, but this particular friend has this extremely annoying.
Okay.
Habit of texting in a passive aggressive way. When are we ever gonna see you? Or heaven forbid, I am in the town that this person lives in. Inevitably, if this person sees that I am in town, instead of getting a hey, I see you're in town. Do you have time? Let's hang out. It's. Oh, thanks a lot for not saying that you were coming. And I'm like, fuck you. Like, why. Why are you unloading this on me? And what you're making me see.
Yeah.
Is that this person isn't a jerk. This person has an addiction to this drama. And they feel a sense of not being important.
They sent. There's a sense of not feeling important. There's a sense of not being seen, which is a chronic issue of the original trauma.
Often.
And I'm assuming they go from seeing something on the Internet and creating a narrative for story and then having an emotional response to the story as opposed to what's actually happening.
Yes.
And so what you could sometimes say is, I hear this story you're creating is that I'm not here for you. But if we can take a step back, I'd love to get together and connect. Because it. And this is the hard part about being someone. Being around someone who's addicted to drama is often they're rolling down the hill of drama. That inertia, you cannot stop. I don't know about your friend, but if you were to say, like, I'm here. Let's get together, they're like, no, it's too late.
Yes, a thousand percent.
You've hurt me. I don't know what I can do. Yes, everyone hurts me. And they just keep pulling all these logs on and to burn their fire. Higher. The drama fire.
Yes.
And you can't stop it.
Well, I was doing this to myself too. So that's an example of somebody on the external.
That's an external rev.
Let me tell you. The internal one is when I would say, boy, probably five or six years ago, as I was really starting to feel lonely. I was. My kids were Getting older and I was no longer seeing a lot of friends because we're all super busy and I'm working all the time. And I started to tell myself a story that I have no friends. And I started to tell myself a story that all of my old friends were always getting together and they were getting together without me. And I kept repeating this story and it kept me isolated, it kept me feeling lonely, it kept me feel. It kept me from reaching out to people. It made me feel separate from everybody else. It actually made me miserable because I convinced myself that all of our old friends were having wonderful parties and enjoying life and everything was fantastic. And we were the losers that nobody liked or ever invited anywhere. And of course, now I know nobody was getting together with anybody. Everybody was busy as hell and starting to feel lonely. And it was a complete dramatic scene that I had created and was the main character in.
Yeah, yeah. That sounds so fucking painful.
Well, I think based on the number of comments and topic requests that we get.
Yeah.
I would be willing to put money on the fact that 90% of you listening can relate to that story.
Yeah. I think it's so common how we create. We internally rev. We create these stories that keep us. That reenact our childhood traumas, that keep us further away.
Well, so for somebody who's never even considered this, could you give us an example that is relatable to how some kind of trauma that a lot of people may have experienced in their childhood might not even consider it to be trauma?
Yeah.
Can you give us an example of how that can create an addiction to drama as an adult?
Yeah, absolutely. So most of us have some sense in our life of not being seen and heard. That's a kind of a very familiar wound for many of us. And so especially as young kids, what do we do? We don't have very many options. So we disconnect. We disconnect from the feeling. We focus on something else and it's a suppression, repression of it.
I think I have an example.
Yeah.
And it's one I did to my kids.
Okay, tell me.
So when our kids were in middle school.
Yeah.
I was starting to travel a lot and my husband was the stay at home dad. And one of the things that our daughters in particular say that we did terribly as parents is that my husband, because of how he was raised, would always say to them, try to get a ride home. And meanwhile, I'm off traveling. I have no idea this is happening. I did not grow up in a family where anybody ever said, try to get A ride home. Yeah. I lived close enough to the school I could walk home if worse came to worse, but our kids could not walk home from where they were. And so Chris, because of his fricking childhood where nobody picked him up, was constantly telling our middle school daughters, see if you can't get a ride home. And so they would be feeling at the end of a soccer match, the panic that they're responsible for bumming a ride home with somebody.
Yeah. Or abandoned.
Or abandoned. All of it. And, and. And fast forward now.
Yeah.
I realize.
Yeah.
That there is a lot of drama in our family around getting out of the house because it becomes this like, ah. Experience in our family.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because they have this unresolved issue.
Yeah. Yep.
Of feeling abandoned. And then it's getting triggered when we as a family are trying to go somewhere and they're starting to feel like nobody's going to be there on time. We're not going to be there on time. This is a very familiar experience and that starts. Is this an example of it?
Yeah, it's a beautiful example. The disproportionate, like, response to a very basic stimulus.
Yes.
It's like blowing out a candle with a fire hose. It doesn't make sense. It's like, oh, it's sprinkling outside. We better go into the bomb shelter. It's like, we're going to leave the house. Come on. Mel, Mel, Mel, we gotta go. We're gonna be late. Everyone's gonna hate us.
You're 1000% in our kitchen right now. The blowing out a candle with a fire hose.
Yeah.
Let's just pause on that phrase. Sure. Because I think we all know a number of people in our lives that blow the candle out with a fire hose that they get triggered and they completely. Tantrum.
Yeah.
Let's talk about what is it like and how can you in a healthy way be in a relationship with somebody who is addicted to. Dramatic.
Yeah. Because most of us know someone who is addicted. Drama. It's important to recognize that a stress response. So someone who's in a chronic stress response, like happens in addiction and drama is that it's contagious. And so let's say I'm. I was pretty nervous when I saw you today. Still am a little nervous.
You are?
Yes. Oh, my God, Mel.
I don't know. You're great.
You're great. And it's intimidating.
Oh, please.
And there someone in this room or even you might start to pick it up on a level you wouldn't recognize.
Okay.
Yeah. So subconsciously.
Yep.
Your physiology is responding to my physiology. That's evolutionarily designed. You know, I'm running into the house or into the studio because I just got chased by a snake. And you don't even have to know what's chasing me. Your physiology is going to mirror mine in preparation to be responsible.
I would imagine this is even faster and more addictive in a family.
Yes. Because you register the cues quicker.
I was shopping with our daughter this weekend and it happened to us. Yeah, yeah. She's stressed about, you know, life after college, and so she's already baseline. You can tell, starting to rev herself up, to use the language of drama. We are out shopping, and she comes out of this dressing room and she's got on a pair of motorcycle boots. And she's like, what do you think? And I said, those look just like the ones that I bought you five years ago. And she goes, well, I don't have those anymore. And the energy shifts and I immediately feel the drama. And she then spins on her heels and stomps back into the thing. And then I feel myself rev up because I'm thinking, is she pissed at me? Because I'm not buying her a pair of boots. And now I'm tense, and it escalated from there. And I'm realizing that the dynamic that you've described of somebody having that flood of emotion and then blowing out the candle with a fire hose and stomping into a dressing room, she's feeling something deep in the moment, which is painful, which is. I don't know what I'm doing with my life, and I'm afraid I'm not going to figure it out. And these surface level fights are her seeking that connection with me.
Yeah. She might not be able to be in contact with it.
It's too painful.
It's too painful. So what do we do? We distract ourselves from that pain by creating more sensation.
Well, so how do you deal with somebody who's constantly like this?
Yeah. So for one, recognize what's happening in your own body. Okay, so the fact that you had that experience with your daughter, you started getting revved up from her revving.
Yes.
So you gotta find your anchor, find your ground, Shake it off.
Oh, my God. And then. You don't wanna know what I did.
What'd you do?
Oh, my God. I texted somebody while she was in the dressing room. It's like, I don't remember what. I was responding to a text and I'm like. And I'm really, like, just deep breathing and using the Let them theory because Kendall is in a mood. And then all of a sudden, Kendall responds back because she was in the group chat and just said, you know, I'm in this group chat with you and Lynn. And then I wrote back, touche, and you are in a mood. What do you need?
And did that work?
You know, we stayed in the drama cycle.
Yeah.
Kind of. For the rest of the day.
Yeah, it does.
And then the next morning. Yeah, I texted her and said, I'm out here for two days. I really want to have today go, well, what do you need for me? And she said, well, why don't we talk? And then we get in the car. And in the safety of the car, there's something about, I think, talking to somebody when you're side by side.
Yes.
Versus looking them in the eye. She just burst into tears and she's like, you think I have it all figured out? I don't. Like, I'm afraid I'm not gonna make it. I don't know what to do. I don't even know why I'm out here. I don't know how to get into, like. And it all came pouring out, and all I did was. And then I just apologized and I said, I'm really sorry. You're right. I look at you and see an accomplished, put together, confident young woman who is doing the work. I don't ask you if you're okay, because I assume you are. And I'm sorry. It was a deep level of fear and pain that a lot of us experience when we're going through a major life change, which she is. Those first years out of college or out of high school or out of a relationship or out of a marriage are scary as you're finding your way. And I forget that. And so I can see that in that example that I just lived in the last 48 hours. The drama escalated because she didn't know how to talk about the painful thing, which is, I'm lonely out here and I feel lost, and I don't know if I'm going to make it in this big world as a singer songwriter. And that's a lot. And so instead, we started fighting about the motorcycle boots. And that led us to this existential, beautiful conversation.
It's such a prime example of how this little thing over here that's blown so out of proportion, that's so disproportionate to what's actually underneath the hood.
Yeah.
And if we can get underneath the hood, the drama often, like, settles. It metabolizes because how do we do that, Doctor?
Come on. No, seriously. Because I think, like, I can think. I see this everywhere.
Yeah.
I see the fact that when my parents came to visit me in Vermont.
Yeah.
It's the first time they've. They've visited us since we moved there three years ago. And they came. It was a beautiful visit. But as soon as my parents were leaving, my mom started to go, well, I guess we'll do Thanksgiving in Florida. When the plan had been for all of us, an extended family, to come, and she started just saying it and saying it and saying it and saying it. And the old me would have gotten pissed off. I would have felt controlled. I would have been angry about the campaigning to change a plan. And I would have felt offended when she said, well, you and your brother can get together. The fact that I'm going to Florida doesn't mean that you can't do what you're doing. All I've ever said is, I want our family to do Thanksgiving together. And so, like, I see. I see.
She created a bind in that moment.
Yeah. And so here's the thing, though. When I really unhooked myself and I went under the hood, here's what I thought. When was the last time that we were all together? When was the last time we actually did all travel to them? And it was quite a while ago. And so when I didn't get into the drama cycle and I just took a deep breath and I was like, well, what's actually going on under here?
That's exactly the question that needs to be asked, Mel.
Okay, so that's the technique. If you're dealing with the friend that texts you, I see you're in town. Oh, now it's too late. We're not getting together. Or the fight about shopping or the.
Yeah, part of it is we can use, like, functional reframes. So we go, what do we imagine the story underneath their story, the feelings underneath their story? What is the unspoken needs that are actually present? And that takes a fair amount of empathy, but it's a skill set for ourselves, too. It's like, so we don't get involved in their drama cycle.
Okay.
That's part of a boundary.
Okay.
So, you know, again, recognizing what's happening in your own body, settling yourself, do not attempt to take them off the rolling hill. Okay, that is never gonna work. It's like, hey, what's going on with you? That just is a fucking log on their fire. Yes, you are squeezing.
So do you just, like, quietly put your hand on your heart and Take a breath and, like, literally go. Let them.
Yeah.
Let them spiral. Let them blow the candle out with the fire hose.
Yep. Sometimes you have to let them run their cycle so that you can then enter in. And usually the cycle ends with a collapse in the drama cycle.
Well, a lot of times what I saw from the listeners that wrote in is that there's the eruption.
Yeah.
And then there's the silent treatment because the person doesn't know or doesn't want to or isn't emotionally mature enough to repair the situation. So what do you do when you get the eruption and then the ice silent treatment or the pretending like nothing ever even happened.
Yeah. That's.
How do you handle that?
Go talk to a friend, a therapist to validate your experience.
Okay.
You know, don't rely on their sense of reality to match yours. The more you try to put that pressure on yourself or them to have that mutual reality, the more challenging you will find it to be in your own sense of peace. The Venn diagram of where the overlap of realities happen is small in those moments because they are pulling in the past and the future as opposed to the present.
What's helped me a lot is understanding that when somebody does that, they are having an experience in their bodies where they're experiencing some wave of emotion that they literally can't tolerate it.
Yep.
So they puke it out at you.
Yep. That you become that. Or the relationships become the depository for the emotions.
So is the reason why this is an addiction is because emotional outbursts or creating this revved up state in your body or keeping yourself in a loop where you're like, nobody gets me. Nobody gets me. Nobody loves me. Nobody takes care of me.
Mm.
It's an addiction because it's. Why is it an addiction? Like, how is it classified as an addiction, Dr. Scott?
So addiction typically has at least five characteristics to it, including, you build up a tolerance level to it. You have withdrawal symptoms. You don't care about the social consequences of the action or the behavior. It occupies a lot of your energy and attention. And all of these things really fit into an addiction and drama. An example of tolerance is you need more to feel more. You need more to get drunk. And the same is true with stress, that we start to need more stress or more of anything in that regard to feel more. So I used to get confused with. I thought I was super tolerant, capable of dealing with stress. I had just built up a tolerance level for it, which meant that I needed more over scheduling. I needed to be in more grad programs. At the same time I needed more intense relationships to get that high, to get that hit that then gives me a sensation of feeling alive. It gives me a sense of energy, gives me that pain relief. I needed more to feel more. So that's tolerance. Withdrawal symptoms shows up as things like anxiety and boredom. It's part of the collapse. It's like, oh, I'm so bored. And we start getting that itch, you know, that itch of like I gotta do something, gotta go get a tattoo or I gotta, I don't know what it is, but I feel like that itch gets met if I get into a little friction with a friend or I go watch the news or I go doom scrolling. Something feels stimulating, takes me out of that boredom and more importantly out of the anxiety. Because at the base of or the bottom of the anxiety is all the things I am trying to avoid. All the feelings that have been tucked down or haven't had the space, time, permission, support to process.
Well, what's interesting about what you're saying is if you're bored, you could pick up a book of Mary Oliver poems, as I often do, could pick up a book of like fabulous fiction. But if what you stimulate boredom with is doom scrolling or turning on some crime junkie thing. I remember when we had the extraordinary document, Dr. Tama Bryant on the podcast and she said something that really struck a nerve and has gone crazy viral. And it's this idea of, you know, if you have trauma in your background, you really want to examine why you watch these crime shows or these horror shows or these violent entertainment shows at night. And she was saying that that is because it's familiar to you.
I would go a little further. It's familiar. So we're in the reenactment pattern. But what does that do for you?
What does it do for you?
I don't know. It gives you, it goes back to the three things. It gives you pain relief, it gives you distraction and it gives you energy.
How does it give you pain relief? I still don't understand that.
So we have two main natural pain relievers in our body. We get it from connection heart and we get it from stress.
So let's see, how is stress a pain reliever? Because I hear the word stress and I'm like, that's pain.
So it's in preparation for what we do as part of a stress response. You're going to get into a fight, you already need the pain relief, the cascade of hormones that gives you the pain relief in preparation to deal with and adapt to the circumstances. So also in love. It releases the hormones that then blocks the pain. It essentially gives us a distraction technique.
Gotcha. So you're basically feet up on the couch, you're watching some sort of dramatic, violent kind of thing. You're calling it entertainment, calling it whatever you want. Yeah. And the stress is rising, but because you're distracted and the stress is flooding your body, it relieves you of that boredom and of the restlessness that you felt which made you not want to sit with a book of poems or historical fiction.
Yeah. What is it that we're not attending to in ourselves when we're attending to something on the outside that is stressful?
I want to further break this down because I think it's really important what you just taught us. So if I were still in a space in my life where I was frustrated with my inability to control my emotions. That used to be me.
Yeah, me too.
Outbursts, nasty tone of voice, unloading on my family when I had a stressful day at work, venting, all of it. If you had told me to just take in my self awareness, I would have thought for a second, okay, I'm taking in that I am not in control of my emotions, and I'm taking in that I want to change this and that's a good thing. And a millisecond later, I would go, Dr. Scott, that's not enough. What do I need to do?
Mel, Are you revving yourself up out of the contact with yourself? Oh, my goodness.
And so even the reaction that, well, that's not gonna work is you revving up those old negative pathways?
Yes.
Holy shit.
Okay. It's you staying out of relationship with yourself at any cost, including blaming me or creating a narrative or whatever other form of revenue use to stay out of relationship with what feels vulnerable.
How long do I have to just sit with it before I'm doing something else? Like, that's seriously.
We build up a tolerance. We titrate it. Okay, so maybe it's a second. Okay, Maybe it's literally one second. And then we build it up to five seconds, 10 seconds. It doesn't have to all be at once.
What's a good way to ask for help?
So we build awareness, we build acceptance. And in that, acceptance, or that validation is also a bit of starting to open up to be seen, because underlying the explosion is something that isn't being seen. So I don't feel like anyone's got my back in the family. I don't feel like anyone helps me clean. So I Feel all alone. And that reminds me of my past when I didn't get picked up from soccer practice.
Thanks for that.
Yeah. Just rubbing on in. And so we're starting to build enough space between the reflexive response, because it goes like that, right? It's in the blink of an eye when we get into the drama cycle. So we start to recognize, okay, can I build enough space between when I start to rev and when I go into that total catharsis where I blow up like a volcano?
And then you're in a shame cycle, and then you're apologizing. I lived that for so long, and one of the things that helped me a lot, and it's a very hard way to ask for help, but I at one point, sat with my family and just said, I don't want to be like this, and I need your help. I need you to tell me when my tone of voice is demeaning. I need you to tell me when I am venting, because it's gotten to be such a lever that I pull reflexively. And what was interesting is that the more they would be like, mom, watch your tone. The more I would then have to practice feeling the engine rev up. But here's what happened that was really interesting is that it forced me when I no longer could get away with unloading my stress and drama on my family. It forced me to focus on the reality that I was profoundly overwhelmed at work and had not prioritized building an exceptional team. And I felt very alone, and I felt unseen, and I felt like nobody got it. And the drama was keeping me trapped in a broken system, in my own business and in communicating with my family. And so I think what ultimately happens when you have the courage to look at where you're revving yourself up or where you're in this cycle of picking fights or exploding on people, and then, you know, it's not working. I think that there's the potential that this unravels something incredibly beautiful and deep that you didn't even realize was the issue in the first place.
Absolutely.
I love what you're teaching us. I have another question I want to ask you. This one from Shauna. My oldest is 30 and constantly blames me for things. And then when I get upset with her, she likes to label me and call me an abuser because she can't get her own way, whether it be for a ride somewhere or a new cell phone. And we have tried the. No, you're not getting it. To just giving in and giving her what she wants. Her father and I are very passive people. We do not like confrontation. What do you suggest for changing this dynamic with our daughter?
It's imperative that you put a boundary up.
And how do you do that?
So it's saying, what are you actually willing to say yes and no to? So it's like, okay, abuser is not a word we allow in the family. That can be a boundary. It's like, hey, when you call me that, it shuts me down. It doesn't get me closer to you. It doesn't get me closer to what your needs are. And what I care about most is this relationship.
What I hear in this dynamic is a child using their parent like a blankie.
Yep.
Life is hard. So I'm gonna call and vomit on you and demand a new cell phone, because I think a new cell phone is the way to solve all my other life.
Yeah.
And if you're still making your parents buy your cell phone plan at the age of 30, you got bigger problems than needing a new cell phone. And so I. I like. That's what I hear, that there is a dynamic where the dramatic person is in control of the relationship, and the drama is what makes everybody jump. And so it just dials up and up and up and up.
Yep. And when we say, like, avoids confrontation, avoids conflict, that's a. Like, that's a flag to me where I go, ooh, we gotta peek under what's on the hood in that.
Well, here's the other thing.
Yeah.
If you are in a situation with somebody who's dramatic, you're always in conflict. Because not saying what you feel and not calling people out on their shit causes a ton of agita and engine revving for the person who's passive.
Absolutely. If you are the person who is enabling someone addicted to drama, guess what? So are you.
Oh, my God. Say that again.
Like, I would get into the fight, the space between my parents, and referee their fights.
Right.
Being in that position, look, it's. It. It creates safety for me. But I found that I was a referee in my entire life. I. I did as a profession, doing couples work, working with people, and I realized that I am getting something, A physiological, revving response by being the martyr.
Well, I think actually for you, if you're listening to this and you're the passive one, or you don't want confrontation, or you think it's just easier to let it slide, Dr. Scott is here to tell you that recognizing that getting kind of trampled by somebody else's drama is your own issue with drama, yes, you.
When you recognize you have choice and agency, when you have power again to say no or walk away, then you can actually be in relationship with someone who's addicted to drama. When you are being trampled on, when you have no choices even for yourself, then you are part of it. And I'm not trying to victim blame. That's not what's happening here. But to recognize our own contribution to our suffering is imperative.
Well, it reminds me of what Dr. Russell Kennedy said when we interviewed him, which is his research and belief is that all anxiety stems from your unmet need to be loved. When you were little, it's the little you. It's the little you saying, I need help right now.
Yeah. I always think of anxiety as the telephone ringing, as the sound of the ring of the telephone. And so when I feel anxiety, I go, okay. I can either participate in the anxiety and worry about worrying, or I can pick up the phone and see what's present in my body.
That's a beautiful image.
Healing, addiction and drama is not about being Zen.
What is it about?
That is some bullshit.
What is it about?
It's truly about being able to be okay. I can accurately use the right amount of energy, emotion, attention, to ride and surf. I can be in flow. I can be involved. I can belong to myself. I can belong to community. I can be a part of this world and feel in sync and adapt, functionally adapt.
And this is why I'm so happy that you have spent time with us today. Because I think what you're talking about is a game changer and it makes it accessible for somebody. Because you can spot drama a mile away. You can feel the revving up in your own body, and it is very hard to cycle down the drama in someone else. But if you want to, the best way to do it is to create more peace in yourself. Because if somebody else is getting all dramatic or triggered or they're blowing out the candles with a fricking fire hose filled with sewage, if you can stay in your centered place of peace because you have trained yourself to not join in with somebody else's stress and drama, which you are capable of doing, it is a freaking superpower.
It's a superpower. I would go the next step and ask you, what can you do with that peace? You can function in so many environments. You can be around someone who's addicted to drama and be untethered to them.
Amazing. So, Dr. Scott, are there. Can you give us just a couple very simple things that someone can do today to start to Break the addiction to drama or remove unnecessary turmoil from their life.
Yeah. Coin a phrase. Create a safety word with your family, with those you trust and you love of them, signaling back to you, like, hey, you're starting to rev up.
I like rev up. I think rev up sounds good. Like, that feels right.
Yeah. Start to recognize what are the things that rev you up. I always. I'd say take a media fast. Yeah. Part of recognizing the job of the media is to get and gain your attention and to capture it. And they use the devices of drama to do it.
Yeah.
They use awe, angst, and anger as the three main devices to capture you and to get you to share what they are sharing.
I don't even watch the news because I figure if there's something very significant going on, everybody will be talking about it.
Do you remember the Boston Marathon, the bombing? They found that those who watched the news from it showed more significant signs of PTSD than those who were there at present at the bombing. Wow. Because of the massive repetition over and over again showing, and the added language that they threw on top of that. So take a media break is a big one. Choose your words wisely. Recognize that the words you use have impact not only on other people, but yourself. So if I'm using the word like, ugh, Mel, when you said that, I just feel like you're a total abuser. Can I step back and choose my words more wisely? That feel aligned not to the dramatic, to the intensification of things, but to what is true. It's like, ooh, when you said that, I felt kind of pained. So stepping back. Choose your words wisely. Forgive yourself is a big one. If you're listening to this and you're like, oh, shit, this is me. This is me. Or this is everyone else I know. And maybe. Maybe it's me. Who knows? Forgive yourself. This. This is not your fault. There are certain conditions. There are certain conditions that created this. This survival mechanism, this way of needing drama to avoid the underlying trauma. Forgive yourself for the actions you've done and take responsibility for them at the same time for the change that you can make as part of your own healing.
Great. Well, Dr. Scott Lyons, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here with us and for giving us not only this really interesting insight, but also specific things that we can do to end the unnecessary turmoil that we create for ourselves when we become addicted to drama.
Thank you, Mel, for being such a beautiful support and so vulnerable all the time to share your own life experiences, to make this so much More accessible to people.
My pleasure. I got a lot of drama. Or I did. Oh, my gosh. I got more out of that than I thought I would. And I also found it so helpful to use the framework that we were just learning in real time to really unpack what happened with my daughter Kendall this weekend. And I hope you found it helpful, too, because you deserve to protect your peace. You deserve to get rid of all of this drama that is not serving you. And when you do that, you will create a better life. And one more thing. I want to make sure I remind you that I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to do just that. Alrighty. I'll talk to you in a few days. We're rolling, right? Did you fold this? Yeah. Oh, my God. Look at you. Okay, here we go.
So if you say the word stress, and then notice what happens to your breath.
I don't want to say that, because I literally felt kind of calm. And then you said, say the word stress, and I'm like, if I say the word stress. Yeah, I think, like, stress. Oh, my God, you have a lot of degrees. I think we got it. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Scott Lyons. All right, let's go. Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Hey, you, YouTube, thank you so much for being here. And if you loved that, which I know you did, I want you to share it with people that need to hear it. But for you, go watch this next. I referred to Dr. Russell Kennedy. This is a 101 on anxiety, and you're going to love it.
