Pursuit of Wellness - Drama & Chaos Addiction: Strategies for Healing w/ Dr. Scott Lyons

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Ep. #131 Welcome back to the Pursuit of Wellness podcast! Today, I'm thrilled to have Dr. Scott Lyons on the show. He’s a licensed holistic psychologist and the author of *Addicted to Drama: Healing Dependency on Crisis and Chaos in Yourself and Others*. Scott's expertise in body-based trauma and mind-body medicine has helped over half a million people globally, and his insights are both profound and engaging. We’ll explore topics like drama addiction, overcoming trauma responses, and practical strategies for maintaining your well-being. Tune in to discover how to break free from the cycles of chaos and find balance in your life! Leave Me a Message - click here! For Mari’s Instagram click here! For Pursuit of Wellness Podcast’s Instagram click here! For Mari’s Newsletter click here! For Dr. Scott’s Website click here! For Dr. Scott’s Podcast click here! For Dr. Scott’s Instagram click here! For POW Brand Promo Codes click here! Sponsors: Visit BetterHelp.com/POW today to get 10% off your first month. That’s betterhelp.com/pow  Visit clearstemskincare.com and use code POW at checkout for 20% off your first purchase. Again, that’s code POW for 20% off your first purchase on clearstemskincare.com. Head to moshlife.com/POW to save 20% off plus FREE shipping on the Best sellers Trial Pack. That’s 20% off PLUS free shipping on the Best sellers Trial Pack at moshlife.com/POW.  Today my listeners receive 20% OFF any AquaTru purifier! Just go to AquaTru.com/POW and automatically receive 20% off any Aqua Tru water purifier. That’s 20% OFF any AquaTru water purifier when you go to AquaTru.com/POW. Show Links: Addicted to Drama: Healing Dependency on Crisis and Chaos in Yourself and Other Topics Discussed 00:03:32 - Dr. Scott Lyon’s background in drama and chaos 00:05:12 - Rock bottom with drama addiction 00:06:01 - Defining drama addiction 00:08:25 - Cramming your schedule and detoxing technology 00:10:18 - Origin of drama addiction 00:16:52- Trauma responses and triggers 00:19:33 - Falling back into the habit 00:22:07 - Recognizing trigger moments and reflecting on responses 00:32:54  - Media and drama addiction  00:33:36 - Cancel culture 00:34:40 - Addressing underlying feelings 00:35:49 - Mari’ & Scott’s strategies for avoiding underlying feelings 00:39:03 - Dr. Scott Lyon’s take on coffee 00:39:50 - Examining Greg’s chaos and urgency culture 00:44:07 - How to tap into your underlying feelings 00:48:23 - Navigating your identity and sitting in discomfort 00:51:43 - Ketamine treatments and preparatory work 00:55:12 - Dealing with drama addicts 01:00:37 - How to set boundaries with drama addicts 01:02:35 - Walking away from friendships 01:07:15: - Addicted to Drama: Healing Dependency on Crisis and Chaos in Yourself and Other

An addiction is anything that gives us some relief from the underlying pain that we carry. And so much of our pain is the absence of us. The ways we have disconnected, vacated, dissociated, abandoned ourself as a means of survival, and the ways our body responds to that over time is a signal of pain or anxiety. This is the Pursuit of Wellness podcast, and I'm your host, Mari Llewellyn. Hi, guys. Welcome back to the Pursuit of Wellness podcast. I'm your host, Mari. And today, we have a very exciting guest, Dr. Scott Lyons. He is a licensed holistic psychologist, educator, and author of the book, Addicted to Drama, Healing Dependency on Crisis and Chaos

in Yourself and Others. He's also the host of the Gently Used Human podcast, a delightfully depthful and honest, hilarious exploration of what it is to be human, to have lived life and come out gently. I think this is a topic that is really common. Once sitting down with him, it's so interesting how so many of us kind of get in these habits of creating drama, chaos, focusing on the negativity in our lives. I know I was very much in a cycle of that back in the day when I was in college before my fitness journey. I kind of lived in a victim mentality and looked for chaos and created chaos when it doesn't exist. Honestly, I think a lot of us grow up in kind of chaotic households and that's what feels comfortable to us. So we end up bringing

that into our adult lives. And Scott is going to give us tools on how to essentially stop doing that. I think this is such a great method. He helps people break free from cycles of pain, limited beliefs, and trauma. He's an innovator in transformative wellness and trauma therapy, teaching over half a million people internationally to relieve stress and restore vitality. Today, we are going to talk about his background in drama and chaos, his rock bottom with drama addiction, what is drama addiction, trauma responses and triggers, recognizing trigger moments and reflecting on responses, acknowledging avoidance and creating space, processing the

feelings and feeling safe in your own body, navigating your own identity and sitting in discomfort, walking away from friendships and setting up boundaries with drama addicts. Maybe there's someone in your family that you're close with. Maybe it's a friend that can be a difficult thing to work on. We also talk about ketamine treatments and preparatory work. Honestly, such an interesting conversation, guys, and one that I think you're going to really love. So without further ado, let's hop into this conversation. Dr. Scott, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's so fun to be with you. I'm so excited. We have so much to discuss. So much to talk about so much drama so much drama and the addiction to drama i'm here for it are you i'm so here for it do you have an addiction drama i don't

but my husband does and we were just discussing this and after i i think when i heard addiction to drama my immediate thought was like high school gossip yes and it actually is so much broader than that. Yeah. The chaos, addiction to work, anything that's kind of like a distraction. Yeah. So I'm excited to talk about the definition. Yeah. I'd love to just start with how you initially got into this line of work. Well, especially around drama, like, I'm a'm a recovering dramatic let's just be real about it I come from a long lineage of folks with who really used drama to avoid their trauma like let's be real about that and and the behaviors and the exaggerations and the intensification of their behaviors and their emotions was really like my normal and And, and it wasn't really till I got away

and got to school and was like, this type of behavior, this type of way of living isn't really healthy anymore. Like, I know we both lived in New York. And, you know, I really realized that the times I got out of New York, I couldn't sleep. Like I missed the buzz. I missed the vibration. I would go out in nature and all the sounds of like the chirping of birds would keep me up. And I was like, where are the cars? Where's the chaos? Yeah. And soon became really clear that I was needing that. Like it was almost like I couldn't thrive without some type of, you know, intense interactions and loud noises. And so part of my grad school process was to like uncover what is that? And that's that's how I got into this addiction to drama material because I figured

out that was me and a whole hell of a lot of other people. I think a ton of people. And it really is like this distraction that we're all living in. Yeah. What would you say was your rock bottom with drama addiction? Oof. I had just gotten divorced. I was, I had gotten drugged at a club and was in hospital for a week. And when I got out, I started like getting into fights with my sister who like was there supporting me. And I would feel like the only thing like and I was having this mass anxiety attack constantly. And the only thing that would soothe me was to call my ex,

who is pretty fucking toxic, you know, and I was going, what is this that I need this level of toxicity to feel, quote unquote, normal again? Yeah. And that was really when I was like, I have to change this or it's going to kill me. Yeah. Yeah. What would you define as drama addiction? All different types? What are some examples of drama addiction and different types of people? Yeah. Well, I mean, we can maybe start with defining drama. And what the funny thing is, is like we all know it, right? Like if I say to you, do you know someone addicted to drama before you even read the book? You'd be like, hell yeah. Like we all viscerally know what it is but we haven't maybe had as much opportunity to define it or unpack it

and so drama is the unnecessary turmoil and stress it's it's the way we exaggerate and intensify our behaviors our emotions our stories and it's a real like disproportionate amount of energy to what's needed to functionally adapt to what we're dealing with. It's like blowing out a birthday candle with a fire hose or it starts to sprinkle outside. So you jump into a hurricane shelter. It's absolutely disproportionate. It's the unnecessary amount of time energy focus emotion to get something actually done or to communicate something yeah and so there's lots of ways it shows up you know we'll talk about your husband on the way it shows up there but like no like I think it's important for all of us to like at home who are listening to go, how does this show

up either in my friends or my parents or me, maybe perhaps just a little bit, but it's, you know, for those who are making drama, it's usually like they're making mountains out of molehills. They're using intense language to share something that maybe doesn't need it. They're always overscheduling themselves. And then I don't know, complaining about how overwhelmed they are. They have your face. I feel personally attacked. I feel I feel personally supportive of your personal attack. Thank you. Yeah. You know, lots of other ways big big relationships big fights big big breakups it's um you know they feel anxious when things are calm yeah and i think we can all relate to that a little bit especially now when we're such an urgency culture overstimulation culture is like

when there's space in that it's almost like we don't know what to do anymore yes i was just having this conversation with a friend the other day about seeing gaps in my calendar and immediately panicking really yes and trying to think what could i do to fill this and i'm really trying to get more comfortable with that open time yeah and using it in a way that i truly want to rather than shoving it forward things that don't serve me. Yeah. Have you ever done like a Vipassana where you just like take like a week and like in a quiet space, no technology? Absolutely not.

It's a hellscape. Don't do it. Don't do it. But do it. It's like I remember the first time I took a technology break and I so much panic at me it was like I couldn't I could I kept searching for the phone I would like just turn my hand up as though my phone was in my hand I mean how many of us have our phone in our hand and without actually the notification going off look at it it's like um obsessive it's an obsessed yeah it's an obsessive

response we actually are interrupting our own peace by doing that or interrupting our own focus and that's actually a big part of addiction and drama is like how are we reflexively interrupting our own calm our own ease like if you ever like try to meditate and all of a sudden you feel or you're walking through a beautiful garden or you're in a bathtub and you find yourself starting to think about like what you have to do at work on Monday or you start thinking about a friend who and then you get into a fight with that friend in your head. Ever do that? Yes. That's signs of an addiction to drama. The ways we interrupt our own piece. We don't even realize it. And what's, you know, funky about it is that all the narratives we're making up in our head, we have a physiological response as though they're

actually happening. Wow. Where do you think this drama addiction is coming from? Like what's the origin? Yeah, it's a good question. And there's multiple origins. And I would say like the old school origin is going to be different than where we are now. But I'll talk about that in a little bit. You know, one is like one of the things I say is like, what was the ecosystem like in your family? Like I grew up in a house of chaos. The environment was chaos. And we're as infants were sponges. So we're actually adapting that that becomes our rhythm that becomes the way we operate is that the tempo of our environment. And so chaos became my internal state. And it also became the currency of love in my family. You didn't get attention until things were wrong. And so that was rewarded. So if I was sick or I didn't do well at school or I got into

a fight with my sister or whatever it took to get that attention to finally feel seen and heard and met. And so you act out the currency of love and you bring that forward into your adult relationships as well. I mean, how many of us have maybe picked a fight with our partner because we didn't feel like we could share our feelings and needs but wanted them to see us? I don't know. Me. Everyone in this room. Yeah. 100%. The Pursuit of Wellness is sponsored by BetterHelp. I feel like throughout my journey,

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purchase. Again, that's code POW for 20% off your first purchase on clearstemskincare.com. Yeah, there's multiple origins. You know, when we have these wounds as kids, as so many of us do, like not being met by our parents or caregivers, you know, that has a physiological effect. We freeze. And in that freeze, we also develop an, uh, or we get overwhelmed if there's trauma and we freeze. And, um, in that

freeze, whether it's shame or whatever the disruption is in our nervous system, we dissociate, we disconnect. And also with that, we become numb. So we, numbness is a form of protection from the underlying pain of not being met, of our underlying pain of our trauma. And that numbness creates, you know, this way of not feeling alive. So we seek sensation to feel something, to confirm our aliveness. And so whether that's, I don't know, jumping out of a plane with a, you know, hopefully a parachute or getting into fights with teachers or getting into fights with friends or over scheduling or, you know, over committing, whatever it is that gives you that sort of stress response that rises above a threshold of numbness to make you feel alive. And then it's rewarded, right? We get that dopamine hit of like, I'm alive. And so we keep searching for that instead of going underneath to why are

we chasing the drama? Because we can't tolerate being with the underlying trauma or the underlying pain, the underlying wounding that's there. Wow. So powerful. I feel like I relate in so many ways. So when you were describing, you know, what drama addiction can look like, it actually reminded me a lot. I was diagnosed bpd in um college really yes i i no longer meet the characteristics for it but bpd was a huge part of my life for a majority of like my 20s and i'm as a teenager and a lot of the diagnosis was about these sort of like over dramatic and i feel weird saying that word but sort of like excessive emotions to a small situation. Yes. And it's interesting hearing it in this definition, because even if you don't

have BPD, we're all kind of creating more conflict than necessary. Absolutely. And you're saying it's because we don't know how to feel the other feelings. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. We can't feel the tender, with the tenderness of our underlying feelings. So sometimes we throw something much bigger. Yeah. We turn up the decibel of it. Yeah. So as to avoid the actual vulnerability of being with it. Totally. And, you know, for those who don't know, BPD is borderline personality disorder. Yes. Sorry. Yes. And, you know, there's something really interesting here about how our physiology works in terms of why people perceive we're exaggerating, even though on the inside we feel like it's truth. So like after trauma or, you know,

trauma is often considered like the event or the impact. But trauma has a lot to do with the way we adapt in response to the next potential threat. That's trauma. And so our whole physiology or the way we see, the way we smell, the way we taste, even the way we touch is all adapting to perceived to perceive threat. And so our focus becomes like very attuned to cues of danger. And so that's what we're hooked on. And so we're responding to cues of danger that are even really subtle. And so our response feels justified, even though we're missing and ignoring most cues of safety. Yes. You posted this quote that I love. You said, hard fact, triggers are your truth, but may not be the truth. Explain what you meant by that. Yeah. I mean, in that way, it's like, we often go, you did this. Like I got into a fight with my partner and I was like, and my trigger was like, you made

me feel like shit. And I was like, oh my gosh. When I backed away, I was like, no, you reminded me of something in my past that is so deeply wounded that I couldn't even attend to it. So I like just threw my anger at you as opposed to being with the deep sadness of like being bullied when I was a kid. Wow. And so like, it's just such a hard adulting thing to do is to recognize what we often do is like project and deposit our feelings on other people as opposed to taking the responsibility of healing, which means that we have to attend to what, where did that emerge from in us? So good. I feel like, I mean, do you find even though you have all this knowledge and you are,

you know, obviously so well versed on this topic that you sometimes fall into that habit too? Oh, totally. I'm still an asshole. You know, it's funny when I used to teach meditation and stuff and people were like, what's the benefit? And I would say, I'm slightly less of an asshole than I used to be. I mean, I'm humanizing it. It's an evolution. It's an evolution. And it's like, even with as much knowledge,

you know, we don't want to like be in this like wellness washing, which is, okay, I've, I've drank the green juice. I've had, I've gone on a meditation retreat. I've gone to therapy 20 times. I'm well and great. And everyone else is an asshole. I'm better than everyone. I'm better than everyone. And it's like, you know, I've been in therapy since I was five. Wow. And there and it's it would be so easy for me to turn to like a partner or friend and just be like, I've done way more than you are. I've definitely evolved way past where you are. And so I'm right, you're wrong and i do that i'm just kidding

once in a while it happens but it but the truth is it's like they're so it's like we're an onion we're constantly peeling away the layers and it's not about getting to this ultimate place of healing because i don't really know what that is or where, and if we will even come to that in this lifetime. But it's really celebrating like, oh my gosh, I wake up in the morning and I don't have that anxiety when I wake up anymore. That feeling in my chest of doom, of like the shoe is the next thing is going to hurt me or harm me. Like that's amazing. And if that's all i get in this lifetime that i wake up and i'm like i'm open to the possibilities of today fuck yeah yes can we swear on your podcast yes fuck yes okay yes you can because it's happened i love no i think that's such a good point it's not about perfection it's about getting closer to the end goal yeah and perfectionism

is just another symptom of an addiction to drama it's's the unattainable. So it's like we keep driving towards the unattainable, knowing that we can never get it. What is happening to our nervous system in response? Oh my gosh. We're constantly revving ourselves up in activation, that stress response. Yeah. And I think it's so interesting talking about the trauma piece. We all have different life experiences. So just to give an example of my own, last night with my husband, Greg, he had to work late and we had a plan to go on a walk and get dessert or whatever. And I have a severe abandonment issue that used to really trigger me. But now I feel like I'm in a much better place with it. I can kind of like take a pause before I react and I feel much better about it. But last night,

I had been traveling. I was tired. I was stressed. And I found myself just triggered again and kind of like taking it out on him as anger. And I was like, this hasn't happened to me in a while. Why is this happening right now? And I recovered from it faster. But it's just interesting how it does, you know, it shows up every now and again. What lets you recognize that you were in the trigger? Like that's, I'm so curious about that. I think because it was an unreasonable amount of emotion.

Okay. Like I was like, I don't usually feel this way. Yeah. Like this has happened before where he has to work late. This isn't an unusual circumstance, but I'm having an unusually strong emotional response. Yeah. So you're like measuring like, oh, this is like a decibel of eight. Yes. Doesn't feel or make a lot of sense. So there's a part of you like a witness part of you that's outside of the trigger that's going let's take a look at

this this feels a little funky especially the next morning like this morning i reflected back and i was like oh i think that i was a little like i was triggered in that moment yeah for sure and how did he take that when you were able to share that? I didn't share it. Greg, if you're listening, we're sharing it now. I didn't say anything. I was just like, I started off on a better foot the next morning, but it's really hard to like acknowledge that you were maybe overreacting. Yeah. There's a lot of shame built into this process. Yes. Because if, you know, like even when I was in the throes of my addiction to drama and i would have a fucking meltdown for no seemingly good reason and then the next day i was like like i remember i lost my wallet at a movie theater and um i called the

movie theater place and talked to the manager. You know, I totally got to that point of like and like saying how important like how their security is not good enough. And I just went at, you know, this was like when I was 13 or 14. Oh, wow. And I remember my aunt cheering me on. Of course, like, again, a long lineage of those who have an addiction to drama and i remember the day after um that phone call and i felt shame but instead of being with the shame i kept retelling the story i kept venting i called my other friends up and i was like i did

this because they were so wrong and it's their fault my wallet got stolen in a movie theater and da da da da da and so it was another way of avoiding even my own internal mechanism or recognition that like something is funky it's like rather than acknowledging you kind of want to get the response that you want to hear from other people. Yeah. I think I put this example in the book or maybe it got taken out. So many examples got taken out because they could have been identified. We need a part two of the book of all the parts that were taken out.

Oh my gosh, so many parts got taken out. X-rated part two and i remember so i got this email from someone who was furious they're like you didn't send this important information on time and you're gonna mess this whole training program up and blah blah blah blah and i went back and i forwarded them re-forwarded them the email I had sent three weeks with all, three weeks prior with all the information. And instead of them just saying like, oh, I'm so sorry.

I must've missed that email. They said in response, you could have sent this an hour earlier. And it's like, I could have easily gone into my own addiction to drama with their addiction to drama and been like, well, da da da da da and just escalated it. Right. But I just said, I hear you. Which is also kind of an asshole move.

Well, I actually like that because it feels mature. It is. And it almost, I think sometimes those are the most powerful responses because it makes the other person sort of reflect on what they have contributed ish like I would I would like to think that they would you know be able to turn back and go hmm they didn't they didn't engage in the drama with me yeah and I'm wondering if I overreacted but so many of us keep revving ourselves, keep pushing, keep avoiding the contact with our own, you know, again, vulnerable feelings or shame in that way of the intensification or exaggeration. We keep finding all the ways to justify it. Yes. And that's the danger and the mechanism that keeps us in this loop is the ways we justify our behavior. It's like

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go to aqua tree.com i also feel like overworking or over scheduling is celebrated yes you know like it's one of those things where you get celebrated for having a work ethic, you know, and for being as busy as possible, busy as celebrated, right? And something I hear a lot of people say, and I've also said myself is, oh, I can't, I can't not be busy because then I can hear my own thoughts. I literally hear so many people using that phrase now. Like that's why we're all on our phones all day. We jump from thing to thing to thing just so that we don't sit still and listen to what we're thinking and feeling.

Yeah. And part of the challenges is like the ways in which media is now operating is mirroring the conditions to what created the addiction drama. Yes. And so we are constantly being pulled out of ourselves. And that lack of contact with ourselves results in behavior that we're not attending to. Exaggerations. You know, we're not able to identify how much energy, how much emotion,

how much focus is actually needed to functionally adapt to things in our in our world instead we're guessing or we're relying on old behavior or old patterns of how much energy attention and emotion is needed yes and so we're we're you know we're misaligned so much because we're being taken away where our focus and our attention is being you know literally controlled now by other people which is called the attentional economy like there's a name for it yeah yeah do you feel like this is where cancel culture was kind of born i think cancel culture is a bit different i think you know there's a way i you know i've seen cancel culture is really interesting and i even like i notice in myself even talking about it i'm like will i get canceled because i've done a lot on my podcast

of deconstructing cancel culture um and going you know, we can't harm people in the same way we've been harmed. We can't, you know, like in the same way we can't move towards wholeness if we're fragmenting other people. Yeah. Like, you know, trauma is a fragmentation. And so, you know, I think it's a replication of the trauma with the intention of making change. And unfortunately, we just can't other people and fragment other people as a means to create more systemic wholeness. Yes. Back to feeling those underlying feelings can we avoid those please how do we yeah take the first step to actually bringing those feelings up because i feel like i struggle with that i'm like okay let me intentionally try to feel what's underlying and it's almost it's so hard to even know what's there yeah it's it's really hard to look under the hood and and

make contact with things we've been avoiding because like how many years how and how many strategies do we have of avoiding and that's actually what we have to kind of get to first before we go to the underlying feelings it's like okay so what are all the ways that you distract from being in contact with your emotions and your feelings? Me? Yeah, let's name it. Okay. Overworking.

Overworking. Check. Same. Overscheduling. Same. Just making myself as busy as possible. Yeah. You know, like making plans even if I don't want to.

Yeah. Just like filling the calendar. Yeah. Do you ever like just scroll scroll yes 100 yeah that's why i want to delete my social media because i feel like it's a huge problem for me yeah just like getting lost yeah absolutely um other strategies that i can i'll just add to the pile like that i do i definitely over scheduled i would over go to school I would just keep going to fucking one school after the next to avoid so much shit um I would like oh gosh I would isolate myself

from like friends to avoid hard conversations you know I think there's so many strategies that we or buying things buying things oh my gosh that's a great one yeah um worrying about my health me me i hyper fixate on health yeah or my body like you know i was a dancer and so like you know i would any weight gain i would just be like oh my gosh this is the end of my career. I'm done for. You can hear the drama. It's like, that's what we call internal revving. External revving is focusing on things outside of us to keep ourselves disconnected. Yeah. And in a state of agitation activation, stress activation. And so once we start recognizing all the ways we interrupt our own settling or peace, then we have the tools or then we have at least the knowledge that, okay, these are the ways I'm doing it.

These are the moments I'm doing it. And then we can start to action not what's underneath it, but action. Can we give ourselves more space between the stimulus and our over exaggerated rated response and so if i can create more of a gap so if i go okay when i'm alone by myself and i start to have a feeling and then i jump to worrying about how much weight i've gained in the last month or what I'm going to look like this summer. You know, I'm like going, OK, that's revving. I am distracting. I'm stressing myself up and using that stress as a distractor from my underlying feelings.

OK, so I'm going to go back and I'm going to go. What was happening right before? Oh, I think I was feeling kind of lonely. That's interesting. So I'm connecting already. When I feel lonely, I start to rev. Okay. So next time I'm going to go, next time I feel a little lonely, I'm going to call a friend. I'm already starting to interrupt the revving. Okay. So the more I interrupt the revving, the more I'm getting out of the habit of distracting myself or being distracted by other things. Because it's not like it's just we're distracting ourselves. Watching the news will overstimulate our nervous

system. People are addicted to the news. Of course. It's a beautiful way of getting that high of stress because let's not forget, stress does great things for us. It's a natural pain reliever. You go for a run, you get that endorphic high. It blocks the pain receptors. So already stress is going to reduce, quote unquote, your perception of pain. It's going to give you a boost of energy. Like we're drinking, What are you drinking?

It's like a mushroom coffee. Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm drinking water. But if we were drinking caffeine, I can't even say the word. Caffeine. This has a little caffeine.

Does it? But I can't have real coffee because I get, like, I'm just so revved up. Yeah. All the time. Yeah. Can I tell you a secret? Yeah.

I've never had coffee. Ever. Ever in my life. That's insane. Isn't it? That's insane. I. Can I tell you a secret? Yeah. I've never had coffee. Ever. Ever in my life. That's insane. Isn't it? That's insane. I'll try it with you though. No. Like, but is it because you are so revved up anyway? Like, did you always know it wasn't for you? No, it's because my mom told me that it would stunt my growth and I never drink it. And then by the time I could, I was too hyperactive. Yeah. And then I was like, well, this wouldn't help.

I mean, you'd think so. And then I have my husband who's the most high energy person ever and he slams three cold brews a day. Oh, shit. No, it's insane. Maybe it's not even meeting like all that caffeine isn't even meeting his like normal baseline state of hyper arousal. He wants chaos he loves he makes

decisions that are inevitably going to end in chaos because he loves it how is that for you let's let's dive into it fuck my book let's talk about this shit no not fuck your book i need the book clearly i mean sorry greg i'm gonna put you on blast right now and we can't wait till we bring him in i know he needs a full like session with you seriously and by the way i promise we'll get back to like how do you get to the underlying feelings we will we will because i need that yeah um okay tell me about the positive i would say about greg is that his high energy and addiction to chaos has allowed him to help build this massive company that we have, because he has very high risk tolerance, very high stress tolerance.

Yes. All things related to addiction, by the way. Yeah. Period. Exactly. But he just makes these crazy choices. Like things are always happening with Greg. Like he had this car that he was obsessed with that he would drive too fast and he ended up crashing it he there's always something quote-unquote he flies so close to the sun yeah schedules his day to the point where it's like inevitably something's gonna happen and go wrong um and this is a constant for him yeah and i can kind of when i spend time with him and his family and i love his family so much they they're New York, Long Island. Yeah.

They are like talking over each other. It's like, you know, chaos and different to how my family was chaotic. So just watching the way he runs his life, it's like everything's in fast motion. Everything is urgent. And I've heard you talk about anxiety being this sort of like addiction to urgency kind of and everything's in fast motion. Everything is urgent. And I've heard you talk about anxiety being this sort of like addiction to urgency kind of and everything's in fast motion. Yeah. Anxiety loves the illusion that everything is urgent. Yeah. What is that? You know, it's part of that innate rhythm, right? Because if we can speed up past the point of sensing sensing and feeling we can avoid it and it's like we live

in an urgency culture right yeah everything is now now now and if you're not doing it now you're going to fail and you're not going to thrive or survive and that rhythm that tempo like again it's like living in new york if you've ever been to like Minnesota for example where I'm from and then you get to New York and you are like oh my god I feel like I just drank five coffees except for those of us who are already so revved up by the time we moved to New York we're like finally the rhythm of me yeah and New York is just such a prime example of like, we both moved out of New York. And it's like, it took me a while to recalibrate that I was safe outside of that rhythm. My gosh, that's so valid.

Because that rhythm is paired with this idea of safety, that that speed, that hyper focus, that hyper attention is what's going to keep me safe. Yes. Or, you know, if we grew up in a family where everyone's yelling over each other, you have to be the smartest, you have to be the fastest, you have to be the loudest in order to be seen and heard and felt. And if you're not, you will perish into the abyss. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, I mean, I feel that way with my work and since moving to austin i feel like i've detached myself a bit from the hustle culture like even being back here now and i have a crazy schedule this week i'm not finding the same joy in it that i used to yes good that's a great sign i'm noticing that and i'm like you know this isn't really for me anymore wow like I'm feeling so much more peaceful in my life in Austin yeah yes I still panic a little bit when I have these gaps in my schedule but I'm getting more and more comfortable with that and that's more so my baseline now and the overworking is not bringing me joy no but I'm

still struggling with let's say I do have a gap or I have a day where I don't have so much going on. Like, what can I do to ground myself and tap into what are the underlying feelings that I'm not allowing myself to feel? Way to bring it back. Thanks. So impressive. Just a little loop, you know, just podcast things. Just podcasting. Loop it back. Loop it it back so we've created that gap like we talked about like okay i'm noticing like you said i'm noticing that these are my patterns i'm interrupting the pattern like oop i'm starting to rev no i'm not i'm gonna do a grounding practice like a somatic grounding practice i'm gonna feel the weight of my body in this chair

right now i'm gonna see where i can say yes to the chair receiving my weight. I'm going to notice all the ways I'm trying to like pull myself out of being supported because it's vulnerable. And so I'm going to keep grounding myself. And then I go, okay, I've interrupted the pattern enough of revving. It's like it opens up, it's like a cloud bed opening up to reveal the sun. And with that light, we get to see what's underneath

that we've otherwise avoided. So it's like going, okay, I'm looking underneath the hood. And as you kind of delve into like, what's the feelings or sensations in my body? What are the things that haven't been recognized recognized i can even ask myself that question it's a great meditation of like i tune in i go what wants to be known what wants to be felt i'm safe enough now what wants to be known what wants to be felt and let whatever emotions or words or sensations or images just come up without judging them and notice the impulse to rev away from it.

Yeah. And the more we can start to attune to what is here that hasn't been addressed and the more we actually start to make contact with it like, oh, there's like this tightness in my chest. Okay. So we take some time to just be with that. Is there words with that tightness? Are there feelings with that tightness?

Is there a memory that comes with the tightness? What if I imagine dipping my finger into that tightness, making contact with it? Oh my God. I just feel like this anxiety that's been there, this sense of like threat. Oh my God, I just feel like this anxiety that's been there, this sense of like threat. Oh my God, there's terror in my chest that has never been felt. That's just been hanging out there. And all of these strategies that we do as part of our addiction to drama

have been ways of trying to survive not being overwhelmed and flooded by those feelings. Wow. And so that's kind of the strategy of like entering in yeah now once we start making up space we can start processing all those those underlying pains and traumas that own body? Because an addiction is the absence of us. The ways we have disconnected, vacated, dissociated, abandoned ourself as a means of survival and the ways our body responds to that over time

is a signal of pain or anxiety. Wow. Anxiety is one of the ways we recognize something in us has not been identified or recognized or processed. It's an alarm signal that's calling us up to say, hey, pay attention. And it is in the same vein as pain. It's so important to process through that anxiety and that underlying pain, but more so it's so imperative to come back home to ourselves because that will stop the addictive process.

There's nothing more that we have to avoid, so to speak. I mean, there is one more tough stage. What? Two more tough stages is navigating our identities with the pain, with the victimhood, with the whatever it is. So identity is essentially the repetition of being. That's what it means. So it's like all those times I felt like I was a victim, all those times the world was against me, all those times I was like created fury and anger as a means of not letting anyone come too close to me. That becomes part of our identity because we repeated those states of being so many times.

Yeah. So even though the fuel is gone, we have to almost offer ourselves a funeral for those identities that no longer fit us. You almost have to grieve that part of yourself. Oh my gosh. Yeah. How do you tap into the identity you were before all of those defense mechanisms? We might not have had one. And so like that's it often is when you know I not too long ago was in a very like I haven't had one of these like deep unfurling therapy sessions for a long time and I had one and I just felt like oh my god about this session I was like I don't know who I am anymore which I love like I've done this enough to go like that's a really positive stage like if I don't have my identity that I'm gripping to

I don't know who I am and that's the space of discovery of who I am without the trauma and the survival strategies wow but it's very fucking uncomfortable yeah you almost need to sit in that discomfort you have to sit and tolerate the discomfort of not knowing who you are without the strategies. Wow. I think another thing that popped in my head when you were talking about this is like, I feel like sadness is a big thing that a lot of us avoid. Yeah. And I'm almost like, is it okay to be sad yeah do you know what I mean yeah I mean I would say so many of us avoid different emotions depending on what was like the emotion to avoid in our family systems you know like yours might have been sadness that was not very wasn't modeled

or provided support for but like anger might have been supported or, you know, modeled or in like Greg's family. I don't know. I'm just making up like joy might have been something that wasn't modeled. Yeah. But working hard and like the sort of aggressiveness might have been something that was supported. So I think we have to go back to the blueprint of our emotions and identify what were the emotions, what were the feelings that were modeled and allowed and what were the ones that weren't because we're most likely avoiding those. And if we're avoiding any emotion, we're in our process of what's going to become an addiction to drama because what does it take to avoid the underlying emotions, our core feelings? It takes strategy. It takes a certain amount of stress and stimulus to avoid that, to disconnect from it.

How do you feel? This might seem like it's out of left field. I'm open to that. How do you feel about like ketamine like it's out of left field. I'm open to that. How do you feel about like ketamine treatments or like cybacillin? Oh, I think it depends on the individual. Okay. It's not meant, it's not universal, just great for everyone. I think that there's a lot of preparatory work you have to do and a lot of post-integration. It's not a magic bullet. I think what it does, psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA therapies, all of those, what they do is they momentarily take down the barrier, take down the survival strategies that are often acting as the protector of our early wounds. And so it's a

way of potentially bypassing or moving beyond those survival strategies, which allows us to more potentially go into the depth of the wounding. That's what I've heard. And that's just so interesting to me because I feel like, I don't know if you could relate to this but i for many years was a little bit performative with my therapist oh yeah which is like a crazy concept that i would show up and be like so many of us today like i like wanted to impress her or make her feel like I was making progress or be funny like yeah going into it with this idea of like I need to sell her yeah me yeah and be the best like patient ever which is such a crazy like well what would she have done in your belief system if you didn't impress her she would have been like disappointed or abandoned me for sure yeah and now I feel like I show up a

bit more authentically yeah i had one of those sessions like you mentioned the other day where i finally brought something up that i've been avoiding for so long and just to get it out yes you know is a wild experience but her and i briefly discussed ketamine treatment and i've just been hearing about it more and more and i think it's so interesting that it really allows you to kind of like go there. It does and you have to have a lot of preparatory work for it and it sounds like you have. And trust with the person you're doing it with. Trust with the person and there's a lot of integration work after because it's like you know in therapy it might take 30 sessions to slowly kind of roll the window down of those

survival strategies so to speak yeah and to let the breeze in and and so forth and then the integration process is more often like titrated and so this is a fast track and it can overwhelm our nervous system if we don't have enough support and resilience to go into it. And so that's why I say like a preparatory work because it's like if you just rip yourself open but you haven't developed the capacity to be with your own emotions or trust other people to help you be with yours, you're going to flood. And I've unfortunately had enough people in my office that went in and did psychedelic retreats and they ended up more dissociated, more disconnected than when they went in. Wow. I could see that happening because I feel like this has just become so popular, the ayahuasca. Everyone's doing it. But if you don't have that like background or trust i could see that being such a big problem yeah for anyone listening who is married to friends with associated with someone who's addicted to drama uh-huh like what is the first step because we

were talking about it before that the people who are addicted don't know that they're addicted yeah usually someone with an addiction is the last to know there's an addiction and especially look addiction and drama doesn't make sense to most people like why the fuck would anyone use stress as a pain relief or to distract themselves and i've said before like it is a natural pain reliever it gives you energy it makes you feel closer to people yeah it's a social glue like and it gives you enough sensation to rise above that threshold of numbness and just knowing these things like why do they instead of like i don't know if greg does, but like I did it. And certainly other people with an addiction and trauma, they either crisis hop or they can't be soothed by you.

So instead of being soothed, they pull you into their chaos. And so they feel like at least they're seen and heard by pulling someone in. Like so many of us feel like, oh, my gosh, they go, what just happened? I don't even know how i got involved but suddenly i got involved with that person and so to go back to your question it's like just even understanding the psychology and the physiology of what's going on and it's not they don't want this nobody wants to burn down a village to get the warmth from it. They just want the warmth. But they don't have the tools to go, hey, can we turn on the fire? Or can you give me a blanket? So that compassion

and understanding, as hard as it is, because I know it's hard. I've been on both sides of it. I've been the one to burn down the village. But I've also been on the receiving end of going whoa how did i just get in smack dad in the middle of this fire i had nothing to do with this so the compassion understanding to go this is why this is what's happening is is can be a relief knowing it's not about you yeah because so often in the addiction to drama especially when it's relationally oriented it will be a lot of like it's about you you did this or it's big fights or big emotions as we talked about that seem disproportionate so I think that that's a big piece of it. I think, you know, finding your own practice of how do you shake off the stress? How do you shake off?

Because stress is contagious. It's actually one of the most, it is the most, love and stress are the most contagious emotional physiological responses. So in our side story about our biological evolution of stress. Fun words. So like, let's say you're really nervous right now, which I don't think you are. You seem pretty chill. You're freaking me out. I'm freaking you out. Like if you come into the podcast really nervous, I'm going to feel it. I'm going to actually have a measured response in my saliva, in my cortisol levels, in my heart rate that will mirror your stress response. That is designed as a means of our evolutionary survival.

I've encountered that. I know exactly what you mean. Yeah. It's like when someone walks in the room and they're like joyous and effervescent, you also have that feeling. It's contagious. Emotions are contagious. But stress is the most contagious. We are designed to be the most sensitive to other states of stress because if it means our survival, we need to be able to take that in and be responsive. So if like a tiger is chasing me and I run into this room, you're not going to be like, what's going on? Your physiology is going to reflexively respond to also run away, even if you don't know why. I mean, you might still ask me. I'll be like, we gotta go. Where are we going? We gotta go. Who cares? They're tiger. So you got to take care of yourself.

Yeah. If you have a husband or a partner or a friend or a sibling or a teacher or whoever who's addicted to drama, you got to start to go,'s happening in me can i tolerate this or how do i mobilize it move it through so do i need to go for a run do i need after interacting with them do i need to go shout and hit a punching bag whatever it takes to release your stress yeah and um so imperative and another big piece is is one of the things that they will do is pull you into their shit. It's their way of being in relationship to you. The safest way to be in relationship to you is to pull you into their tornado chaos. Yep. And so you have to be able to anchor yourself back in your own body back into your own feelings

back into your own sensations back into your own sense of weight and groundedness because once they start pulling it's really easy to be extracted from your own body it's like all of a sudden they have control over you do you have a line that you would say to someone to set a boundary like would i like my own boundary or what i would say to someone who is in their active state of like if someone ran up to you and they were telling you everything that was going on their relationship like oh he's such a this he's such a that like do you have a response that you go to you have a couple responses oh can you give us yeah one is fuck off oh no i'm just kidding we'll edit that one out no i'm just kidding um i love that um no one is like hey i see there's a lot going on can we take a step back and just i need to see if i'm available to really meet you there that's that's when i've done a lot um i've gone oh let's feels like there's a lot going on let's let's take a walk

let's mobilize some of this energy together so that we're not stuck in like a very close proximity where someone's just like telling me their drama walking is so powerful so powerful i've heard a statistic because you're not like looking head on yes you end up opening up more and kind of being more self-reflective. Exactly. It's called parallel play. Oh, okay. I didn't know there was a name for it. Yeah. It comes from like, like working in pediatrics. Like you never go in, like when a kid is having an emotional experience, you always parallel play, you go to their side and you're there as a support. But also in that openness, you won't be consumed by it.

Yeah. but also in that openness you won't be consumed by it yeah because you're on the side of them as like our frontal orientation is very vulnerable and it's very direct and if i start freaking out you're gonna feel more than if i turn my chair to the side and i like maybe look at you and i'm having a feeling yeah but it's not as you're not going to be swallowed up by it. You're zoom tight. How dramatic. I know. Addicted to the drama.

Just like really dramatic sneezing. Sorry. And then you had a third tool. In terms of boundaries. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things is sometimes you have to walk away from the relationship and that is a boundary about your preservation. Make it about you and not about them. Like if you're not able to be with them, that's okay. No shame in that game. Sometimes it's too much

and it's important. Look, if you can't even be with yourself because you're overwhelmed by them, you're not actually going to be available for them. Yes. So good. And valuing that self-respect and knowing when it's time to walk away. I had to do that on my journey and just let go of like, you know, a group of friends that I was a different person with. Can we talk about that?

Yeah. Because I think friendship circles are so tricky. Because the friends we had as we were deep in our wounds and we keep them out of like familiarity are going to have the hardest time when we evolve and change. 100%. And they may keep pushing us back into our trauma responses or survival responses or really keep us from evolving if they're not doing their work too.

And this is so hard because it's like there are memory keepers. They're the people who've been with us maybe even the longest, but they're not part of our evolution. Yes, so true. I experienced that head on with my weight loss journey yeah i was like a partier yeah you know the person that everyone would go to if they wanted to go out in college like i was i had a crazy girl phase uh for sure and i have some of my funniest craziest memories with those people but i hit a point where i was like yeah this is dragging me backwards like I need to move forward and I look back and I regret the way that I handled that departure like I kind of just ghosted

I mean actually I did apologize and rekindle with one of the friends and a couple of them actually yeah but still like it is painful to kind of like it's it's so interesting when you're around people from a different part of your life how it like brings things up it will bring out the familiar yes a hundred percent you know it's like i have a friend who was telling me she used to work in corporate america and it's like they hated their job they hated their boss they would vent and gossip constantly and then they both became therapists makes sense it's the natural progression and um and they moved to different states and she was telling me that like when they get back together they fall back into that venting yeah and so we were talking about like what to do can the

relationship evolve to something that wasn't about drama bonding? Yep. You almost need to re-find a new system. Exactly. And what else can we connect on? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, you know, it's hard even like in relationships where it's like you entered into the relationship through trauma bonding and or drama bonding. And then when you start to heal heal it's like you might go do we have anything in common yeah that's such a hard place to be and the thing that often prevents us from healing because that's a fear that we could drift apart i'm sure there are girls listening right now who are in toxic yeah relationships and i mean i've been with greg for over 10 years now um so i don't i haven't really experienced that actually that's not true i had i had a couple toxic relationships before greg and i think it can be really addictive for people super it you know it

unearths again our reenactment of like it's the hardest thing to do because i've been in these toxic relationships how many meth addicts did i date many i've never done a drug in my life how many have i dated many stop and um i kept going like huh they all it's them it's them it's them but i didn't reclaim my power until i said what's the common denominator it's me and what is it in my even the in the best intention of why I keep entering into these really toxic situations or these really painful situations? It's like, oh, something in me wants to heal from it. So I keep putting myself in the familiar scenario in hopes I will. In hopes it'll be different. In hopes it'll be different. In hopes I'll learn through this process. Yeah. And so often I'm too stressed out and will default to my survival strategies,

which got me into the trouble in the first place. Dr. Scott, this was incredible. You are amazing. You're amazing. Tell us about your new book. Yeah. The book is called Addicted to Drama, Healing the Dependency on Crisis and Chaos in Yourself and Others. And it's, you know, wherever books are sold. And it's a fun one. It really does give a empathetic, supportive response to both those who have an addiction to drama or, you know, have a little drama dabbler, we might say. And for those of us who just know or who have grown up around those people and are in our own healing process. I think so many people could benefit from this book. I feel like even if we are a more healed version of ourselves, we still encounter this all the time.

I know I do. Where can everyone find you online? I love following your content you have the best quotes i pulled so many of them i was like oh yes obsessed you're so sweet i love you um you can find me on social media at i realized i didn't have to say the ad but also www dr scott lines d r s c o t t lN-S. And then that's also my website. Amazing. Thank you so much.

Thank you, love. It's been such a pleasure. Thanks for joining us on the Pursuit of Wellness podcast. To support this show, please rate and review and share with your loved ones. If you want to be reminded of new episodes, click the subscribe button on your preferred podcast or video player. You can sign up for my newsletter to receive my favorites

at marilowelland.com. It will be linked in the show notes. This is a Wellness Out Loud production produced by Drake Peterson, Fiona Attucks, and Kelly Kyle. This show is edited by Mike Fry, and our video is recorded by Luis Vargas. You can also watch the full video of each episode on our YouTube channel at Mari Fitness. Love you, Power Girls and Power Boys. See you next time. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and does not constitute a provider-patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor or health team.