Well with Arielle Lorre - 302: Breaking Addiction to Drama, Dependency on Stress, Chaos, Toxic Relationships & More with Dr. Scott Lyons, PhD

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

Dr. Scott Lyons, PhD, is a top clinical psychologist, educator, and author who helps people break free from cycles of pain, limited beliefs, stress, and drama. As a renowned body-based trauma expert, he's worked with millions of people to relieve stress and restore vitality. He joins the show to talk about our culture's addiction to drama (aka stress), from toxic relationships to over-scheduling your life, and how to cope with it. We also discuss staying grounded in a performative world, social media rage, authenticity, urgency culture, and trauma. This episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct, or indirect financial interest in products, or services referred to in this episode.Read Dr. Scott’s book, Addicted to Drama: https://rstyle.me/+6lEg2EOLo3u0M7Iu_LWaQQGo to Nutrafol.com and use the code Blonde for $10 off your first month’s subscription and free shipping. Go to BetterHelp.com/files for 10% off yout first month.Visit CarawayHome.com/blonde for 10% off your next purchase.Go to JustThriveHealth.com and use the code BLONDE20 for for 20% off a bottle of Just Thrive Probiotic and Just CalmGo to AloMoves.com and use the code BLONDE30 for an exclusive 30 day free trial and 20% off an annual membership.Go to TryBite.com/BLONDE for 20% off your first order.Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Go to your Reis-Adviseur or SunnyCars. The following podcast is a Dear Media production. The IRL is back, and we're showing up bigger, better, and louder than ever. Join us on May 4th in Austin, Texas for the ultimate live podcasting experience. Watch and learn from your favorite Dear Media hosts as they bring their insightful discussions

from your headphones to the stage. Get ready to be inspired, entertained, and watch audio get a makeover. Tickets are on sale now at Dearmedia.com slash IRL. See you on May 4th in Austin, Texas. Welcome to the Blonde Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lorry, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there's so much information out there, so I'm bringing on expert guests and sharing my own experiences to help you sift through all the wellness stuff without the BS. Enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I love today's.

episode so much. This was one of those conversations where I just felt so present and so in the flow of the conversation and so fascinated by the subject matter. And I have to say, going into it, I didn't think that I was going to relate so much to the topic that we were talking about. But as we were in conversation, you'll hear in the episode, I was having revelation after revelation about my life. So my guest is Dr. Scott Lyons. He is a licensed holistic psychologist. He's an educator, and he's the 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, which is truly a delightfully depthful and often hilarious exploration of what it is to be human to have lived life and

come out gently used. We are talking about the concepts in his book about being addicted to drama and having this dependency on crisis and chaos. And I really didn't identify this because I avoid drama, like the plague. I avoid crisis and chaos. And especially since becoming sober, you know, I was really taught to only look for solutions and not stay in problems. So I didn't think that any of this would pertain to me.

but it was so fascinating to explore how this can manifest in our lives, even if we are people who avoid confrontation and avoid drama. And, you know, we looked at it all the way back to early childhood. And I think that you guys will probably come away with this, having had some epiphanies of your own as well. So we are talking about, of course, our culture's addiction to drama and stress. We talk about toxic relationships to overstear. scheduling our lives, how to cope with it all, and how to stay grounded in a performative world. We talk about social media, authenticity, urgency culture, trauma, and so much more. It is such a fun, fascinating conversation. I absolutely adore my guest. So please enjoy Dr. Scott Lyons.

Welcome, Dr. Scott. Hi. Thanks for having me. So excited to have you here. We've already been talking about Crystal Dildos and Tass. Tax evasion. Lots of interesting, fancy, fun things. Off to a great start here. Sorry to the listeners, but we might not be getting too far into those subjects today. We'll see where the conversation goes. But today we're really going to be focusing on this addiction to drama and stress, which I think is so relevant right now. I've been listening to you on some other podcasts, and it's really kind of shifted my perspective around this in a lot of ways. So I'm really excited to delve into it with you today. But can you tell your listeners a little bit about your background and

how you came to focused on this? Yeah. So my background is, I was an artist first and got into kind of health and wellness because I was interested in for myself and then started going into school for it and always had sort of this flare for the dramatic. One might have said I am a recovering drama addict. You know, by the time I was picking like my topic for my dissertation in school, my focus for my thesis, I was like, okay, what has not been talked about, but I've experienced a lot of either in my own life. I mean, I come from a long lineage of dramatics. And so I picked that topic to actually delve into the research because I was like, everybody knows someone addicted to drama. Like we all know someone, but it's hard to define. And there's no actual research out there to prove what we all kind of know just by being human. And so that's how I got into the topic of it. And, you know, definitely from a personal perspective and my own healing from it. And then from an academic side of going, like, what is the missing link here that why we know it but don't know it?

And then as a clinician, I saw it in my office all the time. People were crisis hopping. They couldn't let themselves settle or relax as we were doing some deep. deep healing work that they had to jump into the next issue always. And there was something like, it was almost like a reflex reaction that they couldn't let themselves find peace. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, what does it look like when one is addicted to drama? Yeah. I'm like, well, I don't really have any drama in my life, but it can look like different things. It can look like overworking, over scheduling, over stimulation, right? Yeah. So for the listeners who might be feeling like they're not

identifying as somebody who's addicted to drama. What are some of the ways that it takes form? Yeah. It looks really different from the outside than it does from the inside. So I mean, one of the things we recognize as, like from the outside is like there's a disproportionate amount of energy and behavior and the decibel of intensity that's like their reaction versus what's actually happening. When we're around someone addicted drama, we'll go, wait, what just happened? What was that? And how am I suddenly involved in it? And you're right. It can be anything from over-scheduling to getting into the fast and furious aspects of relationship and the fast and furious exits of relationships. It's constant fights, you know, really getting sucked into the news and feeling like

you're becoming part of it or social media. But essentially what it boils down to, these are all just different behaviors. And the underlying thing, is how we are interrupting our own sense of peace. And we do that because finding peace or stillness or settledness actually brings us closer to the underlying pain and trauma that we're trying to avoid. So in that way, like trauma is something that keeps us far enough away from ourselves and the pain that we've been harboring for so long. So is trauma at the root of all of this?

Yeah. You know, we chase the drama to avoid our trauma over and over again. We find what distracts us. And there's something about, you know, when I say addiction to drama, we're talking about addicted to stress. It's kind of the same thing. Okay. And, you know, stress actually does things for our body that are good.

You know, we often think of stress as like the big bad thing in the closet that's coming out to kill us. And stress is actually our biological process of how we adapt. It means essentially how we get all this energy released in our body. to adapt to whatever the situation is. And that's all it is. And stress does other things. Like if you ever gone for a good run and you're like,

oh my God, I feel kind of awesome. I feel really good. That endorphic high. So that's a stress response. You're stressing your body physically and you have that endorphin release. What that does is it actually blocks the pain receptors. So when we're in a constant state of stress, we are blocking the pain receptors that we experience, right?

Interesting, yeah. And other things, like, if you've ever enjoyed a good cup of coffee in the morning, and then you become exhausted. And over time, a lot of us are exhausted of just dealing with life. And when we feel stressed out, we feel like, whoa, all of a sudden we drink that cup of coffee, like we could fight anyone. That's that energy, that cortisol, and all the chemicals releasing. And it gives us that energy, the energy boost.

and we become attached to it. It's more accessible than coffee and it's a lot more free. And it actually lasts longer than the cup of coffee. Yeah. You know, it typically is a 90-minute boost every time we go into like that cortisol glucocoid reaction.

Interesting. I like to say glucucoid. It's stress hormones. Okay. It just sounds sexy glucocoid. And it's, you know, stress is also a bonding agent. It's a social glue. If you and I went through a stressful experience,

we would actually feel closer than if we didn't go through a stressful experience together. So, you know, from the inside, those who are addicted to drama, they feel constantly alone. They feel like the world's out to get them. They feel like a victim. They feel like they're being rushed. They're out of rhythm. They're out of sync with the world. They always feel like something bad is about to happen or is happening.

So if they get pain relief, if they get energy, if they get a sense of social connection, of course anyone's going to be attached to something that gives in that. And, you know, addiction is essentially anything that fills a void. We become attached dependent on something that fills the void. Yeah, there's, you know, phases like, you know, we grow tolerance to something. We energy and our attention becomes consumed with it. We go through withdrawal symptoms. All of that actually is true with drama or stress.

Is that we become tolerant to it. We need more stress to get that high, to get the pain relief, to get the energy boost, to get the sense of connection. And we go through withdrawal symptoms just like heroin. That's crazy. I know. And in addiction to drama, it comes out in the shape of boredom and anxiety, which is wild. I think oftentimes wellness can feel overwhelming and it can feel impossible to prioritize wellness in our lives. but I have to tell you guys about Allo Moves because this changed my whole mindset.

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for every area of your life, not just exercise. So again, that's alommoves.com and the code is blonde 30. Again, alomoods.com code blonde 30. This show is sponsored by Better Help. A lot of us spend our lives wishing that we had more. time, but I think we don't really play the tape through. So the big question is time for what? If our time was unlimited, how would we use it? I have found that the best way to squeeze that special thing into my schedule is to know what is important to me and to make it a priority. And sometimes

this can be hard to figure out on our own. So something that really helped me is therapy. Therapy can help you find what matters to you so that you can do more of it. I am very open about the fact that I have been in and out of therapy for most of my life and have really benefited from it in the past few years. I think a big misconception about therapy is that it is only for difficult times or major traumas. And this is just simply not the case. I have actually found that I have benefited the most from therapy, I think, when things are going really well for me because I learn positive coping skills. I learn how to set boundaries. I feel empowered to be the best version of myself, and I can figure out what is important to me, what my priorities are, and adjust so that I am moving in that direction and making room for those things in my life.

So if you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists anytime. for no additional charge. So learn to make time for what makes you happy with better help. Visit betterhelp.com slash files today to get 10% off your first month. That's better help, help.com slash files. I've been sober for a long time and in sobriety, I learned to kind of live like around a six or a seven.

Like I don't need the high highs and I don't need the low loads because I would drink when things were really good too and drink and things were really bad. So I try to keep myself like pretty steady and I'm pretty mindful of, you know, my moods and my anger and my stress and all of that. But I'm thinking back to when I was in Italy last year with my best friend. And we were like going out to dinner one night really late and I was so tired and I was dealing with a situation with my now ex-husband. And I was like, maybe if I just like pick a fight, then I'll catch a resentment. And that's like Adderall for me. I was like, I can go to that late dinner and I can go out after. And we were joking about it. But I was like, Why is that? And now I'm understanding. It's that stress response, like gives so much energy. And I can see how, you know, if you're trying to avoid things, if you're trying to numb out or whatever, you can seek that through your actions, your behaviors.

Yeah. That's so amazing that you were able to recognize that and kind of even laugh at it. Because a lot of us do that. It's like, why did we just get into a fight with a friend or online with a stranger or a partner? And it's like, what is that giving us? Is it giving us a sense? the power and agency? Is it giving us energy? Is it giving us? You know, what is it giving us? And that's an important thing to recognize because we're often really attached to what it's giving us. Yeah. And in addition to all the harm it's causing both for ourselves and our relationship. Yeah. Yeah, I mean another example not to just talk about myself. Give me the examples. I love it. I love it. I just went through a divorce. And it was so amicable and such like a loving divorce, that it was so sad and I

don't know how to do sadness you know I know how to do like fuck you no fuck you and you cheat on me and I sleep with your friends and blow everything up you know to do the drama yeah I know how to do the drama

because that was my M-O before I got sober 10 years ago I found myself again kind of being like well let me find something to like get resentful at with him because like anger feels

more comfortable to me than sadness I can just really see like as I'm listening to you talking how this can become habitual and then turn into a lifestyle essentially. What did you do in that process of going like, did you sit with the sadness? Yes. I mean, I would find little things or I would send my voice notes to my friends. Like, can you believe, blah, blah, you know, and like get my little anger venting out.

But, you know, ultimately it was just sad. There was nothing like bad in the divorce really. And so I don't know how to do that because, you know, it's my first. first breakup in sobriety. And, and yeah, prior to that, my breakups were, you know, yeah, throwing bombs. Yes. And then I would drink and, you know, take pills and numb out. I've heard you talking about certain feelings and not having the resources to feel those feelings. So can you talk about that a little bit? Because I would imagine that that kind of leads to this seeking or something to numb that.

When we can't have our primary feelings, we drop into a secondary feeling, a default setting of an emotional response, which means we're not actually able to be present with our emotional experience and we're not using that to really communicate our needs or shift the situation. So if we think of like a crayon box and we have all these emotions that are different colors, And based on our upbringing, you know, like this color and this feeling and this feeling weren't allowed. Like sadness was not allowed. Or anger was the only emotion modeled in our families or rage or something like that. And so we have all of these less crans to express ourselves with.

So we default to the ones we're allowed to have or that were modeled to us. So like for you, it's like, oh, the cran of sadness wasn't in your toolbox, wasn't in your crows. wasn't in your cran box. So you would default towards anger to have some type of expression, except that it wasn't really expressing the truth that you were experiencing, and which creates a dissonance. It's essentially expressing a lie. We create all these narratives and we do all these things to perpetuate the lie of the expression. We move further and further from ourselves, which creates a greater sense of depression, and then we have to deal with that. And so, So it's like we're living an inauthentic expression of ourselves and it's dangerous.

And we have to keep up the narratives. And we have to like, you know, find things to fuel that false emotional reaction. So it's like you might go, oh, I have to stay in the anger because I can't be with the sadness. So I'm going to like imagine he did this. And I'm going to play that story out while I'm in a fucking yoga class, right? We all do that. We all make up these stories that have never happened. But here's the reality is that when we make up a story in our head, we had the physiological response as though it was real. Like, I don't know about you, but like, have you ever had a dream about a friend or a partner?

And in the dream you got into a fight with them? And you wake up and you're like mad at them. Yeah. For like the entire day. Yeah, for the entire day. And they are like, what the fuck is wrong with you? I literally didn't do anything. And that's kind of like what we're doing in drama all the time. You know, we're making up the stories. We're finding different ways to rev ourselves up and away from ourselves. I had such a revelation if I was looking at you like because I was just thinking back to my childhood. And, you know, I don't think I had the crown of sadness.

So I had the crown of anger. And I had that dissonance. And I felt like nobody saw me and nobody understood me. And that came out as more anger and rage. And, you know, that for years got me to the point where I did need something outside of myself. And, you know, to what you were saying about, like, authenticity. I put up so many facades and everything of, like, who I thought you thought I should be and who I thought I should be to fit whatever. I needed stuff to fuel that.

Yeah. So. You just gave me chills. Really? Yeah. I mean, it's so right. It's like we. when we aren't able to express our true nature,

we then feel like the world doesn't see us and maybe even the world's against us. And the truth is we're not actually presenting to the world the truth of what we're experiencing because we don't have the capacity or the vehicle to do it. We're coloring with the wrong crann. We're coloring with the default cram and expecting everyone to see the blue,

but we're coloring with red. Right. And then we're mad at it. Yeah. And then they're just like, you know, perpetuates and perpetuates. Yeah. So well said. Yeah.

I wonder if that's kind of at the root of this culture that we're in now, like on social media, where how mean can you be and how many people can you get to like your mean snarky comment? And then, and, you know, there's this culture just in the comments of videos now. It's not just the videos themselves. It's the commenting. Yeah. And people run to the comments to participate in that. And I would imagine get some kind of bonding based on this anger, drama. I mean, can you be addicted to other people's drama?

And can you be addicted to causing kind of drama like that because you're feeling that? Yeah, absolutely. So I call it depositing or depository emotions. So it's like I'm not able to be with my own expression. And so I projected and deposit on you. I deposit the story and the narrative I'm making on you. So I also feel that emotion. I mean, how often do we go?

and we scroll through social media and we see a friend or someone we don't even know and we make up a story about what's happening in their life based on that one image. And then we're having again, that emotional reaction and then maybe we leave a comment. And we've made up this entire story and narrative and then they are the depository for that

because we're not able to be with our own self and our own emotions anymore. It's really hard. And when you talk about can we be addicted to someone else's drama. Yeah. Reality television, gossip columns, social media. I mean, here's the thing. It's like there's something called an intentional economy. And that means like the highest commodity in this world right now is actually your attention. And I as a marketing agent, I as a fellow human being, have to compete with everyone else for that very, you know, precious commodity of your

attention. And there are certain tools that capture it and maintain it. And those tools are what I call activation tools or drama tools. So we know that the thing that actually creates the sustainment of your attention and the capturing of it is to stress you the fuck out. Yeah? So the more I can use dramatic language, intensified motions, narratives, images, anything like that. You know, turn on the news for five seconds and you'll see the mechanisms of those, of that activation tools. Yeah. It's like, this happened and then this happened, but stay tuned.

Yeah. You know, shit like that. This is spends. And, you know, there was a really good research that was done around this that the articles that got the most shares and likes were ones that evoked things like anger and frustration. We do this in our own lives and we create falseness in our social. media posts. Like I remember when I was younger, I was living my life mostly to tell the story of it. That was part of my drama addiction. It's like I wasn't living my life. I was like capturing these

moments to then think how I would share the story of it on social media. I was like, oh, well, I know if I say it this way, it won't get as many likes. But if I had this whole narrative and these emotions in it and really build up kind of like, oh, I was so angry when someone said this to me, you know, anything like that, it's going to garner more attention. And then that attention, I get a hit of dopamine. And I'm like, oh, I finally get this attention that I feel like, like you said before, like I wasn't seen by the world. So I'm suddenly felt like seeing by what I'm creating, by the intensification and exaggeration of what I'm performing, essentially. Oof.

We are fucked as a culture. I'm just listening to you thinking, well, what's the solution? I mean, it's something that I grapple with a lot too, like being a quote-unquote public figure, you know, having a presence online. And essentially, my brand is me. Yeah. And, you know, for the last 10 years, I've been trying to take the focus off of myself. Yeah.

Because that self-centeredness was very toxic for me. So, you know, how do I present my authentic self and live in this attention commoditized? I don't know if that's a word for world. And still stay grounded. Yeah. It's really hard. I think we can't. I'm going to be really honest.

I think that, like, we, you know, there's this whole thing about performative authenticity. We're in the culture of authenticity. Be as authentic as you can, but not really authentic. Yeah. Be the authentic that will garm. and get the likes and, you know, be really vulnerable, but, you know, make sure you have the right lighting with that vulnerability. And it is not real. And so what we're losing is the ground to what is real and what's not real because we're saying this is real, but it's actually a performative

realness. And the moment you have an audience and you think about it from their perspective, it's no longer authentic in its true nature of authenticity. And so like the moment I think about a post where I'm talking about my life and I'm like, oh, I'm so authentic. Sorry, you're not. It's maybe some authenticity. But it's also the moment you think about audience, you recognize you are on a stage and you are performing.

And that is what social media is. That's what friend groups are. The moment you are trying to get a response from someone else, like, you know, when you were going through a breakup, when I was going through a breakup, how many times did we call that friend wanting a very particular response? Like telling them the stories of what our partners did wrong in a way that made sure we got that response. And then they were invested and they're like, oh my God, that asshole. They said this and they said that. You know, and it's not actually authentic because we're actually. doing a little bit of performative manipulation. Right. Sorry. And there's a little bit of relief and just knowing that's what's happening. For me, knowing what I'm doing is actually a little bit of a power back to myself of going,

oh, I'm making this choice. Yeah. Like, I know what I'm doing if I'm putting a post and I'm sharing a personal story in that post around some like healing quote. Like it's important that I say like I am doing this for me and I'm doing this for you. Yeah. And I know that certain things get better clicks and shares. Yeah.

And that gives me at least the distance to be like, okay. To not start believing that that's who you are. Yeah. I'm not internalizing the performance. Yeah. As that that is a truth. Yeah. And then.

And also if you internalize all the great comments of how much they love you, then you also have to give as much credence to the ones that are negative. Yeah. And there's a lot of that. So yeah. Yeah. So much negativity. Yeah. Because the negative, like the world is hard, y'all. The world is fucking hard. And like, people do not have their shit together. The emotional IQ of our world has gone down. Yeah. Down, down. And we don't have as many great skills as we, I'm not sure we ever did. But we don't have as many great skills to express our feelings and our needs. in truly a non-performative and supportive way.

And so, like, you know, there's so much we're caring, whether it's body tension or emotions unexpressed or trauma, and we're constantly looking for a place to relieve it in. And so, like, it might be that we feel a momentary relief, and that's part of the drama cycle. we feel momentary relief from the like explosion into someone's DMs or explosion onto someone's comments. And we're like, oh, finally it's a little discharge from all this shit I'm carrying that I didn't even know I was carrying with me through life. And we get hooked on that moment of relief.

But it's disorganized. It's not true release in the therapeutic terms. It's more of like a dumpster fire of release. You probably feel worse about yourself. Yeah. I would imagine. not some. It's a fucking volcanic eruption. Yeah. Not like a stream that disperses something and like, and, you know, like helps it move on. Yeah. My theory about that is that people need to feel superior in some way.

Even just for that split second. And then they move on to the next thing. And, and then have to do that again. And I would imagine, you know, talk about addiction and tolerance. Like, I would imagine, like, I would imagine you're tolerance to that would build very quickly and then you just need to ramp it up more and more. Well, exactly. It's like how many of us feel at some level in some moments over life that we're a victim to the world, to the victim to the circumstances that are beyond our control, and we lose a sense of power, especially like, I don't know about you, but when I worked for someone else back in the day, I'm like, oh, fuck, this is, this is like constantly taking away my sense of power, my sense of purpose, my sense of value.

And like, I'm going to do anything I can to get it back. And so that sense of like the superiority, like I'm going to one up you or whatever it is, it's at the heart of it, it's desire to reclaim our sense of power that has been robbed in so many arenas in our lives. Like many women, I experienced a lot of hair thinning and shedding when I was going through a particularly stressful time in my life. And if this has happened to you, just know that you're not alone because hair thinning will happen to approximately one in two women. So thinning is normal, but it's not really openly talked about. And going through it can feel so lonely and frustrating.

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I know, right? I'm right there with you. Yeah, no, my rock, my rock rock rock rock rock bottom, you know, and I, I kind of feel like I'm not, in retrospect, I'm not sure I could have gotten to the true process of healing had I not hit rock bottom. And I, you know, I know that that's often said from a lot of folks who have an addiction. When I was in my 20s, I was in a pretty damn toxic relationship. And what I realized even now is like the amount of toxic relationships, I was in to hide from myself. It was such a distractor to be in the toxicity, and it's such a means of avoidance of what my underlying trauma was. Relationships were my place to get the drama hit, the fix. Yeah.

So many of us used that. And so, like, I was in the process of getting divorced. I was in grad school. I lost this massive job. with a rock band that I was working with. I lost my health insurance. I was getting sick and I was throwing out blood and like we didn't know what the hell was going on. I was basically detoxing from my own toxicity and the relationship. You know, I OD'd. That's what I would say. And I did physically OD but I also OD emotionally that I thought I could always handle stress. I

I was like, I'm good at this. And what I didn't realize is I had a high tolerance for stress, not like capacity. Tolerance and capacity are different. Like you could have a high tolerance for alcohol or cocaine or whatever the addiction is. And my tolerance level had to keep going up in order to get the hit from the stress. And eventually I, through the divorce, through the grad school, through the work that I lost, all these things, it passed the threshold of my tolerance, and I literally collapsed. I was declared dead for a moment.

Wow. You know, like, I also happened, like, in accordance with getting roofied. Oh, my God. And so it was, like, a bunch of shit in combination. Mm-hmm. But, like, I just was hit rock bottom. I could not. And, like, thank God I'm still alive.

Mm-hmm. You know, my mom came in and called the ambulance. and was resuscitated. It took a while. I felt like it was a total reset on my nervous system. But I noticed during that time that I was hungering for normal. And normal for me was chaos.

I didn't feel like myself until I was back on the phone with my ex and I would back in the drama. Or I would fight with my sister who was literally taking care of me. And I was like, where I would feel the sense of relief when I was watching violent movies.

And I was like, this doesn't seem right. This is not normal. Like, these things that I'm now realizing are toxic and, like, shit, are making me feel normal and okay again. And so I had to do a massive detox. I had to really recognize all the moments that I was trying to rev myself back up to a state of, like, activation and stress. And I had to stop myself.

I literally would, like, put it. out my hand and say stop to myself. And I had all these other techniques of like interrupting the desire to get stressed, like over scheduling myself over and over again. Like I found all of, I was fucking creative. I will say. Like when you when you stop the addiction, any addiction, you realize how creative you are of like sneaking it in. Yes. And justifying it. Yeah. Yeah. But especially something like that. So, you know, drugs and alcohol, like I don't need to. You to drink or do drugs ever again in my life. But I do need to schedule things.

So how do you navigate that? Yeah. So the first thing is like, okay, noticing tuning in self-awareness, what is it like when you're getting stressed out? Yeah. So I'm noticing like my own breath. I'm noticing my heart rate. I'm noticing how my muscles operate, like the tension in them.

And that's called revving. So that's like when we're starting to get worked up. we're going revving if I'm scheduling myself I will pause and I will check in with my body am I in a state of trying to override and rev myself up and if so the first thing I do is I go pause stop what's underneath the hood emotionally of the desire to avoid right now I'm like okay oh shit I'm sad and I don't want to fucking deal with it I'm really hurt or I'm really angry or I'm feeling really lonely and I don't want to be alone with my feelings and so that's why I'm all of a sudden over scheduling myself or I'm in that meditation class I'm

starting to think about my ex or I'm sad but I play sadder music like all those things we do to avoid contact what you got a sad playlist yeah what's on your side playlist oh my god I can't even think of what I have. It's all over the place. Yeah. It's the best, though. I have a bunch of Ani DeFranco on mine. Oh, that's good.

Yeah. School night. Gray. Oh my gosh. I don't know why. And then Adele, of course. Yes. And I noticed this when I was going through a breakup.

It's like, I never listened to Adele once before that. And like, sorry Adele. I have been to your concert since then. And I started listening to Adele. And I remember driving and crying and singing the lyrics. Yeah. And I remember just having this like this thought in my mind going, what am I doing? It's like pouring gasoline on a emotional fire.

Adele literally is pouring gasoline on an emotional fire. Is this what I want in my life right now? Like is this what I need? And sometimes, you know, it's like, oh, I feel validated by like the wretchedness of like the emotional experience that she's singing about. I'm like, yes, I feel seen and heard. But then there's a way in which we've gone too far. Right.

And it's such an important distinction. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, sometimes the crying playlist can be good. I love like a flying crying playlist, that combo. I have a flying playlist of movies to cry too. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, I might need that from you.

It's mostly Pixar. I'm not going to lie. But sometimes like it's a healthy emotional. release, but there is that line where it's like at what point are you, you know, kind of torturing yourself a little bit. And this is where it's like when we're relying on a vehicle to have an emotional expression, the vehicle being a movie, the vehicle being a song, as opposed to like taking some moments to pause, feel my emotions. And if there's some tears there, let them out. Mm-hmm.

You know? And that, it's really important because when we start to rely on vehicle, then social media and trolling becomes our vehicle and getting into fights with people becomes our vehicle. Like I have this underlying anger that I've been carrying since I was a childhood, since I was a child. And I'm going to use my adult relationship as the vehicle to try to motor it out of me by getting into fights. Like hell to the no, stop that shit, you know?

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a 90-day bottle of Just Thrive Probiotic and Just Calm. It reminds me of an interventionist that I had on my podcast, actually, and he was talking about addiction, and he said, you're going back to the source of pain looking for comfort. Yes. And that's like what all of this is, you know, and it's so interesting that we engage in these, you know, harmful, whether it's behaviors or habits, knowingly,

knowing that they hurt us, but for whatever reason, that feels better than just what, being present? Well, it feels better than two things. It feels better than the contact we have with the emotions, the trauma, the pain, because we often have carry a belief system that if we go back to it, it's going to feel worse than the original experience. Okay. The other thing that it is dealing with or is filling the void. And we talk about filling the void. That's a common phrase, But what it actually means is that oftentimes when we have had trauma, especially childhood trauma, we disconnect from our body. We disassociate.

And so literally the void is the emptiness of where we once sat and belonged within ourselves. And so addiction is anything that fills that hole where we should belong and fills the hole and helps distract from it. because it is extraordinarily lonely. We don't belong to ourselves or the world when we have had to dissociate and disconnect from ourselves as a means of survival. Yeah, I can relate to that so much because, you know, I look back at my own addiction

and all of that and I can see even as a child, I was looking for external things to regulate how I felt inside and I don't really think that I had much childhood trauma. Maybe there was something that I perceived, you know, as traumatic, but there were no like big teeth. trauma kind of things. No.

But it... Were your parents good regulators? I don't know. Because this is a weird thing. Because it's like, oftentimes I don't like going back and blaming parents, but it could be our family system. It could be a couple of things. It's like, what was the currency of love?

Meaning what was the way that we got attention and connection? So like in my family, you got attention when something was wrong. So I internalized that. and I spent my focus and my energy and my time attending and being wrong, like feeling wrong and like getting into trouble and really focusing on that. And so like that's an important thing to recognize as a currency of love. And the other is like how was the presence of our caregivers to help us regulate? And that's not their fault. There's a lot of fucking distractions as a parent that brings us away from being fully present

in what's called co-regulation. So co-regulation is like, I, as the adult, support your nervous system to regulate until you can learn that on your own called self-regulation. And if you don't have that, then you're going to keep searching for things

that do that for you. And often we find the things that numb us and that we assume or think of that as a regulation. And really, it's just a numbing agent. Yeah, that sounds like me. I identify with the latter. Yeah. Or like if we grew up in a house of chaos and the environment was constant, just yelling

and crisis and whatever, then we might feel the most comfortable in the familiar, and we will go and seek that. Like I lived in New York for 20 years. And New York is the drama center. Like it is urgency culture. It is meanness. It is aggression. It is straightforwardness. It is loud noises. It is chaos embodied. And it felt like home. And I couldn't leave New York for so many years, even though we had a love-hate relationship. Because I was like, this is the only place that feels like home. And what I meant was this is the place that felt like my home growing up. Yeah. It's so interesting because you would think, that you would seek out things as an adult to heal that part of ourselves. Same with, you know, seeking out relationships that kind of mirror the relationships that we had with our parents, even if they were dysfunctional. And you would think that, no, you would find a partner that would

be the opposite, right? But so many of us subconsciously seek out the familiar. The familiar even if it's dysfunctional. Yeah, familiar is safe despite its functional or dysfunctional in this. we're going to seek it. We're also going to do what's called reenactments. So we're going to recreate the scenarios by choosing the partners, unconsciously choosing the scenarios we're in that will bring us back to that familiar state in hopes that this time we might heal it. But we often don't because we're right back in the familiar,

choosing our familiar behaviors and actions of preservation that we learn to begin with. Are we just allergic to unknown? It does require a lot of patience with the unknown. I mean, like, if anxiety is uncomfortableness with the unknown or intolerance for the unknown, then it means that we have to sit in the discomfort of the unknown and unfamiliar until something new happens. And it's like, I can tell you, like, drama was the spice of my life, you know? Like everything else when it wasn't around felt boring. So it was like, I don't know, have you ever had like an everything bagel?

And then when you go to a plain bagel, you're like, muwam, wah. Yeah, where's that little garlic kick? Salty garlic kick. Exactly. And so like that was for me, like when I stopped engaging in the drama and all the ways I wanted to, when I blocked the impulse, life was boring. And I totally thought like my therapist was going to find me boring. I thought my friends were going to dump me.

Some of them did because suddenly I wasn't the entertaining, you know, dramatic individual that was fueling their own drama addiction, that they were able to ride along the tornado of my life. So how do you find stimulation now in other ways? Ooh, that's a good question. It's funny because like when I'm in an argument with my partner, I'm like, like just not interested in going there. And it's so, I like watch myself and I'm like, I'm, I'm just not going to go there. And I just sit there and I'm like, like, the, the desire from one end

is coming at like more drama. And I'm like, yeah, no thanks. I'm just like, sorry. And I find delight in things that are more subtle. Like, you know, I think that's the beauty of when your life isn't at a decibel of a 10 that you really find like there's like oh my gosh there's a plant here and it's just so pretty like in the rest of my life I would have been like too distracted by like the qualms of the world and the things that are going on between you know my friend group and all these things I wouldn't have found just the beauty and like the lines of that plant there and and that makes me really happy that like the subtle things in life can be gratified. that I can find pleasure and something so simple as like a plain bagel.

Fluent free, of course. I love that. Yeah, it's so, I feel like it all comes down to mindfulness, right? Like being present, being able to be in your body, being aware of your intentions and your behaviors and your motives and actions, all of that. All of that. But I think it's so hard because we live in a time where, you know, we're just like constantly distracted from the second we wake up to the second we lay down. And I think there's so much,

like you said before, under the hood that people don't want to look at. And part of urgency culture and the way that marketing works in our world and again back to that attentional economy is people are literally pulling our attention from us and directing it. They're taking our power of attention through essentially, again, those tools of stressing us out. And we are left feeling powerless in the world. So like mindfulness or attention back to ourselves and starting to feel like I have control over my emotions, how much energy and attention I'm putting into anything at any one given time is a reclaiming of your power.

Love that. Okay, well, tell everybody about your book. Sure. And then where they can find you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the book is called Addicted, a Drama, Healing, Dependency on Crisis and Chaos and Yourself and others. So the book is for multiple audience. So if you find your can relate to some things we talked about, good on you, we support you and love you. And this book is for you. And if you find like, oh my gosh,

that's my mom or my friend or the teacher I had in high school, then this book is also for you. It will normalize and help you understand what's going on. It will give you tools, how to deal with the drama addicts of your life. And there are a lot of us out there. So you're, you're There are a lot of tools in here and also tools to help your own healing process, whether you are a drama dabbler or knows someone who is. Amazing. And where can they find you? On social media, I'm at Dr. Scott Lyons, so DR Scott Lyons. My website is Dr. Scott Lyons, DR again, as well.

You can find me on my podcast as well, the gently used human. You can find me walking the streets of L.A. sometimes and sometimes not. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. You're the best. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you liked it, and if you liked the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. You can go to areallori.com.

And I'm always posting about each episode over on my personal page at Ariel Laurie. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.