Are You Addicted to Drama? How to Know & How to Fix it with Dr. Scott Lyons
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First of all, I love you all. Oh, we love you. Oh my gosh. Same. Thank you for having me. I like, I'm sweating. I am nervous, but I am thriving because of this. So thank you. Well, you know, I'm always sweaty and nervous. So we are already bonded. We're trauma bonded. We are drama bonded. So I saw that you had Shira on the show and I saw how you prepared for it, which was like singing and dancing. And I'm not going to lie. I wish I was there.

How did you prepare for the drama? We don't have to, Scott. I've been preparing my whole goddamn life. Oh, my love. Me too. Truthfully, I did. It's interesting. Well, I heard you a while back on some podcasts and I was like, oh, I really...

I related for myself, but I related for all of us. Yeah. It's so pod squad. So here's what we're doing here with this absolute love bug, Dr. Scott Lyons. So we're in this moment of what could be considered sort of a nexus of fear and drama and the unknown and everyone's sort of frenzied.

And because I have had so much drama in my life, I actually always see those as interesting moments. Like when everybody gets so freaked out that you're almost at a breaking point, that's my time to shine. I feel like this is the moment where we can say, oh, our lives have become unmanageable so we can try a new way.

I feel like we have an opening here, right? It's like we've been in a codependent relationship with the world trying to see if it will get okay so that we can be okay. And we can finally say, oh, that's not going to happen. The world is never going to bring us peace. So we have to find it in ourselves. And I think that you were made for just such a time as this, Dr. Scott Lyons.

Thank you for making me blush a lot. You're so sweet. I think we have been in a very codependent relationship with stress. Yeah. And we have been using it to thrive in a way that is not towards our best interest anymore or ever really. But it is a time to break that codependency.

Okay. Well, I want you to know that you have 45 minutes to break our codependency. So let's get right into this. First of all, y'all. I love urgency. So thank you. Yeah, exactly. Yes.

I know all the pod squatters are already in love from the last 45 seconds, but if you don't know Dr. Scott Lyons, and you should, Dr. Scott Lyons is a licensed holistic psychologist, educator, and author of the bestselling book, Addicted to Drama, Healing Dependency on Crisis and Chaos.

Listen to that again, PodSquad. Healing dependency on crisis and chaos in yourself and others. Scott is also the host of the Gently Used Human podcast, a delightfully depthful and often hilarious exploration of what it is to be human, to have lived life, and come out gently used. That's great. As a renowned body-based trauma expert and mind-body medicine specialist, Scott

Scott also helps people to break free from cycles of pain, limited beliefs, and trauma. So, Dr. Scott Lyons, tell us about our codependent relationship with stress and how we might know if we are a drama addict or not.

First that, and then if other people in our lives are drama addict, we will start with the man in the mirror, Dr. Scott Lyons. How brave. I know. Because I think all of us can say, oh, we know that person who makes Mountain Out of Mole Hills, who's addicted to the gossip, the venting, all the ways in which we're stirring things up. But it's never usually us, but it often is in some capacity. Mm-hmm.

And I think it's helpful to kind of start with a little definition of what drama is. And then we can talk about what stress does for us, the value of it, and why we might become dependent on it. So drama is this unnecessary stress and turmoil. It's the exaggeration. It's the intensification of behaviors and emotions and stories. It's a disproportionate amount of energy and emotion and attention that

to what's happening versus what the situation actually needs. It's like blowing a birthday candle out with a fire hose, which I did a lot as a kid. Just so we're clear. I mean, when I'm talking about the man in the mirror who's addicted to drama, y'all, I am talking about me and many of us. And I just, I want to normalize it because we can get so caught up and I'll talk about the ways we identify it

But we can get so caught up in the person who's doing all these actions that are so overwhelming to us and so overwhelming to the world. And we often miss what's underneath it, the why. And I'll talk about the why in a minute, but let's get to the juicy stuff, which is what does it look like? Yeah.

So it's the person, like I said, who makes mountains out of molehills. They're constantly venting. They're gossiping. They're overscheduling. Overscheduling, y'all. They're busy all the time. They're constantly doing, doing, doing. And it's really hard to just be. Stillness feels like a plague. And they're using language that's intense and exaggerated. They get bored when things are calm. They're...

they get frustrated when things are not at a certain level of intensity or they don't feel like they're thriving if things are not at a certain level of chaos. So they wait to the last minute for things. I see a little head nod, so I'm feeling like we can all relate to something. Universal to all of the above. We're with you, Scott.

Yeah. Sometimes it's an adrenaline junkie, right? They need that high, high, high. And it shows up in the relationships as constantly being in these relationships that have these high highs and low lows. And Lord have mercy, I have done so many of those. Oof. And it is part of the addiction.

That intermittent love, ooh, it makes the highs feel that much higher. And when you have had such trauma in your life that you become numb, which is often the case for those of us who've had an addiction to stress and drama and busyness, we need something above that threshold of numbness to feel anything.

Is it like a tolerance? Like if you need to drink more to get drunk or you need more chaos to even have you feel anything? Totally. I used to think that I was so, I had this incredible ability to just manage stress. I was in two grad schools at the same time. I was in a really awful abusive relationship. I was navigating an internship. I had two different companies I was running. I was like,

Whoa, I can really handle the stress. But the reality is, is that I had such a high tolerance like others who have a high tolerance for alcohol. And until you overdose, until you have too much, you don't realize it wasn't that you have a lot of resilience. It's that you built a certain tolerance because you need more to feel more or you need more to get drunk. And I needed more stress to feel that sense of aliveness because the numbness

The malaise, the ache, the pain that I was trying to avoid was so prevalent, was so real. Okay. So we shake up the snow globe on the outside. Because when I was listening to you on a certain interview, I thought this reminds me of the kiddos who write to me about cutting. I really get it. I understand what function that, which there's like this

underlying emotional ache or pain that is so nebulous and confusing and untouchable that it becomes intolerable. And so the only way to distract from that underlying thing is to create something on the outside of your body where all the pain coalesces and you can see it and you can control it and you can explain it and it makes sense. Beautifully said.

Is that an especially dramatic metaphor for this? We chase the drama to avoid our trauma. Oh, shit. Oh, we love it when things rhyme. We really get it when it rhymes. I'm from the Christian community. We love things that rhyme. If it rhymes, we believe it's straight from God. So thank you. I just want to talk about the physiology of this. Yeah. What's going on? What's the brain chemistry? The why of it all? Like a little backdrop.

I love that question. So what does stress do? We often think of stress as like the big bad boogie monster in the closet that just makes us sick. Wrong. Stress does some amazing stuff for us, including pain relief. We release endorphins as part of a stress release. We are more bonded to each other through a stressful encounter. It is a social glue. If you've been through shit together, you grow together. That's right.

Right. There's a great study in Australia that came out that there was one group that put their hand in ice cold water and it hurt. And another group who put their hand in neutral tepid water didn't have the stress of the cold water. The group that had their hands in the ice cold water bonded better and performed better on the tasks that they were given. Wow.

Stress also gives us energy. It's like a boost. It's like taking coffee or some other type of fun stimulant. Name your stimulant of choice. But it actually does that. You get this cascade of hormones that give you this boost of energy. And when you're in kind of a malaise of life, when you're sad, when you're low, when you're down on energy, get stressed. And it gives you more sensation.

So it goes back to that numbness. You know, one of the things about trauma is it splits us apart. It creates all this fragmentation. It fragments us from feeling ourself. It fragments us from feeling in relationship. And consequentially, we are very much alone. And that pain, that lonely pain is indistinguishable from a physical pain. It's the same neural circuitry. Mm-hmm.

And we as humans are designed to find relief from suffering and pain. So how does that work in terms of the physiology of it, the brain chemistry? Let's look at endorphins. You go for that good soccer game or you go for a run, you get that high. That's an endorphic release. And endorphins are these natural chemicals in our brain that produce feelings of pleasure and pain relief and

and emotional warmth. That's a big one, the emotional warmth. It gives us a sense of social bonding and emotional regulation. Ooh, that's why gossip feels so good at first. It feels so good at first. Yeah. It's an in-group activity. It feels like a bonding, something special that you and I share. We'll talk about it later, but not to everyone else. No, just kidding. It's an in-group experience. It makes us feel special. Yeah. And so what's interesting is individuals...

who've experienced developmental trauma, who've had a lack of emotional nourishment or bonding are susceptible to addictions because they're lacking those opioids, those endorphins. Wow. And so it leaves us more vulnerable to seek comfort from things external to us, including, and this is the crazy part,

Because we get endorphic, we get opioids from drugs like heroin, for example, but we also get it, and this is the wild part, from emotional stress, anxiety, fear. We actually get an endorphic response as part of stress and it fills the void of so much of that bonding and nourishment and connection that we have been craving.

Wow. Scott, did I just hear you say that if you've had trauma developmentally when you're young, your baseline of those naturally occurring opioids is lower than your average person? 100%. So we're just trying to bring it up to baseline? You're trying to bring it up to baseline. That is why people who've had emotional, developmental, relational trauma are more susceptible to drug addiction. Wow.

Wow. So if you're out there listening and you are a person who is a gossiper, who is somebody who dramatizes everything, who's, you know, starts the thing in the room, who overschedules so that then you're too busy, who takes on stress and stress, you all like that's, I am a recovering alcoholic and a food addict. And you're just addicted to the thing that's rushing through your blood because of that thing. It makes so much sense. It can be so forgiven. It's like,

Just the same as booze or food, right? A hundred percent. You're dependent on it. You're dependent on the chaos. Gabor Mate has this great quote that says, don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. Yeah. And I continued with that and go, let's not just ask about the pain. Let's evaluate what gives us relief from that pain and not shame it. Mm-hmm.

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Dr. Scott, if stress is bringing us all of these things, what's the promise in quitting? I understand why I had to quit drinking because I kept getting arrested and people were very upset with me all the time and I kept almost dying. Okay. So I feel bad for people who have this sort of addiction because they don't get arrested. It's like this sort of addiction is applauded a little bit because you're serving people. So why do they need to quit? What will happen?

There are significant social consequences. That's the nature of any addiction. They might be more invisible at times, but if you look at those of us who've had an addiction to drama or stress or busyness or chaos, however we want to say it, it perpetuates the loneliness that's feeding the addiction to begin with. Boom. Sure.

No, it's lonely. It's lonely because the thing that we crave most, which is that bonding, which is that connection, which is the healing of that separate and fragmented nature of ourselves.

is so terrifying to contact because the moment we come into relationship with someone else or ourselves, we're coming closer to the very thing we have been trying to avoid because the sense is we will drown in the pain of it. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

So it's just basically saying constantly, look an eagle, look an eagle, look an eagle. That's what it is. It's an avoidant strategy. Yeah. You're avoiding your own shit. You are avoiding your own shit because you probably did not ever have the support, the time, the space, the resources to attend to it in the first place. And now...

It's too hard to get those resources of support and time and space because it feels too vulnerable to even connect with those types of resources or people that could provide them because the consequences, it is potentially more harmful. What we perceive as safe for those of us who have an addiction and especially an addiction to stress does not feel safe. Relationships do not feel safe.

Settling, calm, relaxed doesn't feel safe because we're at the mercy of the next potential threat. Oh my goodness. Yeah. It's sad. It is sad. It's like every addiction. It's sad. You're doing it to get something that you feel and think you really need. And then you realize that it's not the thing because it's blocking us from the connection and the peace that we really do want. Yeah. And it is harmful. Yeah.

I mean, when you talk about like, you know, you might not get arrested for an addiction to stress, but it is creating a toxic system. You know, that constant pouring of cortisol in your body after a while shuts you down. It did to me. Ended up in the hospital for weeks. Tell us your story. How did you come to all this? Oof.

I grew up in a house of chaos. There was addiction and abuse, and it became my norm. It makes sense that I lived in New York for 20 years because that high, fast-paced, drama-filled city felt like home. It was a repetition compulsion. I was looking for the familiar. And for me, the currency of love in my house...

How you got love. And this is a question I always ask people. What was the currency of love in your household? How did you know your value and your worth? For me, it was by doing. The more I did, the more I achieved, the more I got love or attention. But not just that. When I was sick or things were wrong is when I would get the most attention. Whoa. I get that. It was never when I was just being. Yeah.

And so I learned that being wasn't the way that you would get love. It was by doing and by perpetuating wrongness or challenge or stress. And I did that in my relationships unintentionally. Or I sought relationships that could never settle or rest. Hmm.

And at a certain point, I collapsed. I was doing so many things because, again, I built that tolerance up. And it was like applauded. Like you said, people cheered me on. Like, I can't believe how much you've done at such a young age. Yeah. And at a certain point, I went into cardiac arrest and collapsed. Wow. And it was such a wake-up call for me of going, this is not sustainable. Mm-hmm.

And of course I went into cardiac arrest because I'm dramatic. We just have a nervous breakdown like the rest of us. Could have just had a nervous breakdown, but no, I had to go to the polar extreme to like figure my shit out. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's one of those things where like, I still get annoyed, but it's so true that pain is such a catalyst.

It's such a catalyst. And if you're already numb to a pain, you have to keep upping the level of it to get to the point where it knocks you down to become the catalyst you need to change. Yeah, and that's the moment. That's the moment. That's the breaking point, right? Is that we're all in a heart attack. When you're talking about that, I'm thinking about my third grade classroom. And it's so interesting because...

If drama addiction, I guess the way you're describing it, it could be just stress achievement related. That's this one type of drama addict. Just so much stress taking on so much. I'm overscheduled. I'm over busy. That sort of stress.

But it feels to me like there's a different type that is in my class, the ones who got attention by acting out. Yeah. Right? So you like, it's overachievers or underachievers. And both of those types of people get all the attention, whether it's in a classroom or in the world. None of us celebrate attention.

The 60% in the middle who are just being. So of course we wouldn't know how to celebrate that in the real world. We consider that boring. Yeah. So interesting. So true.

And attention is the main commerce that we exist in now. We live in an intentional economy and it's how marketing works. It's how we try, even on social media, even if we're not running a company, we are our own brand seeking attention and all the world's the stage for it. And there's this competition of attention. And the scariest part of it is the

the thing that captures our attention most is a stress response that induces awe, anger, or fear. And so what are we being awe, anger, or fear? And we are being rewarded. So we get that dopamine hit when we get the attention, but how are we capturing and maintaining people's attention? What is the cost to them? And what is the cost to ourselves?

It helped me very much to hear you talk about the process of how it gets us. And starting with like the revving, I think about the revving every day now because I used to think revving meant go.

Now I know for myself that revving means stop. So can you talk to us about how it happens in our own bodies? Yeah. So we might start with seeking stimulus or creating situations that induce kind of a stress and we call that an activation. So we're essentially releasing all this energy into our body. It's hormone related. It's nervous system related.

And we're revving ourselves up. We're preparing for action, essentially. That's what's happening in the physiology. So give us an example. Talk to us about that's when somebody comes to you and starts talking shit or you start to get mad at somebody. Like what might happen? Yeah, like I'm at a grocery store. I'm waiting in line and...

And I'm noticing it's just taking too long for me. And we're all nodding. This is relatable. This is relatable. And we're in line. And then we're going, they're talking too much. And I'm so busy. They're not appreciating my time. And I'm just building narratives and stories that rev me up, that build this stress response. And I have all this energy and kind of know where to go.

So often it becomes this explosive catharsis. We start yelling at someone. We deposit that energy onto another situation or thing, totally avoiding ourselves and our own causation of that. And that revving can also be like, why are you continuing to watch the news past the point to which you have received enough?

And you keep downloading and getting more and more stimulation, more and more drama, more and more violent images. You've heard the story once. Do you really need it again? That's a form of revving. What is it doing for you? And since I've heard that term, I always think about revving partners. So whenever I get revved many times a day,

Pod squad, think about your revving partners. You know exactly who you can call, who is the person who will rev you right up, who will get in there, who will say absolutely that MF-er. It can be a person. It could be Instagram. It could be your own brain, old stories, the news. And then you think about the person you wouldn't call, the rain on your parade, the person who's not like Abby would be my non-revving partner.

I would call her and she'd be like, what's the big deal? And I'd be like, well, that sucks. This is over, I guess. Then you could rev on her because can you believe this bullshit? She doesn't even know what the big deal is. So Abby is clearly not your drama bonding partner in this situation. Right, right. And it's such a great example of like those who we call or those who we hang around to drama bond and co-rev together. Mm-hmm.

And we do see that on the internet. We do see that on social media all the time. Every time you're leaving a comment, how are you participating in the conversation? And what does that do to your nervous system? What does that do to your sense of peace and ease and calm? Does it promote it or does it move away from it? So Scott, is that all to build up

That's to build up. The co-revving is to build up this adrenaline. Yeah. And then what's the next stage? Because I know what the next stage is. What's the next stage, Scottie?

Well, in that stage is also when you're getting the pain relief. I just want to hang out there a little bit longer because there's some benefits and there's some reasons that we talked about. Like you get the pain relief, you get the endorphic high, you get the sense of connection. But then comes the catharsis, the explosion. What do we do with all of that that we've revved ourselves up with? And it's explosive. Almost always it's explosive.

I see you cringing a little bit. Tell me what's going on, my love. Well, I can feel in my body this process that you're saying. Yeah. I know it well. I know the moment comes. I think it's half excitement. It's half...

Fear and then reaching out to get corroboration to justify my own fear, to justify my own judgment. Then I get all that energy or whatever build up in my body. And then I know what you mean. It has to go somewhere. And then I do something or say something regrettable. Yes. And then I feel...

Eventually ashamed. Yeah. And that is the whole process for me. So there is that phase two, which is the... There's the withdrawal process, which is often it comes with a little shame. For a moment, we feel like we have this sense of peace, which is false. Yes. It's collapse. Yes.

Collapse. It is collapse. It is not generative. A relaxation response is generative, meaning we're building more energy. In a collapse, we are literally just going down. Yeah. And after that catharsis, that explosion, or the panic attack, it shows up in different ways, right? Mm-hmm.

If we don't know how to express it or deposit it or throw it at someone or say that regretful thing, it might just show up as anxiety and a panic attack that takes us down. You talk about there's some positive effects of what's happening in the body physiologically and, you know, obviously like emotionally between people bonding. Yeah. Is it ever good? Is there like a limit or an amount, a minimum that we can be like, we're good. Yes.

Cut it off. You get five doses of drama a day. After that, it is too much. I love this drama diet. I'm here for it. Yeah.

You know, I think it's going to be different for different people. But essentially, I think the ideal is that you don't need these sources to feel alive. You don't need these sources of stress and strain and bad relationships or toxic relationships or the news to feel some sense of relief and avoidance. I mean, if we're truly more healed, then we're not chasing all of these other stimulus. We actually produce it.

Got it. Our baseline has maybe not all the ups and downs, but it has energy and sustainability and adaptability. We know the right amount of attention and energy and emotion we need to be in the world, to be in the dance of life. And we have flexibility. What we're talking about here is a lack of flexibility. We need the extremes to feel alive. We need the extremes to feel a sense of pain relief. We need the extremes to feel connected to people because we

We actually don't have any other choice. And I would also argue because I'm also sober almost nine years now and I have had to adjust that baseline and I have to like maintain it. But because I'm doing it in a sober way, when I'm actually developing those actual physical, the chemicals and the feelings that I was chasing with alcohol and prescription drugs, I

I actually am experiencing them a little bit higher than baseline because I'm doing it in a healthy and intentional way. Like it gives this boost, if that makes any sense. I don't know. It makes all the sense in the world. If addiction of any sort is your spice of life, when you take it away, when you take away the amount of stress, when you take away the drugs or the pills, it will feel like life is boring. That's part of the withdrawal. And often in the withdrawal,

is where we get bored and closer to the pain so we keep using. But if we can sustain and tolerate the discomfort of the withdrawal, the boredom,

Life starts to like fill in. We start to fill in back to ourselves where we've been booted out, dissociated from, and we start to feel the nuances, the taste, the spices of life that don't require to dump in the whole thing of salt and pepper to feel and taste anything of life.

That's right. That's right. It starts to fill in. That really tracks for me. At first, it's boring, though. Let's stay there for a second. It's so boring. Let me give you an example.

One of the ways that I identify with this is like the talking shit thing. In our family, that's a thing. We bond. I can picture us around like the kitchen island or a table and like we can get started on somebody. It's like our family's protection mechanism or something. I don't know. Okay. So I have identified this like a year ago as an issue.

Okay. And I am an instigator of it in my family. Okay. I identify it as an issue because I am the issue. I am the issue. I have taught it like a religion to the masses of my family. Okay. But Scott, now...

Honestly, because of you, I understand the revving. I don't want this in my life because it's all just a version of gossip. It's like, yes, it makes you feel good for one second and then it's icky. It's like a fake bonding and then it's icky. And actually it makes you feel connected for a moment, but it makes you actually supremely disconnected because nobody trusts you. So I do not want this in my life. Yeah. As soon as you walk out of the room, you're like, is she talking shit about me now? Of course. Yeah.

But it's hard to break because when I feel the revving now of it's time to talk shit, it's time for a character assassination of someone. I have this thing I do now where I say, so if one of my kids comes and says, did you see that thing that she did? Or did you hear what she said? I say, yeah. I mean, I guess my most generous interpretation of that is. I have noticed you've been doing this. And Scott.

I feel like the Dalai Lama when I say it. But do you know what happens? What? It's like the room was inflated with energy. My kid's face is like this. And then it's just like, I feel it. They're like, all right. Then there's like a silence. Nobody wants to respond to anybody's generous interpretation of somebody. And then the conversation is over. But I feel...

Like it's building trust in a huge way. Like it shifts. You can see a little flicker in their eye of like, wow, boring, but cool. Well, it probably also changes the entire experience. Because if your whole family knows that as soon as someone leaves, the fun is going to be talking about the thing. Then you spend the whole time looking for the thing you're going to talk about. I know.

So well said. You're seeking the crisis, the chaos, the stress to sort of be the fuel for relationality in that way. Oh, yeah. Which makes you never trust that person with yourself. No. Because you think they're doing it to you also. I mean, did you trust yourself in a way of kindness when you were doing it? No, not at all. But my question is like, what's the deeper why? All of us families, I think it's a familial thing, especially when we're parents now. It's like,

I think it's our greatest secret. We never talk about this dream that like our kids think that we have the best family. And I think that all parents in the world share the same secret belief, but you would never say it out loud.

And so I think that in support of that secret desire, we want to create an environment where if a kid comes in and tells a story about another family, we can go straight into demonizing them just to keep perpetuating the idea that we have everything figured out over here. It's that in-group mentality again. And it releases oxytocin. You're so correct. Yeah.

By demonizing others, it creates more of an in-group bonding. And that's the desire, right? And that's actually what happens. And the consequences are we create probably a not-so-safe environment in some ways. Yes.

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We have one child who we've tried very hard to get her to come to the dark side. We have. I love you. Go on. Tell me more. And she just really, she just will not engage. No. She will just be quiet. And then if we say something or someone says something that is like bonkers, she'll be like, guys. And it kind of snaps us all out of it. She's just like. We can have so much evidence, Scott. It can be so obvious that this person is black. So juicy. And she'll be like, I like her. I like her.

We're like, gosh, she's freaking awesome. Yeah. I think something that might be under this whole phenomenon and I notice in myself, I wonder if it's related to drama in general. Do we say those things when people leave? Because we are trying to identify where we end and someone else begins, where our boundaries are, where our values are, but we're doing it inversely instead of saying this is who we are.

And saying, I'm not going to let that happen to me. We're saying that person is bad. So it comes out in this way of, I'm going to so thoroughly defend myself against all of this without actually defending myself because I'm keeping myself in it. But I'm talking about it as if that was defending yourself from it. Yeah.

I love that. I mean, there's this way in which we're talking about like, how are we living our values versus demonstrating or showing them in maybe a negative light? Like by saying, these are our values by saying these people are wrong, these people are bad, as opposed to actually living the value of like, to say, okay.

This family, that family over there, they're all toxic. They don't have any sense of family dinners at night and they watch TV past 9 p.m. And as opposed to saying, here's what we believe in and here's how we're going to embody it and live it in a way of being. Oh, cool. And that's such a different mentality. And I will say the former is more the drama. Mm-hmm.

When we're really focusing on the negative as opposed to other people and things outside of ourselves instead of how we are and how we want to be. It's everywhere. I know that's a micro example of it, but if you think about...

Pod squad, the whole world, your whole feed is just what we just discussed at our table. Everything is what did she do? Everything is shame based or politically or, you know, everything is built to get us revved up because somebody else did something.

That is shame based. Right? So dehumanizing. And we can only dehumanize other people if there is a certain level of fragmentation and dehumanization within ourselves. Oh, that's really good. That's unfortunate. Okay. Super unfortunate. Hurt people hurt people. Yeah. Traumatize people traumatize. Not with intention, but this is what happens. It seeps out in our behaviors and the way we interact in the world.

And it is a responsibility within ourselves to not only look at our own healing, but how do we participate in the systemic healing so that that pattern stops? Yeah. What do you think about true crime, Dr. Scott Lyons? Oh, shit. Be careful with your answer. Don't be careful, Scott. Give her everything that's coming to her, Scott. First of all, I love this tension. It's giving me life.

Don't hate me. What is true crime? I don't watch that much television. Oh my God, you're so healthy. Okay, so to me it feels like the pinnacle of this, which is that

These are shows, podcasts are shows, where you come to them on purpose. You turn them on. And they tell you a story that is so horrific and harrowing and murderous. And that is how people watch the murder.

Yeah. As some sort of calming mechanism. They are to satiate the appetite for the mutilation and killing of women that is voracious in this country. Right. So what is that? Just the epitome of drama addiction or what is it? Yeah. I mean, we're raising our cortisol levels. We're getting to this place of deep appetite.

activation. And if it is our baseline, we are hitting normalcy. Yeah. And that to us feels safer. That's the thing is what creates some false sense of safety. If we're at a level of high vigilance and high activation, not only does it feel familiar because we always choose the familiar hell over something that's more of a calm newness, but

But it soothes that part of us that says, stay vigilant, stay aware, stay awake, so to speak. And if we get that high, that rush...

Then maybe we can go, okay, I got it. I had that big catharsis. I said that awful thing. I watched that intense show. Now I can rest. Oh, that helps me understand that better. Thank you. Because I always judge that, but that helps me understand. It's just people trying to feel safer because they're used to that level of... They're trying to create normalcy. They're trying to reinforce normalcy. And there's a study that was done after the Boston bombing

that I find so interesting, which is that those who watched four hours or more and the replay of it showed more signs of post-traumatic stress disorder than those who were there. Wow. Oh, my stars. And so I continue to say to people, how much are you consuming and at what cost? How much do you truly need to see something, to know something before it affects you? And

That's part of the challenge and the problem is so much of our technologies and our media has usurped our attention, has taken it from us that we no longer have the capacity to monitor and evaluate that question that is about our health. Yeah.

Damn, that's intense. I'm a little intense though. Yeah. I'm curious to know like if there are any for like the JV drama addict, the person who's just listened to this for the very first time and they're just wondering, where do I begin? Yeah. Are there any like initial beginner steps that we can take? Yeah, because we don't know life without it. What does life look like without this? What does healing look like?

Yeah, it's so true. If we grew up in a stormy environment, then how do we know anything but the storm? And I think the first thing we can do is start to recognize where are we contributing to our own level of pain and suffering? And that's such a hard question and such an unfair question, but it's one that is absolutely needed. And sometimes when we can't do that,

We can start with just a simple list of going, where are the things that are easeful in my life? And if that's hard for you, that's good information. And if you can't marinate in that list of good things, also good information. If it feels like the moment you start to rest, to relax, to take a bath, to walk through a garden, to make a list of nice, easeful things in your life, and you get distracted so easily,

Welcome to the club, my loves. You got a little JV addiction and drama happening. And no shame. That's what I want to say is basically what you will eventually get to is what is underneath that. What is underneath the avoidance and the distraction, the ways in which you have been trying to maintain equilibrium in your life, but the consequentially created a whole lot of hurt at the same time.

What are the people in your life like who are not addicted to drama? This is a good question. What are they like to be with? What do they do? Just we've got to give people a vision of what life could be to go through the pain of letting go of something. Right. So what's the hope?

I can talk about it from my own experience too. And the people in my life who aren't addicted to drama is like Abby. I call Abby like every day now. I can't wait to get your number. You guys are going to be so boring. Life is fine.

This is going to sound so weird, like a psychedelic trip. But I was walking down the street. I just moved. And I was walking and I was in a garden. I stumbled upon a garden. And I was like, oh, wow. The whiteness of this flower is just so stunning. It gives me so much sense of life and beauty. And I could never have stopped walking.

especially when I lived in New York, everything was a hustle and a sense of urgency. Even when I had nowhere to go, I was rushing. And to be able to find the moments where I could, literally I turned on some music and danced the other day and the first time in years, I was like, this is just easeful. Or I had a half an hour break in my wild schedule and I just turned off my phone and just kind of hung out

did some breathing and then did nothing. And I was like, whoa, this is fucking boring. But it is also...

gives me a sense of zest again. That sense of liveness in a way that's not synthetically created through stress and chaos and drama. It's like life does feel rich. Life feels full. I feel full. You will feel full. All that sense of emptiness and loneliness

that comes with the fragmentation of trauma, you get to come home and fill yourself back with you. And the relationships that begin to emerge because you're home to be in those relationships, they are deep, they are satisfying, they are fulfilling, they are what it means to be alive. And that is the promise. And that's, I think, so important to hear that, especially with teenage daughters and a young man son, right?

the high school years are so dramatically unbelievable and it kind of wires them in a way to have this like elevated baseline. Right. And, and so like just staying in touch with your kids and trying to like bring down those dramatic, you know, vent sessions that they bring home after high school or even middle school. It's like wild how dramatic it can be. It's just like, this is such a helpful conversation. It's like,

Drama addiction is like porn. Yeah. It's like once you get addicted to porn, you can't enjoy beautiful sex. It's like we had this air freshener. It was like the Rocky Mountains or the mountains. It was like this disgusting air freshener in our car. It smelled like synthetic. I don't know. And we got to the mountains. Remember, we went to the mountains and our youngest was like, this doesn't smell like the mountains. Yeah.

That's like trauma addiction. It's like this fake synthetic thing that you get used to and then you miss the real thing. Yeah. Heroin is a replacement for the endorphins, for the opioids that give us a sense of bonding. Is it a true sense of pain relief and bonding? No, because it's momentary. Mm-hmm.

And it doesn't give us the satisfying sense of what it is when we actually come into true relationship with ourself and another human being or human beings, which does take away that pain so often. So when we're in recovery, Scott, and we are building that up and creating our own non-dramatic life experience, it's

Are we able to level up even if we have had that developmental trauma? Are we able to level up so we're no longer operating at a deficit of the opioids in our brains? Like we can do that through recovery? Yes. And it takes time. It takes a rebuilding of what safety means. Yeah. That's a big one. Oh my gosh. I...

It wasn't until more recently after a really bad breakup and I was surrounded in this group of beautiful humans and I just started crying and I couldn't stop. And these were strangers and they all just held me and the goodness of their heart. And it was like the first time in my life that I actually felt an embodied sense of safety. And I didn't know that I didn't have it until I had it. Mm.

And the depth of it. And I, for the first time in my life, just following that, I didn't feel alone because I had this, and I could feel it. I mean, this wasn't too long ago, but it was a while ago. And, you know, it takes time to rebuild. It takes time to find pauses in the reflex of seeking the revving and the ways we do it.

And it takes time to get to underneath the revving into the trauma and

into the content of what it was that is causing this pain and the subsequent numbing that had to come from it. And it takes time. This is one of the trickiest ones to give up our identity around the addiction. Yeah. You all know that one. Yes. That rings true. Identity is the repetition of being. That is the definition of identity.

And if our repetition of being is feeling like we are a victim to the world, that the world's coming at us, but it's not with us, it is hard to give that up. And it takes time to go, who am I? And that time, that liminal time where we don't know who we are, we are absolute potential. And that is terrifying. Yep. That's so hopeful. And to build. Yeah. Yeah. So hopeful. Yeah.

And it's bless their hearts, their hearts, bless their hearts. Bless our hearts, bless your hearts. I can't imagine this, but like it does make me feel because we think of those kinds of people as look at me type people. Yeah. But actually they're not at all. They're saying look an eagle because they're, they don't want to say look at me.

They don't want to be seen. Yeah. People think it's about attention. It's not. It's about sensation to feel alive. And the attention they get actually can't be received. Not to the depth to which they are repairing the deficit of those endorphins and those opioids. Yeah. Done.

Dr. Scott Lyons, you are so important. You are so important. I love you all. This is so wonderful. I think it's going to help so many people. We're going to leave all the information for you. Go get Dr. Scott Lyons' book. I have it. It's wonderful. Go read all of his work and just keep that vision of the walking in the garden and really appreciating a white flower for the first time as the vision for why this is all worth it.

You're wonderful. Thank you, Dr. Scott. Thank you, my loves. See you next time, pod squad.

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