Addicted to Drama with Dr Scott Lyons

0:04 This is Crappita Happy and I am your host Castunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist. I'm mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Doctor Scott Lyons is a holistic psychologist and educator and author. Are renowned body based trauma expert and the creator of the Embody Lab, which is the largest online learning platform for body based trauma therapies.

0:51 Doctor Scott has recently written a book called Addicted to Drama, and in it he turns the notion of the drama queen on its head, showing that drama is an addiction that those who are suffering with it are experiencing a much deeper psychological, biological, and social pain. If you or somebody that you know is addicted to drama, then this is a must listen. Scott shared with me how this comes about. How certain people become drawn to chaos or always seem to be attracting chaos in their lives. What the conditions are that create that, and what you can do if you know somebody like this to protect your own energy, and also what you can do if this is you. It's a really, really fascinating, enlightening conversation. Here is that conversation with doctor Scott Lyons. Doctor Scott Lyons, Welcome to the Crappy to Happy Podcast. Such a pleasure to meet you.

1:52 Thank you, so happy to be here. I'm just like, I love the title. It's unfeeling it, it's snappy, and you know what, I've got a lot of guests because of the title. I've had people just go bloody Earth, I'm going to be on crappy or Happy? Of course, I am like, why wouldn't I who wouldn't want to know? Happy? Fuck ypy Scott. I saw that you had written this book. Look at the look at the posted notes. I've been attempting to speed read before we had this call. As soon as I saw it, I thought, I have to talk to you. Addicted to Drama took great titles. I knew that everybody in my audience will just be dying to hear all about this. Everybody knows somebody who is addicted to drama.

2:39 But before we get into that, what what I guess, what's the definition? Like, what does it look like and feel like to be a person who is kind of in this constant cycle of being drawn to chaos? Yeah? Well, I love that you started off with we all know someone addicted to drama, because we do, and it's and it's so universal, and while we might not have all the words to describe it, we all know it viscerally. We know what it's like to walk into a room and someone is pulling you into their chaos. They take all the air out of the room. They're making something small into something huge for no apparent reason. And we all know that, we feel it in our bones and our gut and we just want to run the hell away usually, or we're like, that's mildly entertaining, and we kind of want to step a little closer, you know, like reality television, right, you know, and so you know, but it's it's harder to.

3:41 Define. And that's what the reasons I wrote the book is. I'm like, Okay, we all know it, but there's no books on it, there's no self help support on it, and it's not even a clinical term. And yet it's one of the most popular terms among the general populace. So like why is there a gap? And you know, coming back to the definition, drama is the unnecessary turmoil. It's the exaggeration. Between the stimulus and the response, meaning like what's happening to us is disproportionate to our response to it. It's like blowing out a birthday candle with a fire hose.

4:24 It makes no sense from the outside, but on the inside it's justified, or at least will gather all the evidence we need or create it to justify the extreme response. And you know, the thing. Is is it is true for the person on the inside, the person who has a propensity for drama. It's like, of course I have to blow out a birthday candle with a fire hose, or of course I have to go into a bomb shelter if it's sprinkling out, you know, to protect myself from the soon, right, because that is how they. View the world, right Truly, it's this elevated response to everything which other people just can't understand. It makes no sense, and so it looks like at tension seeking right, Like it often just looks like oh my god, there they go again, go again?

5:20 Yeah, it's all and for that person on the inside, it is always something. There's always something wrong. There are always the victim of things that they that are happening to them at them, and they don't recognize it's coming from them. Right, And from the outside again, you're like, whoa, why is there something always happening from this person? Why are they always mixed up in some sort of drama issue or fight with a partner or fight with a parent, or like work issue or home issue, or why are they always over scheduling themselves and complaining about it? Why can't they find peace? Like what is going on in there?

6:05 Yeah? Yeah, And it's hard to understand. It doesn't make sense from the outside because it's all about creating sensation. It's not about making sense. It's about making sensation. We'll get to that, because that's a really good point. I just wanted to pick up. Though we both agree that we all know somebody who is addicted to drama. And I know that you said in the book that when you speak to groups and you say hands up, if you know somebody, everybody puts their hand up. And now when you say hands up, if you're addicted to drama, nobody puts their hands up. Is there a lack of self awareness or do people who have this propensity tend to self identify or do they not?

6:49 No, that's the complication of it is. I mean, how many of us have recognized our own contribution to the issues we're having. How many of us have recognized, Hey, we might be the problem. It's like, okay, this is This is an example I love to give. My dating life in my twenties and thirties sucked like. I had dated so many methadics for some reason, and like like. Three, wow, that's extreme. And I was like, and I just kept going, what is happening in the universe that these people are attracted to me? That they keep ending up in my life?

7:32 And little by little by little did I realize the common denominator in all of these relational issues is me? Holy shit, And it's so like But I had done so much therapy. I found all my friends to enable me to reinforce my belief in the world that the issue was all these other people interesting. They kept trying to find me that it was or it was just happenstance I found them. Little did I recognize that I was reinforcing my early childhood patterns of being consistently abandoned by people who needed substance as a way to fill the void in them. So, you know, in any addiction, we're not going to recognize ourselves as the issue. That is the beauty of having these distractive substances or behaviors.

8:30 It helps us maintain distance from ourselves. That is the entire point of an addiction. We are avoiding the trauma by chasing the drama. We are avoiding our trauma by going and have alcohol or heroin or any of these things. And the trauma might be a lot of different origins, but it's hill has the same response in our body and what we all do, What would you do? Is my question to everyone, to avoid the severity of pain that you can't get away from. Welcome to the world of addiction. And we have all sorts of things we can become dependent on, and that can be sex, or gambling, or drugs or stress. Stress as the most accessible free form of substance, truly that we can get our hands on at any time. I can be alone in the desert and create drama.

9:36 Right. I can't go get heroin, but I can go get drama. I can stir up stories in my head. I can go think about my parents, I can think about my ex. I can think and I can blame the desert for being too hot. Yeah, yeah, I can do it all. I can find any way I need to rev myself up at any time. It is so true. And I have talked a lot also about you know, we kind of demonize these certain things that people are hooked on. You know, if you've hooked on alcoholic drugs or something, well that's really bad. But if you're a workaholic, well that's fine. But it's all the same thing, right. But I have actually never thought about this idea that you can actually be hooked on drama, that you know, that you can actually be hooked on stress.

10:21 Yeah. Well, I mean let's think about it this way. When I go back to the question, what would you do to avoid the pain? Okay, so when we ask that question, everyone would be like, whatever it takes, right, I'll go take a drug. I'll go take I'll go maybe go to therapy, I'll go do whatever I need to. What's called auto regulate to disconnect from the pain as a means of survival, and stress does three incredible things. It helps us avoid. So it distracts us, which is amazing. Right. So if I have a little bit of heartache from some breakup that happened a couple months ago, but I go watch the news of what's happening right now in the Middle East, and I get myself involved in it, it's a distractor. I can oh, I can create a higher decibel of stress, or tend to a higher decibel of stress to distract myself from what's happening within me.

11:25 I can avoid what's underneath the hood and really attend to everyone else and everything else, or and absorb it into me. So it is a distractor. It's a natural pain reliever. It's one of our most powerful natural pain relievers. That stress and love are too natural pain relievers. It literally, when we're in a state of stress, it blocks the pain receptors wild, right. So when you go for a run and you release all those hormones and you get that kind of high, it's also you're releasing all of these hormones that like essentially block the pain receptors. That's what happens in a stress response. It's not just when you run. Running is a stress is a stressful activity.

12:20 You know, going into an ice bath is a stressful activity. Going and getting into a fight with a lover is a stressful activity. It's a pain blocker, and it's an energizer. Stress is a battery pack. The first stage of stress is to release a massive amount of energy so that you can respond to the stimulus. So we have it as a distractor. It's a pain reliever, it's an energizer. And one last. Component of it that stress does is if you've ever been depressed or sad or known the feeling of kind of feeling numb when you get into a fight with someone and you're angry or it gets stressed out, it actually rises. It gives you a sense of feeling Yeah, so above the threshold of numbness. So holy shit, if you were living most of your life with some sort of malaise, some sort of depression, some sort of sadness or low energy, or just plainal numbness, which we all have at some point, it makes us feel alive. And feeling alivee gives us a sense of value and purpose.

13:35 Wow. Yeah, how could we not become dependent on stress? You talked before about this sensation seeking. I'm really interested in that, Like you're talking about the numbness. So is this a case of but I don't I'm disconnected somehow from myself internally, so then I'm looking outside of myself to create something to feel. Is that kind of what's happening. Yeah, yeah, so a lot of us know are more familiar with the termino dissociation. Yeah, it's a it's a basically taking a vocation from your own body. You know, it's a way of it's a survival mechanism. We are getting into a fight with someone, We're not going to stay as present as we would if we were making love to someone, or or if making love is scary, We're also going to disconnect. We're going to disconnect so we don't have to feel flooded by what the experience is A. It's a it's part of our biological evolution to be able to disconnect or divorce from ourself.

14:37 To feel less. Now, the problem is, first of all, that's brilliant. The fact that we can do that is amazing. It has allowed so many people to survive some crazy shit in their lives. Yeah, the problem is is when you vacate yourself, but you don't have a map to get back home to yourself, and there is a void within you. Yeah, yeah, And I'll talk a little bit more about sensation seeking in just a moment. But part of addiction, the basic definition, as we understand now, death of addiction is how are we filling the void? And that void is the void of us of having to you know, whether it's in our early developmental experiences or in childhood or in adulthood, all the times we had to divorce ourselves from ourselves, to vacate, to leave, to dissociate and not know how to fully come home. It leaves emptiness where we should belong, and we feel that. We feel that in any way because the gap of us, the void of us, is one of the worst experiences and feelings of being human.

15:54 We know what it's like. Many of us know what it's like to feel left out, to feel the sit of belonging so deep loneliness, but we don't necessarily recognize that deep loneliness is within us. We're separated from ourselves, and to cure it, or to believe what we believe could cure it, is to fill it with something else. When our glass is empty, I'm going to go fill it with alcohol or stress or or love, addiction or whatever it is, to try to fill what should be filled with our essentially our sense of self. Yeah, now going back to your actual question and sensation.

16:37 Okay, So what. Happens often early when we're disconnected and dissociated or when there's been an injury, an emotional injury. So what we call the trauma is that we develop a layer of protection called numbness. Numbness is protection. So like you fall off a bike, for example, and you bruise your elbow, and there's a bunch of inflammation, so it gets like all funky and shit, and there's like a lot of that's the technical trum for medicine, all funky and shit, and it's all flu Like you see a fluid buildup. Yeah, Yeah, that fluid build up is to protect the injurious tissue, the injured area. Same thing happens to us emotionally. Yeah, when we have a heartbreak, when we have a trauma, and that inflammation, yeah, that's essentially meant to protect us, creates a layer of numbness. We are disconnected from that area, and so we start to lose and numbness, we start to lose a sense of feeling connected to things because we are connected, we feel alive through sensation. I don't think, therefore I am, I feel therefore I am. I know my existence by feeling in this world. And the less I feel, the less I feel like I belong to

18:09 this world. And that's a serious, serious injury that's per perpetuated from the initial injury, the initial trauma. So the consequence of it, like a first injury or emotional injury or trauma, is that it leads us to feeling more blocked and disconnected from ourselves and other people. And so what do we do to feel live or connected? You know, maybe we go fight with a partner, Maybe we created story in our heads so we feel jealous, we feel some type of sensation, so we feel something rather than nothing, And so that's the sensation seeking part of an addiction to drama.

18:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah, So there's a lot that you said there about early experiences and trauma essentially, so for people listening, like, what are some of the early like the causes and conditions I guess that might lead to this kind of addiction to drama like down the track. Yeah, so there's a couple of things. It could be that the environment to which we grew up. When is chaos, and babies are sponges, we literally absorb the ecosystem and internalize it. If it's a peaceful environment, our nervous system is more regulated. If if there's loud noises and fighting and drama and chaos and our families, that becomes the rhythm we internalize in our own bodies, the rhythm to which we operate from as adults, the rhythm we seek in other people or environments as adults.

19:54 That's complicated, that's tricky, you know how to because it becomes part of us from an early standpoint of our lives. Other ways, and I talk about this a little bit in the book, is when the currency of love in our families is when things are wrong. So if I got attention from my parents when I was sick or naughty, quote unquote naughty, and one of our fundamental needs of survival is to be seen and heard and recognized and attended to, and so that's the currency of love. So if the currency of love is when I am ill or when something is wrong, when something is negative, then I'm going to internalize that too, as that is how I survive and I will act and seek out more negative things in the world. I'll attend to those primarily because that's the reinforcement of my survival.

20:55 You know. Other things are like major boundary issues when we're kids, either things that essentially create this numbness. So anything like an emotional desert can cause it. And you know, and well some people might seek stress, other people might seek drugs, so it you know what's available. And when I know for myself that stress was available much sooner than drugs. And I never got into drugs, like I just I mean, I had family members who were very much into hardcore drugs, and so for me, I was like, I don't want anything to do with that. But I just went into something else for me, which was easy to attain, easy to create, which was stress, which was drama.

21:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can have an example, a really good example in the book too about you described it. I think as like maybe a little girl who has to keep herself small to be safe. It's an experience white, you know, people would be familiar with. So you know, there's a lot of chaos, violence, perhaps in the family household, so she stays small. But then it's almost like this big personality emerges as a compensatory kind of thinks. It's kind of complex, isn't it? All of these Yeah, that's the Allison Wonderline phenomenon. Is like you shrink and then you have to over extend and get really big, So your emotions, your responses have to be exaggerated in compensation to shrinking in survival and what ends up happening is an inability to register and identify how much attention, energy, and emotion is truly needed in any given moment. And that inability to identify and actualize that is as is what we call dysregulation, right regulation, Well, you know that fancy term in terms of you've got a regulated nervous system or you know, whatever the fuck that means. And what that actually means is you have the ability to identify how much energy, attention, and emotion is needed to adapt to a situation. And when you

23:16 have a very funky disproportionate response, that is dysregulation where you are using up way too much energy, we're not enough energy, and the results are more harmful to the environment, other people, in yourself. If you've got an individual who has got this propensity towards drama and creating chaos, blong things out of proportion. How does this impact relationships? For example, just to brief it, I mean, let's get all my ex boyfriends on the phone. Shit.

23:57 It doesn't. It doesn't fare well because to the things many things actually relationships. I mean, when we think about relationships, some of us, the lucky fifty five to sixty percent in the populace, will go, oh relationships. When I think about I pauseive relationship, I go, I relax, I settle, I find ease, I find support. Now, for some of us, a good thirty percent of the population thirty to forty percent, relationships trigger an internal response of fear. It does not feel safe to be an intimacy and vulnerability. It leads to a sense of danger. If I'm intimate, which requires vulnerability, I will not be prepared for the next potential threat or trauma, which means I am susceptible to death. And that is the internal script and Q that's running for so many people. And so they go and it's internal.

25:03 They can't hear it. They act on it. Their behavior represents it, but they don't recognize it's coming from them. So they start fights, they push people away. It's fast connections and very fast destructions. It's fights for no reason, it's jealousy for no reason. It's like all the things we look at like I don't know if you remember Jerry Springer or like the old school, like crazy, like what the fuck is going on? And then we would go, oh, I do. I do a version of that, just smaller, maybe just smaller because it's not on television. That type of drama is a means of protection in relationships. And then there's another interesting thing. If you know someone addicted drama, they are baiting you to their dysregulation. They are pulling you in like a tornado, like a whirlwind, into their dysregulation.

26:04 Why because that in that chaos and that swirl of chaos is where they feel a sense of being in sync and safe enough to connect. And in that chaos for them is a momentary sense of belonging interesting. And so the relationships require chaos for connection. It's really sad because what it does is it pushes people away. It creates destructive patterns in relationships. And what's underneath it is a desire for closeness. The alarm system of danger that simultaneously goes off when closeness is too close, and the behavior, all that jealousy, the fighting, all that shit is like a survival response that takes the driver's seat. They're not in control of that.

27:00 I would assume that somebody who has, you know, a secure attachment, somebody's fairly healthy and comfortable in relationships, would not last too long in a relationship with somebody with this addiction to chaos? Is that necessarily the case? And I'm wondering do these kind of people end up drawn together? Like do these people who are addicted to drama kind of find each other and thrive off each other's chaos? Yeah? Yeah, that's a great question. I haven't, like, I didn't just study in relation to that material. So I'm going to speak towards what I've seen in my own life, what I've seen in talking to people and then with patients, and I would say like, for the most part, there's usually one person who's more the addicted drama and one person who is enabling them or supporting them by being in the relationship or fighting back or they find themselves.

27:58 And here's the interesting thing about secure attachment is I think a long time ago for those who are not so familiar with the idea of attachment theory. Secure attachment basically means that you feel safe in the arms of another person, and that you can when they feel regulated, you can also feel regulated. That's called coregulation, and that feels safe or safe enough. Now there's insecure attachment is when that doesn't feel safe all the things I was talking about before. It's like, I'm here with you, and that sense off an alarm in your body and you act out of that alarm. The thing about secure attachment is we it's a baseline, but it doesn't mean we can't become insecure as an adult. So if you're with someone with a addiction to drama and you have a secure attachment, you will become dysregulated. Yeah, and there's it's not just because oh my gosh, you're dealing with their crap and sometimes they're even pulling you in and then you don't know where you are. You lose your anchor, you lose your sense of boundary, you lose your sense of ground. It's also because, and here's the kicker, stress as a state of being is contagious. It's called stress contagium.

29:23 So like when you walk into a room and someone's happy, you know, as opposed to crappy, just to bringing them to title this show, you also feel something you're like kind of related to you don't even recognize it. They're like that person's just great and they like, you know, it's like they transmit happy and you know, happiness is also contagious, but not nearly as contagious as stress. And we've really done the research on this to identify. Like you go to an auditorium and you watch someone do a talk, for example, beach and this is this is a very common research study, and the person is kind of nervous about talking in front of other people. Your heart rate, your blood pressure, your cortisol release will exactly match theirs as an audience member exactly. Stress is one of the most contagious states we have as humans, and it makes so much sense we need it by you know, evolutionarily.

30:30 If I'm running into a house and you're their cast and I'm huffing and puffing in my eyes are really wide and I'm not blinking and my heart rates really accelerated, and without needing to explain anything, you start to match my states so we can run away together because something is possibly chasing me. Who knows if you non reactive and I keep running, but you're like, hey, you're like intellectually trying to understand what's going on, how is your day? Whatever's chasing me is going to get you because you're not also prepared to react. So that's why stress contagion, why we evolutionarily have developed such a strong contagious response to stress. So going back to it in relationships, the more you're around someone addicted to drama, the more you're having their experience. That's significant. And so it's like, now as we're all and many of us are going home for the holidays soon, whoa shit, you know, we are navigating not only our family's patterns of reenactment, we're also dealing with whoever the drama addict is in the family.

31:49 And we almost all have at least one, you know, is knowing that their drama, their stress, they're chaos is going to bill the room. And then because you're in the room, it also will fill you to some degree. You're just talking about going home for the holidays made me think, I'm sure there'll be people listening going, oh, that's my mother or that's my father. Like having a parent addicted to stress. So I mean, I guess, like anything, some of that would would be modeled and some of it would be like as in two kids in the family, and therefore they become sort of the same way. But also they're living in that drama all the time, and so that's a there's a trauma kind of response there as well.

32:35 Yeah, absolutely, it's tough, and you know, having a parent who's as a propency for drama. You know, I chose the term addicted drama. It's derogatory and it's very like general concept. You know, if you call someone a drama addict, it's usually a criticism. And why I wanted to use that title in the book is to reclaim it and say, if they're addicted to it's because there's trauma that is pervasive within them that they are trying to escape from. It's too much. They're hurting, they're flooded by it, and it's important for those of us on the outside. And I've straddled the fence. I have my own history of an addiction to drama. I come from a long lineage of those who are addicted to dramas, so like, I know what it's like to have healed something and then to go back into an ecosystem where I'm like, where it has not been healed, and how to survive it because it is oo. It is tough not to get pulled back in because not only is there like a physics force pulling you back in, but they also crave it.

33:48 They also need your energy as an additional energy pack, essentially to maintain the vortex of drama to keep it going. So I guess this brings me to two things. One, if you're a person who is in relationship with somebody who you identify has addicted to drama and recognizing now that this is a survival strategy, there's a trauma response on trauma, like something else is going on here, what can you do as the person who is impacted by that in the form of somebody else's behavior? And then afterwards I'll get to what if you're the person then what steps do you take? But let's just start with because we all can identify another person, so let's start there, what do we do we know this is what's going on to protect ourselves from being pulled into that and being affected by that.

34:41 Now, in the book, I call that chapter something like a bird in a snowstorm, you know, or a bird in a hurricane something like that. And it's essentially talking about like there are tools that we can start to use and to know, you know, during a storm you have to to have the right gear. You have to have the right gear to thrive through it, and that gear is boundaries. So starting to identify for yourself, Okay, when is enough enough? What is the point where you feel like you're being pulled in and you're losing yourself? What are the words you can say to set up that you're not open to the drama? And it doesn't work to just say, hey, you're being a dramatic I promise you that will never ever fucking work. It will just throw fuel on their fire. Do not say it?

35:39 Yeah no, do not fuck it' say it. It's saying like, hey, you know, I noticed there's a lot of hard things we're talking about. Is it okay if we pause and talk about some of the positive things that are also happening in your life? You know, shifting to the positive can be restorative. If I know, like a friend or a parent or a family member is often kind of dramatic and like they're like. Oh, did you see the news? And why are bad things always happening in the world, And you just feel like you're you know that person where it's almost like the new It's like they are the news story, as though it's happening directly to them, as opposed to being a witness to it or even soap operas. I can't believe what's happening in my TV shows, or they crisis hop for example, they go from one bad thing to the next, and there's just like there's no space in between, there's no their general concept of the day, of the week, of the world. It's just negative.

36:44 So one of the things I often do with those individuals, as I say it like I'm happy I have I have fifteen minutes for you. That's what I have available, and I'm happy to listen to you because I know for myself that's my cutoff point. Fifteen minutes is all I have, and if I go any longer, I feel dreamed. So I go fifteen minutes and I need to chat. I need to do it on a walk in a public space, because I know when I'm on a when they're moving, when they're motoring, they're less dramatic or if I know we're they're in a public space, they at least will keep their voice down a little bit more. Sometimes I'll be like, go ahead, I'll stop someone, I'll possible and I'll just say this story feels familiar, you know, like have you shared it before today? And they might go, oh, yeah, I told some other people the same thing. And I'm like, so, I might go, so, what what's shifted for you? Like what's what support do you need now that you're talking to me? Like what can I offer you in this moment?

37:48 I like, do you just need to be heard? Do you feel like talking about some of the underlying feelings that's underneath the hood might be helpful? You know, if you can get to the under the feelings actually underneath the exaggerated emotions, they'll settle it usually, you know, if you're sometimes not saying much is more than enough. Like if they're they're rolling down the hill of drama and they're taking anything you say, anything anyone else says, and weaponizing it, using it as fuel, dumping it, which is often a very familiar act for those addicted drama, and they're just rolling down the hill. The inertia is strong. I might just say something like it, like it's really strong for you, Like these are big, strong feelings. I'm gonna just pause for a moment. Let's take a break, Let's just go for a walk in silence, and then we'll come back to it all. Like, I feel like I'm not quite getting it right for you, and I really want to show up for you. Can we take a pause so that I can sort out how I can really show up better for you. Those type of things are really helpful. It's really important to take care of yourself. If you are around some an addicted drama.

38:59 The things things that always always happens is they will pull you out of you. You will feel less of your own body, weight less sense of presence in your own body. So find a sense of what I call ground and anchor weight in some sense of like a central line, like your spine, something central in you that gives you a sense of presence. Maybe it's your breath. Yeah, And when you start to lose track of your own breath or your own weight for example, or your own sensation of like touching something like hold the rock, keep touching something when you start to lose your ability to be in contact with it, or connection to it. That's a real sign that they're pulling you out of you keep coming back into you. You need to be like again, if you are not present in your own body, you're not able to process and metabolize all the big emotions in the room that they're pushing out, that they're deposing into the space, possibly parsing into you.

40:01 Yeah. I feel like that's good advice just for anybody, because I think so many of us, so many people are not connected to themselves and grounded a lot of the time, you know, like drama, addiction or not. I think that that's just a lot of people. So in any situation, I think that's great advice to kind of find some sense of anchoring, check in with yourself and you talk Scott about yoga and meditation and kind of those kinds of things were really helpful to you when you recognize this in yourself. So are those the kinds of things that you would recommend to other people who are experiencing this sort of thing, Like, what's what can people do to help themselves when they go, oh, it's me, Hi, I'm the problem, it's me.

40:45 Well. One of the ways I like to sough the enter into the conversation of it's me, I'm the problem. First of all, thank goodness for Taylor Stiff. Thank you Taylor, thank you. Yes. So, I mean when you start to recognize or people are telling you, hey, there's something like a little dramatic, or you find yourself constantly in issues and challenges, let me just say life is hard, but life is not a constant stream of hardship. If you're unable to notice any of the positive aspects of life, then by all means it's start to It's it's important to start to look in more and if you notice this is a soft core way of starting to recognize h something something in me. If you ever are meditating, if you're ever walking through a garden, if you're ever doing something relaxing, and you start to settle, and then you start to quickly think about your grocery list, or you start to think about your fight you had, or you start to like if I've done this, I will say it many times where I've started to think about, like I just created a fight with someone in my head and I'm like and then you pull out and you're like, wait, and now I'm mad at that person and they weren't even involved, or like I had a partner once who had a dream that we got into a fight and then woke up and was angry at me, and I

42:18 was like, but I didn't do anything. But that's that's the same type of shit. So if you notice that for yourself, like you're in a relaxing place or potentially relaxing place, you start to settle, and you find something stirs you up, Oh I forgot to do this or all those things, that's an indication. That's the physiological indication of some type of propensity towards drama. If you're finding like I used to do this all the time, where I'm like just on a scroll, like a stroll through, like on the street, relaxing, you know, like I don't have anywhere to go, I'm just taking an exercise break for the day, and I find like I'm rushing, and I'm like, wait, why am I rushing? I have nowhere I have to be right now, which is amazing, And I'm still acting in that sense of urgency. There's nothing urgent here, but my body is almost on constant urgency drive.

43:17 And then I would slow down and then I would like just pause for you know, like feel settled for a few moments and then I find myself. I'm like, oh, those birds are so loud today, and it's all like you're finding yourself. Like anything, you can rev yourself up from right as soon as you settle, that's an indication. That this might be a good book for you. And so starting to bring awareness in as a first part. Yeah, so if you're looking for things the constantly revu up, it's really important to start to stick a wedge in between this, the the stimulus and the reed response, like ooh, I'm looking for things I'm seeking. I'm becoming hyper vigilant, looking for stresses. I'm starting to stress myself out by certain thoughts or actions. And the more we can start to find a pause in between where we go okay, I'm noticing, Like here's a great example.

44:23 About a week and. A couple of weeks ago, I saw I was driving on the highway and I saw a flag that I thought was that half mass and and so my first thought was, oh, my gosh, who died? And then I was like, I was saying to a friend of mine, okay, google real quick, who died? Like you know, clearly we need to be in the know. And now I'm like, is it you know? It was this by it was the president, Like what's going on? And then I was. Like, okay, take a pause, reconnect your body, you have you don't know anything. You had a quick thought and then a story on top of that, and that's the REV.

45:06 And I'm like, whatever information, I don't have to have it in this exact moment. I'm okay. So I'm gonna settle my body back down. I'm gonna take even a moment to look back at the flag and just see it as a flag. And when I did that, I was like, oh my gosh, the flag's not at half mass. There was just an antenna on top of it, so it made the flag look shorter than it was. And I was like, oh wow, So I created a scenario that's not there. I had a physiological response to it. I involved someone else. I'm gonna pause, I'm gonna go back.

45:47 I'm gonna settle in my body and sit and just like keep keep clearing things out, keep clearing things out. And the more I'm able to do that, the more I'm able to pause in between. Oh, I see the flag, for example, and the rebbed response, I'm like, oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, who's died? You know, I'm able to go, Oh, I'm seeing a flag. Oh I'm curious. Oh I noticed there's a response in my body to create a little story. I'm just gonna turn the knob down, turn the decibel of that story down, and keep grounding, keep angering because the more I the less I anchor and ground, the more I'm able to disconnect from my own body and create narratives and create drama and you know, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and go sensation seeking all of those things. Yeah.

46:40 Right, So presumably when people first begin to do this, to slow down and kind of unhook from the story, Like, that's gonna feel uncomfortable, isn't it. Oh yeah, so that's really important to not Like, I know, because I teach meditation as well, and like I said, the rich person finds it really difficult to just sits still, you know, focus on your breath and for five minutes. So is it a case of just I guess it's just distress tolerance. Isn't it just kind of building up your capacity to sit with discomfort? Yeah? Oh my gosh, yeah, certainly sitting with discomfort of And it's also about like telling yourself you're going to be safe, because part of that rev response is preparation for the next potential threat. So it's like, Okay, I'm safe enough in this car. I'm okay enough not to know exactly who died. I didn't know five minutes ago, and if I don't know exactly right now, I'll still be okay.

47:50 You know. It's talking myself down, and it's like, oh, there's maybe there's some discomfort of like the like not knowing who again then the flag situation. Oh, it's uncomfortable not to know. It's uncomfortable not to act on it. It's uncomfortable not to call everyone I know and tell them someone diet even though I don't know who died, you know. Like so, yeah, it's a distress tolerance. So building more okayness with non reaction, it's the distressed tolerance is actually creating more how do we see it, more okaeness with quietness that peace quietness can be safe. That's the distressed tolerance we're really working towards.

48:38 Scott. I know that in the book you've got a whole lot of really, really great resources in there, like a whole lot of archetypes for different types of drama, addiction that people can work through self identify, loads of really practical stuff, which is what I love. So thank for that. I will be promoting it far and wide. Really appreciate you taking the time to write the book and taking the time to talk to me today. I have really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you me too. Thank you for your great questions and your interest in the book. Oh yeah, I told you. I've been trying to speed read it. But while I've got you here too, I want to also shout out to your Embody Lab, which is the most amazing resource. As a psychologist myself, I now use it for all of my professional development needs.

49:23 I just log on there do a course because it's all of the stuff that I'm so interested in. So I want to really shout out too, because I have a lot of psychologists that listen to the show as well. But obviously you don't have to be a psychologist. Anybody can access the resources that are there. So do you want to just say a little bit about what the embody Lab is while you're here? Yeah, You're so sweet. Thank you that worms my heart, Like you know, I I one of my dreams for so long was to make a hub for embodied education for somatic therapy where it's accessible like this is. There's so many significant teachers and methodologies and semantics, and I wanted to create a home for all of that, one that's non competitive, like saying like here's some something beautiful we can take from this, and saying beautiful we can take from psych sematic psychedelics, and saying we can take from sematic experiencing, and saying we can take from Hakomi, all of these really powerful practices that truly bring us towards healing, not just individual healing, but collective healing. And yeah, and and my you know, we're both psychologists. We both went to school for far too long and spent way too much money to become very stressed out and pay back an enormous amount of loans and you know that whole game. And the truth is is that you know, like years ago, when I

50:55 wasn't a psychologist, when I was working in pediatrics as a you know, I had a lot of different professions as a neural developmental therapist and as a doctor and all these things and I was like, wait, wait, wait, Trump doesn't just magically happen and show up in our office as therapist. It doesn't. My sister is an incredible school teacher and shows up just as much in her office as it does mine, in fact sometimes more, except that, you know, it's so like. One thing that was really important for the Embody Lab is accessibility. Is say, yes, we all have different professions, but to be more Trump informed and to be able to have the tools of somatics as not only to support ourselves as SpaceHolders or as practitioners, but the tools to support other people in this process despite our career is so important. I want someone to be able to study with Gaberamante and Peter Levine and Kai Tom and Kemendevo and all these incredible teachers if you're a dentist or a school teacher, or a parent.

52:07 Or a psychologist. And so that's what we did. We created an accessible learning platform that holds at the heart of it that somatics can help truly transform ourselves to the world. It's amazing. I'll put the link down in the show notes and share that as well. But yeah, I love it, and Gil done you create. Thank you