Alienated Parents: Ever wonder why chaos and drama seem to follow you, even when all you want is peace? In this episode, Shelby unpacks the hidden patterns behind drama addiction and offers practical steps to help you break free and reclaim calm in your life.

In episode 159 of Beyond The High Road, Shelby continues her deep dive into the cycle of chaos and drama, especially as it relates to alienated parents and anyone who finds themselves repeatedly drawn into high-intensity situations. Building on last week’s exploration of why drama becomes familiar, this episode focuses on how to recognize, assess, and begin to heal these patterns. Shelby shares personal stories, self-assessment questions, and actionable strategies for mind management, all designed to help you shift your set point from chaos to peace. You’ll learn how your nervous system gets wired for drama, why calm can feel uncomfortable, and how to start untangling the stories that keep you stuck. The episode wraps with encouragement and a preview of next week’s somatic tools for deeper healing.

Main Areas of Focus: ​

• Understanding the roots of drama addiction and how it becomes a “set point” in your nervous system
• Self-assessment: recognizing your own patterns, triggers, and behaviors​
• The long-term impact of drama addiction on health and well-being​
• Five steps to untangle mind drama and manage your “threat brain”​
• Practical journaling and awareness exercises to break the cycle​
• Cultivating self-compassion and letting go of shame or blame​

 

Key Takeaways ​

Drama addiction often stems from early life experiences or extended periods of chaos, wiring your nervous system to seek intensity.​Self-awareness is the first step: notice when you’re uncomfortable with calm or repeatedly find yourself in drama.​Mind management and cognitive tools can help you break the cycle, but it requires honest self-assessment and practice.​Cultivating self-compassion is essential—these patterns are adaptations, not personal failings.

 Notable Quotes

• ​“Your body’s desire to attract drama isn’t a character flaw—it’s an adaptation for survival.”​
• “Awareness in the moment will help you to form a new memory to attach to the old pattern.”​
• “Drama will follow you until you identify each of the thoughts or beliefs that your body is accustomed to repeating.”​
• “Letting go is not a failure. It’s an act of self-compassion.”​

 

Down Off a Ledge: How to Make Your Best Choices During Anxiety

Next week’s episode will provide actionable somatic exercises to help you find and sustain peace. 

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Episode Transcript

 

Introduction

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road Podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 159.   📍 📍 Welcome to Beyond the High Road, a podcast dedicated to healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation. I'm your host, Shelby Milford, a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth. If you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal, then this show is my love letter to you.

Stay tuned.

 

 

Overview of Drama Addiction Series

Hey guys, so today is going to be part two of now three episodes.

, A addressing chaos and drama and how. Alienated parents, not just alienated parents, but people in general can become addicted to that state of mind, as a result of experiencing.

Repeated or ongoing nervous system activation sometime earlier on in life. I said last week, and I still believe that. , Usually it happens in childhood, which leads us to make decisions and get ourselves into relationships pretty early on that recreate the familiarity of when we were kids. , But it doesn't always have to be.

So you, this could have happened later on in adulthood. , But if you notice that you are more comfortable, like  you don't want drama, you cannot. Really, really, especially in the middle of it, you're like, all I want is boring. Just get me to like calm peace, right?  but when it is calm and peaceful in your world, you may notice that you feel uneasy with it.

maybe it's not that you've actually acknowledged that consciously, but you notice instead that. Just when things get peaceful,  shit blows up again. And I'm not saying that that's always like your fault. Sometimes it's just the way of alienation. But to be an alienation to begin with, we had to have had a patterning.

And being comfortable with some sort of chaos from before. I'm generalizing here, but for the most part, that's, usually why we chose the person that would alienate our kids to begin with.  There's a dynamic there and we played a role similar to the one that we played in alienation earlier on.

. It felt familiar to your nervous system. My screen keeps, freezing on me and so I hope it's recording correctly. So, , what I had originally planned on doing was.  Originally I planned on doing it all in one episode, and then last week, I realized how much information I had gone and collected and organized and realized that I wasn't gonna be able to deliver it all in one session, not in an hour-ish timeframe. So I decided to split it up into two  and then this week, so, appropriate for the circumstance here. Just sort of like a couple weeks ago when I was feeling anxious because I was doing, or I think anyway, it had something to do with Addressing a topic about anxiety. Last week and this week,  I've really created a lot of drama for myself. Um, not only in one of the things I'm gonna talk about in a minute, which is procrastinating, but also in over. Doing, over gathering, over organizing, and over basically, uh, the early part of overdelivering, the message that I have for you. 

Right? And so I have created so much stress and drama in my own world by doing that. Anyway, my point is, I guess number one is that I'm saying that I'm still a work in progress, right? But two, because I do wanna serve you the best. I, I know that this week, I told you last week that this week I was gonna give you all the somatic exercises and all the, you know, the how to like, and I am gonna give you the how to this week though, it's not going to include that, that's gonna be pushed off to next week.

And here's why. Because like I said, I do wanna serve you best and I want to. Deliver this information since like July, I told you I'm doing things in a more searchable way and giving you for most of these episodes anyway and topics so that it's complete to better, equip you.

, Especially for those that are just searching on the internet and looking as an alienated parent, like, how do I, la la la? You know? And so back to what I was saying, I started editing. This week's material, which by the way, I rerecorded because it was a different week, different mindset.

And I just decided to, rerecord. So of course I add on more drama for myself and chaos there. But, , I like the way that I've organized it better now. , And so. Because of how much information I have to share with you guys this week. We'll be talking about the cognitive how to in this episode, and then next week will be what you do in the middle of drama and chaos in order to calm your nervous system.

So cognitive portion today, let me just go through, the. Structure of it , we're gonna go back and look at the signs of drama addiction, but this time this week we're gonna do it in service of self-assessment. Rather than how I presented the problem and gave you the symptoms last time, so, and then I'm gonna pose some questions for you and help you to determine how it's showing up for you.

 

The objective there is sort of to help you to clue yourself in on where you might wanna place your attention now,

and then we're gonna talk, just touch on pretty briefly about what drama addiction does for you long term in the body and yada yada. And then we're gonna talk about mind management, which is essential. That's, we're getting into the cognitive solutions here. We're gonna talk about the emotions and experiences that feel familiar.

To you, like how you might enter into the drama, creating chaos, creating space. , And then we're gonna talk about how to untangle mind drama. There's five steps to doing that.

Then we're gonna talk a bit about threat brain, what its job is, and then that'll be that for this week, i'll offer some encouragement and what have you, and then next week will be the somatic exercises and things to calm you down in the middle of anxiety. Drama chaos.

, I'm recording this a couple days after I actually recorded the, the main content for this. So I'm gonna get let you get onto that. But I had a couple other thoughts for you. And I just wanna add it here. I was thinking, I don't know, you know, just doing this content and the other day I had some , extra.

Stories that sort of came up for me and one of them was, I was living in Miami, going to school in Miami after high school. I was in college, early in college, or maybe mid college, and I worked down in Coconut Grove. Not that it matters, but at this.

Tuesdays and I had this manager, his name was Marcus, and he had my number. He. I really felt uncomfortable around him as a result of that. But he called me out on it so much, and I cannot, I can remember him to this day, standing, I was a, uh, a waitress and a bartender, but I was standing at the waitress station one day and he, that's what he, he told me, he was like, you just create drama, Shelby.

Why do you, like, you just love chaos? And he was saying it somewhat kind heartedly like, uh. Funny, like, but he also, I felt like he. I felt exposed and I felt like, um, I thought he didn't like me and he may not have, I don't know, but I just couldn't understand why he would think that at the same time, you know, like the defensive part of me, like, what are you talking about?

I don't, I don't want drama. I hate drama. I really, really wish I wouldn't even the way I said it to him. I know it was drama, you know, but there were clues so early on. That I was creating the drama, recreating drama. And it makes sense why. I mean, if you listen to last week's episode, then um, you, you understand or you will understand when you listen.

It makes sense why I was creating drama. It wasn't my fault that I was doing it, it was my nervous system recreating a familiar state of mind, recreating, , and like spurring or,

igniting the systems in my brain that would secrete the neurochemicals that my body was craving so much, you know? So I know today it wasn't. On purpose. But back then, if you were a shit starter, drama creator, it was looked at, not in the same light, you know, it was a character flaw.

And so, um, I just, I don't know. It's not any sort of profound. Meaning to that story. I wanted just to let you know if that's you. If you feel like, no, I'm not a drama starter, shit starter. I don't want chaos in my life. It just ends up showing up. I get you. I feel you. And there is nothing wrong with you that if it's happening with you, and you'll hear that I talk about that in the episode, but I just wanted to,

I don't know, just offer you some encouragement off the bat that it's okay that your body has craved. The drama, even though you don't, you don't want to, you're higher thinking, you, you know, you wanna stay away from it, but for some reason, you just keep ing yourself back into the bad relationships or the non-productive conversations or whatever it is for you.

You just notice that shit's blowing up in your life and you don't know why. , There's nothing wrong with you. so, I'm gonna just let you get on with the episode and, , I'll see you next week.

 

Understanding Nervous System Activation

📍 📍 📍 Your nervous system being drawn to high intensity states. I just wanna say and I did say it last week in a couple different ways, but your family history and attachment patterns,  our family history and attachment patterns wire us for chaos if we're here, When we're here, we often believe that

peaceful environments, healthy relationships and connections are boring and unsafe.  I just would like for you to question the validity of that in today.  and I also wanna remind you that. Just because you're like not comfortable in calm right now, if that's you, , I want you to not beat yourself up about that because it's not your fault. It's not a character flaw. It's not,  that you're a product of bad upbringing or that,  you know, your parents did something wrong or they didn't do the right thing or whatever you're telling yourself like, a lot of, my clients say, and I remember saying too, that like,  I just didn't have enough guidance growing up.

My parents weren't there. They didn't give me the tools I needed to, adult in a healthy way. , I was basically going into the world blind.  And so I really blamed my, lack of. Skills and desire to go to drama and chaos. On them and their lack of being present in my life.

And of course, as I say, probably in every episode, whatever you're looking for, you will find. If I look for all the ways that my parents weren't there for me and that they didn't give me direction, in fact they ignored me and did whatever, I'm gonna find that right?  But if I look for ways that maybe they were there, then what that does is actually calm my nervous system and doesn't reinforce the old beliefs that cause nervous system activation to begin with, you know? 

So,, your desire to. Attract drama, even though it's not your, prefrontal, cortex's desire, right? That's not really your higher thinking's desire is to attract drama, but your body's desire to attract drama and , your body's discomfort

during peace and calm. It's not your fault, nor is it anybody else's.. It's the way that your nervous system adapted in order to keep you performing well. I don't know about you. I just remember being like socially with friends. I mean, shit could be going down in my life my whole life.

shit could be going down. But in a group of friends and a stressful event happened?  I was the first one to be like, I got this. Let's go. Follow me. I worked very well under pressure.

Especially in social situations, because that kind of stress was nothing compared to the shit that I went through at home or in my relationships,  and in calm areas of calm and peace. It was, it was really uncomfortable and actually super boring and wah wah to me.

And that's why I never really was attracted to the, to the quote unquote healthy guys. The guys that were communicative and made eye contact, the guys that, um, were comfortable with pauses in conversation, right?  📍 📍 📍

 

So right now, I'm gonna go through some of the, um, this is the awareness and identification part. We're gonna be looking at the signs of drama addiction. Some of these behaviors that I was writing earlier, I noticed that and I had to cross reference,  make sure and look it up, cause a lot of signs that have got listed here are also symptoms of A DHD. And I truly believe, as you've probably heard me say before, that there is a crossover there. It doesn't mean that A DHD happens because of trauma? I don't think it does. , But they do look very, very familiar.

Okay. So if you are a DHD and you're noticing that this list sounds a lot like that, trust me, I know too, but I, I am positive that this is signs of drama addiction because of past trauma. Complex trauma.   📍 📍 So the first sign is procrastinating. So if you notice that you were really comfortable with, the chaos of doing things last minute.  In fact, not only are you comfortable with doing things last minute,  you prefer to do things last minute because it gives you the motivation and the push that you feel like you need in order to, to complete the task, get it done properly. 

So in other words, no part of you wants to go do something. When you've got months in advance to like finish something, you prefer to do it and you like the rush, in fact, your brain releases chemicals. And your body if you are addicted to drama is addicted to the chemicals that your brain secretes as a result of procrastinating.

so on a nervous system level, your body is like, no, let's wait till we have only 24 hours to complete whatever should have taken six weeks because we like those chemicals. Those are the feel good chemicals, and that's what brings us back to it. Steady state. Okay, so that's the first one.  📍 📍

Taking on responsibilities, extra responsibilities, and overscheduling your life. So if this is sort of a people pleasing, also a DH, D thing to do too. So if you notice that you take on all the responsibilities and you're the one that's like raising your hand to do all the things like maybe you did also in school, like I'll do that.

 Maybe you're in all the clubs on the other hand, maybe you weren't too, you could have been one that like underachieved in that area, but took on responsibilities other places. Maybe you over schedule things over, commit yourself

 and so you really end up doing future. You dirty by overscheduling today, You're like, oh, future for me will be fine. I'll figure it out up there. But then you never do because you're a procrastinator. So by the time you get up there to do it, it's too late to do half the things that you needed to do to prepare yourself.

So you've now overscheduled and procrastinated and taken on responsibilities that probably weren't yours.  This is also a. sign. .   📍 📍 Difficulty relaxing like maybe if you know anything about yoga, at the end of a lot of yoga sessions anyway, they'll do savasana and many people want to crawl out of their skin.

And that last 10 minutes of class, if your teacher goes that long, it's like, get me out of here.  It's quiet, it's calm. Maybe there's some soothing music playing and some, drums, you know, in the background, like steel drums. But it's, otherwise it's very calm and quiet and it feels like  blah to some people. 

I actually truly enjoy that, but it took me a long time to train my brain there. You know where it shows up for me,  guys, you're probably not gonna get this, but. Think of something gives you the same feeling  I used to get my eyelashes done for like years. I mean, I was thinking about it the other day.

It's been 18 years since I started doing my lashes. Still a long time. But up until 2020, I would go somewhere to get them done, ,  it was an hour and a half of me laying down ,  on a bed, like a massage table, basically with my eyes closed.

I couldn't look at my phone, I couldn't do anything. And so I would get like restless leg where my, I would just like bob my leg, my knee, and my foot constantly through the whole time. I would usually schedule with the same lash lady, but if I didn't and if I was scheduled with. Whoever.

I was always like, I hope they like to talk, or I hope they have good stories or something. Because I didn't wanna be with the silence of my own brain. It drove me crazy. And I never really knew why, you know? It was just like, I, I can't, that is way too much to ask of me. I drove me nuts. I did it, but I, I always talked through the whole thing.

Nervously talked. In fact, I was just watching old coaching sessions of me back in the day, , recently, I was like. Cringing throughout watch. It was very uncomfortable for me to watch these coaching sessions because that quality in me and needing to fill the space and talk, like I had so much anxious nervous energy.

From the second that I got into the session, I was like, I, I was actually out of breath when I was talking, like I was going through a, low level trauma response almost in a panic mode, and it always came through in the way that I spoke.

I felt so bad for these coaches that were on the other end because this was back when I first started coaching for my own self and I was in this group coaching program and I also, then, anyway, it was a long story, but I had different coaches each week. It was a different person. I never had the same person

until later on when I had the money to hire my own coach, that was like mine.  I couldn't relax. In fact, I felt like I needed to entertain.

That's what it was. I felt like I needed to entertain the person that was in front of me. On a Zoom call and they were there to coach me, you know, but I felt, I don't know, I felt like there was some like obligation. I felt like I, I owed them something.  Anyway, so if you know what I'm talking about, then   📍 📍 another sign I kind of mentioned this earlier, feeling bored unless you're stressed, unless you're in a high intensity situation.  So, and you won't say that most of the time. You may say that you're bored, but you don't really know why. But you feel like almost lifeless, like, what is going on here?

What are we still gonna do?   📍 📍 Or when people are, this used to happen with me too, is that when people are having a discussion and you're supposed to be included in that, maybe on a work team call or whatever, and in your mind shit isn't getting done because they're just bantering or talking and throwing out ideas and it feels not productive to you.

I mean, of course there's a line,  but if you have a really low tolerance for people sort of shooting the shit and not getting stuff done, and it's not high intensity and like hit after hit after hit of productivity, then this might be a clue for you. You know, I just have a really low tolerance for that.

Like,  are we gonna come up with a solution or what? Let's move on to something. Let's get to the interesting part or get onto the action part.  Right. I didn't like hearing people just throw out ideas for us all to kind of like look at and examine. to me it was, sort of indulgent and not needed, unnecessary.   📍 📍 Alright. If you use substances, any sort of substance, and I'm gonna include here, you know, the, how I talk about if you use any behavior, shopping, eating, drinking,  gambling,  porn,  relationships, sex, anything any behavior or substance that you ingest in order to not feel.

You notice that you need more of whatever that is to keep you entertained.  Which by the way, if you've ever noticed that, like if, if it's drinking or if it's any real substance that is actually so boring. If you ever sat with two people that are drinking or not necessarily in the right mind.

The conversations that they have that they're entertained with are boring. And you wanna like quality your skin being there as the sober one. You know? So we say that we wanna use those substances because we wanna not be bored, but then when we're using those substances, we are the boring ones,  you know?

Anyway. I just realized that for each one of these, the way I plan this is to present the symptoms and now I'm giving like argument, challenging each one of the symptoms. But anyway, it's fine. I'm talking sense into my own. Case.

 

Okay.   📍 📍 If you feel a rush from stressful situations, like you get a rush and seek out like, I have a previous client that we still keep in, in really close contact and she loves horror movies, loves, loves them, and she almost nightly she'll watch a stressful, uh, sort of content movie or show

 I don't know if she still does, but this was a thing for her she sought out like horror movies, true crime, dateline, even sort of things, in the Dateline stuff and like the nightly news or whatever.

If anger and disgust cause you to feel alive. Make you feel like going back to the episode I just did recently on righteous indignation, right? Which I'm actually gonna touch on here in a minute. If that gives you a rush, then this could be a sign that you're addicted to drama. Okay? I think enough said there, you can go back and listen to that episode.

Being right, actually keeps you wrong. That episode explains that all. But it's also, it's a form of, drama and chaos and you will create it or we will create it ourselves by choosing it.  Horror movies, uh, I've never been a fan of horror movies, but I know a lot of people are.

People really get off on the rush of being terrorized  especially coming from what we have because we feel like, because of . How activated our systems have been in our situations of alienation or whatever happened in our relationships before that.

Even our set point, to intensity situations is already so high.  We oftentimes will, people will need even like way higher sort of very radical, , stimulants, in order to get the rush. So you sort of like  up the ante each time looking for things that are gonna give you that same rush and that same, feeling of being alive actually. 

So that could be another clue for you. This doesn't have to be in horror movies or true crime. It can go across, you know, even the same thing I was talking about this last week is, um, this sort of continuation is, ,  📍 📍 gossiping like if you feel like your conversations with your friends,  certain friends, a like I had a group of friends that I could gossip with and then a group of friends that I could do other things with. 

My friends that I gossiped with,  and usually those are the ones that I drank wine with too.  , we all liked the same thing, right? And so we would go to each other and my, my brains, your brain will get conditioned to  only talk gossip with those people.

Like you won't go and talk about the calm, peaceful things most of the time you go and you immediately turn on like where  beforehand you were talking about like, I don't know, church or yoga or taking a walk. 

When you get in front of the other group of people, that conversation does not happen. Instead, you're straight to business of talking about activating situations, people gossip, can you believe? And oh my gosh, do you know what my ex did? It'll go into a whole conversation about, , significant others, right?

Your exes, divorce.  I know , this is hitting home from a lot of you. Even the guys out there. I want only speaking to the women here. this can happen too with one of your parents or both. Maybe if you grew up in a family that sort of lived around gossip , you know, spilling the tea and,

maybe of shock or awe was sort of like the way that y'all connected, at the dinner table , maybe your mom or your dad did that. And so then that's what y'all still relate on nowadays, you know, um, chasing quick hits of dopamine and adrenaline.

So whether that's that you're always just kind of how I mentioned looking for the next thing that's like the next hobby that's going to spark your attention and hold your attention and, but seems like it keeps getting a little bit more dangerous or a little bit more the radical. You know? I'm not saying that you always have to be jumping outta planes or, bungee jumping or stuff like that.

They can, you can do this in other ways.

So now I'm gonna pose some questions for you guys, providing hopefully some more awareness. Just know that when I ask these questions, when I pose them for you, just if you can right now, take a deep breath and then just allow yourself to become aware and be, willing to be honest with yourself about whatever behaviors you might have.

This is not to shame or blame or anything you, or you've got a lot of work to go, but instead to, once you recognize how you might be creating drama without even realizing it, how your nervous system might be creating drama without you even realizing it in your life, At that point, you can do something about it. And until you know where specifically you're being triggered throughout your day, then you won't be able to change it. You can say, oh my gosh, yeah, I am addicted to drama. And you could say it in a pretty vague way. Look at the past relationship here.

It was just drama. Look at, uh, my childhood. That was just drama.  But it's not going to help you in your everyday life until you see how that's coming into, , each morning, each afternoon, like where it's happening, what your behaviors are, what preceded that, that's when

, that awareness will help you to hone in on what you can do next. You know? So just be open to answering these questions as honestly, , as you can, and just let them also linger.   📍 📍 So maybe you say no at first, but Be willing to notice if they do show up anytime in like the next month or so,

  📍 📍 so how often do you dwell in or complain about things going wrong?

And is it daily? Is it many times a day or three times a day? , is it more, is it once a week? How often  this question I know many of you are gonna be, like  all the time because it's become habit, especially coming from alienation.  I mean, if you were to ask me this question, this first question, 5, 6, 7 years ago, I mean, even on a day recently, probably.

When I'm having a bad day, I will dwell in or complain about things going wrong for, I mean, I used to do it for all day long, every day, not even realize I was there, and the way that you can realize too, is   📍 📍 notice what stories you're repeating to yourself. Are you looking at the things that have already happened and repeating those in your head in order to make sense of your today? 

Okay. Again, nothing wrong with you if you're there or if you're doing that, or if it's a habit now, okay? It's actually so great if you're able to answer like,  yeah, I do this all the time. You know, because then we're working with something and then we know how to get through this.  But if you're like, yeah, maybe I don't know, then we, there's nowhere to go from there, you know?

So the more specific you can get, the better chances you are at moving through it. Okay. So  📍 📍 how do you feel when you're not busy or don't have anything to stress about? Like what happens inside of you when you're not busy or when you're not stressing in your brain about something?  📍 📍

What emotion would you say you feel? A lot of times when I say how do you feel people will go off with a whole story like, well, I feel like blah, blah, blah, blah. I talked about that in one of the episodes.  I feel versus I feel like instead, what emotion do you feel when you're not busy or don't have anything to stress about?

Okay.   How do you feel, or what emotion do you feel when you're alone in quiet by yourself when talking isn't, communicating isn't an option. What emotion do you feel and for how long can you remain there? Okay. The next question,   how often do you seek drama via, it can be this, but insert whatever you like here.

Do you seek drama via social media? Do you doom scroll? How often do you gossip with friends? Like I was just talking about, do you find anger inducing disgust inducing content on the TV with other people? how often do you seek that out without even,  you likely won't say to yourself, I need to seek drama.

But the behaviors are drama, Is it a couple times a week? Is it every day? Is it multiple times a day? What times of day is it? Is it routine? Is it habit or what precedes it? If it's not routine, like it isn't the same six o'clock news every day. If it's just like certain times when you're all of a sudden you, you feel that feeling in your belly and you're like, go to doom scroll.

What happens before that? That causes the feeling in your belly that makes you go dooms scroll. All of this is awareness. Will provide awareness. I'll help you well, I'll tell you in a minute, but it helps you to drop the habit. ,   How often do you pick fights in your relationships when things are running smoothly? 

Maybe it's not a picking a fight, but do you ever notice that maybe you subconsciously you, you don't plan it out, but you say things. That might like push buttons, unkind jabs that you didn't really wanna say. And maybe afterwards you're like,  Ooh, why did I say that? Why did I say that? I didn't wanna do that.

But you said it.  How often do you do that? You know .  How often do you seek low key relaxing activities? Low key meaning like painting doing a puzzle. Not when you're gossiping around the table of a bunch of other people gossiping, but just a calm, relaxing puzzle.  It can be with somebody else, but just chill. or anything creative, quiet, creative. I would say that Netflix or going to the movies isn't necessarily qualifying as low key relaxing activities.

It can be, but not for this conversation in this context. Okay., Maybe it's gardening or writing. Or when you're forced into a low key relaxing activity, are you relaxed? Do you think relaxing thoughts? And if not, what pulls you out of the low key relaxing activity?

Is it your doom thoughts? Why? Okay.   Nitpick kind of goes with the picking fights in your relationships, but maybe you nitpick things or like you're argumentative in conversations and you really don't like that you're argumentative. It just happens because you need things to be correct and true. 

So I think the best thing that you can do, I was talking about earlier, be willing to stay aware over the next 30 days.

But maybe in order to stay aware, you know what I'm gonna say is maybe do daily thought downloads

get yourself a, a designated book, like blank page book that you can write stuff down in or designate an app. Or a section of your notes, If you've got notes app, but designate somewhere to write down your thoughts and notice when you're doing this, log, what prompted it, notice any sort of drama seeking, impulsive , escalation or discomfort with Quiet, right? And that's what you can do. You can actually section it off, like drama seeking behaviors, impulsive escalation, where you wanna like get things going like more, , intensified Or any sort of discomfort with quiet. Do three different columns and note down log, when how often that happens for you. Okay?   📍 📍 In the end, just know that drama sucks the life out of you. Your lower brain will suppress all of your creative networks, right? All of your creative thinking.

, With the drama seeking activities, it would really prefer that you stay in activation because the reality is, is that stress reactions release stress hormones, stress hormones over time.  If that's your set point and it's been for a long time, then you know that cortisol in the body coursing through your veins for long periods of time can produce some really negative results in your life.

Some health issues, Inflammation and , illness. Long-term illness that I know that you don't want, what I have written here is it's entirely normal to believe that drama just happens to us. In reality, what feels external is usually a reflection of internal thought habits and trauma driven expectations. The mind stories, especially the ones running below awareness, direct attention filter, meaning, and even attract or unconsciously generate experiences that match the old pattern until someone becomes skilled at noticing and managing these patterns.

The drama cycle repeats because the mind trying to keep you safe and familiar, keep searching for what it knows, even if what it knows is distress. Because these habits, Or all done on a subconscious level based on your central nervous system's desire to, release the hormones that feel good for us, even if it doesn't actually feel good in the moment. Like cortisol and  adrenaline can feel good, but not in the situations that we're seeking out.  But because your body is, has been tricked into believing that that is the normal state and that's what we need to seek in its effort to be efficient.

Because as you know, our bodies like to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and be efficient. So this be efficient part of us always wanting to create habits it's going to try to reinforce that. Until you learn how to manage your mind and you become aware of what's actually happening for you, like when the behaviors are triggered, you can't do anything about it.

And because most of our thoughts are so native to us, like 95% of our thoughts are habit thoughts, are done by our subconscious. Your subconscious is running you literally 95% of your day for the average person. And so in order to manage your mind, what that means is you living more of your life on a conscious level, ?

And the way that you can do that is by being aware of the current thoughts that you have but in order to become aware, you also have to become adept at identifying the thoughts that are causing the patterns, habits, behaviors. ,, it's really difficult to identify them because they feel like truth, like the thoughts that you're thinking down on a subconscious level, You don't even realize because they're sort of fragments of thoughts. They're not even like full sentences that are coming out. They're belief systems that you have. That create these states of mind that you're living in.

And so noticing, becoming aware of those thoughts that you believe are true statements about the world and how the world works for you is really difficult to do, especially in the beginning. Once you develop the skills to notice the thoughts, then it's, at that point, it's super easy. It become, that becomes the habit, and it's like nothing.

You could do it like with your eyes closed, brushing your teeth with the music in your ears, and you could still notice the thoughts that are going on because that's become the habit.

Like I hear clients rattle off a whole story. And all of these thoughts within their story that they believe are just facts that they're regurgitating, this happened, this happened, and this person acted this way and that way.

And they'll say it in such a way that they feel like this is the truth. And they don't realize thoughts about their own selves. They don't realize that everything, they're telling me is just stories, and those stories are not serving them.

. Just so happens, this is what I'm trained in. I mean, this is the whole reason why I went to that second coaching school is for this purpose because, and that's what attracted me to them because I wanted to go to the root of what was going on with me.

The first coaching school was all about like, um, and I know you don't, guys don't, many of you don't necessarily care about that 'cause you're not going to coaching school yourself. But I wanna get to the why of how I teach you what I teach you and why it works. You know, the first place I school I went to, it was more about this idealistic way of living.

Like, just always look at what you wanna create and then just go create it. You, you can't live like that. It's not realistic. And the results aren't, great. Like the percentage rate is not good because in order to do that, you have to overcome all of these.

Other thoughts, these other limitations. And so either you're gonna create the end result and it's gonna be like the unicorn and you're never gonna be able to create it again. Or you're gonna beat yourself up for not being able to create it because you can't get over the thoughts that they're not asking you to look at.

So it doesn't work. And so when I finally found this other school, I was like, this is what I need, because the first school just had me feeling like shit about myself for not being able to get the results that I really wanted in my life. Thus causing me to be more stuck. So if you've ever been there, you know, and you feel like, oh, people just tell you to do this and do that, and then focus on up there, and you feel like shit about yourself and you feel like you're just, it's like Groundhog Day and you just keep trying to get yourself unstuck and create something that you, you don't really know how to create.

You're just focusing on other things. You, you, you wonder if you can identify with this, then it might be helpful at least to, schedule a consult with me, just a one off and see if it's interesting to you. Because I was actually trained like for , like three years in identifying these thoughts, not only in myself, but then identifying them with my clients.

Like I can. Jump on one foot, chew gum, be listening to something else and hear my client talking, and I can identify all the thoughts that are not serving them, that they believe are fact just like that. And many other people like, you can do this with friends and I'm not just trying to sell me because you can have friends like bounce your ideas off of friends and even therapists.

There's nothing wrong with either of those options, but I just, the method that I use the sole purpose is to find and challenge the thoughts that you believe or fact, not only just challenge them, but effectively over time. Drop through a , science, back strategy, and replace those thoughts because you can't just go replace a thought with a better thought.

It doesn't happen because you're subconscious. It's gonna be like Uhuh, uh, we already believe the other thing. So it's gonna be onto you and then you'll actually lose trust with yourself for not, acknowledging and giving , the unhelpful belief, some attention, so there's a way to do it anyway.

Stress-Inducing Emotions

This is what I'm trained in. So just know that drama will follow you until you identify , each of the thoughts, or beliefs that your body is accustomed , to repeating

 

all right, now I wanna talk about stress inducing emotions,, because anything we do is for an emotion,  anything we do is because our body wants to feel an emotion.  Our body, our brain secretes specific. Neurochemicals for each emotion that we feel, right?

And if you are addicted to drama, your body is gonna be geared to go towards certain emotions.   So I'm gonna read out right now some typical emotions. This is not like an exhaustive list by any means, but I'm gonna read out just a few of these emotions that might be showing up for you and can help you to identify where the habit's coming from, along with the questions that I posed for you earlier, and some of the behaviors before that.

Okay?  So

Stress Inducing Emotions, Which Ones Are You Addicted To?    

Judgment if you. Notice that you get a rush from judging others.

I mean, if you're using your, your prefrontal, you know that judgment doesn't actually serve you in the long run. But if you notice that it's a go-to for you, and it feels on some level good, then that's one.   Guilt and shame. Guilt and or shame. Okay? If you notice that your body immediately goes to guilt or shame. 

Also another one,    worry,    rumination, righteous indignation. Like I spoke about a few weeks ago.    Anger    victimhood.  Are any of these sounding familiar, you guys, because it's pretty much the experience of alienation, this ongoing complex trauma that we experience as parents going through this, you know, these could have been and become your set point. 

And how often are you feeling these? I'm not done with this list. I'm like halfway through. How often are you feeling these?  Is this pretty much the majority of the time? If it is, then obviously is going to be, reinforcing addiction to drama and chaos.   Rage,    gossip.

You're going towards gossip and like that it's a , there's an emotion there.    Um, anxiety,   sadness,   overwhelm.   Panic   catastrophizing is a behavior, but it's also a compulsion, you know, 

that's a behavior that, and a lot of these are not just emotions. They're experiences that your body creates for you, not consciously. This is all done subconsciously, like rumination about your past, catastrophizing about your future, and worry about your future guilt. And shame about your past.  

If you are an overthinker too, like overthinking over anything, as you guys have probably heard me say before, any over anything is a result of under feeling  awareness in a moment, like you noticing these things now, like while we're talking, and then being able to bring awareness to yourself in the moment that it's happening, that you are in judgment, guilt, and shame, catastrophizing, panic, whatever it is for you.

This will help you to form a new memory to attach to the old pattern. Okay, I'm gonna say that again. So,   awareness in the moment will help you to form a new memory to attach to the old pattern,  and that new memory will help you the more times that you became, become aware in the moment the further away that you get from the old habit because of all the new memories you're making in the moment.

Because you're being aware, like  here's how you do it. Let's say you go into judgment a lot, right in the moment, if you notice that you're gossiping or in judgment, oh, the way I say it, and I got this from somebody, I don't know who is, this is the part of the movie where I go into judgment. Like, I've seen this movie before.

I know it well, this is the episode where Shelby goes into judgment. Not in a way to judge yourself, but like, oh, right, but now we're gonna notice it and now attach this new memory saying, here I am in this moment. You can like narrate it to yourself, becoming aware of this pattern that I've had for a really long time, and I'm creating a new memory in this moment because now I'm aware of the pattern. 

You're sort of stepping outside of yourself and become the watcher of the pattern. And by doing that, not only do you get separation from the pattern and of you in the pattern, but now you've brought awareness to the whole thing and sort of stuck a pin in it, or just let some of the air out of it and you've developed a different perspective from there.

And the next time it happens, you may have to train yourself and do it a few times each time it'll be that much easier to notice and become aware in the moment that you subconsciously go into one of these behaviors. Judgment, guilt, shame, rumination, indignation, whatever.

Keep stopping and noticing yourself, like gently interrupting the pattern,  not judging yourself or bullying yourself, or going into shame or guilt about the fact that you're doing it,  just becoming the watcher, the fascinated or interested, loving watcher of your own self in there. You're not at the effect of what's happening anymore. You're not the victim of it anymore when you're the onlooker, So, all right.  

How to Untangle Mind Drama

number one, you wanna separate facts from stories. Remember what I was talking about earlier, my clients will bring me paragraphs like them talking about

their story. And they'll tell it to me as if it was, they were all facts,

and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But you wanna now separate the facts , from the story, make it neutral, , un or deactivating, and that sometimes can feel offensive if you're really invested in the story, like passionate about the story. It can feel strange to neutralize it and step away from it as if you didn't know yourself or the characters in the story.

But this is the way that will pull the drama out. And then you can add the inflection and the tone back in. Once you're able to separate yourself from the story. And this is how you. De dramatize your life. That's the first step. Okay? Notice what is actually happening versus what the mind is creating as drama or chaos.  

Number two is challenge. Recurring thoughts. Ask if the dramatic thought is actually true or if it's just an old well worn story. Okay? So recurring thoughts, recurring stories. You know, they're kind of like on a, they're like in a pattern. They're come in cycles, right? If some familiar activation, something happens, your ex sends an email, you will have almost a script that your brain will go through.

It's very predictable what your brain will say. It's like, here we go again. Here's the asshole coming to fucking wreck my life. Whatever. Whatever you say, and then you'll go into maybe, I don't know. This is what happened for me, is like I would go into. What might be in the email. And I would go back to old, like things that happened in the past and I would recreate that in the now before I even opened the email.

And what they're gonna say. And depending on what they actually said in the email, if I looked at it then, , I would tell retell myself stories that reinforce my beliefs about them or about the story that they're telling me. Do you know what I'm saying? So challenge those recurring thoughts, , it's like a playing a pressing play on an old tape.

Rewind, play, fast, forward, rewind, ad nauseum. So look at those recurring thoughts. Is it true? Am I sure it's true? Don't just stay with, is it true? Because your brain's gonna be like, yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's true. How do I know it's true? That's from Byron Katie, are you sure it's true?

state the case, how do you know it's true? What else could be true? How is the opposite true?    

Number three, focus on what is within your control? Shift your attention to choices in small actions that support calm and your agency.

Focus on all the things that you can control now, and I will tell you right now as a hint, it's not whatever's in their mind or their intentions if we're talking about the alienating parent or any relationship, um, or what they might do in the future, none of that is within your control and you ruminating on that.

Not being in your control is also don't go there instead, what can I control right now? What's within my power in this moment that's going to bring me , have me step into my own power and bring me calm, uh, sense of, confidence or certainty.

Certainty's a great emotion, to create to support calm and agency, determination. Also calm, quiet, determination.   4.  practice letting go. Recognize that some things can't be controlled and that is not a failure.

That is not failure. Letting go is not like giving up. I mean, it could be sometimes, but that's not what I'm talking about. That's never what I'm talking about. It doesn't also mean letting go of your child or letting go of the situation as a whole. Letting go is just like, okay, here's what I can control.

I've already worked on that in step three. Here's what I can control and the rest of it, I have to let, let it be. Because what el The other choice is me staying in the drama and feeling, , out of control, feeling victimized, feeling powerless, helpless, all the things. So how can I allow that to be for right now, even it's that you have to create containers.

I'm gonna practice letting go and I'm gonna let this go for the next hour. Make like, do small increments the next two hours, what is gonna support that for me? Now, what action's gonna support that? I'm gonna go paint, I'm gonna go right. . Garden. I'm gonna, whatever it is for you, put something else in place of that.

And let me tell you right now, it would be really helpful if you made up a list. Now, put it on your fridge, put it somewhere you can see on your phone of things that you can do. Or like, you know what it is good to I, I always tell myself there's nothing I need to be doing right now. But the, when I say that it's bullshit, there's always things that I can do, whether it's to my house, you know, like organizing drawers or whatever.

When I'm, you know, like on a Sunday when I say there's nothing to do, there's always stuff to do. And that stuff is usually the stuff I never wanna do. But in moments like this, deferring or defaulting to that list would be really helpful because not only do you get like quick calm, good wins that last because you're creating great results in your life, but also then you're diverting your attention, and bringing it to, to things you need to talk.  

. Number five, cultivate self-compassion. Notice the pattern without shame or blame. It's an adaptation, not a character flaw. Like I said earlier, your patterning has happened. Your nervous system and your body created that out of necessity whenever it all started, either the alienation or as a whole when you were a kiddo.

You know, this is not your fault. It's not your parents' fault. It's not anybody's fault. There's nobody to blame here. This is your body's way. It's very efficient and it's . In fact, such a powerful, , system. Your body, it's going , to adapt to your environment to ensure that you survive. 

And so the set of patterns or habits that you're now trying to evolve, they worked for you. They worked well, or else your body wouldn't have kept doing it, and now they just don't work anymore. And that's okay. You could just thank those habits. I think of like, , Marie Kondo,

Talking about letting things that, don't spark joy. Thank them for serving you when they served you, and then you can let them go, give them away, and in this case, you give them out back out to the universe, byebye habits, it's okay. And they, by the way, they won't just bye-bye, kiss them and they just disintegrate into the universe.

But it's a practice of you continually doing that. Each time the habit comes up, until you create the certainty and calm in your nervous system doesn't crave. The drama and all the things anymore, those habits anymore. Okay, so when you're, craving the drama and chaos, it's coming from your threat brain.

Understanding Threat Brain

And your threat brain is basically, it's your fear centers, think of your threat brain as like any other person or thing that has a purpose. Your threat brain is going to continuously on alert of ways to keep you terrified. This is threat brain's job, since the complex trauma started for you.

So threat brain will continuously sort of be on alert and try to run scenarios .

Until it finds one that works for you. And what I mean by that is you know how your brain will, like if you're a worrier, your brain will run through the what ifs. Like, well what if this, but what about that last time they did this? But what about this? But what about that? Oh my gosh, what if this happens?

Do you know what I'm talking about? That is your threat brain hard at work running. Like, I think of like, and I've talked about this before, I've used this comparison before, like back the old DOS computers or whatever, that would just run codes and you could watch it on your screen , with the the yellow or light green writing

it would just run codes until something worked and that the computer would start up again. Your threat brain is doing that for you at all times when you're still like in nervous system of activation and, and addicted to that activation, right? It's going to bring up all the what ifs until one ding it works and you latch onto it.

It's like you took the bait it's gonna keep upping the ante and upping the, the intensity of the stories until it finds the one that finally hooks you. restores you.

And when you get hooked, the threat brain's like yes, because then it's able to release the cortisol, release the adrenaline, release the epinephrine, and then your body returns back to homeostasis. But homeostasis isn't always a state of peace. Homeostasis is just whatever. It knows what it thinks as a state of normal.

And if you are addicted to chaos and stress, then your normal is going to be nervous system activation, which is not where you wanna be, right? If you want a more productive, and you what unquote healthy life moving forward, if you want to create different results in your life than the ones that you've created, you wanna feel better and not be worrying, not in the rumination, not in the right, righteous indignation, all that sort of stuff.

Then you have to know, be onto your own self, be onto your threat brain when it offers you these scenarios. Okay, so it's just a matter of you going, oh, again, this is the part of the movie where my brain offers me all the what ifs. It's okay. Threat brain. Think of like, inside out, how sadness was super annoying, but they all still tolerated her and loved her.

All the other emotions, right? They dealt with her like, they were like, oh, your sadness goes again, ruining everything for everybody, right? But they still brought her along. And it's sort of the same thing with threat brain. You can do that if you want like. Oh, this is threat brain offering me all the crazy stories.

It's not, like I said in the fear episode, it's not predicting the future. It's not, it's just running scenarios. It will lie, it will cheat, it will bargain, it will steal and order to get its job done. And its job is not to protect you, right? Well, I mean there is part of your, your body that's there to protect you, but threat brain is not, you know, like a lot of times when we're thinking about, like, when we're doom scrolling, our brain will tell us that this is important.

This is important because we're being smart and we're protecting ourselves. Brett, it's not really its job to protect you. What it's doing is running scenarios to bring you back to the state that it's used to, which is nervous system activation. So don't believe it is what I'm saying. Be onto it like you have its number now.

So each time that it's running the what if scenarios, you can just say, oh, that's threat brain. I also talked about this in, an episode about anxiety and stress. I'll link it below. It was last about a year ago now. And I used to call threat brain cave thoughts, and I got that from my coach back in the day.

Cave thoughts, like caveman thoughts or also I named it Helga. Sorry if anybody's named Helga out there. I just had my, there's no offense to anybody. I just had my scary thoughts. I named her Helga and I imagined her like smoking and like, you know, like with a raspy voice. And she would just be like, don't do this and don't do that, or look at this.

She would give me all the crazy scenarios, you know, so I sort of humanized all of the inconvenient emotions really. Oh, that's just so and so doing its job. But it doesn't mean that I have to believe it. Develop a sense of tolerance and compassion for that part of you because it's trying to serve you in some way, in this case, trying to restore you back to homeostasis.

But we don't want that to be the norm anymore. So in order to create the new way, you gotta create the new patterns, right? And the, the way that you do that is by becoming very aware of what's causing it, and in this case, threat brain.

And summary of that threat brain's job is to keep you in the familiar state of terror. Okay. And that's not where we wanna be 'cause it doesn't serve us. In the end. It thinks it's serving you, but it's not.

Preview of Next Episode

So I will see you guys next week for part three of this three part only series on creating drama and chaos in your life for how that keeps showing up. . And we'll talk about completing the trauma cycle so that you don't keep pent up trauma inside of you. And I'm gonna talk about what that does if you do.

And then of course, like all the ways out of it. we'll Touch on. Quick like in the moment ways, that you can plan to move yourself to a state of peace, when you're in a state of anxiety, chaos, drama. . And then we'll talk about long-term solutions to create and sustain, peace in your life moving forward.

Okay? So. And those are all like the actionable steps as opposed to the cognitive, solutions and tips, if you will, that I provided today. Okay. So I will see you next week.

 

Outro

Thanks so much for listening today. If you like what you're hearing and you'd like to hear more, please make sure to click subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Also, for bite-sized clips and tips, be sure to find me on TikTok or Instagram. See you next week.