October 16, 2025 • 50 mins
Why do we get hooked on drama and how can we break free?
This week on Let’s Talk Love, Robin sits down with clinical psychologist and founder of The Embody Lab, Dr. Scott Lyons, to explore the hidden role drama plays in our lives. Drawing from his book, Addicted to Drama: Healing Dependency on Crisis and Drama in Yourself and Others, Scott brings warmth, openness, and relatability to a subject many of us don’t fully understand—yet we all know what it feels like to get wrapped up in the chaos of other people’s lives.
Scott himself once struggled with being addicted to drama, and now he dedicates his work to helping others heal from this exhausting pattern. As he shares, drama often masks unresolved trauma—it’s a coping mechanism for pain we haven’t yet faced. Because drama is so contagious, it can ripple through our relationships and communities unless we learn to stop perpetuating it. Together, Robin and Scott unpack why we get hooked on drama and how it becomes addictive, how unresolved trauma hides behind cycles of chaos and crisis, and what neuroscience reveals about the toll these patterns take on our bodies and minds.
They also explore practical ways to step out of drama and create more peace, along with the surprising role of play in restoring joy, connection, and balance. With compassionate insights and grounded strategies, Scott offers a roadmap for breaking free from drama and building steadier, more fulfilling relationships. This conversation is a powerful reminder that awareness and compassion are key to healing—and that choosing peace over chaos is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and the people we love.
We want to hear from you! Please send us your anonymous questions for the Podcast as well as our weekly IG Live Ask The Experts Q&A. https://realloveready.com/submitaquestion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Let's Talk Love. I'm thrilled to be joined by
Doctor Scott Lyons, a renowned clinical psychologist and
founder of the Embody Lab. Today, Scott and I explore the
complex relationship between love and drama, looking at how
our early experiences can createan addiction to drama in our
(00:20):
adult relationships. We talk about the neuroscience
behind this pattern, the healingpower of somatic practices, and
the role of play in restoring joy and connection.
So many of us find ourselves caught in the cycles of crisis
and chaos without even realizingit, mistaking drama for love,
(00:40):
intensity, or aliveness. By understanding what's really
happening beneath the surface, we could begin to step out of
these cycles and build steadier,more peaceful, and more joyful
relationships. I hope you enjoy our
conversation. I know I sure did.
Welcome to Let's Talk Love, the podcast that brings you real
(01:04):
talk, fresh ideas, and expert insights every week.
Our guests are the most trusted voices in love and
relationships, and they're here for you with tools, information,
and friendly advice to help you expand the ways you love,
relate, and communicate. We tackle the big questions, not
shying away from the complex, the messy, the awkward and the
(01:26):
joyful parts of relationships. I'm your host, Robin Ducharne.
Now let's talk love. Hello, everyone, and welcome to
Let's Talk LOVE. Today we're joined by Doctor
Scott Lyons to talk about love and drama.
(01:49):
I love that you're laughing about love and trauma.
Because guess what? A lot of times they go hand in
hand. They wish it wasn't that way,
but actually they do sometimes. A lot of the time.
I know, I know. Bless.
Doctor Scott, thank you for being with us.
We're going to talk about your book today, which I really,
(02:12):
really, I, I really enjoyed reading and listening, listening
to you read this. I mean, that's my favorite thing
is hearing the authors narrate their own books because I, you
know, you really get this is your story as well.
You share about your life, Scottin here so vulnerably.
And I'm excited to talk to you about love and drama and all the
(02:33):
things today. So thank you for being with us.
I'm here for it. Let's talk about drama and love
and all the good stuff and support some people in the
meantime. Well, you know what?
And I think that's what it is, Scott, when I read your book,
it's called Addicted to Drama, Healing, Dependency on Crisis
and Chaos in Yourself and others.
And what I want to say first andforemost is that this is an
(02:56):
awesome, awesome piece of work. I learned a lot because I'm
like, how's this going to go? You know, like I'm going to read
about like you think about people that earn your life and
maybe you have been stirring up some drama yourself.
But I'm like, what you did was you brought light to something
that I didn't realize that it could be an addiction for
people. I mean, it makes sense, but I
didn't, I didn't understand it from that level of an addiction.
(03:20):
And the other thing that I thinkyou did really well was like, I,
I now see this from a compassionate lens.
Yeah, because we all know someone, right?
We we all know someone who's like, making mountains out of
molehills is like chronically busy, but then complaints about
it is like in a constant roller coaster in relationships.
(03:41):
Like we all, we all know that person.
Never us. It's never us.
No, no, it's never. Us, no, it's never us, but we
know that person and we might call them the drama queen or
drama king or some other, you know, like, wait kind of
derogatory term. And one of the things I was
really interested in it is like,I would go to these big talks
(04:02):
and I would say, OK, raise your hand if you know someone
addicted to drama and everyone would raise their hand and I was
like, this is so interesting to me because it's we all know it.
We know it viscerally when we'rein the room with someone who's
like a drama queen or drama kingor like just a chaos monster.
And and yet it's so hard to define.
(04:24):
And there was no scientific research on it.
So how could we have something that everyone knew about, but
there was no academic support togo, yes, this is actually a
thing. And so I really wanted to bridge
that gap and heal myself in the process of my own little
addiction to drama. Yes.
And so actually this is your story, right.
I mean, this is, you know, I think about, I, I think about my
(04:45):
own story and why I'm doing the work I'm doing.
I, you know, I've been on like alifelong quest for having deep,
beautiful, like just the best relationships and especially
intimate partnership, you know, and there's been like, I, I just
feel like it's, is a part of my life.
I know it is that I've struggledwith, you know, like I had a
(05:05):
really beautiful first marriage.I did until I realized it was
not, I didn't want to be in it anymore.
My second marriage was a complete disaster and I really
think that there was a lot of chaos in that marriage.
And here I am in my third, hopefully final relationship
with a man that I love and just so incredibly deeply.
And it's a beautiful, healthy relationship.
(05:26):
We're doing it very consciously this time, but it takes it takes
time. It's almost like now I feel like
I've got more wisdom and it ableto come from a place of like,
all right, I've been through it and now I've got some.
I've got a lot of learnings thatI can pass on.
Yeah. And you have the same Scott.
Yeah. With your own journey with being
addicted to drama. Yeah, I mean, I just wouldn't
(05:48):
really name that too is like we like we think about like I'm on
my third marriage or I'm on my 5th relationship and it's like
just some of us might have had the opportunity and we met one
person and it was golden and it's great.
But I, I like to think, but it'slike we need a lot of practice,
especially if we didn't get thatrefinement and that experience
as kiddos, then you know that that process of refining
(06:09):
relationship can only really happen in relationship.
And I, you know, in the, in the same way that like for me to, to
heal an addiction to drama, you have to also go back and heal a
lot of, of experiences. And you need a little bit of the
drama to be aware of your reaction and your own propensity
(06:31):
for it, but also the ability to not be taken into it.
So it's like we need these challenging relationships.
We need unsatisfying love to really highlight what is love?
Sometimes, yes. And we need sometimes calm
experiences to highlight how bored we are when things are
turbulent. Right.
So so Scott, tell us about your journey of being you realized
(06:54):
you recognized that you were addicted to drama.
Yeah, I there was a couple of key experiences I've had or like
questions I asked myself. I'm like, why isn't life just
easier? Because on paper it should be
Like I'm very privileged. I have a lot of certain things
that make should make my life really easy.
And I was like, why doesn't lifejust feel like it's in flow?
Why doesn't it just feel easy? And the answer was because of
(07:18):
me. No, it's not that simple.
But I, I grew up in an environment that was incredibly
chaotic. There was drugs and, and
violence and, and a lot of unpredictability.
And so to me, that became not only the, the world I lived in,
but the internal ecosystem. The rhythms I knew that and
(07:39):
adapted inside were those same incongruent chaotic rhythms that
were happening around me. I became that chaos because
because that's the the bridge between nature.
Nurture is like that. We actually learn and adapt and
become part of our nature. And if you go into the woods for
a year and you slow down and youattune to the like the rhythms
(08:03):
of nature, you suddenly become more and more aligned with that.
If we grow up in a city, for example, the research shows
where we're right next to a train and there's constant noise
pollution. There's a significant more
amount of things like ADHD and learning disabilities.
There's, they have a harder timefocusing and being attuned to
their own sensations and emotions of their body because
(08:25):
there's constant distraction, right?
And so the same kind of happens with us.
And, and you know, in, in that sort of chaos and the challenges
and the pains of my childhood, Idid what any kid would do, which
is I kind of shut down and dissociate it.
Like we only have a couple options when we're those who we
love are those who hurt us. And the the thing we do is we
(08:50):
either people please and do liketry all these strategies so they
don't hurt us. And Oregon, we shut down and
dissociate and disconnect and I went on a mental vacation and
referred to myself as a kid, often to my parents, as like a
walking ghost. Really.
You would say that? Yeah.
Yeah, I didn't feel like I was like, I don't feel like I have
dimensionality. I didn't have quite that
(09:11):
language. And now I know the the neural
research on that. And it makes a lot of sense that
like one of the interesting things about trauma is that it
interrupts our ability to three dimensionally map our body so we
feel less dimensional. And it's, it's such an
interesting component of trauma.And we're more, you know, and
it's part of an aspect of dissociation too.
(09:31):
So, you know, one of the things that is important to recognize
is that as we numb out, as we dissociate, as we disconnect as
a means of survival, as we shut down, we start to go into this
process where we start to have asense that we don't exist in the
world. We're isolated, we're alone, and
(09:52):
we don't have this rich tapestryof sensation to confirm that we
are alive, right? An apple tastes bland, for
example. Or a relationship that is safe
and secure feels really boring. And so we had this numbness that
is sort of like, you know, when your foot falls asleep and you
(10:12):
have to like, tap it out, it's like, imagine that as your whole
body. And that's something so many of
us know is that our whole being is asleep.
And what wakes it up? Kind of pounding it against the
ground, which is kind of dramatic.
Why? Because we're trying to add in
some sensation to rise above that threshold of numbness, to
know that we are alive, to feel some type of existence as
(10:34):
opposed to just being a ghost inthe world.
And that was pretty much for me as I started to realize I was in
these like really intense relationships, like really
abusive relationships as an adult.
And I, even though I knew better, even though it was a
therapist and I was like, well, I just feel something.
And it was the intensity I was feeling that I mistook his love.
(10:55):
Yes. And so suddenly I started asking
myself like, OK, well, I remember getting like, like my
cell phone wasn't working. And I had called the, the phone
company to try to work it out. And I remember getting like
really angry and trying to outsmart.
And this is when I was a teenager and outsmart the, the
person on the other end. And, and, and I remember hanging
(11:20):
up the phone with some like explosion and feeling some level
of power and satisfaction. And immediately I was like,
whoa, that's not the value I want to live in my life.
What was that? Which really started to get me
to evaluate, why would I feel a sense of energy and power in in
a volcanic eruption of emotion? What is that?
(11:42):
And I didn't have, I didn't havethe intelligence of the new
inner intelligence of the time to really evaluate it.
But it became a part of my constant self evaluation of like
going, Oh, there that thing is again, that where it's like
something goes wrong, there's a crisis.
And I feel like suddenly I'm, I have a, I'm able to have a sense
(12:03):
of power again, something and, and choice and agency.
And that's really what led me into then going into the deeper
research of what is an addictionto trauma and how, how could we
possibly be attached to something dependent on something
that causes more challenge and stress and strain in our life.
But I think that's what addiction is, right?
(12:23):
Yeah. I've been listening to Elizabeth
Gilbert's newest book, Right Doubt something down the river.
Sorry, Liz, if you're listening to this, I, I miss, I, I know, I
know enough her. But she talks about how, like,
as human beings, like, we've been addicted, all of us as
adults to something in our lives, whether it be
codependency in relationships, drama, a substance, you know,
(12:44):
just somehow we're numbing, but we're getting something out of
it. Yeah, there is.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.
And that's, and that's the important thing is like for so
long an addiction was just something many people shamed as
opposed to going, what is this individual getting out of it?
And what they're getting out of it is space from the underlying
(13:05):
pain that they're in. So it's important when we look
at addiction that we're evaluating what is the pain and
how are these strategies to avoid pain affecting their life
as opposed to just going, they're addicted to something,
addicted to sex, they're addicted to gambling, they're
addicted to love. Because there's a way in which
we kind of don't really appreciate the full complexity
(13:26):
of humanity when we just call ita simple addiction, right?
When we can go, this individual is in pain like so many of us
are. And we know the science says
that physical pain and emotionalpain are indifferent in the
brain. So whether it was that pain was
from a bike injury when they were a kiddo or not being cared
(13:48):
for and loved enough as a kiddo,it's the same residual effect in
the nervous system and in chronic pain.
Who wouldn't want a, a way to eliminate it?
We take medication all the time for pain, right?
And that's really whether it's gambling or whether it's sex or
whether it's drama or porn or any of these things.
(14:08):
This is their attempt at medicating the pain and
navigating the pain. So Scott, that just makes me
think like, like, how do you help somebody in your life?
This is you cover this in your book right around somebody
that's coming like coming at youwith like all this drama because
it's contagious. You say that, which is we know
that should be true. I mean, somebody comes to you
(14:30):
and they're like, Oh my gosh, all the drama, the drama, right,
Like you're wrapped in it. You're like, Oh my God, tell me
more. That's not the right approach,
but like, and but I OK, there, there's that.
And then I also think like, how can we put like love changes
everything that is like, I believe it, like I believe it to
be true, but how do you like bring more love to this
situation that you, if you're saying that somebody's they've
(14:51):
got dramatic tendencies or they're addicted to drama, how
as you as the person in their life, what is the best approach?
Well, you know that old saying or idiom like love heals all,
right? It's not actually true, and it's
interesting. Love is not soft though
sometimes. Sometimes love is not soft, but
sometimes love triggers a sense of danger.
(15:12):
And for those with developmentaltrauma, that's exactly the case.
So for those with drama, it's like you can try to love them.
I've certainly tried to love people into healing and health.
And when there's been such a history in which love is
overcoupled, right? Or wired together with danger,
like if my parent hit me as a kid, but then they told me they
(15:33):
love me, that's wired together that love and danger are
equated, right? So I mean it goes.
It's like, it's like. Love and hurt, they're the same
side of it, you know, the same, same, different side, same coin.
And so I'm going to keep seekingthat as an adult is like
unintentionally, but it is also is this interesting thing is
that like for those who are addicted drama, the closer you
(15:54):
get to them, the more that stirsthem into a level of discomfort.
And it will bring them into someof the activation patterns
around the drama to create more space and distance.
The ways that they can feel safewith intimacy.
Truly, the only way they can feel safe with intimacy is to
pull you into the drama, into the vortex of intensity as
(16:15):
opposed to like holding hands with you and looking and yet you
in the eyes. That level of intimacy at some
point is going to terrify them. It's going to send off this
alarm system in the body that says this is too dangerous.
You lower you the drawbridge of intimacy, you're going to be
unprepared for the next potential threat.
And so anytime that alarm goes off, they activate into all
(16:38):
sorts of funky patterns and relationships, which is
different than if someone's likecoming at you and they're like
trying to share the gossip and they're trying to like rile you
up or, you know, like we all know those friends that's.
Different than what you're talking about.
Yeah. And with those friends who are
coming at us with all the drama,and it can feel exciting.
It can feel like we're part of something cool or we're in the
(17:01):
in Group, you know, as they're telling us the gossip.
And then you kind of realize afterwards, I feel exhausted.
I don't know why I feel tired, but I just.
Yeah. Totally drained.
Totally drain. It's because it's a fast, fast
ascension in the stress responseand then an explosion that
leaves you unintegrated. And that's that's the normal
(17:23):
rhythm of someone who's addicteddrama.
But for those who aren't, it feels like, you know, when you
get that adrenaline rush, if yougo like jump out of a plane, out
with a parachute or zip, you know, like a zip line or
something really intense, it's that rush.
But then you have a refractory period where you are exhausted,
where you are like, it's like taking a drug.
(17:44):
And if you think of something like MDMA or ecstasy, right, you
have like that serotonin hangover the next day, you have
this burst of it and then none at all.
And so the same is true for an addiction and drama, except
instead of MDMA or ecstasy, whatwe're talking about is actually
endorphins and other glucocoid stress hormones.
Yeah, you said you, you started to become aware of what was
(18:06):
going on within you, Scott. And I imagine that a lot of
people that you've treated, thatyou've really helped through
this, there's not like, is there, is there awareness or is
it more like, OK, people are coming to you and going like
this person. I, I'm, I'm this is the person
in my life. I really want them to get help.
Do they have a level of awareness?
Like how do you help people through this?
(18:26):
Yeah. Well, typically those with an
addiction are the last to know, right.
That's the that's the nature of addiction is, is that illusion
that were not addicted. And certainly, you know,
something like drama, it's so easy to blame other people.
It's so easy to make ourselves the victims in the in our life.
It's so easy to make everyone else the villain or something
(18:49):
else the villain and focus on that.
And so addiction to drama is less tangible than like if
someone's taking an opioid and and so it makes it more
difficult and it's a lot of patience, I'll tell you that.
So I've worked with a lot of people who also have had this
propensity, this addiction dependency on crisis and chaos
and stress. And you'll see them like in a
therapeutic setting, they'll do something called crisis hopping.
(19:11):
So you'll do some grounding practices or some breath work
and it settles down their nervous system.
And they can tolerate that for afew seconds.
And then they'll just jump on tothe next issue or the next
challenge in their life. They can't really sustain a
sense of calm or a sense of relaxation.
That that relaxation reflects for many of us that we all
(19:33):
enjoy, that let's us take a deepbreath and settle in and
restore, feels dangerous to them.
So the relaxation reflects like the intimacy triggers an alarm
that says, OOP, you will not be ready for the next threat if you
relax too much. So stay vigilant.
And sometimes you'll have to either go seek conditions or
create stories in your head or other situations to maintain
(19:56):
that level of stress, to keep vigilant around the dangers of
the world. And so breaking all of that down
is a big help for folks and keep, you know, for my, my love
lies with an addiction and drama.
Who would come into my office? I would just say, can we stay
with that settling just. A second longer and even a
second longer. And so it's like this very
titrated approach about generating more tolerance for
(20:19):
things that are not activating or stressful is is a real
beginning process. Yes, so much of this, which I I
can see in your work, right? You're you're focusing on really
it is, it's slowing down, it's being present, it's being
mindful in your life, settling into the reality, right, because
there's a lot of story, a lot ofreally make believe.
(20:42):
Yeah, I mean, like any trauma. I mean, and and really, we're
chasing the drama to avoid our trauma.
So let's let's be very clear. We're chasing the drama to avoid
our. Trauma, yeah, it's, it's yes,
it's no different than chasing adrug or chasing any other
addiction. And and, and when you all riled
(21:03):
up about like that, so and so was like where like, think about
someone here that cut you off and like as you were driving,
right. And right before that happened,
maybe you were sad. Maybe you were like listening to
sad music and it touched like something in your heart.
But the moment you're in the like, Oh my God, I can't believe
they cut me off. You have bypassed any contact
(21:24):
with your own emotions. And for many people where if
they were in relation to their own emotions, they're already
too close to the underlying painthat resides within them.
And so they're going to focus onthat person who cut them off.
They're going to focus on that person who took too long in the
grocery store. They're going to focus on the
news and what's happening in theworld and Can you believe it?
(21:45):
And why are things always bad happening to me or other people
I know, you know, all of those things in which their focus and
attention is on the things that rile them up, which is the drug.
And it is actually a drug. Like, I don't know if you want
to go into the the nerdy, dirty science of it.
Yeah. I think this is, I think this is
fascinating because it really gives us a lens for what's
(22:06):
happening with the person that and, and maybe it's you, maybe
it's the person that's listeningright now.
It's like I have really been creating a lot of drama and
chaos in my life. But it's feeding you somehow,
right? Your brain chemistry is getting,
you're getting hits, right? Yeah.
Yeah, and we'll, and so like when we see people like in
relationships where there's morethat addiction and drama where
you have like constant conflict and escalation or you have
(22:29):
emotional whiplashing, you have there's like a lot of hyper
vigilance and overreactivity in relationships.
You have just a lot of like sometimes there's emotional
intimacy and then there's not. There's a lot of a lot of
symptoms in which this addictiondrama shows up in relationships.
But the neuroscience underneath it all is really interesting
because sometimes I think we canfocus too much on that, like
(22:50):
attachment styles, when there's something that like comes before
attachment styles in the neuroscience.
And there's a part of the brain called the prefrontal orbital
cortex that when there isn't enough safety, security,
emotional connection basically becomes underdeveloped in the
brain. And consequently, as that part
of the brain gets underdeveloped, we become
(23:12):
insensitive to things like oxytocin.
So we even if there's love thereas an adult, we often can't
literally the receptors can't take it in, can't register the
oxytocin that the bond, the sense of bonding.
And there's another piece of that is that those individuals
(23:34):
who have that sort of oxytocin or endorphic, well, I'll talk
about endorphins in a second. Oxytocin kind of depletion or
inability to receive have a much, much higher chance for an
opioid addiction. And the reason for that being,
and this is where it gets reallyinteresting and this is where
like an addiction to drama and stress comes in, is that things
(23:58):
like endorphins. So you know when you go for a
run and you'll get that runner'shigh, that is an endorphic
response. So it attaches to the opioid
receptors in our brain like the and it gives endorphins give us
pain relief. It gives us a sense of social
and emotional closeness as well or bonding and it gives us a
(24:19):
sense of like pleasure. Now where do you think we get
those endorphins from? Little hint, stress, every time
you're stressed, whether it's you're going for a run and you
get that endorphic high or you're dealing with your
mother-in-law, you have an endorphic response in your body.
And so this is where it gets really interesting.
It's because stress, the mechanism of stress creates pain
(24:42):
relief, social bonding and a sense of elevation in our mood.
And we, we often times go, no, no stress is, is awful thing.
That's a very simplistic understanding of stress and that
the Physiology and the biology of stress is actually way more
complex. And, and so it's really
important to know that actually stress has an important response
(25:03):
in our ability to adapt in the world.
Someone throws a baseball at you, you have a stress response
to catch it, right. That's a stress response just as
much as like you're not sure if you can pay your electric bill
this month. They might have different
intensities, but both of those had the same response, which is
an endorphic release as part of the stress activation.
(25:25):
And why that's important is because remember, those who are
addicted to anything have some severity of pain, emotional or
physiological, physical pain. So what do we do?
We want to relieve that pain. We and for we also want to feel
more alive. Those who have trauma and I felt
numb in their life don't didn't get enough nourishment and love
(25:47):
all of those things and they became more dissociated.
They want to feel more alive andconnected and they want to feel
more bonded. Stress allows for all of that.
There's a research study of Australia in which they made
they had two groups of people. One group stuck their hand in
(26:08):
cold water, like really cold water that kind of burned, and
then went to do these tasks, these sort of academic tasks.
And the other group would just put their hand in neutral, like
water that was kind of warm, lukewarm, whatever, and they
would go do the task. The group that went through the
stress together not only felt more bonded and connected after,
(26:30):
but they also performed better. Their attention and their energy
from the stress response allowedthem to feel more connected
bond, so connected, bonded and focused.
And so these are the really important things to recognize is
because it's like as humans, we're all looking for pain
relief, right? Some way or another, we're all
(26:50):
looking for closeness. It's kind of the nature of being
human. We're all looking for more
energy and this assurance that we feel alive and, and a sense
of awe and wonder in the world. Thus we just feel dead inside,
right? And the thing that gives us that
the most and is the most contagious, as you said, and the
most addictive is stress. Wow.
(27:11):
So it's like creating, it's creating stress as a pain
reliever to make yourself feel better somehow.
It's it's making, yeah. Yeah, and social bonding, right.
People call trauma bonding, but trauma bonding just literally
means, and it's often misunderstood, which is
different than drama bonding. Trauma bonding gives us a sense
(27:32):
of closeness to other people through shared pain.
Yeah, that's part of our the nature being human.
Through shared stress, we feel more connected.
Drama bonding is more when you're like throwing logs on
someone else's drama fire, right?
Like they come over and they're like, my partner did this and
you're like, Oh my gosh, how dare they, They're so awful.
Tell me more, Who else? We've all done that.
(27:54):
We've all done that, right? You're just like, you're like
you're, you're, you're not really offering solutions.
You're just like Oh my God, I can't even believe that.
You're not offering solutions, you're a cheerleader to the
drama. I have one of my best friends.
I love her. She is an absolute cheerleader
to my drama. And like, I know that if I call
her, I'm gonna have this deep sense of, like, vengeance and
(28:15):
satisfaction and like, you know,screw them and they were wrong.
And if I call other friends, I'mgonna be like, Oh my gosh, I
really see my part in this. So, you know, I often call herds
first, right? Right.
Of course do the work and then. You'll and then I'll do the work
I need. Inspection.
Yeah, I need the satisfaction first.
We all need it. I love.
This like, I love this card. It's so funny because like you
(28:35):
are that you're a therapist and you've been through living the
drama of life. And so you, you know what it's
like to live on both sides of it.
You're like, I got the awarenesspiece, But first let's relish in
the in the fun of it and then we'll get into the the work.
Look, again, we feel more bondedto someone who's going to be
drama. It's called drama bonding for a
reason. We're going to feel more
connected. We're going to feel more or less
(28:56):
validated and satisfied. And that that can feel really
good. It's just not accurate most of
the time, right? You know what this made me think
of? It's just yesterday as I was
preparing for this and talking to my best friend.
We work on the podcast together and I was like, cursed.
Just today, I'm watching my feedand there's a post by People
(29:16):
magazine around, you know, it was a picture of Justin Baldoni
and Taylor Swift with this, like, big line between the the
two of them, right? And it was like something around
the story of she's being served papers and the person that was
serving jumped over Travis Kelsey's fence, right.
And got arrested because obviously he's trespassing.
And like, yeah, no good man. That's totally legit.
(29:38):
The guy was deserved to be arrested.
But it was all around creating drama between Justin and Taylor
Swift, right? It's just like this rift I'm
going. This is what the world we live
in, though, Scott. It's creating drama around
circumstances that we know nothing about.
I don't need to know anything about.
Of course not. I really, really don't care.
(30:00):
And I'm thinking actually, I've got a compassion for the people
that are all involved that are actually, they're, these are
real people that are going through like a legal dispute,
which is so freaking stressful and awful.
And it's like actually the drama.
There's no need for anybody to get involved.
But that's what I'm saying around here is like we're, we're
surrounded by stories, made-up stuff, drama.
(30:24):
And it's, no, it doesn't surprise me that in our own
lives, on a personal level, it'slike, you know what I mean?
There's the perpetuation in our society around this.
Yeah, well, we're in an endemic of an addiction to drama.
Like it's not like what I was kind of sharing us like the the
personal origin story that was once more like that was the
(30:44):
common components or the common denominators for those who are
addicted dramas, early developmental trauma, you know,
numbing out, dissociating, needing to feel some sense of
sensation that rises above the threshold, numbness and having
big kind of seeking and creatingscenarios that help do that.
That that was the sort of classic case.
Now we're in a culture in which the intensity and overwhelm to
(31:09):
our nervous system is just everywhere, right?
There's a reason the news has increased by like 42% over the
last few years. The use of dramatic language
imagery, sexual imagery, violentimagery, all of these things
that that heighten our stress response and get our attention
(31:30):
and capture it and maintain it. And the consequence of that over
and over again is that we are over stimulated and under
processed. We start to numb out.
We start to feel more dead inside and dead in the world.
And what do we need to start to feel alive again?
Something that rises above the threshold of that numbness,
which has to be something reallyintense and something that can
(31:52):
really get us worked up to some degree.
The media knows this. That's why they keep having to
increase the level. So if you're familiar with
anything around addiction, you know that we build tolerances,
right? So you need more alcohol to get
drunk. You need more stress to get the
the stress, the high endorphic responsive stress after a while.
(32:12):
And in the same thing is true here, that we actually need much
more intense stimulus. And they will provide intense
stimulus, whether it's on the news or in the newspaper or on
social media feeds. All of these things to rise
above that threshold of numbnessthat they help create to get our
attention in order to then eventually sell us whatever's
(32:33):
being sold on the brakes or on someone's social media.
Like that's just what we're that's the world we live in now.
You know, it sounds kind of likea conspiracy theory, but there's
tons of research on it. I know it's not a conspiracy
theory because we live in this world and it's all you, all you
need to do is turn on the TV andand just.
See. Turn it off and see what
happens. Like when you start to get bored
(32:56):
and go through withdrawal symptoms, which is actually very
real for a lot of people. And it's like when you go on
vacation, the first few days you're like, Oh my God, this is
amazing. Then you get the itch and you're
checking your phone all the timeand you're like, and you're
thinking about work or you're thinking about other things and
you can't actually relax. That's what's happening to us as
a culture where we're moving further and further away from
(33:16):
our own ability to restore. That is so true.
That's so well said. And this is part of this.
This is a lot of the work that you're doing, right, Scott?
Like day-to-day is helping people to come back to that
place of, of connectedness, right with yourself.
Yeah. And making rest a practice,
(33:37):
making peace, like peace a priority in your life.
Like, what does that mean exactly?
Like, I didn't know what peace was until I would say the last
year of my life. Like, I feel like I'm embodying
peace. Yeah.
Yeah. I never used to be in that place
to say that, you know? Well, and, and that's amazing.
And as we recognize, OK, what are the conditions that allow
(34:00):
any of us, including you, to find the embody or experience
rest or peace and to recognize what are the ways in in which
we're getting in the way of our own peace?
How are we contributing to our own life?
That is difficult. And, and people will come at me
after I say things like that andthey're like, you're, you're
(34:22):
shaming and blaming me. You're making me the victim.
And I was like, you should read my book.
It's called Addicted to Drama and right, it's and and there
are conditions and there are shitty things in the world and
there are mean people. And none of that is untrue.
And here's the thing, like by the third meth addict that I
(34:42):
dated, I had to ask myself here.Who am I contributing to this?
Yeah. What's the common denominator?
Oh, my gosh, it's me. Were they still on meth?
Yes. Was it awful?
Yes. But why did I stay and why did I
allow my boundaries to be crossed so many times over and
over again? That is my contribution to this
(35:03):
equation. And so even if the world is hard
and it is hard, and even if people are mean and maybe
incapable of loving us in the ways that we want, what in US is
the mechanism that keeps us involved in that?
And that's part of the the same mechanism that we're talking
about in addiction to trauma. So you, you are like a
practitioner and teacher of somatic and you've got a body
(35:25):
lab. Can you tell us about somatic
therapy and somatic practices just in like really simple
terms? Because this is like the word
itself. I don't people, a lot of people
don't know what it is, but I like, I would love to learn more
about that. Yeah, when we're talking about
somatics in terms of therapeutictherapy, we're talking about
like body based therapies. So soma means Greek means body
(35:49):
and somatics is the practices ofcoming more into our body and
that's that. So it's a radical shift from the
idea like we're just we're heads, we're brains that are
just being carried around by ourbody.
Like we know that's no longer true.
Like, thanks to many great books, like the Body Keeps a
Score right, that our tissues hold memory right.
(36:12):
This is not, this is no longer some like some funny idea.
This is like, this is all the where the science is
demonstrating. It's like the body keeps the
score right. The your muscles, your breath,
your cells are reenacting the historic past in every moment
until there's some type of shift.
For example, when people say, oh, I'm triggered, right?
(36:34):
Which is such a funny word because like what they mean is
I'm having emotional past and I'm living out my history in my
past as though it was currently happening in the present.
That's really well said, yeah. And thanks.
And somatics as a tool and a technique helps us reconnect to
the present moment, to our breath in this moment, to the
(36:55):
sensations and feelings in this moment.
And even be able to discern whatis the emotions from the past
that are acting as though it's in the present.
And what are the actual sensations and feelings and
emotions happening in the current moment.
When we think about, I think oneof the easiest ways to
understand somatics is in relation to trauma.
So trauma is the great fragmenter.
(37:17):
It cuts us off from feeling our own body, our own intuitions,
our own sensation, from feeling relationship.
And all of these things that arefragmented, cut off, can only be
refound through the body. If we're dissociated, if we're
disconnected through the body, we're not going to come home and
suddenly feel like we can groundin our body or feel safe here
(37:40):
unless we have the practices that allow us to experience
that. And it's not a cognitive thing.
Like go ahead and tell yourself you're safe when you're watching
a scary movie. Try it, See how well that works
for you. But if you connected, for
example, to the sense of the blanket around you that you're
holding, or the person next to you that you're leaning into, or
the chair underneath you, then you can be feel both the fear,
(38:03):
but also the sense of security and safety that only can be felt
through the body. And so in this sense, you
suddenly start to feel safe as opposed to think your way into
safety. You can't think your way into
safety and you can't think your way into healing the all the
fragmented parts. You can only feel your way in to
(38:24):
heal. And so when you're talking,
Scott, I, I think I'm understanding this in a new way
because you know, like traditionally it's like talk
therapy. We could talk it out, right?
We're like, all right, let's go into that memory.
Let's like even, you know, with my own therapist, we do.
Well, I think maybe it's, it's acombination of somatics because
it's like we go into meditative state and go into that place, go
(38:45):
into that memory. So it's possible that it's a lot
of different things all at once,but it makes me think like
somatics is. And you, please correct me if
I'm wrong, but it's like you're intentionally going into your
body to heal stuff that that is trapped.
You don't know, right? So you're doing movement, you're
whatever it is that you are doing.
It's like trying to locate that stuff that you would not have
(39:08):
otherwise been able to do with, like with talk talk therapy, for
example. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, here's what we know is that like a new thought, for
example, is so fast, like milliseconds, and then an old
thought takes a little longer tolike longer to form.
Excuse me, a new, an old thoughttakes is very fast.
(39:28):
A new thought is even longer to form.
And to contact or connect to a sensation in our body takes
about 10 times longer than the formation of an old or new
thought. And why that's important is, is
it means we have to slow down toactually get out of the patterns
of our thoughts. We have to slow down to be able
to feel the sensations, to feel the things that we never felt.
(39:52):
One of the things about trauma is that it's not what happened
to you. It's not the event, it's how did
it happen and how did it get stored and what was missing and
what didn't get to be processed.And when you're actually healing
trauma, you have to go back and feel and move, metabolize and
move through what never got to be felt.
And you can't think your way into feeling.
(40:13):
You can only. A tune into yourself, into your
body, the place where feelings and sensations happen and feel
your way through it. And it melts all of those, you
know, like they're like cysts almost in your body, right?
That those memories, those experiences that never got to be
processed and that's taxing on the body over time.
And it's, you know, in the same way if you break your, let's say
(40:36):
you break your foot, right? And all of a sudden and you're
like, you know, you're, you're not putting much weight on it,
you're being very careful. But all of a sudden in like 3
weeks, your back starts hurting and your hip is hurting.
You're like, well, what does this have anything to do with
my, my injury? But the whole body is connected
and compensating constantly for the injury.
(40:58):
The same thing is true for emotional injuries is you're in
constant compensation for the emotional injuries.
And, and this is where it becomes really challenging
because not only do we have to address the injury, but the
compensations. And that's really the power of
semantics is it allows you to identify what's the
compensations like our attachment style and what's the
(41:18):
actual root pain and be able to then process and metabolize that
as well, not just the compensational or behavioral
pattern. Wow, that's amazing.
It makes me think of two things while you're saying this.
The first is like, I remember this was a few like quite a few
years ago. One of my really good friends
runs five rhythms workshops and it's like like 2 day I signed up
(41:42):
and I was like, all right, let'sdo this.
I've never done anything like it, right?
So it's like free dance and justlike free, like whatever.
Like she's, she's a DJ. And so the music's pumping and
then it's slowing down and you're just moving along among.
I was like probably 50 of us in this big hall and one give at
one point in time. Like I was just having a great
time really. And some of it was intense.
Some of it was just like and at 1 moment I remember like just, I
(42:06):
had all of a sudden I just started crying like bawling,
calling my eyes out. And I'm like, what the heck.
And like and she's seeing, but she's talking to all of us as a
collective and going just feel the feels whatever, like just.
And I'm, I'm trying to, I think I was judging like why am I
crying? But then I was like, I just have
to let this out. Whatever it is, it's coming up
(42:27):
for me. So I cried, cried and then
within 20 minutes I'm feeling really good again, like just
light, but it because it passed,but that was that was locked in
me somewhere somehow. I don't know what I was crying
about and I guess it doesn't matter.
It really doesn't, right? The end of the day, you.
Don't have to know. That's just it though, right,
(42:49):
Scott? Like that must be the experience
for a lot of people going through this.
It's like something's coming up and maybe you will get a memory,
maybe you will have something, some cognitive understanding,
but at the end of the day, doesn't really matter.
Like you're releasing it, right?That's how I understood it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean this is the interesting
thing that happens in trauma. One of the things that fragments
(43:11):
is our our memory systems fragments.
So the part of our memory that'sinvolved with that, that holds
the emotions, that holds the sensations and experience what's
called the implicit memory. And then which is different from
the declarative or autobiographical memories, which
is or narrative memories, which is like the story of what
happened and what in trauma happens is those two become
(43:33):
separated. So we and it makes it much
harder to process your emotions when you it's not related, when
it's just floating around right away from the story that so when
someone tells you a story or talks about a relationship or
divorce and then just sound flat, that's what it's like.
It's like it's so separate the emotions from the the memory or
(43:54):
on the other side, someone can have like big kind of emotional
responses and it is related to the memory that's been
fragmented, but they, they don'thave a container, a place to put
it. So it just is like this chronic
crying or depression. And so what's really what is
beautiful is that one of the things we do in somatic trauma
(44:15):
work is we bridge back the memory system.
So, and sometimes we are not able to have the narrative
memory, like narrative memory means like there was a
beginning, middle, end of the story.
We don't necessarily have to have that if we allow for it to
(44:35):
just move and process through the body, the emotions.
I mean, and that's what you did.Like the dance was the container
was the thing that held you, then your body was the container
as you moved that allowed for that to metabolize and just move
through you. And sometimes we have
experiences that are really emotional that happened before
ages. We can even remember it.
(44:56):
And sometimes the emotional memory will never meet or
connect back up with a narrativememory.
And that's OK too. We can still process it.
Wow, I've really like Doctor Scott Lyons.
I love talking to you. I've learned so much in this
hour. I really have.
I really appreciate everything you're doing.
And I just thanks, like, I just love your presence and the work
(45:17):
you're doing because you bring alot of levity too.
Thank you. You know, like you really do
too. Like some serious stuff.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. It's funny because I remember I
was talking to Ester Perel recently about this and she's
like, I no longer. I'm interested in trauma, I'm
only interested in joy. And I was like, oh, I, I really
(45:38):
get what you're coming from. And she, we talked through it,
but like, I was like, I wonder if I could start saying that
too, of like. But my, my way, my, my shift in
language around it is like the things that get denied from us
as part of trauma is things likeplay and levity and joy.
(45:59):
And here's the thing, it's like we could try to force that on
ourselves and it wouldn't do anything.
But if we can find play, and this is really interesting
because this is research that's been coming out more, is that
one of the most effective traumahealing practices is play.
It doesn't surprise me at all. And not me either.
And there's there is a parallel between somatic therapy and play
(46:21):
because it is more, there's a lot more curiosity and
investigation and sort of sometimes movement that that's
also associated with play. So it's very restorative.
I can't imagine my life without just a shit ton of joy and play.
You know, I, it's, it is part ofmy life.
It's just laughter. I just, I like, it's just so
important to me. It's like one of my, my top
(46:41):
values. It's funny, I've never written
that down, but it's, it is play and joy and fun because like
what? How else?
What do you deal with life? It's hard.
Well, and this is the thing, andit's like if we've had tough
experiences and we've had a lot of trauma, it freezes us and
it's really hard to push past ormove through the freeze in order
to find play. But at the same time, play can
(47:03):
help defrost us or thaw us out abit.
Yeah, and sometimes it's just like it doesn't have to be, you
know, there there's so many waysthat we can play.
Like my idea of playing is like sitting down with like my
friends or a partner or even my kids and doing like Angel cards.
I mean, come on. Like that is fun.
Like to me, that's like, let's let's play with some Angel
because angels are going to tellus some great stuff.
(47:25):
Yeah. That kind of thing, for
instance. 100% So this last yearfor my birthday, I took like
2025 of my dearest friends. We're all adults.
And we went and did laser tag for a couple hours and it was
like, and every, so many of themwere like hesitant.
They're like, I don't know, thisis for kids.
(47:46):
And I was like, we are kids and adult bodies.
And by the end everyone was like, we have to do this so much
more. This is like therapeutic.
And it's, it's like, I haven't felt this level of joy in such a
long time. And I was like, yeah, play is
play is my jam. Oh, that's that's so fun, Scott.
Well, thank you, Doctor. Scott Lyons.
My pleasure and. I know you're not feeling great,
(48:06):
so I really appreciate you. You, you made your champion.
I'm holding up your book again because I think it's amazing.
And I hope everybody buys it in audio too, so they can hear your
voice and your stories and your laughter, because that's that's
that's a big part of it too. Thank you so much, what a
pleasure. I'm going to close with a
blessing with your sentiments and your and my learnings
(48:26):
through you this week. May we support our loved ones
that are addicted to drama, understanding this is often from
a deep, wired reaction to pain within.
We've really learned that today.May we, while supporting others,
hold space to support ourselves,creating clear boundaries and
doing practices that restore andrecuperate our own energy and
(48:49):
our own peace. And may we understand that
healing is about letting the parts of you that hurt finally
feel safe. Safe enough to stay.
I love that. That was a quote that we took
from your book and I just think that is beautiful.
Yeah. Thank you.
So thank you, Doctor Scott Lyons.
(49:10):
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you so much for being here
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on as well. Many blessings and much love.
Welcome to Let's Talk Love. I'm thrilled to be joined by
Doctor Scott Lyons, a renowned clinical psychologist and
founder of the Embody Lab. Today, Scott and I explore the
complex relationship between love and drama, looking at how
our early experiences can createan addiction to drama in our
(00:20):
adult relationships. We talk about the neuroscience
behind this pattern, the healingpower of somatic practices, and
the role of play in restoring joy and connection.
So many of us find ourselves caught in the cycles of crisis
and chaos without even realizingit, mistaking drama for love,
(00:40):
intensity, or aliveness. By understanding what's really
happening beneath the surface, we could begin to step out of
these cycles and build steadier,more peaceful, and more joyful
relationships. I hope you enjoy our
conversation. I know I sure did.
Welcome to Let's Talk Love, the podcast that brings you real
(01:04):
talk, fresh ideas, and expert insights every week.
Our guests are the most trusted voices in love and
relationships, and they're here for you with tools, information,
and friendly advice to help you expand the ways you love,
relate, and communicate. We tackle the big questions, not
shying away from the complex, the messy, the awkward and the
(01:26):
joyful parts of relationships. I'm your host, Robin Ducharne.
Now let's talk love. Hello, everyone, and welcome to
Let's Talk LOVE. Today we're joined by Doctor
Scott Lyons to talk about love and drama.
(01:49):
I love that you're laughing about love and trauma.
Because guess what? A lot of times they go hand in
hand. They wish it wasn't that way,
but actually they do sometimes. A lot of the time.
I know, I know. Bless.
Doctor Scott, thank you for being with us.
We're going to talk about your book today, which I really,
(02:12):
really, I, I really enjoyed reading and listening, listening
to you read this. I mean, that's my favorite thing
is hearing the authors narrate their own books because I, you
know, you really get this is your story as well.
You share about your life, Scottin here so vulnerably.
And I'm excited to talk to you about love and drama and all the
(02:33):
things today. So thank you for being with us.
I'm here for it. Let's talk about drama and love
and all the good stuff and support some people in the
meantime. Well, you know what?
And I think that's what it is, Scott, when I read your book,
it's called Addicted to Drama, Healing, Dependency on Crisis
and Chaos in Yourself and others.
And what I want to say first andforemost is that this is an
(02:56):
awesome, awesome piece of work. I learned a lot because I'm
like, how's this going to go? You know, like I'm going to read
about like you think about people that earn your life and
maybe you have been stirring up some drama yourself.
But I'm like, what you did was you brought light to something
that I didn't realize that it could be an addiction for
people. I mean, it makes sense, but I
didn't, I didn't understand it from that level of an addiction.
(03:20):
And the other thing that I thinkyou did really well was like, I,
I now see this from a compassionate lens.
Yeah, because we all know someone, right?
We we all know someone who's like, making mountains out of
molehills is like chronically busy, but then complaints about
it is like in a constant roller coaster in relationships.
(03:41):
Like we all, we all know that person.
Never us. It's never us.
No, no, it's never. Us, no, it's never us, but we
know that person and we might call them the drama queen or
drama king or some other, you know, like, wait kind of
derogatory term. And one of the things I was
really interested in it is like,I would go to these big talks
(04:02):
and I would say, OK, raise your hand if you know someone
addicted to drama and everyone would raise their hand and I was
like, this is so interesting to me because it's we all know it.
We know it viscerally when we'rein the room with someone who's
like a drama queen or drama kingor like just a chaos monster.
And and yet it's so hard to define.
(04:24):
And there was no scientific research on it.
So how could we have something that everyone knew about, but
there was no academic support togo, yes, this is actually a
thing. And so I really wanted to bridge
that gap and heal myself in the process of my own little
addiction to drama. Yes.
And so actually this is your story, right.
I mean, this is, you know, I think about, I, I think about my
(04:45):
own story and why I'm doing the work I'm doing.
I, you know, I've been on like alifelong quest for having deep,
beautiful, like just the best relationships and especially
intimate partnership, you know, and there's been like, I, I just
feel like it's, is a part of my life.
I know it is that I've struggledwith, you know, like I had a
(05:05):
really beautiful first marriage.I did until I realized it was
not, I didn't want to be in it anymore.
My second marriage was a complete disaster and I really
think that there was a lot of chaos in that marriage.
And here I am in my third, hopefully final relationship
with a man that I love and just so incredibly deeply.
And it's a beautiful, healthy relationship.
(05:26):
We're doing it very consciously this time, but it takes it takes
time. It's almost like now I feel like
I've got more wisdom and it ableto come from a place of like,
all right, I've been through it and now I've got some.
I've got a lot of learnings thatI can pass on.
Yeah. And you have the same Scott.
Yeah. With your own journey with being
addicted to drama. Yeah, I mean, I just wouldn't
(05:48):
really name that too is like we like we think about like I'm on
my third marriage or I'm on my 5th relationship and it's like
just some of us might have had the opportunity and we met one
person and it was golden and it's great.
But I, I like to think, but it'slike we need a lot of practice,
especially if we didn't get thatrefinement and that experience
as kiddos, then you know that that process of refining
(06:09):
relationship can only really happen in relationship.
And I, you know, in the, in the same way that like for me to, to
heal an addiction to drama, you have to also go back and heal a
lot of, of experiences. And you need a little bit of the
drama to be aware of your reaction and your own propensity
(06:31):
for it, but also the ability to not be taken into it.
So it's like we need these challenging relationships.
We need unsatisfying love to really highlight what is love?
Sometimes, yes. And we need sometimes calm
experiences to highlight how bored we are when things are
turbulent. Right.
So so Scott, tell us about your journey of being you realized
(06:54):
you recognized that you were addicted to drama.
Yeah, I there was a couple of key experiences I've had or like
questions I asked myself. I'm like, why isn't life just
easier? Because on paper it should be
Like I'm very privileged. I have a lot of certain things
that make should make my life really easy.
And I was like, why doesn't lifejust feel like it's in flow?
Why doesn't it just feel easy? And the answer was because of
(07:18):
me. No, it's not that simple.
But I, I grew up in an environment that was incredibly
chaotic. There was drugs and, and
violence and, and a lot of unpredictability.
And so to me, that became not only the, the world I lived in,
but the internal ecosystem. The rhythms I knew that and
(07:39):
adapted inside were those same incongruent chaotic rhythms that
were happening around me. I became that chaos because
because that's the the bridge between nature.
Nurture is like that. We actually learn and adapt and
become part of our nature. And if you go into the woods for
a year and you slow down and youattune to the like the rhythms
(08:03):
of nature, you suddenly become more and more aligned with that.
If we grow up in a city, for example, the research shows
where we're right next to a train and there's constant noise
pollution. There's a significant more
amount of things like ADHD and learning disabilities.
There's, they have a harder timefocusing and being attuned to
their own sensations and emotions of their body because
(08:25):
there's constant distraction, right?
And so the same kind of happens with us.
And, and you know, in, in that sort of chaos and the challenges
and the pains of my childhood, Idid what any kid would do, which
is I kind of shut down and dissociate it.
Like we only have a couple options when we're those who we
love are those who hurt us. And the the thing we do is we
(08:50):
either people please and do liketry all these strategies so they
don't hurt us. And Oregon, we shut down and
dissociate and disconnect and I went on a mental vacation and
referred to myself as a kid, often to my parents, as like a
walking ghost. Really.
You would say that? Yeah.
Yeah, I didn't feel like I was like, I don't feel like I have
dimensionality. I didn't have quite that
(09:11):
language. And now I know the the neural
research on that. And it makes a lot of sense that
like one of the interesting things about trauma is that it
interrupts our ability to three dimensionally map our body so we
feel less dimensional. And it's, it's such an
interesting component of trauma.And we're more, you know, and
it's part of an aspect of dissociation too.
(09:31):
So, you know, one of the things that is important to recognize
is that as we numb out, as we dissociate, as we disconnect as
a means of survival, as we shut down, we start to go into this
process where we start to have asense that we don't exist in the
world. We're isolated, we're alone, and
(09:52):
we don't have this rich tapestryof sensation to confirm that we
are alive, right? An apple tastes bland, for
example. Or a relationship that is safe
and secure feels really boring. And so we had this numbness that
is sort of like, you know, when your foot falls asleep and you
(10:12):
have to like, tap it out, it's like, imagine that as your whole
body. And that's something so many of
us know is that our whole being is asleep.
And what wakes it up? Kind of pounding it against the
ground, which is kind of dramatic.
Why? Because we're trying to add in
some sensation to rise above that threshold of numbness, to
know that we are alive, to feel some type of existence as
(10:34):
opposed to just being a ghost inthe world.
And that was pretty much for me as I started to realize I was in
these like really intense relationships, like really
abusive relationships as an adult.
And I, even though I knew better, even though it was a
therapist and I was like, well, I just feel something.
And it was the intensity I was feeling that I mistook his love.
(10:55):
Yes. And so suddenly I started asking
myself like, OK, well, I remember getting like, like my
cell phone wasn't working. And I had called the, the phone
company to try to work it out. And I remember getting like
really angry and trying to outsmart.
And this is when I was a teenager and outsmart the, the
person on the other end. And, and, and I remember hanging
(11:20):
up the phone with some like explosion and feeling some level
of power and satisfaction. And immediately I was like,
whoa, that's not the value I want to live in my life.
What was that? Which really started to get me
to evaluate, why would I feel a sense of energy and power in in
a volcanic eruption of emotion? What is that?
(11:42):
And I didn't have, I didn't havethe intelligence of the new
inner intelligence of the time to really evaluate it.
But it became a part of my constant self evaluation of like
going, Oh, there that thing is again, that where it's like
something goes wrong, there's a crisis.
And I feel like suddenly I'm, I have a, I'm able to have a sense
(12:03):
of power again, something and, and choice and agency.
And that's really what led me into then going into the deeper
research of what is an addictionto trauma and how, how could we
possibly be attached to something dependent on something
that causes more challenge and stress and strain in our life.
But I think that's what addiction is, right?
(12:23):
Yeah. I've been listening to Elizabeth
Gilbert's newest book, Right Doubt something down the river.
Sorry, Liz, if you're listening to this, I, I miss, I, I know, I
know enough her. But she talks about how, like,
as human beings, like, we've been addicted, all of us as
adults to something in our lives, whether it be
codependency in relationships, drama, a substance, you know,
(12:44):
just somehow we're numbing, but we're getting something out of
it. Yeah, there is.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.
And that's, and that's the important thing is like for so
long an addiction was just something many people shamed as
opposed to going, what is this individual getting out of it?
And what they're getting out of it is space from the underlying
(13:05):
pain that they're in. So it's important when we look
at addiction that we're evaluating what is the pain and
how are these strategies to avoid pain affecting their life
as opposed to just going, they're addicted to something,
addicted to sex, they're addicted to gambling, they're
addicted to love. Because there's a way in which
we kind of don't really appreciate the full complexity
(13:26):
of humanity when we just call ita simple addiction, right?
When we can go, this individual is in pain like so many of us
are. And we know the science says
that physical pain and emotionalpain are indifferent in the
brain. So whether it was that pain was
from a bike injury when they were a kiddo or not being cared
(13:48):
for and loved enough as a kiddo,it's the same residual effect in
the nervous system and in chronic pain.
Who wouldn't want a, a way to eliminate it?
We take medication all the time for pain, right?
And that's really whether it's gambling or whether it's sex or
whether it's drama or porn or any of these things.
(14:08):
This is their attempt at medicating the pain and
navigating the pain. So Scott, that just makes me
think like, like, how do you help somebody in your life?
This is you cover this in your book right around somebody
that's coming like coming at youwith like all this drama because
it's contagious. You say that, which is we know
that should be true. I mean, somebody comes to you
(14:30):
and they're like, Oh my gosh, all the drama, the drama, right,
Like you're wrapped in it. You're like, Oh my God, tell me
more. That's not the right approach,
but like, and but I OK, there, there's that.
And then I also think like, how can we put like love changes
everything that is like, I believe it, like I believe it to
be true, but how do you like bring more love to this
situation that you, if you're saying that somebody's they've
(14:51):
got dramatic tendencies or they're addicted to drama, how
as you as the person in their life, what is the best approach?
Well, you know that old saying or idiom like love heals all,
right? It's not actually true, and it's
interesting. Love is not soft though
sometimes. Sometimes love is not soft, but
sometimes love triggers a sense of danger.
(15:12):
And for those with developmentaltrauma, that's exactly the case.
So for those with drama, it's like you can try to love them.
I've certainly tried to love people into healing and health.
And when there's been such a history in which love is
overcoupled, right? Or wired together with danger,
like if my parent hit me as a kid, but then they told me they
(15:33):
love me, that's wired together that love and danger are
equated, right? So I mean it goes.
It's like, it's like. Love and hurt, they're the same
side of it, you know, the same, same, different side, same coin.
And so I'm going to keep seekingthat as an adult is like
unintentionally, but it is also is this interesting thing is
that like for those who are addicted drama, the closer you
(15:54):
get to them, the more that stirsthem into a level of discomfort.
And it will bring them into someof the activation patterns
around the drama to create more space and distance.
The ways that they can feel safewith intimacy.
Truly, the only way they can feel safe with intimacy is to
pull you into the drama, into the vortex of intensity as
(16:15):
opposed to like holding hands with you and looking and yet you
in the eyes. That level of intimacy at some
point is going to terrify them. It's going to send off this
alarm system in the body that says this is too dangerous.
You lower you the drawbridge of intimacy, you're going to be
unprepared for the next potential threat.
And so anytime that alarm goes off, they activate into all
(16:38):
sorts of funky patterns and relationships, which is
different than if someone's likecoming at you and they're like
trying to share the gossip and they're trying to like rile you
up or, you know, like we all know those friends that's.
Different than what you're talking about.
Yeah. And with those friends who are
coming at us with all the drama,and it can feel exciting.
It can feel like we're part of something cool or we're in the
(17:01):
in Group, you know, as they're telling us the gossip.
And then you kind of realize afterwards, I feel exhausted.
I don't know why I feel tired, but I just.
Yeah. Totally drained.
Totally drain. It's because it's a fast, fast
ascension in the stress responseand then an explosion that
leaves you unintegrated. And that's that's the normal
(17:23):
rhythm of someone who's addicteddrama.
But for those who aren't, it feels like, you know, when you
get that adrenaline rush, if yougo like jump out of a plane, out
with a parachute or zip, you know, like a zip line or
something really intense, it's that rush.
But then you have a refractory period where you are exhausted,
where you are like, it's like taking a drug.
(17:44):
And if you think of something like MDMA or ecstasy, right, you
have like that serotonin hangover the next day, you have
this burst of it and then none at all.
And so the same is true for an addiction and drama, except
instead of MDMA or ecstasy, whatwe're talking about is actually
endorphins and other glucocoid stress hormones.
Yeah, you said you, you started to become aware of what was
(18:06):
going on within you, Scott. And I imagine that a lot of
people that you've treated, thatyou've really helped through
this, there's not like, is there, is there awareness or is
it more like, OK, people are coming to you and going like
this person. I, I'm, I'm this is the person
in my life. I really want them to get help.
Do they have a level of awareness?
Like how do you help people through this?
(18:26):
Yeah. Well, typically those with an
addiction are the last to know, right.
That's the that's the nature of addiction is, is that illusion
that were not addicted. And certainly, you know,
something like drama, it's so easy to blame other people.
It's so easy to make ourselves the victims in the in our life.
It's so easy to make everyone else the villain or something
(18:49):
else the villain and focus on that.
And so addiction to drama is less tangible than like if
someone's taking an opioid and and so it makes it more
difficult and it's a lot of patience, I'll tell you that.
So I've worked with a lot of people who also have had this
propensity, this addiction dependency on crisis and chaos
and stress. And you'll see them like in a
therapeutic setting, they'll do something called crisis hopping.
(19:11):
So you'll do some grounding practices or some breath work
and it settles down their nervous system.
And they can tolerate that for afew seconds.
And then they'll just jump on tothe next issue or the next
challenge in their life. They can't really sustain a
sense of calm or a sense of relaxation.
That that relaxation reflects for many of us that we all
(19:33):
enjoy, that let's us take a deepbreath and settle in and
restore, feels dangerous to them.
So the relaxation reflects like the intimacy triggers an alarm
that says, OOP, you will not be ready for the next threat if you
relax too much. So stay vigilant.
And sometimes you'll have to either go seek conditions or
create stories in your head or other situations to maintain
(19:56):
that level of stress, to keep vigilant around the dangers of
the world. And so breaking all of that down
is a big help for folks and keep, you know, for my, my love
lies with an addiction and drama.
Who would come into my office? I would just say, can we stay
with that settling just. A second longer and even a
second longer. And so it's like this very
titrated approach about generating more tolerance for
(20:19):
things that are not activating or stressful is is a real
beginning process. Yes, so much of this, which I I
can see in your work, right? You're you're focusing on really
it is, it's slowing down, it's being present, it's being
mindful in your life, settling into the reality, right, because
there's a lot of story, a lot ofreally make believe.
(20:42):
Yeah, I mean, like any trauma. I mean, and and really, we're
chasing the drama to avoid our trauma.
So let's let's be very clear. We're chasing the drama to avoid
our. Trauma, yeah, it's, it's yes,
it's no different than chasing adrug or chasing any other
addiction. And and, and when you all riled
(21:03):
up about like that, so and so was like where like, think about
someone here that cut you off and like as you were driving,
right. And right before that happened,
maybe you were sad. Maybe you were like listening to
sad music and it touched like something in your heart.
But the moment you're in the like, Oh my God, I can't believe
they cut me off. You have bypassed any contact
(21:24):
with your own emotions. And for many people where if
they were in relation to their own emotions, they're already
too close to the underlying painthat resides within them.
And so they're going to focus onthat person who cut them off.
They're going to focus on that person who took too long in the
grocery store. They're going to focus on the
news and what's happening in theworld and Can you believe it?
(21:45):
And why are things always bad happening to me or other people
I know, you know, all of those things in which their focus and
attention is on the things that rile them up, which is the drug.
And it is actually a drug. Like, I don't know if you want
to go into the the nerdy, dirty science of it.
Yeah. I think this is, I think this is
fascinating because it really gives us a lens for what's
(22:06):
happening with the person that and, and maybe it's you, maybe
it's the person that's listeningright now.
It's like I have really been creating a lot of drama and
chaos in my life. But it's feeding you somehow,
right? Your brain chemistry is getting,
you're getting hits, right? Yeah.
Yeah, and we'll, and so like when we see people like in
relationships where there's morethat addiction and drama where
you have like constant conflict and escalation or you have
(22:29):
emotional whiplashing, you have there's like a lot of hyper
vigilance and overreactivity in relationships.
You have just a lot of like sometimes there's emotional
intimacy and then there's not. There's a lot of a lot of
symptoms in which this addictiondrama shows up in relationships.
But the neuroscience underneath it all is really interesting
because sometimes I think we canfocus too much on that, like
(22:50):
attachment styles, when there's something that like comes before
attachment styles in the neuroscience.
And there's a part of the brain called the prefrontal orbital
cortex that when there isn't enough safety, security,
emotional connection basically becomes underdeveloped in the
brain. And consequently, as that part
of the brain gets underdeveloped, we become
(23:12):
insensitive to things like oxytocin.
So we even if there's love thereas an adult, we often can't
literally the receptors can't take it in, can't register the
oxytocin that the bond, the sense of bonding.
And there's another piece of that is that those individuals
(23:34):
who have that sort of oxytocin or endorphic, well, I'll talk
about endorphins in a second. Oxytocin kind of depletion or
inability to receive have a much, much higher chance for an
opioid addiction. And the reason for that being,
and this is where it gets reallyinteresting and this is where
like an addiction to drama and stress comes in, is that things
(23:58):
like endorphins. So you know when you go for a
run and you'll get that runner'shigh, that is an endorphic
response. So it attaches to the opioid
receptors in our brain like the and it gives endorphins give us
pain relief. It gives us a sense of social
and emotional closeness as well or bonding and it gives us a
(24:19):
sense of like pleasure. Now where do you think we get
those endorphins from? Little hint, stress, every time
you're stressed, whether it's you're going for a run and you
get that endorphic high or you're dealing with your
mother-in-law, you have an endorphic response in your body.
And so this is where it gets really interesting.
It's because stress, the mechanism of stress creates pain
(24:42):
relief, social bonding and a sense of elevation in our mood.
And we, we often times go, no, no stress is, is awful thing.
That's a very simplistic understanding of stress and that
the Physiology and the biology of stress is actually way more
complex. And, and so it's really
important to know that actually stress has an important response
(25:03):
in our ability to adapt in the world.
Someone throws a baseball at you, you have a stress response
to catch it, right. That's a stress response just as
much as like you're not sure if you can pay your electric bill
this month. They might have different
intensities, but both of those had the same response, which is
an endorphic release as part of the stress activation.
(25:25):
And why that's important is because remember, those who are
addicted to anything have some severity of pain, emotional or
physiological, physical pain. So what do we do?
We want to relieve that pain. We and for we also want to feel
more alive. Those who have trauma and I felt
numb in their life don't didn't get enough nourishment and love
(25:47):
all of those things and they became more dissociated.
They want to feel more alive andconnected and they want to feel
more bonded. Stress allows for all of that.
There's a research study of Australia in which they made
they had two groups of people. One group stuck their hand in
(26:08):
cold water, like really cold water that kind of burned, and
then went to do these tasks, these sort of academic tasks.
And the other group would just put their hand in neutral, like
water that was kind of warm, lukewarm, whatever, and they
would go do the task. The group that went through the
stress together not only felt more bonded and connected after,
(26:30):
but they also performed better. Their attention and their energy
from the stress response allowedthem to feel more connected
bond, so connected, bonded and focused.
And so these are the really important things to recognize is
because it's like as humans, we're all looking for pain
relief, right? Some way or another, we're all
(26:50):
looking for closeness. It's kind of the nature of being
human. We're all looking for more
energy and this assurance that we feel alive and, and a sense
of awe and wonder in the world. Thus we just feel dead inside,
right? And the thing that gives us that
the most and is the most contagious, as you said, and the
most addictive is stress. Wow.
(27:11):
So it's like creating, it's creating stress as a pain
reliever to make yourself feel better somehow.
It's it's making, yeah. Yeah, and social bonding, right.
People call trauma bonding, but trauma bonding just literally
means, and it's often misunderstood, which is
different than drama bonding. Trauma bonding gives us a sense
(27:32):
of closeness to other people through shared pain.
Yeah, that's part of our the nature being human.
Through shared stress, we feel more connected.
Drama bonding is more when you're like throwing logs on
someone else's drama fire, right?
Like they come over and they're like, my partner did this and
you're like, Oh my gosh, how dare they, They're so awful.
Tell me more, Who else? We've all done that.
(27:54):
We've all done that, right? You're just like, you're like
you're, you're, you're not really offering solutions.
You're just like Oh my God, I can't even believe that.
You're not offering solutions, you're a cheerleader to the
drama. I have one of my best friends.
I love her. She is an absolute cheerleader
to my drama. And like, I know that if I call
her, I'm gonna have this deep sense of, like, vengeance and
(28:15):
satisfaction and like, you know,screw them and they were wrong.
And if I call other friends, I'mgonna be like, Oh my gosh, I
really see my part in this. So, you know, I often call herds
first, right? Right.
Of course do the work and then. You'll and then I'll do the work
I need. Inspection.
Yeah, I need the satisfaction first.
We all need it. I love.
This like, I love this card. It's so funny because like you
(28:35):
are that you're a therapist and you've been through living the
drama of life. And so you, you know what it's
like to live on both sides of it.
You're like, I got the awarenesspiece, But first let's relish in
the in the fun of it and then we'll get into the the work.
Look, again, we feel more bondedto someone who's going to be
drama. It's called drama bonding for a
reason. We're going to feel more
connected. We're going to feel more or less
(28:56):
validated and satisfied. And that that can feel really
good. It's just not accurate most of
the time, right? You know what this made me think
of? It's just yesterday as I was
preparing for this and talking to my best friend.
We work on the podcast together and I was like, cursed.
Just today, I'm watching my feedand there's a post by People
(29:16):
magazine around, you know, it was a picture of Justin Baldoni
and Taylor Swift with this, like, big line between the the
two of them, right? And it was like something around
the story of she's being served papers and the person that was
serving jumped over Travis Kelsey's fence, right.
And got arrested because obviously he's trespassing.
And like, yeah, no good man. That's totally legit.
(29:38):
The guy was deserved to be arrested.
But it was all around creating drama between Justin and Taylor
Swift, right? It's just like this rift I'm
going. This is what the world we live
in, though, Scott. It's creating drama around
circumstances that we know nothing about.
I don't need to know anything about.
Of course not. I really, really don't care.
(30:00):
And I'm thinking actually, I've got a compassion for the people
that are all involved that are actually, they're, these are
real people that are going through like a legal dispute,
which is so freaking stressful and awful.
And it's like actually the drama.
There's no need for anybody to get involved.
But that's what I'm saying around here is like we're, we're
surrounded by stories, made-up stuff, drama.
(30:24):
And it's, no, it doesn't surprise me that in our own
lives, on a personal level, it'slike, you know what I mean?
There's the perpetuation in our society around this.
Yeah, well, we're in an endemic of an addiction to drama.
Like it's not like what I was kind of sharing us like the the
personal origin story that was once more like that was the
(30:44):
common components or the common denominators for those who are
addicted dramas, early developmental trauma, you know,
numbing out, dissociating, needing to feel some sense of
sensation that rises above the threshold, numbness and having
big kind of seeking and creatingscenarios that help do that.
That that was the sort of classic case.
Now we're in a culture in which the intensity and overwhelm to
(31:09):
our nervous system is just everywhere, right?
There's a reason the news has increased by like 42% over the
last few years. The use of dramatic language
imagery, sexual imagery, violentimagery, all of these things
that that heighten our stress response and get our attention
(31:30):
and capture it and maintain it. And the consequence of that over
and over again is that we are over stimulated and under
processed. We start to numb out.
We start to feel more dead inside and dead in the world.
And what do we need to start to feel alive again?
Something that rises above the threshold of that numbness,
which has to be something reallyintense and something that can
(31:52):
really get us worked up to some degree.
The media knows this. That's why they keep having to
increase the level. So if you're familiar with
anything around addiction, you know that we build tolerances,
right? So you need more alcohol to get
drunk. You need more stress to get the
the stress, the high endorphic responsive stress after a while.
(32:12):
And in the same thing is true here, that we actually need much
more intense stimulus. And they will provide intense
stimulus, whether it's on the news or in the newspaper or on
social media feeds. All of these things to rise
above that threshold of numbnessthat they help create to get our
attention in order to then eventually sell us whatever's
(32:33):
being sold on the brakes or on someone's social media.
Like that's just what we're that's the world we live in now.
You know, it sounds kind of likea conspiracy theory, but there's
tons of research on it. I know it's not a conspiracy
theory because we live in this world and it's all you, all you
need to do is turn on the TV andand just.
See. Turn it off and see what
happens. Like when you start to get bored
(32:56):
and go through withdrawal symptoms, which is actually very
real for a lot of people. And it's like when you go on
vacation, the first few days you're like, Oh my God, this is
amazing. Then you get the itch and you're
checking your phone all the timeand you're like, and you're
thinking about work or you're thinking about other things and
you can't actually relax. That's what's happening to us as
a culture where we're moving further and further away from
(33:16):
our own ability to restore. That is so true.
That's so well said. And this is part of this.
This is a lot of the work that you're doing, right, Scott?
Like day-to-day is helping people to come back to that
place of, of connectedness, right with yourself.
Yeah. And making rest a practice,
(33:37):
making peace, like peace a priority in your life.
Like, what does that mean exactly?
Like, I didn't know what peace was until I would say the last
year of my life. Like, I feel like I'm embodying
peace. Yeah.
Yeah. I never used to be in that place
to say that, you know? Well, and, and that's amazing.
And as we recognize, OK, what are the conditions that allow
(34:00):
any of us, including you, to find the embody or experience
rest or peace and to recognize what are the ways in in which
we're getting in the way of our own peace?
How are we contributing to our own life?
That is difficult. And, and people will come at me
after I say things like that andthey're like, you're, you're
(34:22):
shaming and blaming me. You're making me the victim.
And I was like, you should read my book.
It's called Addicted to Drama and right, it's and and there
are conditions and there are shitty things in the world and
there are mean people. And none of that is untrue.
And here's the thing, like by the third meth addict that I
(34:42):
dated, I had to ask myself here.Who am I contributing to this?
Yeah. What's the common denominator?
Oh, my gosh, it's me. Were they still on meth?
Yes. Was it awful?
Yes. But why did I stay and why did I
allow my boundaries to be crossed so many times over and
over again? That is my contribution to this
(35:03):
equation. And so even if the world is hard
and it is hard, and even if people are mean and maybe
incapable of loving us in the ways that we want, what in US is
the mechanism that keeps us involved in that?
And that's part of the the same mechanism that we're talking
about in addiction to trauma. So you, you are like a
practitioner and teacher of somatic and you've got a body
(35:25):
lab. Can you tell us about somatic
therapy and somatic practices just in like really simple
terms? Because this is like the word
itself. I don't people, a lot of people
don't know what it is, but I like, I would love to learn more
about that. Yeah, when we're talking about
somatics in terms of therapeutictherapy, we're talking about
like body based therapies. So soma means Greek means body
(35:49):
and somatics is the practices ofcoming more into our body and
that's that. So it's a radical shift from the
idea like we're just we're heads, we're brains that are
just being carried around by ourbody.
Like we know that's no longer true.
Like, thanks to many great books, like the Body Keeps a
Score right, that our tissues hold memory right.
(36:12):
This is not, this is no longer some like some funny idea.
This is like, this is all the where the science is
demonstrating. It's like the body keeps the
score right. The your muscles, your breath,
your cells are reenacting the historic past in every moment
until there's some type of shift.
For example, when people say, oh, I'm triggered, right?
(36:34):
Which is such a funny word because like what they mean is
I'm having emotional past and I'm living out my history in my
past as though it was currently happening in the present.
That's really well said, yeah. And thanks.
And somatics as a tool and a technique helps us reconnect to
the present moment, to our breath in this moment, to the
(36:55):
sensations and feelings in this moment.
And even be able to discern whatis the emotions from the past
that are acting as though it's in the present.
And what are the actual sensations and feelings and
emotions happening in the current moment.
When we think about, I think oneof the easiest ways to
understand somatics is in relation to trauma.
So trauma is the great fragmenter.
(37:17):
It cuts us off from feeling our own body, our own intuitions,
our own sensation, from feeling relationship.
And all of these things that arefragmented, cut off, can only be
refound through the body. If we're dissociated, if we're
disconnected through the body, we're not going to come home and
suddenly feel like we can groundin our body or feel safe here
(37:40):
unless we have the practices that allow us to experience
that. And it's not a cognitive thing.
Like go ahead and tell yourself you're safe when you're watching
a scary movie. Try it, See how well that works
for you. But if you connected, for
example, to the sense of the blanket around you that you're
holding, or the person next to you that you're leaning into, or
the chair underneath you, then you can be feel both the fear,
(38:03):
but also the sense of security and safety that only can be felt
through the body. And so in this sense, you
suddenly start to feel safe as opposed to think your way into
safety. You can't think your way into
safety and you can't think your way into healing the all the
fragmented parts. You can only feel your way in to
(38:24):
heal. And so when you're talking,
Scott, I, I think I'm understanding this in a new way
because you know, like traditionally it's like talk
therapy. We could talk it out, right?
We're like, all right, let's go into that memory.
Let's like even, you know, with my own therapist, we do.
Well, I think maybe it's, it's acombination of somatics because
it's like we go into meditative state and go into that place, go
(38:45):
into that memory. So it's possible that it's a lot
of different things all at once,but it makes me think like
somatics is. And you, please correct me if
I'm wrong, but it's like you're intentionally going into your
body to heal stuff that that is trapped.
You don't know, right? So you're doing movement, you're
whatever it is that you are doing.
It's like trying to locate that stuff that you would not have
(39:08):
otherwise been able to do with, like with talk talk therapy, for
example. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, here's what we know is that like a new thought, for
example, is so fast, like milliseconds, and then an old
thought takes a little longer tolike longer to form.
Excuse me, a new, an old thoughttakes is very fast.
(39:28):
A new thought is even longer to form.
And to contact or connect to a sensation in our body takes
about 10 times longer than the formation of an old or new
thought. And why that's important is, is
it means we have to slow down toactually get out of the patterns
of our thoughts. We have to slow down to be able
to feel the sensations, to feel the things that we never felt.
(39:52):
One of the things about trauma is that it's not what happened
to you. It's not the event, it's how did
it happen and how did it get stored and what was missing and
what didn't get to be processed.And when you're actually healing
trauma, you have to go back and feel and move, metabolize and
move through what never got to be felt.
And you can't think your way into feeling.
(40:13):
You can only. A tune into yourself, into your
body, the place where feelings and sensations happen and feel
your way through it. And it melts all of those, you
know, like they're like cysts almost in your body, right?
That those memories, those experiences that never got to be
processed and that's taxing on the body over time.
And it's, you know, in the same way if you break your, let's say
(40:36):
you break your foot, right? And all of a sudden and you're
like, you know, you're, you're not putting much weight on it,
you're being very careful. But all of a sudden in like 3
weeks, your back starts hurting and your hip is hurting.
You're like, well, what does this have anything to do with
my, my injury? But the whole body is connected
and compensating constantly for the injury.
(40:58):
The same thing is true for emotional injuries is you're in
constant compensation for the emotional injuries.
And, and this is where it becomes really challenging
because not only do we have to address the injury, but the
compensations. And that's really the power of
semantics is it allows you to identify what's the
compensations like our attachment style and what's the
(41:18):
actual root pain and be able to then process and metabolize that
as well, not just the compensational or behavioral
pattern. Wow, that's amazing.
It makes me think of two things while you're saying this.
The first is like, I remember this was a few like quite a few
years ago. One of my really good friends
runs five rhythms workshops and it's like like 2 day I signed up
(41:42):
and I was like, all right, let'sdo this.
I've never done anything like it, right?
So it's like free dance and justlike free, like whatever.
Like she's, she's a DJ. And so the music's pumping and
then it's slowing down and you're just moving along among.
I was like probably 50 of us in this big hall and one give at
one point in time. Like I was just having a great
time really. And some of it was intense.
Some of it was just like and at 1 moment I remember like just, I
(42:06):
had all of a sudden I just started crying like bawling,
calling my eyes out. And I'm like, what the heck.
And like and she's seeing, but she's talking to all of us as a
collective and going just feel the feels whatever, like just.
And I'm, I'm trying to, I think I was judging like why am I
crying? But then I was like, I just have
to let this out. Whatever it is, it's coming up
(42:27):
for me. So I cried, cried and then
within 20 minutes I'm feeling really good again, like just
light, but it because it passed,but that was that was locked in
me somewhere somehow. I don't know what I was crying
about and I guess it doesn't matter.
It really doesn't, right? The end of the day, you.
Don't have to know. That's just it though, right,
(42:49):
Scott? Like that must be the experience
for a lot of people going through this.
It's like something's coming up and maybe you will get a memory,
maybe you will have something, some cognitive understanding,
but at the end of the day, doesn't really matter.
Like you're releasing it, right?That's how I understood it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean this is the interesting
thing that happens in trauma. One of the things that fragments
(43:11):
is our our memory systems fragments.
So the part of our memory that'sinvolved with that, that holds
the emotions, that holds the sensations and experience what's
called the implicit memory. And then which is different from
the declarative or autobiographical memories, which
is or narrative memories, which is like the story of what
happened and what in trauma happens is those two become
(43:33):
separated. So we and it makes it much
harder to process your emotions when you it's not related, when
it's just floating around right away from the story that so when
someone tells you a story or talks about a relationship or
divorce and then just sound flat, that's what it's like.
It's like it's so separate the emotions from the the memory or
(43:54):
on the other side, someone can have like big kind of emotional
responses and it is related to the memory that's been
fragmented, but they, they don'thave a container, a place to put
it. So it just is like this chronic
crying or depression. And so what's really what is
beautiful is that one of the things we do in somatic trauma
(44:15):
work is we bridge back the memory system.
So, and sometimes we are not able to have the narrative
memory, like narrative memory means like there was a
beginning, middle, end of the story.
We don't necessarily have to have that if we allow for it to
(44:35):
just move and process through the body, the emotions.
I mean, and that's what you did.Like the dance was the container
was the thing that held you, then your body was the container
as you moved that allowed for that to metabolize and just move
through you. And sometimes we have
experiences that are really emotional that happened before
ages. We can even remember it.
(44:56):
And sometimes the emotional memory will never meet or
connect back up with a narrativememory.
And that's OK too. We can still process it.
Wow, I've really like Doctor Scott Lyons.
I love talking to you. I've learned so much in this
hour. I really have.
I really appreciate everything you're doing.
And I just thanks, like, I just love your presence and the work
(45:17):
you're doing because you bring alot of levity too.
Thank you. You know, like you really do
too. Like some serious stuff.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. It's funny because I remember I
was talking to Ester Perel recently about this and she's
like, I no longer. I'm interested in trauma, I'm
only interested in joy. And I was like, oh, I, I really
(45:38):
get what you're coming from. And she, we talked through it,
but like, I was like, I wonder if I could start saying that
too, of like. But my, my way, my, my shift in
language around it is like the things that get denied from us
as part of trauma is things likeplay and levity and joy.
(45:59):
And here's the thing, it's like we could try to force that on
ourselves and it wouldn't do anything.
But if we can find play, and this is really interesting
because this is research that's been coming out more, is that
one of the most effective traumahealing practices is play.
It doesn't surprise me at all. And not me either.
And there's there is a parallel between somatic therapy and play
(46:21):
because it is more, there's a lot more curiosity and
investigation and sort of sometimes movement that that's
also associated with play. So it's very restorative.
I can't imagine my life without just a shit ton of joy and play.
You know, I, it's, it is part ofmy life.
It's just laughter. I just, I like, it's just so
important to me. It's like one of my, my top
(46:41):
values. It's funny, I've never written
that down, but it's, it is play and joy and fun because like
what? How else?
What do you deal with life? It's hard.
Well, and this is the thing, andit's like if we've had tough
experiences and we've had a lot of trauma, it freezes us and
it's really hard to push past ormove through the freeze in order
to find play. But at the same time, play can
(47:03):
help defrost us or thaw us out abit.
Yeah, and sometimes it's just like it doesn't have to be, you
know, there there's so many waysthat we can play.
Like my idea of playing is like sitting down with like my
friends or a partner or even my kids and doing like Angel cards.
I mean, come on. Like that is fun.
Like to me, that's like, let's let's play with some Angel
because angels are going to tellus some great stuff.
(47:25):
Yeah. That kind of thing, for
instance. 100% So this last yearfor my birthday, I took like
2025 of my dearest friends. We're all adults.
And we went and did laser tag for a couple hours and it was
like, and every, so many of themwere like hesitant.
They're like, I don't know, thisis for kids.
(47:46):
And I was like, we are kids and adult bodies.
And by the end everyone was like, we have to do this so much
more. This is like therapeutic.
And it's, it's like, I haven't felt this level of joy in such a
long time. And I was like, yeah, play is
play is my jam. Oh, that's that's so fun, Scott.
Well, thank you, Doctor. Scott Lyons.
My pleasure and. I know you're not feeling great,
(48:06):
so I really appreciate you. You, you made your champion.
I'm holding up your book again because I think it's amazing.
And I hope everybody buys it in audio too, so they can hear your
voice and your stories and your laughter, because that's that's
that's a big part of it too. Thank you so much, what a
pleasure. I'm going to close with a
blessing with your sentiments and your and my learnings
(48:26):
through you this week. May we support our loved ones
that are addicted to drama, understanding this is often from
a deep, wired reaction to pain within.
We've really learned that today.May we, while supporting others,
hold space to support ourselves,creating clear boundaries and
doing practices that restore andrecuperate our own energy and
(48:49):
our own peace. And may we understand that
healing is about letting the parts of you that hurt finally
feel safe. Safe enough to stay.
I love that. That was a quote that we took
from your book and I just think that is beautiful.
Yeah. Thank you.
So thank you, Doctor Scott Lyons.
(49:10):
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you so much for being here
with us. Let's Talk Love is brought to
you by Real Love Ready and hosted by Robin Ducharme.
If you'd like to keep learning with us, visit realloveready.com
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