Are You Addicted To Drama? How Can You Recover Positivity?

I’ve just read this wonderful article about the importance of telling your story and I largely agree with it. As a counsellor my training has helped me to understand that shame lurks in our shadows and can cause havoc in our lives through unseen adaptations from negative childhood experiences and when we open up about our story we can bring that shame into conscious awareness and that enables us to accept our adaptations with compassion and then gradually change them to become more healthy and less destructive. 

Brain Biases For Survival 
However… and this is a big however… I personally think the counselling world does not educate and provide enough warnings to clients. As a coach and an advocate of mediation and positive psychology there is a very important aspect to bear in mind when framing our stories - the biases of the brain, which will always prioritize survival, and therefore FEAR (and other negative emotions that shock us). A bias is a systematic distortion of the facts, leaning towards a certain angle. Because of evolution the brain tends to bias towards:

1. Negativity - it will tend to look for problems, instead of positive  things to be grateful for
2. Amplification of problems - it will tend to make things bigger than they actually are, instead of seeing things in proportion, in a balanced way.
3. Confirmation of current beliefs - it will tend to try and uphold the beliefs already formed as these are ‘known’ and therefore ‘feel’ safer, instead of challenging beliefs and looking for new evidence. Brains love the known and fear the unknown. 

First Warning: Your Brain Doesn’t Really Want Happiness. 
With the knowledge of these things we can try to temper our stories. The first warming I would give to clients is - the brain will not want to temper the stories. It wants to hold on to the fear. The primal parts of the brain and millions of years old and have served it well to survive and reproduce. It doesn’t really care for happiness. It will always prioritize survival, and therefore fear. Drama is a great way of fueling fear.  

The Second Warning: Drama Is Addictive
The primal brain is basically addicted to drama. If you’re describing a challenging situation the brain will almost always want to dramatise it - to look for the problems and amplify them. It finds no-problem situations and factual sentences… kinda boring! Notice how when someone else tries to retell your situation without emotion the brain will get angry that the situation isn’t being presented dramatically enough. It will want to tell stories of brutal trauma and vulnerability. Whilst there is a place for that I believe that we must allow some space for raw, emotional expression and then we must try and let the stories go and come back to a healthy, balanced view. Again the brain will HATE this idea. It always wants to prioritize survival, so it will try to believe the negative and run life based on feelings instead of facts. 

The Third Warning: You Might Inadvertently Amplify Trauma
The problem with this is that it may amplify the traumatic memories and then the subsequent effects. It can become an obsessive thought pattern that can create powerfully problematic symptoms and behaviours like depression, anxiety, OCD, bitterness or even panic attacks, intrusive thoughts and more. These are known as negative feedback loops, where the results of the negative thoughts reinforce negative behaviours and then create evidence that supports more negative thoughts, 

Trauma vs Adaptation
Trauma is a real thing. I work with people who’ve lived under terrifying and unpredictable parents. I’ve worked with people who have been attacked and people who have had repeated abuse. It is important to emotionally validate how hard and traumatic these experiences were. However  ‘Developmental Trauma’ is not the event itself but the series of events and the internalised set of beliefs and behaviours that the child adapted to survive. I often define it as ‘too much, too fast, too soon, too alone’. It is times we were not only overwhelmed but didn’t have the resources and support from people to process it. 

But is everything challenging a ‘Trauma?’ 
Sometimes we define big T Trauma and little T trauma, butIt is increasingly recognized in psychology and neuroscience that many responses described as "trauma responses" are more accurately defined as adaptations to adverse, threatening, or challenging experiences. This shift in terminology emphasizes that these behaviors are not a sign of a broken system, but rather a set of intelligent, protective strategies the brain and body developed to ensure survival in the face of danger 

I fought hard to acknowledge my ‘Trauma’.
I know, I know, the brain fights this idea. It wants to cling on to the idea of trauma, because that is part of the drama triangle - the victim mindset. I think there is an important first step in identifying past pain and acknowledging how painful it was. Then as a second step we can challenge our own thinking and come to see that perhaps we have adapted to challenges and this is incredible!  There might be some benefits to taking this perspective:

• Reduces Stigma and Shame: Framing responses as adaptations helps remove the idea that a person is damaged or weak. It reframes their reactions as functional, albeit potentially no longer helpful in their current safe environment 
• Empowers Individuals: Recognizing these as protective measures highlights a person's resilience and agency, rather than just their victimhood. It acknowledges that they did what they needed to do to survive 
• Guides Treatment: Therapies can then focus not on simply eradicating "symptoms," but on helping the individual understand the original protective purpose of these adaptations and then gently updating their nervous system's response to align with current safety,
• Encourages Faith: When we see the world as challenges leading to growth we begin to see the universe as kind and helpful, even if it is rough, at times. The universe / god / our parents gave us life. Coming back to faith in life helps us feel grateful. 

The Discipline To Amplify Positivity,
As a counsellor I can attest to the power of expressing your pain and telling your story with a whole heart. It is so healing in itself, but I think that the healing job is only half complete at this point. Health is about balance. To balance the brain and the painful stories I believe we need to counteract the negative biases also. This includes:

• Recorrecting our language to be more accurate and not pedal the subtle lies within our stories (for example ‘trauma’ implies a wound
• Removing blame and shame by finding a balanced view and deeper understanding of the nuance of our past and of the people who hurt us.
• Remembering the positive parts of our past - the times where we were loved and supported or the times where we succeeded and connected beautifully.
• De-labelling ourselves and removing a fixed mindset to see ourselves as growth oriented  beings, adapting to change and choosing to make conscious choices in that process. 
• Defining the principles that you choose to lead the way in your life. 
• Practicing positive and healthy mental and physical habits. 

Positivity Is Actually Easier
The good news is you don’t have to use willpower to do this, you can use reminders. I call mindfulness Re-Mindfulness because all we’re really doing is reminding ourselves of some basic facts:

• Positivity, gratitude, appreciation and love feel great
• They also help us get things done in a more efficient way than fear
• They also help us connect more, which makes things even easier to do - teamwork makes the dream work. 
• They also help us to remember that life is good and give us more motivation to live life in a healthy and happy way. 

 
My personal practices
I’m not perfect, that’s for sure. I’m a work in progress. I can share with you what I’m attempting to do to steer myself to be more aligned with reality and to rebalance the negative mind:

1. TSP prayer, twice daily (Thank you, Sorry, Please)
2. My chosen principles are on the wall in my bathroom, where I see them daily
3. Name the brain. I call mine Jarvis - like Tony Stark’s AI computer companion. I tell it to stop thinking about things and it does! Having a separation really helps. 
4. Choosing my media carefully I've struggled with this a lot! Getting the algorithms on board helps, by clicking the appropriate like/dislike buttons on stuff you see (and reporting bad content).
   1. Reading helpful books
   2. Less news, more documentaries
   3. For downtime I read interesting fiction or play an instrument
5. Tea, lots of it, mostly decaffeinated or herbal. 
6. Listening to others and responding with empathy.
7. STEP into Worry time!  When I get emotions I stop and  note down each STEP ( Situation, Thoughts, Emotions and Potential consequences). I don’t review all these until about 4:30pm, before dinner, but after work - allocating a specific, limited period each day to focus solely on concerns.  By setting a time and place I can get on with my day and then the worry time is contained. I find it tends to be quite fun too! It helps put emotional thoughts into perspective. 

If you’d like help rediscovering you positive, playful and powerful adult self then come to a course or do some coaching with me.

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