00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 268, "Drama Response." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living.

00:21

Alright. Hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad to have you here today. We've got some good stuff planned. Aren't our brains fascinating? It never ceases to amaze me all of the workarounds that they create in order to protect us from fear and from perceived danger. And today we're going to delve into this a little bit deeper and we're going to see how this shows up in our lives in the form of drama.

00:50

Okay. So we're going to be talking today about the drama response. And this is what I call "our natural inclination to go into drama." This isn't a scientific term, by the way. It's kind of my own little made up thing. But here we go. Our primitive brain loves to play in extremes. It loves "all or nothing" mentality. It loves to go to worst case scenarios. I think all of you get that, right? Your brains have done this and these things heighten the intensity of our thoughts and our emotions and our responses. So why does the brain like to do this? Because it wants to be prepared for any contingency that might occur. It wants to protect us. It is actually doing what the primitive brain was created to do. If we go back to cave man days, our brain had to be on constant alert for danger. And you never knew when the next corner would have a saber-toothed tiger waiting for you. Our brains still have this heightened sense of danger awareness, even though they're not encountering life[1]threatening danger around the house or in the neighborhood. So it's looking for other things that might occur, might cause us some consternation, and although they aren't a real danger to us, our brain often interprets them as danger and goes into protective mode.

02:10

For example, when your mother says for the umpteenth time about how you're not doing something right, an unchecked brain will go to the extremes and freak out as though we are in real danger. "Why is she always like that? How can she make me feel so small even when I'm in my fifties? She never treats my sister like this." See our brain going to extremes and when we want to start telling our best friend, our spouse, our children, anyone who will listen, we just go there. Our brains want to do that. Our brain is rallying the troops to protect us and the story gets bigger and bigger with each retelling and our emotions get higher and higher. Are you with me? You've been here before? Because I know darn well I'm not the only one, okay? And this is when the drama hits the fan, right? But it all starts with our brain trying to protect us. I also think that when our brain starts feeling as though we're losing control, it will really ramp up the emotions in order to feel as though we're gaining a semblance of control because it's dangerous to lose control, right? And so our brain again is trying to protect us. And it's fascinating to notice that contrary to what our brain is thinking is going to happen, we actually don't get more control when we ramp up the emotions, we actually start spinning out of control and into drama. 03:40 So when talking about drama, the word that comes to mind for me is "excessive." Excessive emotions lead to drama, excessive expectations lead to drama, excessive behaviors lead to drama, right? It's our brain blowing things out of proportion with our thoughts, then experiencing an excessive feeling, and then we behave in excessive ways. This is what I call the drama response. And it happens in every area of our lives where we haven't yet learned how to manage our thoughts and keep them in check. And even if we have learned how to do that, we're not always really great at it, right? So sometimes they still go into drama. I'm going to share with you today that mine have a little bit lately, okay?

04:26

So today we're going to talk about four ways that our brains go into drama response. So we can be more aware of what's happening to us and why. We can start watching ourselves go into drama response and go, "whoa, whoa, whoa, back off. Like, I don't want to go into drama." Because although the drama response can feel good in the moment, it creates this dopamine rush of, "whoa," like all this stuff, it uses a lot of energy. And it has us showing up in ways that we're not proud of later. So then we might start shaming ourselves or beating ourselves up and it damages relationships.

05:03

So the first way that we're going to talk today about how we go into drama response is one of my personal favorites because, in fact, I have actually caught myself using this, going here, many times in the last few days and this is trying to tell the future. Our brain has an amazing way of thinking that we can tell what is going to happen in the future. I will get myself all worked up by creating scenarios or stories of how things will play out and snarky ways that I will respond. And I notice while my brain is working to tell the future, my emotions are getting riled up as well. I start feeling angry that the people in my story, my brain's creating for the future, that they're responding to me in a certain way in the predictions my brain is making about the future. So. The funny thing is while I was preparing this part of my podcast, I totally, like my brain went off and to a particular situation that I'm kind of working through right now, and I created a future scenario for me all over again and I took a five minute break from preparing the podcast to start predicting my future and creating a story of what was going to happen in the future. And this future story I kept telling myself is so powerful. My heart rate elevated a little bit and I was feeling some anger. And my brain, and it's all from my brain thinking that it can tell the future, that it can predict what's going on. But guess what? It can't. But it sure likes to try. So why does our brain do this? Well, it is pulling information from our past to try and predict what will happen in the future so that it can protect us. Okay. It's like my brain saying, "oh, if this happens in the future, this is what you'll say. This is what you'll do." But guess what? Our past does not predict our future. I notice in the story that I'm currently telling myself in my situation that it's preparing me to know how I want to respond in words and behaviors when this prediction comes to pass, which it won't. They're all far fetched, right? The story I'm telling myself about what will happen is so far away from anything that would really happen, but I'm still having an emotional response about it and I'm feeling angry. And if I keep entertaining these false predictions, I'll get myself so riled up that if the real life situation brings about anything even close or even starts heading in something similar, my primitive brain will probably respond so quickly that I'll say or do things that will cause some drama, even before my prefrontal cortex is aware that something is going down. Been there, done that, not just me, right? Like we respond and then we go, "whoa, what was that? What did I just say? What did I just do?" I also notice that in these times I feel, when I create these these predictive stories of the future, I find my brain wanting to talk to people about it a lot. I'm wanting to tell them all the things that are going on. This is the deal. Our brains just keep on braining. When we can get ourselves to stand outside and be the watcher of our brain it really is quite fascinating.

08:24

Remember your brain cannot predict the future regardless of how many stories it comes up with or how detailed they are. We create our future based on the choices we're making right now. It can't be predicted. For me this means that as soon as I catch myself in this daydreamy predicting the future place I redirect my brain to thinking of things that are more productive than creating drama in my brain that has the potential to ooze out into my life later on. So I just redirect my brain and I go, "okay, serious, like, let's get back to reality. Let's think about how I actually want to process this." So there's the first way, we go into making up stories about our future thinking we can predict the future.

09:14

Now here's the second way. This, we move into this drama response that is closely related to predicting the future, and it's making up stories about the past or the present. Our brain loves to make up stories. And in the previous example, our brain was making up stories for the future. But now we're talking about making up stories for the past and the present. Because our brains love a complete story. They love to be able to put all the pieces together so that things make sense. And if our brain only has part of a story, it will invent the rest of the story to complete it. So if you only know the end of the story, your brain will make up the beginning and the middle, just make it up out of thin air. That's what our brain does. If it only knows the beginning or the middle, it will make up the other parts that it doesn't know. And here's the really fascinating part. Our primitive brain can't tell the difference between a true fact and a made up piece of information like this piece of information that our brain makes up. It just believes them all even though it knows that it made it up. Kind of crazy. So here's something that I've learned lately that is shifting so much of my thinking. Research is showing that about 60% of our memories are wrong. 60%! Isn't that crazy. So here's what happened after 9/11, they interviewed people about their experience about who they called, about what they talked about about, what happened, what they did. And then a few months later, they interviewed the same people again. And so much in their story was different. And the people had so bought into their new story that they were insistent that even though they said one thing the day after 9/11, they couldn't figure out why they would have said that because they knew that it wasn't that way.

11:07

Our brains are always manipulating the information to best fit our view of ourselves and others. Meaning, if I think I'm always kind and thoughtful, then even when I'm not, my brain will adjust the information to show and make me believe that I was being kind and thoughtful. If I really think someone else is a jerk, my brain will change the information given to make them a jerk, even if in reality they responded with kindness. Isn't that crazy? So when we can realize that our brain can be very unreliable as far as memory goes, then we can begin to realize that much of what we remember about situations is not true. But if we are a person who tends toward drama, liking excessive emotion and lots of intense interpretations and stories and the attention that it brings, then we can know that our brain is filling in the rest of the story with details that will create drama, details that are in fact made up. Another fascinating part about this is that we will not realize that it's made up. We will 100% believe that what we are thinking or believing is true. Even enough so, that even like the interviewees from 9/11, months later we will insist that our mother wasn't the first one we called even if we said on September 12th that she was. We will be convinced three months later that we actually called our best friend first. Isn't that crazy? When they were interviewed on September 12th, they told one story and three months later they were telling a different story but insisting that their September 12th self was wrong. Our brains really just aren't as reliable as we like to believe that they are. Have you noticed how often you and someone from your past will have different recollections about things? It's your brain and their brain filling in the pieces, making up stories, making up the parts of the story that it doesn't know for sure but that will fit in with our view of the world.

13:18

And your brain will replay that story so many times that you will be 100% convinced that it's true. So when you fill the pull to go into a drama fest, remember that what you are remembering may not be true even if you're certain that it is. So I've gotten pretty good lately at saying, "I might be wrong about this, but this is what I remember," or saying, "this is what I remember but I might be wrong." I'm just trying to get to the point where I acknowledge that, "listen I might be wrong." Maybe it's very likely. Right?

13:54

Working with one of my clients last week we were talking about things that one of her adult children had accused her of that she didn't believe or remember. And I was able to remind her that whether it was true or not her child completely believed that it was. And as well, maybe it was true and it was her memory that had changed the story. So this space of being able to offer grace for the fact that this was her child's belief helped her to not create more drama with her daughter. So remember the more you think someone is a jerk, the better the jerk story your brain will create. The more you think someone is loving and kind, the better a loving story your brain will create. Okay, pretty crazy, right? So one more reason that it's so important to manage our thoughts around people because our brain will create stories that can throw us into a huge drama response with that often made up information.

14:54

Okay, so here's a third way that our brains create a drama response. They pretend. So this one always cracks me up. A few years ago, I was getting some coaching on something my ex-spouse was doing and I was up in arms with shock that he would do what he was doing, right? Notice the drama. My coach just looked at me and asked if I was surprised, and, of course I was completely shocked. Then she looked at me again and said, "okay, honestly, are you really surprised that that's his response?" And then I told myself the truth and actually I wasn't surprised. It was right on brand for how things were going between us at the time. But my brain was really enjoying the drama response, pretending that I didn't know that he would do something like that. Okay, because where's the drama fun in saying, "of course he would respond that way. That's totally on brand for him." There's no drama there. And my brain kind of likes the drama. It creates this adrenaline, right? The real drama adrenaline comes in the shock and the awe and the surprise and the telling everybody about how horrible he is and "can you believe it?" And them buying into my story and being just as shocked and appalled as me...that's the drama adrenaline.

16:12

Now that, my friends, is a fun drama response. And I'll tell you what, it feels fun and exciting and justifying at the time. And then the drama response start playing out and we don't always love the end result. Because this is the place where people get hurt, where the unkind things are said, where we feel regret, and our resentment builds. The drama starts to spin out of control and we are caught up in a constant flurry of "he says” and "she says" and it starts building energy and it takes so much of our time and depletes our personal energy. So start learning to stand back a bit when you feel this huge shocked response to someone's behavior and you'll often realize that it's actually not so surprising. It's really what you would expect. Our brain just likes the drama of pretending that we didn't know because really who doesn't love a good drama once in a while? Am I the only one who thinks drama is kind of fun? I don't love it, but I think all of us are drawn to it at some level.

17:27

So the last one I'm going to talk about is resisting. Resisting two things: resisting change and resisting what is. Our primitive brain, first of all, loves certainty. It doesn't like change because that's uncertain and it never knows what's lurking around the next corner. And so when change is coming up, our brain is trying to protect us by resisting the change and creating a lot of drama in the form of what ifs. "What if the car breaks down?" "What if we get mugged while traveling?" "What if I get married and he turns into a slug?" "What if I never find friends in my new neighborhood?" "What if we go out and it ends up being a horrible date?" So many what ifs. And so when we resist change, it's just our brain trying to keep us safe from the uncertainty. But the funny thing is we are never certain about anything. We just like to pretend we are. We think we're going on that trip next month, but in actuality, we really have no idea because anything could happen between now and then that could drill our plans. But we still plan as though we're certain. We think we're going to bed early tonight, but so many things might actually come up and prevent that. But our brains really, really want to resist change because it's uncomfortable. But that really is actually just another story that our brain is making up. Change really isn't uncomfortable. It's just our thoughts about change. In fact, change is more natural and comfortable than not changing when you think about it. But we resist it. And very often our brain will create some drama around change.

19:13

And the other thing that our brain resists is what is. Something is what it is, and we push, and we push, and we push against it. Our adult child is growing up and starts separating out emotionally and rarely calls us back. We resist and tell everyone how they should call us back, how it's just not right, how much we want them to get in touch, we tell them that they should call us, we try and shame them into calling their mother. We create a lot of drama around it. Now, I know from personal experience that this is a very painful situation. But regardless of how much I resist my child not wanting to connect with me, it's not changing it. I've shared this quote with you before but it's always a great one. Byron Katie says, When you fight against reality you're going to lose but only 100% of the time." You will always lose when you resist reality. Truth is I am 5 foot 4 inches. I can be angry and push and scream and create drama about how I could have been a better volleyball player in high school if I was 5'8" instead. But it's not going to change the reality that I'm 5'4". I can fight and scream and yell and complain about how horrible it is that my child doesn't seem to want a relationship with me. I can cry because it hurts, and I do sometimes, but I can't change the reality that this person does not want to exert any effort right now to have a relationship with me. But my brain wants to resist it and wants to shout "but they should! They should want a relationship with me. I'm their mother. Everybody should want a relationship with their mother!" My brain resists the reality of what's actually happening, which is that they are not that interested right now in a relationship. And my brain creates a lot of drama with all of these kinds of statements that I just shared. But accepting things as they are cuts out the drama.

21:25

So instead, I choose to think "this child doesn't want a relationship with me and it hurts like crazy. I wish it was different, but they get to choose how to show up with me and this is what they're choosing, even if I don't understand it." I'm not saying I love it. I absolutely don't. I hate it and it makes me so sad and it makes me so mad sometimes and it hurts like crazy. But resisting it, fighting against how this child is choosing to show up, isn't helping either one of us. It causes me to become passive aggressive and that just pushes them farther away. I can resist what actually is, or I can learn to embrace this child's agency to show up in our relationship however they want, respect and honor their agency and still choose to show up the way that I want to. There are so many realities in life that we resist. We might fight against our spouse's wants and needs. We might fight against the weather or where we live. We might fight against our children's responses or the person who works in the cubicle next to us. We might be angry every day about the kind of hair we have or how our bodies look, or what our face looks like or how big our nose is or whatever. We can resist, we can create a lot of drama, but when we can lean into acceptance of what is, there is no drama.

22:59

So just to clarify again, "no drama" doesn't mean that we love it and that we would choose it. It just means that we're not resisting and creating an excess of emotion, doubling down on our own difficult emotions, creating stories, and trying to predict the future and telling everybody about it and stirring the pot and dividing up teams. Drama is exhausting, whether it's our own or someone else's, it's just not helpful in any way. Learning how to identify your drama responses can help you learn to drop the drama and ease into a life that just feels so much better. Will there still be pain? For sure. But we're not multiplying it by the resistance and the highly dramatic stories that we create for our past, our present, and our future.

23:53

So, as we talked about this today, what have you seen in yourself? Did you recognize a go-to drama response for you? Do you go into trying to predict the future? Do you start going into storytelling? Do you start resisting? Or do you start pretending things? We're all gonna do some of them. It's just natural. It's just our brain trying to protect us from pain, trying to protect us from danger. But just notice it, pay attention. Give yourself a lot of grace for being a human. It's what we do. Life can be tough, my friends. Let's not make it tougher for ourselves and the people around us by dropping into our drama response. We don't have to do that. This is part of growing up in middle age, right? Isn't this middle age growing up thing just the bomb? I love it so much. This is part of growing up: learning how to be aware, learning how to drop the drama. Okay, that's gonna do it for us today.

24:58

If you would like to talk about coaching, about how it can help you, you can get on my website tanyahale.com. You can go to the tab that says "free consultation" and you can access my calendar. You can find a time that we can sit down and talk about coaching and see if it's a good fit for you. You can ask me all kinds of questions about it. I can tell you all the things that we do in coaching. And if it's a good fit, let's get together and let's get through this. I promise you can work through things in such a shorter amount of time, three to six months. We can work through a lot of work that on your own would take two, three, four, five years to work through because I can offer you awareness that your brain is often not able to see on its own. That's the benefit of coaching. I can help you see things that you won't see and it will fast forward your progress. You know, if you could learn how to work through things and show up more the way that you want to in six months as opposed to taking six years to go to get there, think of how much more joy and love and satisfaction you could fill in your relationships. It's all available, my friends. Okay, that's going to do it. Have an awesome, awesome week and I will see you next time. Bye.

26:18

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.