How I Beat My Addiction to Drama

A Theory About “Facts” and “Emotion.”

I have a theory about “facts” and “emotion.” My theory is that facts and emotion are not “real.”

Based on our own personal history, for example, the exact same “facts” can feel catastrophic to one person but can be viewed as a learning experience for another.

Facts and Emotion are Subjective and Therefore Not “Real”

If facts and our emotional responses are both subjective, my theory is that neither one is “real.” I further believe that “facts” and “emotions” are elements that exist only in the human mind. On this basis, over-reliance on “facts” and “emotion” can serve to limit the reach and the capacity of the human experience.

Due to the constant fluctuations of human emotion, my belief is that making decisions based on emotion can lead to dramatic and often chaotic results.

Love is Truly All There Is…

In terms of a “constant,” my theory is that love is the only feeling that is universal. Love is a universal feeling that all conscious beings feel and experience within.

All other emotions are a by-product of the human mind. On this basis, emotion limits our ability to make decisions based on the highest principle possible, which is love.

Love is a Misunderstood and Misinterpreted “Emotion”

My view is that people misinterpret love as emotion. We have a tendency to feel “in love” when we believe in certain facts, which under my theory are not “real” and therefore, misleading.

My view is that love is an experience that involves the entire field of consciousness. Love is a universal agreement within the field of consciousness as to what constitutes “love.”

Good love, smart love, intelligent love feels good! “Good love” is rational. It is reasonable. It is intelligent. It is logical.

Love does not hide. Love is such a good feeling that it wants to make its presence known. In my mind, I fictionalize love as a living being saying things like: “I am here for you. Let’s work together to bring more love into your life.”

I see love as an intelligent, guiding light — helping to lead, steer, and guide us towards a better life filled with compassion, gratitude, and understanding. Love is like the master director of this beautifully designed and intelligently choreographed play we call “life.”

Life is an Intelligently-Designed Collaboration

Planning your life in collaboration with the love and divine energy of the universe means that sometimes you have to abandon the facts altogether. This is especially true when dealing with pain, which is the most persnickety of all the “attention-grabbers.” When you are in the throes of what you believe is “pain,” rest assured that the pain energy will continue to feed you until you are convinced that you are living the most miserable existence imaginable.

No matter how much pain you felt, and regardless of how much pain you think someone inflicted on you, you have to let it go. Pain does not control you. Yet, if you think you are “in pain,” then guess what? You have given weight and credence to that “pain.” Your attention to that pain is serving like an anchor — the pain is tethered to you because you keep giving it a place to live in your mind.

Re-centering and gaining freedom for yourself means rejecting pain as a limitation. What happened to you may have been really awful. But, at some point, in order to truly get past it, you have to look that pain in the eye and say “No more. I am done.”

Rejecting the Drama Narrative

For me, rejecting the pain narrative in my own life was a very real, very conscious decision. During entire spans of my life, I had experienced intense emotions and the resultant drama. Thus, letting go of my drama pattern was like saying good-bye to an old, familiar friend; the drama/pain pattern had been attached to my soul for a very long time.

My theory is that we become essentially “addicted” to our pain or drama cycles. And, therein lies the problem. Whether you call it depression, or negative thinking, or addiction, or just straight up self-doubt, the truth is this:

If you suffer from any of these afflictions, you may not even realize it until that beast is on your back. Addiction, like any strong attraction, kind of grabs you and attaches to your soul before you even realize it is there.

On this point, I wanted to add a personal perspective.

A couple of weeks ago, I experienced some intense drama. I will not recite the details here. But, suffice it to say that I went from one dramatic scene to another and then to another. By the end, I was exhausted. And, I imagine that the people I talked to during this time were probably pretty exhausted too. That is the thing with drama. It is draining! I like sucks all the energy and life out of a situation.

Despite this recent dramatic outburst, drama is pretty rare for me. When drama comes, I am not worried that the drama is going to somehow devour me. Instead, I look at drama as a teacher. The existence of drama is an opportunity to potentially correct some past mistakes — by bringing a new energy or perspective into the situation.

Even though I had grown accustomed to going through a full pain/drama cycle, as I call it, I must admit that the most recent one was perhaps the toughest one yet.

Reliving certain decisions and experiences from my past was difficult and gut-wrenching.

Yet, in reviewing my life, and trying to get to the root of the perceived pain, I had to look at all that stuff — not as stuff that “happened to me” but rather as “stuff that happened’ as a result of the decisions I had made behalf of myself. The reason this time was so painful is because I had to look at me. This was my stuff.

At the end of this process, I was convinced that this most recent pain cycle was the blessing I did not know I needed. I did not know it at the time, but I needed to be delivered and healed from my own addiction/attraction to drama.

The Facts are Not Real

From this experience, you know what I believe? That no matter what the facts may look like to you, in reality, those facts exist because they are drawn to you — something in your energetic “footprint” is drawing that particular energy pattern.

I imagine that each case is different. However, from my own experience, the only way to free yourself from a negative energy pattern is to simply shut it down. When you sense negative energy, the only way to escape it is to simply say “No.” Turn your back to the negativity, pain, or drama and simply walk away.

Drama as a Precursor to Healing

Interestingly enough, not too long after I said “bye bye” to the drama, something very interesting happened between me and my husband.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a very intense, dramatic encounter. Things were so tense between us that we were not even speaking.

Finally, after a couple of days, I went to him and said:

“You know what, no matter where we are (in terms of our marriage), we have to be able to work together for the sake of the kids. We really need to work together to get ourselves out of this situation. Putting all the emotional stuff aside, we have to figure out a way to work together to pull ourselves and our family out of this situation.”

He agreed.

Initially, we discussed the household business matters and put together a plan.

Thereafter, we talked about the other personal projects we each had going on.

He had recently become active in local politics. Some of the community leaders have been encouraging him to run for a political office. He asked, and I agreed, to help him set up a Twitter account so he could communicate with potential constituents and other community leaders. He sent out his first Tweet this past weekend.

I showed him some of my writing on Medium. I explained to him that my main interest was to share some of my mental health challenges with the goal of encouraging people to address their own challenges through self-exploration. I explained to him that I had been a hesitant to post certain writings because they referenced his affair. To my surprise, he did not discourage me from writing. In fact, he said that he supported my interest in writing and further encouraged me to speak my truth.

We both agreed to work together to elevate our family out of our current circumstances. Following our discussion, I felt more love than I have felt in a very long time. Love is so much more than just a feeling or an emotion. It is an energetic experience that contributes to a feeling of expansion, healing and transformation.

Not only was I kicking drama out of my life, I finally felt that I had a willing partner to kick drama out of our lives — out of our individual lives, out of the lives of our children, and indeed our whole family.

Finally, with regard to drama, I feel victorious. Onward and upward from here.