Love, Pain, Soothers, and Overcoming the Addiction to Drama

Are You Sick of the Drama?

Addictions are so dangerous because often times we give over a lot of our life-force energy to our addictions.  In the systems and programs of the Matrix, there are many addictions available, but the addiction to drama is often the most over looked because sometimes our addiction to drama can look and feel like love.

So, has love changed in modern times?  The answer is certainly not.  Modern love is the same as all love through out history.  In this day in age, we want the same things from love relationships that we wanted years ago even if it wasn’t articulated.

In loving relationships we want to be accepted for our true and authentic self, we want someone who understands us, and we want someone we can share our lives with.  This is true about love rather it is friendship love, family love, community love, or romantic love.  However, in this day and age, there is one thing we must get pass and that’s the addiction to drama.

I really hate to use the word drama, because true drama is an art form and artistic expression (Dramatic Arts); but, in this case we use drama to identify the addiction many people have to heightened states of emotional trauma. So please do not confuse “drama” with the Dramatic Arts.

For a long period of time in the field of personal development, many philosophers taught that if we associate enough pain with a habit, practice, or addiction, then eventually we will break the habit or addiction.  Unfortunately, modernism has met with this modality and has created what I call “soothers” to help us get pass the pain, thus staying in the pain much longer.  Moreover, in many cases the soothers themselves can make the pain of the addiction feel good.

Who Will Finally say, "No More Drama?"

Let’s take the subject of drama.  A woman who attended some of my group sessions a while back in New Orleans told me about the relationship she had with her fiancé of five years.  She told me he was emotionally and verbally abusive.  She stayed in the relationship because he was a “good man.”  In her eyes, he helped to pay the bills, he went with her to her doctors appointments, and he helped her with their children from time to time.

She said he was only verbally abusive when he had a hard day at work or when the finances seemed to be “strained.”  After being engaged for five years, she gained quite a bit of weight and much of the weight came about because she used comfort food, fast food, and junk food as a “soother.”   Within five years she had gain 80 pounds and also had high blood pressure.

His soother, however, was his Xbox, ESPN on a 52 inch television, a six pack of beer a day, and having his friends over every Sunday.  Both of them had the wonderful distraction of jobs they hated which took up a 60-hour week and a bunch of unnecessary bills  they collected which required extra hours of work(the $129 per month 52 inch flat screen was just one of them).

She had been able to prolong the relationships because their soothers kept them distracted and kept them from dealing with each other and  dealing with their problems.  Once she became involved in her own self-worth, spiritual evolution, personal development, and health, she began to eat more raw and living foods.  She practiced yoga.  She spent time in meditation.  She cut back some hours at work and her soothers were gone.  After her soothers were gone, she ended the relationship.

When she ended the relationship, it was the first time she had ever been without a man for more than a few months.  She took two years to commit to herself and her daughters.  After two years of what she called her “sobriety,”  she met a wonderful man about 4 years her senior.  They dated for a year and were married after a six-month engagement.  They are still married now even after they lost their home during Hurricane Katrina.  They have recently bought a new home in Houston, Texas (yes, even in this economy).

Until we get rid of or lessen our dependency on the soothers in our lives, we will continue to play out the dramas of our dysfunctional relationships.  With soothers distracting us from the truth and from the pain, we find ourselves taking much longer to hit rock bottom and sometimes even when we hit rock bottom we have used our soothers to cushion the fall.

Today, with modern conveniences we have found it difficult to know if we are in love or in drama and dysfunction.  With our soothers distracting us, we often don’t know the difference. And if we can not acknowledge the existence of pain and suffering and dysfunction in a situation, it takes much longer to hit rock bottom.  And the longer it takes to hit rock bottom, the longer it takes to heal.

To this end, it is apparent that either we lessen or get rid of our soothers in order to face what we have attracted in our lives, or not only do we prolong suffering but we become addicted to the drama we have manifested in our lives.  And this addiction will always hinder our spiritual and personal growth on the path of enlightenment.  It hinders our growth because it robs us of the life-force energy and mind power required to co-create our lives as we truly desire our life to be.

In fact, the addiction to drama can be downright deceptive if we don’t get rid of or release our dependency on the soothers in our lives.  For example, sometimes we find that what we are think we are addicted to (toxic food, drugs, alcohol, sex) isn’t really the addiction.  Once we probe our lives and get rid of the soothers (toxic food, drugs, alcohol, sex), then we realize that it is the drama behind the addiction we are really addicted to.

A friend of mine told me about a cousin of his who was a prominent business man in New Orleans.  This prominent business man was what we call a womanizer.  He told many of his friends that he was addicted to good scotch, women, and sex.  Well, eventually these women ran interference in his life and he ended up in a big sex scandal surrounding the Canal Street Brothel in New Orleans.  It was in all the papers and many national news channels.  There was his name and his face and his business attached to the biggest sex scandal New Orleans had seen in while (and for New Orleans, that’s saying a lot!).  The man was devastated and so was his business.

After a few years of laying low, he left the line of business he was once in because he had lost the trust of his clientele.  In 2007, he started a new company doing what he loved and now he’s a suburban dad coaching his son’s little league baseball team.

My friend said his cousin seemed so content now.  He said his cousin told him, he had to “hit rock bottom” before he realized what the real problem was.  The real problem was that he was unhappy.  He was in that particular line of business because he made a lot of money, but it didn’t leave him much time for anything else.  So, instead of the wife and family he really wanted, he convinced himself he wanted the women, fast cars, sex, and alcohol.

It took a scandal to destroy his business before he overcame his addiction to drama.  My friend said his cousin hit rock bottom when all of the women who were once beating his door down stopped calling and wouldn’t even acknowledge him in public.  He really discovered who cared about him and who his real friends were.

Why put ourselves through the trauma of drama over and over again when all we are doing is destroying our hope, faith, and confidence in our true and authentic self.  Not only that, but we are also destroying our perception of our true self worth.

And just how do we overcome he addiction to drama?

(1)    We have to acknowledge the dysfunction in our lives and not treat it as if it is “normal” or okay.

(2)    Get rid of our soothers through detoxification and treatment if necessary.

(3)    Get in some “self” time through meditation and prayer.

(4)    Face the pain of the situation we have attracted in our lives and build our spiritual strength through self-empowerment.

(5)    Practice present moment awareness and proclaim what you really want in your life.

(6)    Stop settling for an artificial version of your true desires. Acknowledge how you want to live your life and do not settle for a fake version of it.  The fake version is only an illusion of the ego.

(7)    Use your “creativity” for something other than creating avenues of pain and suffering.

Despite what we have been told, we can overcome drama.  We don’t have to live our lives in a tornado of drama, trauma, and dysfunction.  If we want to live in abundance and increase our self worth, we have to pledge…NO MORE DRAMA.

Until next time, remember to give up the drama, live well, live wise, live wealthy, and let the Creative Spirit move you.

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