Let’s Talk Love Podcast Episode 116 with Dr. Scott Lyons | Transcript
16.10.25
This transcript is from the Let’s Talk Love Podcast, available in our Podcast Feed.
Welcome to Let's Talk Love. I'm thrilled to be joined by Dr 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 create an addiction to drama in our adult relationships, we talk about the neuroscience behind this pattern, the healing power 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 realizing it, mistaking drama for love intensity or aliveness, by understanding what's really happening beneath the surface, we can 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.
Robin Ducharme | Hello, everyone, and welcome to Let's Talk love today. We're joined by Dr Scott Lyons to talk about love and drama.
Dr Scott Lyons l I love that you're laughing about love and trauma
Robin Ducharme | Because guess what, a lot of times they go hand in hand. I wish it wasn't that way, but actually they do sometimes
Dr Scott Lyons l A lot of the time.
Robin Ducharme | I know, I know.
Dr Scott Lyons l Bless
Robin | Dr Scott, thank you for being with us. We're gonna talk about your book today, which I really, really, 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, Scott in here so vulnerably, and I'm excited to talk to you about love and drama and all the things today. So thank you for being with us.
Dr Scott l I'm here for it. Let's talk about drama and love and all the good stuff and support some people in the meantime,
Robin | 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 and foremost is that this is an awesome, awesome piece of work. I learned a lot because I'm like, how's this gonna go? You know, like, I'm gonna read about like you think about people that are in 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.
Dr Scott l Yeah.
Robin | And the other thing that I think you did really well was, like, I now see this from a compassionate lens,
Dr Scott l Yeah, because we all know someone, right? We all know someone who's, like, making mountains out of mole hills. Is, like, chronically busy, but then complains about it is like in a constant roller coaster in relationships, like we all, we all know that person never us. It's never us.
Robin | No, no, it's never us.
Dr Scott l No no, it's never us. But we know that person, and we might call them a drama queen, or a drama king, or some other, you know, like, way kind of derogatory term. And one of the things I was really interested in is like, I would go to these big talks and I would say, okay, 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're in the room with someone who's like a drama queen or drama king, or like just a chaos monster, and and yet it's so hard to define, and there was no scientific research on it. So how could we have something that everyone knew about, but there was no academic support to go, 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.
Robin | Yes. And so, actually, this is your story, right? I mean, this is, you know, I think about, I think about my own story and why I'm doing the work I'm doing. I, you know, I've been on, like, a lifelong quest for having deep, beautiful, like, just the best relationships, and especially intimate partnership, you know, and there's been like, I just feel like it's a part of my life. I know it is that I've struggled with, you know, like I had a 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. We're doing it very consciously this time.
Dr Scott l Love that
Robin | But it takes, it takes time. It's almost like now I feel like I've got more wisdom and able to 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 that I can pass on.
Dr Scott l Yeah
Robin | And you have the same Scott
Dr Scott l Yeah
Robin | With your own journey with being addicted to drama
Dr Scott l Yeah I mean, I just want to really name that too, is like, we, like, we think about, like, I'm on my third marriage, or I'm on my fifth relationship, and it's like, some of us might have had the opportunity, and we met one person, and it was golden, and it's great, but I like to think of it as, like, we need a lot of practice, especially if we didn't get that refinement and that experience as kiddos, then, you know that process of refining relationship can only really happen in relationship. And I, you know, in the same way that, like for me 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 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
Robin | Yes
Dr Scott l And we need sometimes calm experiences to highlight how bored we are when things aren't turbulent
Robin | Right. So Scott, tell us about your journey of being you realized you recognized that you were addicted to drama?
Dr Scott l 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 life just feel like it's in flow? Why doesn't it just feel easy? And the answer was, because of me? No, it's not that simple. But I grew up in an environment that was incredibly chaotic. There was drugs and violence and a lot of unpredictability, and so to me, that became not only the world I lived in, but the internal ecosystem, the rhythms I knew that and 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 and nurture is like that we actually learn and adapt and become part of our nature. If you go into the woods for a year and you slow down and you attune to the like the rhythms 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 time focusing and being attuned to their own sensations and emotions of their body, because there's constant distraction, right. And so the same kind of happens with us, and you know, in in that sort of chaos and the challenges and the pains of my childhood, I did what any kid would do, which is I kind of shut down and dissociated, 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 either people please and do like, try all these strategies so they don't hurt us and or 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.
Robin | Really, you would say that?
Dr Scott l Yeah, I didn't feel like I was like, I don't feel like I have dimensionality. I didn't have quite that language. And now I know the neuro 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 such an interesting component of trauma, and we're more you know, it's part of an aspect of dissociation, too. 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 a sense that we don't exist in the world. We're isolated, we're alone, and we don't have this rich tapestry of 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 have this numbness that is sort of like, you know, when your foot falls asleep and you 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 opposed to just being a ghost in the 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 even though I knew better, even though I 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
Robin | Yes
Dr Scott l And so suddenly I started asking myself, like, okay, well, I remember getting like, like, my cell phone wasn't working, and I had called 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 I remember hanging 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 a volcanic eruption of emotion? What is that? And I didn't have, I didn't have the intelligence, or the 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 of power again, something and choice and agency. And that's really what led me into, then going into the deeper research of what is an addiction to drama and how, how could we possibly be attached to something, dependent on something that causes more challenge and stress and strain in our life.
Robin | But I think that's what addiction is, right? Yeah, I've been listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's newest book, right. Something Down the River. Sorry, Liz, if you're listening to this I missed I know I know enough for 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, just somehow we're numbing, but we're getting something out of it.
Dr Scott l Yeah
Robin | There is, yeah, yeah,
Dr Scott l 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 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, they're 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 of humanity when we just call it a 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 emotional pain 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 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 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. This is their attempt at medicating the pain and navigating the pain.
Robin | So Scott, that just makes me think 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 you with, 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 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 okay, 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 if they've got dramatic tendencies, or they're addicted to drama, how as you as the person in your life, what is the best approach?
Dr Scott l Well, you know that old saying, or like, love heals. All right? It's not actually true and it's
Robin | Sometimes love is not soft, though sometimes
Dr Scott l Sometimes love is not soft, but sometimes love triggers a sense of danger. And for those with developmental trauma, 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 over, coupled right, or wired together with danger, like if my parent hit me as a kid, but then they told me they love me, that's wired together, that love and danger are equated.
Robin | Love and hurt
Dr Scott l Love and hurt they're same side of you know, same same different side, same coin. And so I'm going to keep seeking that 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 get to them, the more that stirs them into a level of discomfort and will bring them into some of the activation patterns around the drama to create more space and distance. The ways that they can feel safe with intimacy, truly, the only way they can feel safe with intimacy is to pull you into the drama, into the vortex of intensity, as opposed to like, holding hands with you and looking at 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 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 sorts of funky patterns and relationships, which is different than if someone's like, coming 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 with those
Robin | Yeah that's different than what you're talking about
Dr Scott l 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 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
Robin | Totally drained.
Dr Scott l Totally drained. It's because it's a fast, fast ascension in the stress response and then an explosion that leaves you unintegrated. And that's, that's the normal rhythm of someone who's addicted drama. But for those who aren't, it feels like, you know, when you get that adrenaline rush, if you go, like, jump out of a plane with a parachute or zip, you know, like a zip line, or something really intense, it rush, but then you have a refractory period where you are exhausted, where you are like, it's like taking a drug. 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, what we're talking about is actually endorphins and other glucocorticoid stress hormones.
Robin | Yeah, you said you be you started to become aware of what was going on within you. Scott, and
Dr Scott l Yeah
Robin | I imagine that a lot of people that you've treated, that you've really helped through this, there's not like, is there, Is there awareness? Or is it more like, okay, people are coming to you and going, like, this person, I'm this is the person in my life. I really want them to get help.
Dr Scott l Yeah
Robin | Do they have a level of awareness? Like, how do you have you help people through this?
Dr Scott l 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 we're 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 our life. It's so easy to make everyone else the villain, or something else the villain, and focus on that. And so addiction to drama is less tangible than like if someone's taking an opioid. 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. So you'll do some grounding practices or some breath work, and it settles down their nervous system, and they can tolerate that for a few seconds, and then they'll just jump on to the 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 reflex, for many of us, that we all enjoy, that lets us take a deep breath and settle in and restore feels dangerous to them, so the relaxation reflex, like the intimacy, triggers an alarm that says 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 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 lovelies 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 things that are not activating or stressful, is a real beginning process.
Robin | Yes, so much of this, which I can see in your work, right, you're focusing on really it is it's slowing down. It's being present. It's being mindful in your life, settling in the reality, right? Because there's a lot of story, a lot of really make belief.
Dr Scott l Yeah, I mean, like any trauma, I mean, and really, we're chasing the drama to avoid our trauma. So let's, let's be very clear
Robin | We're chasing the drama to avoid our trauma.
Dr Scott l Yeah, it's, it's, yes, it's no different than chasing a drug or chasing any other addiction and and when you all riled up about like that so and so was like or like think about someone who, like, cut you off in the 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 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 pain that resides within them. And so they're going to focus on that 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 the world, and can you believe it? 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 neuro science of it
Robin | I think this is, I think this is fascinating, because it really gives us a lens for what's happening with the person that and maybe it's you, maybe it's the person that's listening right 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?
Dr Scott l Yeah, yeah. And we'll and so, like, when we see people, like, in relationships where there's more of that addiction and drama, where you have, like, constant conflict and escalation, or you have emotional whiplashing, you have there's, like, a lot of hyper vigilance and over reactivity. 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 addiction drama shows up in relationships. But the neuroscience underneath it all is really interesting, because sometimes I think we can focus too much on that, like 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 insensitive to things like oxytocin. So we, even if there's love there, as an adult, we often can't, literally, the receptors, can't take it in, can't register the oxytocin, the bond, the sense of bonding. And there's another piece of that is that those individuals 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 really interesting, and this is where, like an addiction to drama and stress comes in is that things like endorphins. So you know, when you go for a run and you get that runner's high, 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 sense of like pleasure. Now, where do you think we get those endorphins from? lLttle 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 relief, social bonding and a sense of elevation in our mood, and we oftentimes go, no, no, stress is this awful thing that's a very simplistic understanding of stress, and 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 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 have the same response, which is an endorphic release as part of the stress activation. 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 all of those things, and they became more dissociated. They want to feel more alive and connected, 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 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, but they also performed better. Their attention and their energy from the stress response allowed them 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 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 a sense of awe and wonder in the world us, 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
Robin | Wow. So it's like creating it's creating stress as a pain reliever to make yourself feel better. Somehow it's making yeah,
Dr Scott l 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 of closeness to other people through shared pain. Yeah, that's part of our the nature of 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 is
Robin | We've all done that, right? You're just saying you like, you're you're not really offering solutions. You're just like, oh my god, I can't even believe that
Dr Scott l 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 satisfaction and like, you know, screw them and they were wrong. And if I call other friends, I'm gonna be like, oh my gosh, I really see my part in this. So, you know, I often call her first, right, right? Of course,
Robin | And then you'll do the work and then
Dr Scott l And then I'll do the work.
Robin | I need inspection
Dr Scott l Yeah, I need the inspection first. We all need it
Robin | I love this. Like God, it's so funny because, like, you are that you're a therapist, and you've been through living the drama life, and so you you know what it's like to live on both sides of it. You're like, I got the awareness piece. But first, let's relish in the in the fun of it, and then we'll get into the work.
Dr Scott l Again. We feel more bonded to someone who's gonna be drama. It's called drama bonding for a reason. We're gonna feel more connected. We're gonna feel more like validated and satisfied, and that that can feel really good. It's just not accurate most of the time, right.
Robin | You know what this made me think of is just yesterday, as I was preparing for this and talking to my best friend, we work on the podcast together, and I was like, Kirst. Just today, I'm watching my feed, and there's a post by People magazine around, you know, it was a picture of Justin Baldoni and Taylor Swift with this, like, big line between 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
Dr Scott l Yeah
Robin | No, good man, that's totally legit. The guy would deserve to be arrested. But it was all around creating drama between Justin and Taylor Swift, right. It's just like this. We have to be I'm going, this is what the world we live in, though. Scott
Dr Scott l Yeah
Robin | It's creating drama around circumstances that we know nothing about.
Dr Scott l I don't need to know anything about
Robin | Of course, not. I really, really don't care. And I'm thinking, actually, I've got compassion for the people that are all involved, that are actually there. These are real people that are going through, like, a legal dispute, which is so freaking stressful and awful
Dr Scott l Yeah, yeah
Robin | 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, and it's no it doesn't surprise me that in our own lives, on a personal level, it's like, you know what I mean, there's the perpetuation in our society around this.
Dr Scott l Yeah, well, we're in endemic. Make of an addiction to drama, like, it's not like what I was kind of sharing as like the personal origin story that was once more like, that was the common components, or the common denominators, for those who were 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 creating scenarios that helped do that. That was the sort of classic case. Now we're in a culture in which the intensity and overwhelm to 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, violent imagery, all of these things that that heighten our stress response and get our attention and capture it and maintain it. And the consequence of that, over and over again, is that we are overstimulated 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 really intense and something that can 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 stress the high endorphic response of stress after a while 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 numbness that they help create, to get our attention in order to then eventually sell us whatever's 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 like a conspiracy theory, but there's tons of research on it
Robin | I know it's not a conspiracy theory, because we live in this world and it's all you need to do is turn on the TV and just see
Dr Scott l Or turn it off and see what happens?
Robin | Right
Dr Scott l When you start to get bored 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 time and you 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 our own ability to restore
Robin | 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.
Dr Scott l Yeah
Robin | And making rest a practice making peace, like peace a priority in your life.
Dr Scott l Yeah
Robin | Like, what does that mean exactly like, I didn't know what peace was until I would say the last year of my life, I feel like I'm embodying peace.
Dr Scott l Yeah, yeah.
Robin | I never used to be in that place to say that, you know,
Dr Scott l Well and, and that's amazing. And as we recognize okay, what are the conditions that allow any of us, including you, to finally embody or experience rest or peace and to recognize what are the ways 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, and they're like, you're you're 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 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 dated, I had to ask myself here,
Robin | How am I contributing to this?
Dr Scott l 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 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 same mechanism that we're talking about in an addiction to drama.
Robin | So you, you are like a practitioner and teacher of somatic and you've got a body lab. Can you tell us about somatic therapy and somatic practices? Just in like, really simple terms. Because this is, like the word itself. Know people, a lot of people don't know what it is,
Dr Scott l Sure
Robin | But I, like, I would love to learn more about that.
Dr Scott l Yeah, so when we're talking about somatics in terms of therapy, therapy, we're talking about, like, body based therapy. So Soma means, in Greek, means body, and somatics is the practices of coming more into our body, and that's that. So it's a radical shift from the idea, like, we're we're heads, we're brains that are just being carried around by our body. 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?
Robin | Yup
Dr Scott l This is not an this is no longer some, like, some funny idea. This is like, this is all where the science is demonstrating. It's like the body keeps the score, right? 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. Which is such a funny word, because, like, what they mean is I'm having emotional past, and I'm living out my history and my past as though it was currently happening in the present.
Robin | That's really well said, yeah
Dr Scott l 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 sensations and feelings in this moment, and even be able to discern what is the emotions from the past that are acting as though it's happening in the present, and what are the actual sensations and feelings and emotions happening in the current moment when we think about, I think one of the easiest ways to understand somatics is in relation to trauma. So trauma is the great fragmenter. It cuts us off from feeling our own body, our own intuitions, our own sensation, from feeling relationship, and all of these things that are fragmented, cut off can only be re found 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 ground in our body or feel safe here, 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 but also the sense of security and safety that only can be felt through the body. And so in this sense, you certainly 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 heal.
Robin | And so when you're talking Scott, 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 a combination of somatics, because it's like, we go into meditative state and go into that place, go 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 is trapped you don't know, right?
Dr Scott l Yeah
Robin | 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 other otherwise been able to do with, like with talk therapy, for example.
Dr Scott l Yeah, yeah. I mean, here's what we know, is that, like a new thought, for example, is so fast, like milliseconds, and an old thought takes a little longer to like, longer to form, assuming an old thought takes is very fast, a new thought is even longer to form and to contact or connect to a sensation 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 to actually 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. 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 metabolize and move through what never got to be felt. And you can't think your way into feeling. You can only attune 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? 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 you break your foot, right? And all of a sudden, in your like, you know you're you're not putting much weight on it, you're being very careful. But all of a sudden, like, three 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. 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 somatics, is it allows you to identify what's the compensations, like our attachment style and what's the actual root pain, and be able to then process and metabolize that as well, not just the compensation or behavioral pattern.
Robin | 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, quite a few years ago. One of my really good friends runs Five Rhythms workshops, and it's like, like, two days I signed up, and I was like, all right, let's do this. I've never done anything like it, right? So it's like, free dance and just like, free like, whatever. Like, she's, she's a DJ, 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 at one point in time, like I was just having great time, really. And some of it was intense, some of it was just like, and at one moment I remember, like, just I had, all of a sudden, I just started crying, like, bawling, bawling 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 trying to, I think I was judging, like, why am I crying?
Dr Scott l Sure, yeah
Robin | But then I was like, I just have to let this out. Whatever it is, it's coming up 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
Dr Scott l You don't have to know.
Robin | That's just it though, right 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, does it really matter? Like you're releasing it, right? That's how I understood it.
Dr Scott l Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is the interesting thing that happens in trauma, when the things that fragments is our our memory systems fragments, so the part of our memory that's involved with that that holds the emotions, that holds the sensations and experience, what is 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 separated so we and it makes it much harder to process your emotions when 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 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 don't have a container or 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 work is we bridge back the two memory systems 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 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, the 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, and sometimes the emotional memory will never meet or connect back up with a narrative memory. And that's okay, too, we can still process it.
Robin | Wow. I really like Dr, 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
Dr Scott l Thanks
Robin | Like, I just love your presence and the work you're doing, because you bring a lot of levity too.
Dr Scott l Thank you.
Robin | You know you really do too, like, some serious stuff.
Dr Scott l Yeah, yeah. It's funny, because I remember saying to Esther Perel recently about this, and she's like, I'm no longer I'm interested in trauma. I'm only interested in joy. And I was like, oh, I really get where 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 way, my shift in language around it is, like, the things that get denied from us as part of trauma is things like play and levity and joy. 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 trauma healing practices is play.
Robin | It doesn't surprise me at all,
Dr Scott l And not me either. And there's, there is a parallel between somatic therapy and play, 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.
Robin | I can't imagine my life without just a shit ton of joy and play. You know, I it is part of my life. It just laughter. I just, I like, it's just so important to me. It's like, one of my top values. It's funny. I've never written that down, but it is play and joy and fun. Because, like, what how else do you deal with life? It's hard.
Dr Scott l Well and this is the thing, and it'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 or move through the freeze in order to find play. But at the same time, play can help defrost us or thaw us out a bit.
Robin | Yeah and sometimes it's just like, it doesn't have to be. You know, there's so many ways that we can play. Like, my idea of playing is like sitting down with like, my friends or my 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 gonna tell us some great stuff.
Dr Scott l Yeah, yeah
Robin | That kind of thing, for instance.
Dr Scott l 100% so this last year, for my birthday, I took like, 20-25, of my dearest friends, who are all adults and we went and did laser tag for a couple hours,
Robin | Awesome, awesome
Dr Scott l And it was like, and every so many of them were, like, hesitant, and they're like, I don't know, this is for kids. And I was like, we are kids in adult bodies.
Robin | Exactly
Dr Scott l 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.
Robin | Oh, that's so fun, Scott. Well, thank you. Dr, Scott Lyons,
Dr Scott l My pleasure, my pleasure
Robin | And I know you're not feeling great, so I really appreciate you made it 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.
Dr Scott l Thank you so much. My pleasure.
Robin | I'm going to close with a blessing, with your sentiments and your my learnings 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 and recuperate our own energy and 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 you That was a quote that we took from your book. And I just think that is beautiful. Yeah
Dr Scott l Thank you
Robin | So thank you. Dr, Scott Lyons,
Dr Scott l 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 for more resources and tools to boost your relational skills and get better at love. If this podcast has resonated with you, it would mean the world to us if you could take just 30 seconds to do these three things, follow or subscribe. Never miss an episode by hitting the follow or subscribe button wherever you listen to your podcasts, whether it's Apple podcasts Spotify or your favorite app, this makes sure new episodes show up automatically for you, and it helps us get more visibility so more people can find our show, leave a rating and review. Your feedback means everything to us. By leaving a five star rating and a thoughtful review, you're not only showing your support, but also helping others discover the podcast. Share an episode that really spoke to you with someone in your life, whether it's a friend, partner or family member, your recommendation could just be what they need to hear. We at Real Love Ready acknowledge and express gratitude for the Co Salish people, the stewards of the land on which we work and play. And encourage you to take a moment to acknowledge and express gratitude for those that have stewarded it and continue to steward the land that you live on as well many blessings and much love.