Why so dramatic? I bet you know many people who seem to love drama. They overblow what the worst that can happen. They relish gossip and add details to stories they hear. Yet I bet you didn’t know that you also delve into drama quite a bit too. Maybe you know you do and if so good job at least you are more aware of what is happening than many people.
What is drama?
When I refer to the drama I am not meaning plays or acting. I am meaning when we allow our reptile part of the brain to add all sorts of extra emotions to the information we have. Most of the time the level of drama grows with the lack of information. Drama is the extra unnecessary emotions that fog up our judgment and create suffering and stress in our lives
We as people are emotional beings so we like to have drama in our lives. Look at movies would you watch a film that had just an ordinary guy doing ordinary things? Well no. it would be boring. Look at reality Television, these people are all about the drama that I am talking about.
Example of how we make drama
Say your son just got his driver’s license and he is wanting to go drive around and show off his new skill to his friends on the drag. You finally let him go and he has to be back at 10 pm. Around 10:15 your new driver still isn’t home.
What do you do? Most parents start o wonder why he isn’t home and as each minute ticks by the scenario you have in your head gets worse. First, he just lost track of time which leads to flat time. This leads to him having car problems to he was racing and crashed. This then leads to him dying in a ditch with dirty underwear on. Then around 10:36 he drives up and knows he is in trouble and it is even worse because we got ourselves all worked up over nothing.
Perhaps your wife texts call me. Suddenly you start making stories of someone being in the hospital, or the back part of the house just being eaten by a sinkhole. Yet when you in a rush call her she was just needs you to stop by the store. We build so much into the lack of information.
Why do we turn to Drama so much?
Well, our brains are wired for drama. We take the little information we have and apply drama to it w]to fill in the gaps. Now some people are more predisposed to using their amygdala or reptile part of the brain than other people. So that is why you have some people who are easily more attracted to drama.
My son dated a girl who I call the Choas Machine she was nothing but drama. Everything was in a state of panic and chaos for her. One example was when her stepfather died due to a drug overdose, as part of the police investigation, she was questioned by the police. After that, she was convinced that the police thought she had killed him, and she would tell anybody who would listen that she was being investigated for this dude’s murder. No amount of other facts would dissuade her from thinking otherwise. Such a very tiring place to be is in this young woman’s life.
People are wired for drama. We try to plan for the worst and when we don’t allow for the logic part of our brain to hammer out the details our reptilian part of our brain takes over and starts to fill in the gaps. Since it is trying to keep us safe and comfortable we get the worst possible happenings.
Drama as a whole doesn’t serve us anymore. Some people may argue that we can prepare for the worst yet, in reality, we do better when we allow our prefrontal cortex to do its job and work out all the logical parts.
With drama, we have more stress and suffering in our lives because we are busy working on things that most likely are never going to happen.
The Rumor Mill
Another place where the drama really can play a huge role is in a company. When rumor mills start to churn out their product. Many times these forms of drama can be destructive if not addressed. Some companies have an actual rumor policy for their company culture.
This is because rumors are based on little fact and a lot of emotion. They crop up more when there is very little communication from the leadership. Rumors often lower the morale of the employees because again we are focusing on the worst instead of pressing on with our actual job.
Drama and choices
It is easy to be caught up in the emotion of drama. When you notice you are in drama it can be hard to turn it off. A good example of this is to stop in the middle of the drama-filled story and try to reframe that story in a positive light. You will see your brain fight tooth and nail against that change.
Want a fun experiment try that exercise on a friend who is telling you a drama-filled tale. You can see the struggle on their face.
How to minimize drama
Since you can’t remove all drama from your life, you can minimize it though. The best is to ask yourself questions. The first is how does getting worked up in drama benefit me? Then you can lay out the fact of the story and try to remove the emotions from the details. Doing so will help you to engage the logic part of your brain and start to minimize the emotionally filled part of your brain. You can then see that that mountain you are afraid of is nothing more than a molehill.
The Relaxed Male is a podcast that helps men find their purpose and learn to breathe. We offer solutions for when life gets tough. Whether it’s divorce or just the stress of everyday life, we can help you get back on your feet and be the man you want to be. You deserve more than what society tells us we should do as men. Be the father your children need, be the partner your spouse needs, and most importantly – be yourself! This all starts with you getting out of your own way and deciding how you are going to live life.
Great post, so many people seem to feed off of drama but it’s nice to be able to switch off from it all.
It is nice to know that it is possible to turn off the drama, or at least turn it down a notch or two.