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Beating the Drama Demons at Their Own Game
NML says that drama is like relationship crack and rightly so. For so many reasons, fallback girls are addicted to it like the addict is to crack. We rail against how much we hate it and yet we seem to always find ourselves smack in the middle of it.
We become drama addicts for many reasons. For me the groundwork was laid by a narcissistic mother and inattentive father. I struggled to gain attention…any kind of attention. And, as I watched my mom, I learned that drama was the way to do that. Sadly for me, though it worked for her, it did not always work for me.
Still, I carried it into my relationships. It was all I knew. I chose and attracted men who were only to happy to oblige my need for it. They were emotionally unavailable men who constantly ran hot and cold, and drama was the only way to maintain the relationships.
In the first post of her 30 Days of Drama Reduction series last year, NML said,
Many women don’t know how to bring out positive attention hence they ‘act up’. This could have been learnt in childhood where the only time you may have felt like you were taking centre stage is when you had your parent(s) mad at you. Or you may have lived in a high drama household and repeated the pattern.
She may as well have posted my picture.
With her help though, I fought my drama demons and won. I even wrote a couple of guest posts for her series including No More Drama and Don’t Engage the Drama Demons. I was on my way…or so I thought.
I’m an addict and, like any other addiction, once an addict; always an addict. I’ve been humming along all this time thinking I was drama free. I didn’t realize that how vigiliant I needed to be to maintain my sobriety. Not by a long shot. Not until the drama demons reared their ugly heads once again.
See the thing about a drama addiction is this. Even when things are good, or maybe especially when things are good, fallback girls are uncomfortable. We are so used to drama in our relationships that when it’s not there, we feel like something is missing.
For 40 something years there was drama in my life. Certainly it was there growing up in my relationship with my mom, and it has been in every marriage and every relationship since. And, let’s face it, a 40 year addiction is a difficult one to break.
Even though I worked very hard to beat that addiction, I wasn’t vigilant enough to keep the drama demons at bay. Perhaps the scariest part is that I didn’t even realize what was happening until it was almost too late. I spouted off in No More Drama about having a strategy in place to combat drama and I do. Sadly though, I was so completely unaware of what was happening that my strategy went right out the window. Or maybe I thought I was strong enough to fight my addiction on my own.
Regardless, I created drama where none exsisted because of my own discomfort. Things in my relationship are good. They are, in fact, very good, but because I had drama in my relationships for 40 plus years, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it didn’t, I created drama where there was none.
Yes, you read it right. I created the drama. I ignored everything I’ve learned. I swept my strategies aside and I gave into the drama demons. I let those bastards get inside my head and convince me that my discomfort had something to do with the relationship rather than with my addiction.
The truth is that I’ve never had to really face my addiction in a healthy relationship and moving from theory to practice is more difficult than I realized it would be. I was ill prepared to deal with my discomfort. I had no idea what creating drama where none exsisted would look like or feel like. Though I thought I would recognize the demons when they knocked at the door, I really had no idea.
It’s kind of like poison ivy. If you’re wandering around in a wooded area and you don’t know that poison ivy is there, or you don’t know what it looks like, you’re very likely to step right in the middle of a patch of it. If, however, someone tells you to be on the lookout for it and you take the time to learn to identify it, you can avoid it and come out poison ivy free.
I know now what those demons look like. I know how I feel physically when my mind is trying to create drama, and I know where my brain goes. In short, I know when that discomfort shows up it’s the relationship crack addiction talking and not a problem in the relationship. I’m well aware of what the poison ivy looks like and I’ll be damned if I step into the middle of it again.
Thoughts?
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auntiegwen June 15th, 2009, 11:06 am
Keep at it sweetie, we are works in progress x
auntiegwen´s last blog post..Reasons to be cheerful part 4
searchingwithin June 16th, 2009, 1:51 pm
I have found at times that those demons are very, very good at disguising themselves, and if you begin to recognize them, they change their disguise. They are not at all happy about being left behind, and/or unacknowledged. Keep working and loving, accepting, and forgiving yourself, and most of all, best wishes.
searchingwithin´s last blog post..Trust In The Power of Your Femininity
lisaq June 17th, 2009, 8:20 am
That we are Gwen, but we’re getting there!
Very true searchingwithin. They are tricky, tricky, tricky! Thanks sweetie!
Bobby Rozzell June 24th, 2009, 10:08 am
Well said, well written and brave of you to tell it the way you did. Thanks for sharing this with all of us.
Bobby
Bobby Rozzell´s last blog post..His inner green light
lisaq June 25th, 2009, 7:43 am
Thanks Bobby and thanks for the shout out on Douglas & Main!