part0016

S ometimes we have drama-filled lives because of fears that peace is boring. There’s a lot of reinforcement in the media for this belief, with every television show and movie filled with conflict and drama.

I discovered this personally when TV producers at three different networks separately contacted me to be in a reality show about my work with angels. After they’d interview and film me and my family, though, each producer would say the same thing: “Your lives are too peaceful. No one would watch the show without drama and fighting. Peace is boring.” One producer even asked us to pretend to argue, which we refused to do. With producers thinking this way, no wonder there’s so much violence on television and in movies!

Why do we associate drama with entertainment? Well, it’s because of the addiction to stress chemicals such as adrenaline, cortisol, and histamine. The heart-pounding excitement of stress makes us feel alive . . . for a few moments anyway, until our energy crashes afterward in the same way a sugar high is followed by an energy lull. Remember that studies show that these chemicals will be elevated even if we are watching the stressful situation happening to someone else, such as a dramatic television show or movie.

THE HEART-POUNDING EXCITEMENT OF STRESS MAKES US FEEL ALIVE . . . FOR A FEW MOMENTS ANYWAY, UNTIL OUR ENERGY CRASHES AFTERWARD IN THE SAME WAY A SUGAR HIGH IS FOLLOWED BY AN ENERGY LULL.

Adrenaline, cortisol, and histamine give us a boost of energy, heightened awareness, and a heart-racing thrill. The trouble is, those bodily reactions are so toxic that they can lead to serious diseases and addictions. And if that’s not enough, cortisol makes us insatiably hungry and gives us wrinkles—meaning that stress makes us look old and fat!

We also equate drama with excitement because of conditioning from upbringings in stressful environments, including school classrooms. We often accept something we’re comfortable with, even if it’s an unhealthy condition, because it’s predictable and we understand it.

As one who has lived both the crazy-stress and the tranquil, inner-peace lifestyles, I can tell you that the quieter excitement of peace yields more happiness. Being peaceful does not mean you sit around all day cross-legged with your eyes closed, repeating a mantra. You can be peaceful while engaged in very stimulating activities. It’s just that you won’t be driving yourself or other people crazy with nervous energy of fear or anxiety.

Have you ever spent time with a highly anxious person? It’s draining and difficult! It’s certainly not fun to be with someone who’s expecting the worst to happen. And you don’t want to be that person, either, for your own sake and that of the people who are with you.

Feeling unworthy and unlovable and assuming that others will reject you are symptoms of trauma. This is especially true if you were abused, neglected, or rejected in early childhood.

The false assumption that you must have done something bad to deserve punishment leads to self-blame for the trauma. Of course this is an untrue and very sad belief. However, this is how trauma survivors organize their memories of their painful experiences.

These feelings can lead to learned helplessness , a psychological term for giving up and not even trying, which I touched upon briefly in Chapter 2 . Learned helplessness can cause depression, where you stop caring what happens to you. You want to change your life, but it seems like a futile effort, because you doubt anything will change.

Being pessimistic and expecting the worst is a posttraumatic symptom. It’s our misguided way of shielding ourselves from future disappointments, by not even hoping or trying in the first place.

Pessimism gives you permission to not even attempt something fulfilling or healthful. You decide ahead of time that it’s pointless to make an effort to lose weight, write that book, finish school, or follow your dreams. In fact, the favorite phrase of pessimism is “Dream on!”—as if it’s crazy to dream about a better tomorrow. After all, if your yesterday was horribly painful, why should you expect today or tomorrow to be any better?

It’s a negativity cycle, because if you don’t attempt to improve your conditions, then nothing will improve . . . and, most likely, things will worsen due to your neglecting yourself.

Some people think it’s cool to be pessimistic, as it gives you a detached, I-don’t-give-a-darn attitude. But these “cool” pessimists are left behind while the optimists go out into the world having fun and successful explorations. Many studies demonstrate the benefits of optimism, including increased well-being, greater ability to cope with illness, and a better quality of life.

To turn pessimism around requires that you have a glimmer of caring about yourself, your health, and your happiness. Think of a plant, which needs nutrients, water, sunshine, and loving care in order to grow. So do you! In fact, tending to a houseplant gets you in the healthful habit of caretaking, which can rub off on how you treat yourself.

Negative chatter in your mind can drive you to addictions in an attempt to quiet the noise. Mind chatter is an inner form of drama. Some people use extra noise, such as loud music, in an attempt to muffle their mind chatter.

However, loud music (especially if it has aggressive lyrics) only increases thoughts and feelings of fear, anger, anxiety, and paranoia. Quiet music—which is usually labeled “meditation,” “relaxation,” “nature,” “spa,” or “yoga” music—mutes noisy chatter, and allows you to focus upon the priority at hand.

One study found that meditation music lowered cortisol levels while participants engaged in a stressful task. In the same study, those who listened to heavy-metal music had increased cortisol.

You may wonder: But won’t I fall asleep and be unproductive if I’m listening to meditation music? This question represents the voice of the fearful mind speaking, because that part of the traumatized mind is afraid of being calm. It believes that fear keeps you safe because your guard is always up, on the lookout for danger.

So the fearful mind conjures all sorts of violent future possibilities and things to worry about. The fearful mind—sometimes referred to as the “ego”—believes that hypervigilance is the way to be prepared for inevitable disaster. This is the same mind-set that drives a fascination with violent scenes in movies, shows, and games . . . and in reality.

The fearful mind convinces you to identify the bad guys and what they’re up to so you won’t be a victim of their plots. The fearful mind also obsesses about news stories of terrorism, accidents, and plagues, and whispers to you: This could happen to you, too.

Having fights in your mind or imagining aggressive encounters with others or violent scenes isn’t a flashback ; it’s a flash-forward , where you’re expecting the future to be just as violent as—or more violent than—your past.

BEING AFRAID OF THE FUTURE ISN’T A POST-TRAUMATIC FLASHBACK. IT’S A FLASH-FORWARD , WHERE YOU’RE EXPECTING—AND POSSIBLY CREATING—A FUTURE THAT IS WORSE THAN YOUR PAST.

However, being guarded, hypervigilant, and paranoid is not the way to stay safe. Those fearful habits have actually stripped you of safety, because your mind has been hijacked by fear. Sure, your body is alive, but you aren’t living life fully if you’re obsessing day and night about bad things happening to you.

Fighting against fearful thoughts just pours gasoline upon the fire. Anything you resist does persist. Instead, go around, under, and over the fears by taking the proven measures outlined in this book, including the Drama Detox presented in the next section and the techniques in the following chapters. Scientific studies galore say that yoga, meditation, breathwork, essential oils, spirituality, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and cognitive psychotherapy do reduce fearful ruminating.

And lest you worry that you’d have to do all of above simultaneously to improve your thought patterns—please know that you don’t. Pretty much any steps you take in a positive and healthful direction will carry you further than stressing about doing all the steps, now and perfectly (which the perfectionistic fearful mind would convince you is necessary).

The nice thing about a detox is that you can approach it as a temporary stopgap, so the tyranny of your fearful mind won’t argue with you about giving up something addictive forever. After undergoing a detox, you’ll have the mental and emotional strength to make it a lifelong commitment.

We associate the word detox with the elimination of harmful chemicals from our diet. Detox traditionally means abstaining from alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, coffee, and other drugs. Yet if you’re addicted to your body’s and brain’s stress and pleasure chemistry, detoxing takes on a whole new meaning.

As you read in Part I, scientific studies demonstrate that cortisol, dopamine, histamine, and adrenaline are released during stressful situations. The more stressful—or dramatic—the situation, the more your body and brain are flooded with addictive chemicals.

We also know that your body has a tolerance for a certain amount of histamine. The analogy is a bucket that can only hold so much histamine before it overflows. The more stress and drama in your life, the fuller your histamine bucket. Pollution, chemicals, alcohol, caffeine, and pickled foods all add to the histamine bucket. When it overflows, uncomfortable allergic symptoms such as bloating, itching, runny nose, and irritability ensue.

So a Drama Detox really involves reducing your stress levels. Like any other form of detox, it entails consciously abstaining from your “drug of choice”—in this case, addictive drama. You already know the drama patterns triggering your stressful feelings.

1. Set a date when you’ll begin your Drama Detox. Commit to it by writing it in ink on your physical calendar and by adding it to your online or cell-phone calendar.

2. Decide on the length of time for your Drama Detox. Be realistic so that you don’t set yourself up for disappointment. A good detox period in the beginning is three days. If all goes well, you can increase the amount of time.

3. Make a list of all of the drama patterns you are willing to abstain from. For example, you may decide to abstain from one or more of these stressors:

4. Once you begin your Drama Detox, take it one minute at a time. This means that you focus upon your behaviors in the present moment, instead of worrying how you will abstain tomorrow. You tell yourself: Right this moment, I choose to abstain from _____ [describe the stressor you’re detoxing from]. Notice how you feel as you’re detoxing compared with how you felt during dramatic moments.

5. Have alternative plans for those moments when you crave drama. Every addiction involves dealing with cravings in the beginning. To avoid a relapse, it’s essential to have replacement healthful behaviors available, such as:

As you can see, there are many healthful replacements for drama—and they are more fun and satisfying than drama, too! Have patience with the process of replacing old unhealthful cravings with your new healthful lifestyle choices. Any progress you make in the direction of health is positive and something to feel very good about.

If something reminds you of a trauma, you’re likely to get triggered. That’s when you’ll experience post-traumatic symptoms and lose your sense of self.

A trigger can be “generalized,” meaning that something reminds you of the trauma, even though it wasn’t specifically part of the trauma itself. As one study on traumatic triggers concluded, “the traumatic memory may be stored in such a way that neutral stimuli that only vaguely resemble some feature of the traumatic event are sufficient to trigger the memory” (Kostek et al. 2014).

It’s important to know what your personal triggers are so that you can understand what’s happening when your stress levels begin to escalate. Yet if you overfocus upon identifying your triggers, you can actually trigger additional emotional pain. So, please respect this balance for yourself.

Triggers can be external, such as something you see, smell, or hear that reminds you of the trauma. An external trigger could be a place or a person you associate with the trauma. It’s best to avoid external triggers as much as you can while you’re healing.

Triggers can also be internal, which usually means a feeling that reminds you of how you felt prior to or during the trauma. Triggers such as sadness, anger, fright, or loneliness may motivate you to use addictions to numb them.

Internal triggers can also be “thought patterns,” where you believe that something negative is about to happen. For example, you may believe that people are angry with you (when they’re not in reality). Your belief may be a trigger to act out in unhealthful ways. You can also unconsciously self-fulfill negative beliefs, and make your fears a reality.

Triggers are ingrained thought and feeling patterns (which can be visceral and involve your sense of smell). They bypass logic and go straight to the nervous system, which reacts as if the trauma was recurring right now. Sometimes the process is unconscious, but with effort, you can begin to notice the trigger patterns as a way of healing them.

Be aware of triggers, but don’t go into fear mode about encountering them. Instead, memorize a list of healthful ways to deal with stress such as “Get up from my desk and walk around for ten minutes,” or “Stretch my arms and back to release these feelings.”

Sometimes we get stuck in an endless loop of thinking about the past because we’re analyzing what happened. It’s all too easy to ruminate about the trauma, wishing that we’d acted in a different way in order to create a different outcome.

Obsessing about “what-ifs” (What if this had happened instead? ) is a form of self-blame and self-punishment that is unhelpful and unhealthful.

It’s beneficial to learn from mistakes so they aren’t repeated. But holding on to guilt and shame is not productive. Remember also that if you were abused as a child, you did nothing wrong to cause this. No child deserves to be abused, period.

Guilt is when you blame yourself for some action that you took or did not take. It is not the same as taking responsibility. Guilt is a pervasive belief and a feeling. Responsibility is a thought process and a conclusion.

Shame is when you feel that there’s something inherently bad about you. You’re embarrassed by your perceived shortcomings. If you feel ashamed, you may isolate yourself. You may expect to be rejected, so you don’t even try to socialize.

Guilt and shame dull your sparkle. They take the brightness and color out of life. It’s essential to replace them with more accurate and healthier self-perceptions.

There’s nothing wrong with you. If you made a mistake, there’s no need to punish yourself on an ongoing basis. Besides, doing so won’t undo the past. But what will help the present and future is your taking healthful action steps so that you can make a positive difference in your and others’ lives.

One source of stress is the way in which you view and manage time. How often have you been upset because you’re running late or behind on a deadline? Time pressure is a major source of stress. Chronic lateness can also lead to relationship arguments.

Your brain under stress is focused upon surviving and reacting, and less focused upon planning and creating. With chronic stress, your brain learns—and is rewired—to be focused upon survival and reacting only. It has difficulty amping up the area devoted to devising plans for the future.

— Approval seeking: A mind-set of I must get everything done right now, or I will be in trouble or something bad will happen comes from the desire to prove yourself or to appease a real or imaginary authority figure. Usually, this stems from a childhood where you were working overtime to gain parental acceptance. As an adult, you can transfer the desire to win outside approval to a healthy desire to give yourself approval. And that comes from taking positive action steps, such as peacefully working instead of frantically racing against the clock.

— Forcing yourself: If you find yourself starting a sentence with the words “I have to . . .” stop and question why you’re doing what you’re doing. Why are you forcing and pushing yourself? That’s a sign that your soul is rejecting the activity, and it isn’t healthy. Either meditate and get to the point where you are happy to engage in the activity, make changes with respect to how you engage in it (switching to a more enjoyable workout routine, for example), or stop doing it altogether.

— Indecisiveness: The thought I can’t decide whether to do this or do that can make you feel stuck. The existential dilemma of having to make choices concerning how to spend time is the basis of internal struggles and angst. Remember that not making a decision is the same as making one . . . because if you aren’t making a decision, you’re deciding to stay in your present state. Sometimes life calls you to make a choice before you’re ready. Do your best, and go for what your soul calls you to do.

— Not planning ahead: Part of drama addiction is procrastinating until an appointment or deadline is upon you. Do you wait until Christmas Eve to shop for gifts, or the night before a report is due to begin it? These are examples of needlessly stressing yourself. Planning ahead is a new habit that can substantially lower your stress levels. One way to plan is to break a big task down into small steps, and then schedule them into your calendar. This is the method I use to meet my writing deadlines.

— Stressing to impress: Are you working like crazy to make enough money to buy prestigious items? Who are you trying to impress? This unhealthy and stressful habit stems from a desire to be loved. However, if people like you for what you own, it’s a hollow feeling. You desire and deserve to be loved for who you are . . . beginning with loving yourself for having a calmer, more peaceful schedule.

— Being a martyr: Do you feel resentful and irritable because you have to do all of the work? This is stressful and toxic, and a sign that you need to (a) look for ways to simplify your life so that you’re not bemoaning how much you have to do, and/or (b) start delegating tasks and asking others to help you.

— Focusing upon the future: After a trauma, it’s natural to worry whether something painful will recur. However, if you become obsessed with fear about possible future traumas, you’ll lose the enjoyment of the moment. This is a part of post-traumatic dissociation, where you lose present awareness of yourself. A simple and effective method for reconnecting with the present is to do deep breathing. Inhale deeply, and then exhale completely. Notice your heart rate. Be aware of whether you’re comfortable or not. What do you see and hear right now? Focusing upon present feelings and environmental cues helps center you in the here and now. This empowers you to feel more confident about your present and your future.

Our sparkle dulls when we don’t enjoy our own companionship. Taking good care of ourselves, by eating healthfully and doing yoga, helps us love and appreciate ourselves.

Self-care is essential, but if you don’t value yourself, you may not make the time for yourself. That’s okay. In the beginning, small steps will help.

For example, become aware of tension in your jaw, your shoulder, your stomach, or another part of your body. If you notice any stress-related tension, stop whatever you’re doing, walk away, and engage in positive self-care behaviors.

The same applies if you feel your heart racing into stress-related panic mode. Stop whatever you’re doing, walk away, and take a few minutes to do one or all of these positive self-care behaviors:

If you’re often anxious, it’s likely a post-traumatic symptom. Diet can also increase anxiety, as we’ve discussed. Know that taking self-care steps such as these, or any listed throughout this book, can help you to regain your sparkle that comes from inner peace.