Are you addicted to drama in your relationships? Are you often attracted to partners that you perceive as being exciting and intense? Is your relationship sign-posted with intense feelings?
Drama addiction is not a conscious choice, but a coping strategy that temporarily helps to relieve the loneliness or tension one feels inside. The coping strategy comes from a learned behavior before one’s language was fully developed. It’s a distraction from the empty feeling inside. The drama created is an attempt to get one’s needs, wants and desires met.
The adrenalin rush triggered by the intense emotions rising from the drama makes one feel alive and creates an opening for releasing trapped emotions. This is often followed with feelings of shame, guilt and self-loathing. The passion felt when making up after a fight compensates for the pain previously felt.
As human beings we are wired to bond with another person Dramacool since it optimizes our survival needs. A baby will attach to the mother or other care-giving adult for survival. As we mature, the yearning to attach moves to attach to an another adult partner. We look for someone we feel will provide the caring qualities of support, love, nurture – someone who will meet our needs, wants and desires to fit with our inner template.
When the bond is broken through conflict we suffer, we feel threatened, rejected, alone, angry, disappointed and emotionally unsafe. The basic human survival instincts take over, bypassing the rational mind. In our insecurity we defend, attack and withdraw as a way of controlling our environment, only to reestablish the attachment bond again.
If your fights often consist of intense emotions and behaviours of yelling, screaming, blaming, criticizing, name calling, storming out, throwing or breaking things, chances are that you and your partner are caught in a destructive cycle of drama addiction. Both you and your partner feel powerless and out of control over the cycle that seems to have a life of its own. Conflict is a normal occurrence in every couple relationship, however, the intensity and frequency of conflict makes it addictive.
Your body and mind register signals of threat to your survival, via your partner’s face, eyes, voice, movement etc., and you will automatically switch into defense or attack mode. Your basic survival instincts are in full operation because there is a threat to your attachment bond – your partner. You have both entered the battlefield because this is the only map you have to get what you want. There doesn’t appear to be any other option so the drama continues.
You may believe your partner is to blame. “If s/he changed/listened/was different/didn’t get angry /wasn’t so demanding, we wouldn’t fight”. However, your partner may also be feeling the same way about you. Your partner is also caught in the drama addiction and doesn’t have a new map to navigate through the turbulent waters.
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