I am not a fan of drama. On TV and in the Movies is one thing… but in real life? Not so much. Drama is exhausting, sapping your energy and wearing down your mind. And often times drama is born of misunderstanding or misinformation. There’s often a bit of impatience and stubbornness that comes into play. Usually emotions get twisted up, raw and disconnected. And sometimes, it can be the byproduct of shitty fucking timing.
I try to avoid drama. When confronted with it, my natural instinct is to push right back. A natural instinct I think we all feel. The problem with that instinct is that it tends to feed back into the drama, increasing the misunderstanding, fueling the emotional disconnect and draining the energy even more. It can be a vicious circle.
If left unchecked, that drama can cause damage. It can ruin relationships, destroy reputations and leave deep scars that can alter yourself and your course. And all because we don’t stop to be real, to understand or to allow our emotions to even settle. The more the drama grows, the more we feed into it, the more we become less real to the situation… the more we become less.
Over the years I have learned tools to better handle these situations. Mind you, for most of my life I got it wrong… I gave into the drama, and I have paid some significant prices as a result. In order to stop the costs for me personally, I have had to begin to step back and be honest about it all.
I am sharing these thoughts, both as a reminder to myself, and in hopes that others may benefit from it in some way. Take what you will, leave the rest…
The first step is exactly that… step back. Take a pause, remove yourself from the drama as a whole. Getting out of the cycle and downward spiral is absolutely a requirement, else you will continue to be dragged in deeper and deeper… becoming less and less.
If you simply step back and do nothing more, you will most likely be at a loss. For whatever drama you were involved in likely involved people you care about on some level. And if you just stay away, the drama will find its casualty. For many of us, myself included, we can get to that step… and often no further. So we feel the loss, both with the people we may have cared about, but also for ourselves.
The next step for me is being honest… with myself. Almost any drama that we are involved in is at least partially ours to hold blame for. We have added to that drama in some way. Perhaps we instigated it based on half-truths, insecurities, hurt feelings or any other of the various shortcomings of the human experience. Perhaps we fed back in to it for many of the same reasons. But somewhere along the way, we added to the mess. We contributed towards the downward spiral, and helped to suck others in deeper.
So we have to be honest with ourselves as to what we have added and why. Its not always easy to do, and often it means coming face to face with our pride and our insecurities. It can mean admitting a vulnerability we may not have known, or at least do not like. But if we do not own this, if we do know know this… we will be stuck at step one, or worse, skip to the next step and give the drama wheel yet another spin.
Once you have been honest with yourself, its time to act. If the relationship with the people involved is of any significance to you, its time to own up your side of things. The key is to be sincere… to be honest and forthcoming… and to be vulnerable.
No one likes to admit their failures to others. We often hate admitting that we were even partially wrong. But we have to in order to remove the drama and restore relationships.
Its important to understand that this will apply to the others involved… they will hate admitting their failures relating to their part of the drama. And they may not yet be beyond the step of being honest with themselves. As such, its critical that we remember that we are acting on our side, and not to make our actions conditional on their reactions. They may yet scoff, they may seize the moment to take a victory at your expense… or any variety of reactions. If you react in equal measure, you are spinning that wheel of drama yet again, and that’s counterproductive to your goal.
You be honest and sincere… not because of what you want them to do or how you want them to respond… but because it’s what you need to do for you.
If they have stepped back and been honest with themselves as well, and are able to admit their own contributions to the drama, you may find that peace and at least partial restoration right there. Of course, that’s the ideal outcome.
But if they have not, or even refuse to do so, you have done your part. If they are unwilling to meet you in the middle, simply say your peace in sincerity, without adding to the drama, and then step back again. The next move will be theirs to make, and either it will resolve at some point, or it will fail completely. But you have done your part in ending the drama and attempting the resolution, and that is all any of us can do.
Regardless of the final outcome, sincerity becomes the best antidote for drama. It’s not always going to fix things, and there may yet still be damage from the drama itself. But it can help save your own emotions and draw you out of the downward spiral… which in my opinion is the ultimate need. You have to go through the steps to get to it, but being sincere will at the very least help save your own soul from the darkness of drama’s dark hole.
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