Welcome to Let's Talk Love.

I'm thrilled to be joined by Doctor Scott Lyons, a renowned clinical psychologist and founder of the Embody Lab.

Today, Scott and I explore the complex relationship between love and drama, looking at how our early experiences can create an addiction to drama in our adult relationships.

We talk about the neuroscience behind this pattern, the healing power of somatic practices, and the role of play in restoring joy and connection.

So many of us find ourselves caught in the cycles of crisis and chaos without even realizing it, mistaking drama for love, intensity, or aliveness.

By understanding what's really happening beneath the surface, we could begin to step out of these cycles and build steadier, more peaceful, and more joyful relationships.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

I know I sure did.

Welcome to Let's Talk Love, the podcast that brings you real talk, fresh ideas, and expert insights every week.

Our guests are the most trusted voices in love and relationships, and they're here for you with tools, information, and friendly advice to help you expand the ways you love, relate, and communicate.

We tackle the big questions, not shying away from the complex, the messy, the awkward and the joyful parts of relationships.

I'm your host, Robin Ducharne.

Now let's talk love.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Let's Talk LOVE.

Today we're joined by Doctor Scott Lyons to talk about love and drama.

I love that you're laughing about love and trauma.

Because guess what?

A lot of times they go hand in hand.

They wish it wasn't that way, but actually they do sometimes.

A lot of the time.

I know, I know.

Bless.

Doctor Scott, thank you for being with us.

We're going to talk about your book today, which I really, really, I, I really enjoyed reading and listening, listening to you read this.

I mean, that's my favorite thing is hearing the authors narrate their own books because I, you know, you really get this is your story as well.

You share about your life, Scott in here so vulnerably.

And I'm excited to talk to you about love and drama and all the things today.

So thank you for being with us.

I'm here for it.

Let's talk about drama and love and all the good stuff and support some people in the meantime.

Well, you know what?

And I think that's what it is, Scott, when I read your book, it's called Addicted to Drama, Healing, Dependency on Crisis and Chaos in Yourself and others.

And what I want to say first and foremost is that this is an awesome, awesome piece of work.

I learned a lot because I'm like, how's this going to go?

You know, like I'm going to read about like you think about people that earn your life and maybe you have been stirring up some drama yourself.

But I'm like, what you did was you brought light to something that I didn't realize that it could be an addiction for people.

I mean, it makes sense, but I didn't, I didn't understand it from that level of an addiction.

And the other thing that I think you did really well was like, I, I now see this from a compassionate lens.

Yeah, because we all know someone, right?

We we all know someone who's like, making mountains out of molehills is like chronically busy, but then complaints about it is like in a constant roller coaster in relationships.

Like we all, we all know that person.

Never us.

It's never us.

No, no, it's never.

Us, no, it's never us, but we know that person and we might call them the drama queen or drama king or some other, you know, like, wait kind of derogatory term.

And one of the things I was really interested in it is like, I would go to these big talks and I would say, OK, raise your hand if you know someone addicted to drama and everyone would raise their hand and I was like, this is so interesting to me because it's we all know it.

We know it viscerally when we're in the room with someone who's like a drama queen or drama king or like just a chaos monster.

And and yet it's so hard to define.

And there was no scientific research on it.

So how could we have something that everyone knew about, but there was no academic support to go, yes, this is actually a thing.

And so I really wanted to bridge that gap and heal myself in the process of my own little addiction to drama.

Yes.

And so actually this is your story, right.

I mean, this is, you know, I think about, I, I think about my own story and why I'm doing the work I'm doing.

I, you know, I've been on like a lifelong quest for having deep, beautiful, like just the best relationships and especially intimate partnership, you know, and there's been like, I, I just feel like it's, is a part of my life.

I know it is that I've struggled with, you know, like I had a really beautiful first marriage.

I did until I realized it was not, I didn't want to be in it anymore.

My second marriage was a complete disaster and I really think that there was a lot of chaos in that marriage.

And here I am in my third, hopefully final relationship with a man that I love and just so incredibly deeply.

And it's a beautiful, healthy relationship.

We're doing it very consciously this time, but it takes it takes time.

It's almost like now I feel like I've got more wisdom and it able to come from a place of like, all right, I've been through it and now I've got some.

I've got a lot of learnings that I can pass on.

Yeah.

And you have the same Scott.

Yeah.

With your own journey with being addicted to drama.

Yeah, I mean, I just wouldn't really name that too is like we like we think about like I'm on my third marriage or I'm on my 5th relationship and it's like just some of us might have had the opportunity and we met one person and it was golden and it's great.

But I, I like to think, but it's like we need a lot of practice, especially if we didn't get that refinement and that experience as kiddos, then you know that that process of refining relationship can only really happen in relationship.

And I, you know, in the, in the same way that like for me to, to heal an addiction to drama, you have to also go back and heal a lot of, of experiences.

And you need a little bit of the drama to be aware of your reaction and your own propensity for it, but also the ability to not be taken into it.

So it's like we need these challenging relationships.

We need unsatisfying love to really highlight what is love?

Sometimes, yes.

And we need sometimes calm experiences to highlight how bored we are when things are turbulent.

Right.

So so Scott, tell us about your journey of being you realized you recognized that you were addicted to drama.

Yeah, I there was a couple of key experiences I've had or like questions I asked myself.

I'm like, why isn't life just easier?

Because on paper it should be Like I'm very privileged.

I have a lot of certain things that make should make my life really easy.

And I was like, why doesn't life just feel like it's in flow?

Why doesn't it just feel easy?

And the answer was because of me.

No, it's not that simple.

But I, I grew up in an environment that was incredibly chaotic.

There was drugs and, and violence and, and a lot of unpredictability.

And so to me, that became not only the, the world I lived in, but the internal ecosystem.

The rhythms I knew that and adapted inside were those same incongruent chaotic rhythms that were happening around me.

I became that chaos because because that's the the bridge between nature.

Nurture is like that.

We actually learn and adapt and become part of our nature.

And if you go into the woods for a year and you slow down and you attune to the like the rhythms of nature, you suddenly become more and more aligned with that.

If we grow up in a city, for example, the research shows where we're right next to a train and there's constant noise pollution.

There's a significant more amount of things like ADHD and learning disabilities.

There's, they have a harder time focusing and being attuned to their own sensations and emotions of their body because there's constant distraction, right?

And so the same kind of happens with us.

And, and you know, in, in that sort of chaos and the challenges and the pains of my childhood, I did what any kid would do, which is I kind of shut down and dissociate it.

Like we only have a couple options when we're those who we love are those who hurt us.

And the the thing we do is we either people please and do like try all these strategies so they don't hurt us.

And Oregon, we shut down and dissociate and disconnect and I went on a mental vacation and referred to myself as a kid, often to my parents, as like a walking ghost.

Really.

You would say that?

Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't feel like I was like, I don't feel like I have dimensionality.

I didn't have quite that language.

And now I know the the neural research on that.

And it makes a lot of sense that like one of the interesting things about trauma is that it interrupts our ability to three dimensionally map our body so we feel less dimensional.

And it's, it's such an interesting component of trauma.

And we're more, you know, and it's part of an aspect of dissociation too.

So, you know, one of the things that is important to recognize is that as we numb out, as we dissociate, as we disconnect as a means of survival, as we shut down, we start to go into this process where we start to have a sense that we don't exist in the world.

We're isolated, we're alone, and we don't have this rich tapestry of sensation to confirm that we are alive, right?

An apple tastes bland, for example.

Or a relationship that is safe and secure feels really boring.

And so we had this numbness that is sort of like, you know, when your foot falls asleep and you have to like, tap it out, it's like, imagine that as your whole body.

And that's something so many of us know is that our whole being is asleep.

And what wakes it up?

Kind of pounding it against the ground, which is kind of dramatic.

Why?

Because we're trying to add in some sensation to rise above that threshold of numbness, to know that we are alive, to feel some type of existence as opposed to just being a ghost in the world.

And that was pretty much for me as I started to realize I was in these like really intense relationships, like really abusive relationships as an adult.

And I, even though I knew better, even though it was a therapist and I was like, well, I just feel something.

And it was the intensity I was feeling that I mistook his love.

Yes.

And so suddenly I started asking myself like, OK, well, I remember getting like, like my cell phone wasn't working.

And I had called the, the phone company to try to work it out.

And I remember getting like really angry and trying to outsmart.

And this is when I was a teenager and outsmart the, the person on the other end.

And, and, and I remember hanging up the phone with some like explosion and feeling some level of power and satisfaction.

And immediately I was like, whoa, that's not the value I want to live in my life.

What was that?

Which really started to get me to evaluate, why would I feel a sense of energy and power in in a volcanic eruption of emotion?

What is that?

And I didn't have, I didn't have the intelligence of the new inner intelligence of the time to really evaluate it.

But it became a part of my constant self evaluation of like going, Oh, there that thing is again, that where it's like something goes wrong, there's a crisis.

And I feel like suddenly I'm, I have a, I'm able to have a sense of power again, something and, and choice and agency.

And that's really what led me into then going into the deeper research of what is an addiction to trauma and how, how could we possibly be attached to something dependent on something that causes more challenge and stress and strain in our life.

But I think that's what addiction is, right?

Yeah.

I've been listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's newest book, Right Doubt something down the river.

Sorry, Liz, if you're listening to this, I, I miss, I, I know, I know enough her.

But she talks about how, like, as human beings, like, we've been addicted, all of us as adults to something in our lives, whether it be codependency in relationships, drama, a substance, you know, just somehow we're numbing, but we're getting something out of it.

Yeah, there is.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.

And that's, and that's the important thing is like for so long an addiction was just something many people shamed as opposed to going, what is this individual getting out of it?

And what they're getting out of it is space from the underlying pain that they're in.

So it's important when we look at addiction that we're evaluating what is the pain and how are these strategies to avoid pain affecting their life as opposed to just going, they're addicted to something, addicted to sex, they're addicted to gambling, they're addicted to love.

Because there's a way in which we kind of don't really appreciate the full complexity of humanity when we just call it a simple addiction, right?

When we can go, this individual is in pain like so many of us are.

And we know the science says that physical pain and emotional pain are indifferent in the brain.

So whether it was that pain was from a bike injury when they were a kiddo or not being cared for and loved enough as a kiddo, it's the same residual effect in the nervous system and in chronic pain.

Who wouldn't want a, a way to eliminate it?

We take medication all the time for pain, right?

And that's really whether it's gambling or whether it's sex or whether it's drama or porn or any of these things.

This is their attempt at medicating the pain and navigating the pain.

So Scott, that just makes me think like, like, how do you help somebody in your life?

This is you cover this in your book right around somebody that's coming like coming at you with like all this drama because it's contagious.

You say that, which is we know that should be true.

I mean, somebody comes to you and they're like, Oh my gosh, all the drama, the drama, right, Like you're wrapped in it.

You're like, Oh my God, tell me more.

That's not the right approach, but like, and but I OK, there, there's that.

And then I also think like, how can we put like love changes everything that is like, I believe it, like I believe it to be true, but how do you like bring more love to this situation that you, if you're saying that somebody's they've got dramatic tendencies or they're addicted to drama, how as you as the person in their life, what is the best approach?

Well, you know that old saying or idiom like love heals all, right?

It's not actually true, and it's interesting.

Love is not soft though sometimes.

Sometimes love is not soft, but sometimes love triggers a sense of danger.

And for those with developmental trauma, that's exactly the case.

So for those with drama, it's like you can try to love them.

I've certainly tried to love people into healing and health.

And when there's been such a history in which love is overcoupled, right?

Or wired together with danger, like if my parent hit me as a kid, but then they told me they love me, that's wired together that love and danger are equated, right?

So I mean it goes.

It's like, it's like.

Love and hurt, they're the same side of it, you know, the same, same, different side, same coin.

And so I'm going to keep seeking that as an adult is like unintentionally, but it is also is this interesting thing is that like for those who are addicted drama, the closer you get to them, the more that stirs them into a level of discomfort.

And it will bring them into some of the activation patterns around the drama to create more space and distance.

The ways that they can feel safe with intimacy.

Truly, the only way they can feel safe with intimacy is to pull you into the drama, into the vortex of intensity as opposed to like holding hands with you and looking and yet you in the eyes.

That level of intimacy at some point is going to terrify them.

It's going to send off this alarm system in the body that says this is too dangerous.

You lower you the drawbridge of intimacy, you're going to be unprepared for the next potential threat.

And so anytime that alarm goes off, they activate into all sorts of funky patterns and relationships, which is different than if someone's like coming at you and they're like trying to share the gossip and they're trying to like rile you up or, you know, like we all know those friends that's.

Different than what you're talking about.

Yeah.

And with those friends who are coming at us with all the drama, and it can feel exciting.

It can feel like we're part of something cool or we're in the in Group, you know, as they're telling us the gossip.

And then you kind of realize afterwards, I feel exhausted.

I don't know why I feel tired, but I just.

Yeah.

Totally drained.

Totally drain.

It's because it's a fast, fast ascension in the stress response and then an explosion that leaves you unintegrated.

And that's that's the normal rhythm of someone who's addicted drama.

But for those who aren't, it feels like, you know, when you get that adrenaline rush, if you go like jump out of a plane, out with a parachute or zip, you know, like a zip line or something really intense, it's that rush.

But then you have a refractory period where you are exhausted, where you are like, it's like taking a drug.

And if you think of something like MDMA or ecstasy, right, you have like that serotonin hangover the next day, you have this burst of it and then none at all.

And so the same is true for an addiction and drama, except instead of MDMA or ecstasy, what we're talking about is actually endorphins and other glucocoid stress hormones.

Yeah, you said you, you started to become aware of what was going on within you, Scott.

And I imagine that a lot of people that you've treated, that you've really helped through this, there's not like, is there, is there awareness or is it more like, OK, people are coming to you and going like this person.

I, I'm, I'm this is the person in my life.

I really want them to get help.

Do they have a level of awareness?

Like how do you help people through this?

Yeah.

Well, typically those with an addiction are the last to know, right.

That's the that's the nature of addiction is, is that illusion that were not addicted.

And certainly, you know, something like drama, it's so easy to blame other people.

It's so easy to make ourselves the victims in the in our life.

It's so easy to make everyone else the villain or something else the villain and focus on that.

And so addiction to drama is less tangible than like if someone's taking an opioid and and so it makes it more difficult and it's a lot of patience, I'll tell you that.

So I've worked with a lot of people who also have had this propensity, this addiction dependency on crisis and chaos and stress.

And you'll see them like in a therapeutic setting, they'll do something called crisis hopping.

So you'll do some grounding practices or some breath work and it settles down their nervous system.

And they can tolerate that for a few seconds.

And then they'll just jump on to the next issue or the next challenge in their life.

They can't really sustain a sense of calm or a sense of relaxation.

That that relaxation reflects for many of us that we all enjoy, that let's us take a deep breath and settle in and restore, feels dangerous to them.

So the relaxation reflects like the intimacy triggers an alarm that says, OOP, you will not be ready for the next threat if you relax too much.

So stay vigilant.

And sometimes you'll have to either go seek conditions or create stories in your head or other situations to maintain that level of stress, to keep vigilant around the dangers of the world.

And so breaking all of that down is a big help for folks and keep, you know, for my, my love lies with an addiction and drama.

Who would come into my office?

I would just say, can we stay with that settling just.

A second longer and even a second longer.

And so it's like this very titrated approach about generating more tolerance for things that are not activating or stressful is is a real beginning process.

Yes, so much of this, which I I can see in your work, right?

You're you're focusing on really it is, it's slowing down, it's being present, it's being mindful in your life, settling into the reality, right, because there's a lot of story, a lot of really make believe.

Yeah, I mean, like any trauma.

I mean, and and really, we're chasing the drama to avoid our trauma.

So let's let's be very clear.

We're chasing the drama to avoid our.

Trauma, yeah, it's, it's yes, it's no different than chasing a drug or chasing any other addiction.

And and, and when you all riled up about like that, so and so was like where like, think about someone here that cut you off and like as you were driving, right.

And right before that happened, maybe you were sad.

Maybe you were like listening to sad music and it touched like something in your heart.

But the moment you're in the like, Oh my God, I can't believe they cut me off.

You have bypassed any contact with your own emotions.

And for many people where if they were in relation to their own emotions, they're already too close to the underlying pain that resides within them.

And so they're going to focus on that person who cut them off.

They're going to focus on that person who took too long in the grocery store.

They're going to focus on the news and what's happening in the world and Can you believe it?

And why are things always bad happening to me or other people I know, you know, all of those things in which their focus and attention is on the things that rile them up, which is the drug.

And it is actually a drug.

Like, I don't know if you want to go into the the nerdy, dirty science of it.

Yeah.

I think this is, I think this is fascinating because it really gives us a lens for what's happening with the person that and, and maybe it's you, maybe it's the person that's listening right now.

It's like I have really been creating a lot of drama and chaos in my life.

But it's feeding you somehow, right?

Your brain chemistry is getting, you're getting hits, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, and we'll, and so like when we see people like in relationships where there's more that addiction and drama where you have like constant conflict and escalation or you have emotional whiplashing, you have there's like a lot of hyper vigilance and overreactivity in relationships.

You have just a lot of like sometimes there's emotional intimacy and then there's not.

There's a lot of a lot of symptoms in which this addiction drama shows up in relationships.

But the neuroscience underneath it all is really interesting because sometimes I think we can focus too much on that, like attachment styles, when there's something that like comes before attachment styles in the neuroscience.

And there's a part of the brain called the prefrontal orbital cortex that when there isn't enough safety, security, emotional connection basically becomes underdeveloped in the brain.

And consequently, as that part of the brain gets underdeveloped, we become insensitive to things like oxytocin.

So we even if there's love there as an adult, we often can't literally the receptors can't take it in, can't register the oxytocin that the bond, the sense of bonding.

And there's another piece of that is that those individuals who have that sort of oxytocin or endorphic, well, I'll talk about endorphins in a second.

Oxytocin kind of depletion or inability to receive have a much, much higher chance for an opioid addiction.

And the reason for that being, and this is where it gets really interesting and this is where like an addiction to drama and stress comes in, is that things like endorphins.

So you know when you go for a run and you'll get that runner's high, that is an endorphic response.

So it attaches to the opioid receptors in our brain like the and it gives endorphins give us pain relief.

It gives us a sense of social and emotional closeness as well or bonding and it gives us a sense of like pleasure.

Now where do you think we get those endorphins from?

Little hint, stress, every time you're stressed, whether it's you're going for a run and you get that endorphic high or you're dealing with your mother-in-law, you have an endorphic response in your body.

And so this is where it gets really interesting.

It's because stress, the mechanism of stress creates pain relief, social bonding and a sense of elevation in our mood.

And we, we often times go, no, no stress is, is awful thing.

That's a very simplistic understanding of stress and that the Physiology and the biology of stress is actually way more complex.

And, and so it's really important to know that actually stress has an important response in our ability to adapt in the world.

Someone throws a baseball at you, you have a stress response to catch it, right.

That's a stress response just as much as like you're not sure if you can pay your electric bill this month.

They might have different intensities, but both of those had the same response, which is an endorphic release as part of the stress activation.

And why that's important is because remember, those who are addicted to anything have some severity of pain, emotional or physiological, physical pain.

So what do we do?

We want to relieve that pain.

We and for we also want to feel more alive.

Those who have trauma and I felt numb in their life don't didn't get enough nourishment and love all of those things and they became more dissociated.

They want to feel more alive and connected and they want to feel more bonded.

Stress allows for all of that.

There's a research study of Australia in which they made they had two groups of people.

One group stuck their hand in cold water, like really cold water that kind of burned, and then went to do these tasks, these sort of academic tasks.

And the other group would just put their hand in neutral, like water that was kind of warm, lukewarm, whatever, and they would go do the task.

The group that went through the stress together not only felt more bonded and connected after, but they also performed better.

Their attention and their energy from the stress response allowed them to feel more connected bond, so connected, bonded and focused.

And so these are the really important things to recognize is because it's like as humans, we're all looking for pain relief, right?

Some way or another, we're all looking for closeness.

It's kind of the nature of being human.

We're all looking for more energy and this assurance that we feel alive and, and a sense of awe and wonder in the world.

Thus we just feel dead inside, right?

And the thing that gives us that the most and is the most contagious, as you said, and the most addictive is stress.

Wow.

So it's like creating, it's creating stress as a pain reliever to make yourself feel better somehow.

It's it's making, yeah.

Yeah, and social bonding, right.

People call trauma bonding, but trauma bonding just literally means, and it's often misunderstood, which is different than drama bonding.

Trauma bonding gives us a sense of closeness to other people through shared pain.

Yeah, that's part of our the nature being human.

Through shared stress, we feel more connected.

Drama bonding is more when you're like throwing logs on someone else's drama fire, right?

Like they come over and they're like, my partner did this and you're like, Oh my gosh, how dare they, They're so awful.

Tell me more, Who else?

We've all done that.

We've all done that, right?

You're just like, you're like you're, you're, you're not really offering solutions.

You're just like Oh my God, I can't even believe that.

You're not offering solutions, you're a cheerleader to the drama.

I have one of my best friends.

I love her.

She is an absolute cheerleader to my drama.

And like, I know that if I call her, I'm gonna have this deep sense of, like, vengeance and satisfaction and like, you know, screw them and they were wrong.

And if I call other friends, I'm gonna be like, Oh my gosh, I really see my part in this.

So, you know, I often call herds first, right?

Right.

Of course do the work and then.

You'll and then I'll do the work I need.

Inspection.

Yeah, I need the satisfaction first.

We all need it.

I love.

This like, I love this card.

It's so funny because like you are that you're a therapist and you've been through living the drama of life.

And so you, you know what it's like to live on both sides of it.

You're like, I got the awareness piece, But first let's relish in the in the fun of it and then we'll get into the the work.

Look, again, we feel more bonded to someone who's going to be drama.

It's called drama bonding for a reason.

We're going to feel more connected.

We're going to feel more or less validated and satisfied.

And that that can feel really good.

It's just not accurate most of the time, right?

You know what this made me think of?

It's just yesterday as I was preparing for this and talking to my best friend.

We work on the podcast together and I was like, cursed.

Just today, I'm watching my feed and there's a post by People magazine around, you know, it was a picture of Justin Baldoni and Taylor Swift with this, like, big line between the the two of them, right?

And it was like something around the story of she's being served papers and the person that was serving jumped over Travis Kelsey's fence, right.

And got arrested because obviously he's trespassing.

And like, yeah, no good man.

That's totally legit.

The guy was deserved to be arrested.

But it was all around creating drama between Justin and Taylor Swift, right?

It's just like this rift I'm going.

This is what the world we live in, though, Scott.

It's creating drama around circumstances that we know nothing about.

I don't need to know anything about.

Of course not.

I really, really don't care.

And I'm thinking actually, I've got a compassion for the people that are all involved that are actually, they're, these are real people that are going through like a legal dispute, which is so freaking stressful and awful.

And it's like actually the drama.

There's no need for anybody to get involved.

But that's what I'm saying around here is like we're, we're surrounded by stories, made-up stuff, drama.

And it's, no, it doesn't surprise me that in our own lives, on a personal level, it's like, you know what I mean?

There's the perpetuation in our society around this.

Yeah, well, we're in an endemic of an addiction to drama.

Like it's not like what I was kind of sharing us like the the personal origin story that was once more like that was the common components or the common denominators for those who are addicted dramas, early developmental trauma, you know, numbing out, dissociating, needing to feel some sense of sensation that rises above the threshold, numbness and having big kind of seeking and creating scenarios that help do that.

That that was the sort of classic case.

Now we're in a culture in which the intensity and overwhelm to our nervous system is just everywhere, right?

There's a reason the news has increased by like 42% over the last few years.

The use of dramatic language imagery, sexual imagery, violent imagery, all of these things that that heighten our stress response and get our attention and capture it and maintain it.

And the consequence of that over and over again is that we are over stimulated and under processed.

We start to numb out.

We start to feel more dead inside and dead in the world.

And what do we need to start to feel alive again?

Something that rises above the threshold of that numbness, which has to be something really intense and something that can really get us worked up to some degree.

The media knows this.

That's why they keep having to increase the level.

So if you're familiar with anything around addiction, you know that we build tolerances, right?

So you need more alcohol to get drunk.

You need more stress to get the the stress, the high endorphic responsive stress after a while.

And in the same thing is true here, that we actually need much more intense stimulus.

And they will provide intense stimulus, whether it's on the news or in the newspaper or on social media feeds.

All of these things to rise above that threshold of numbness that they help create to get our attention in order to then eventually sell us whatever's being sold on the brakes or on someone's social media.

Like that's just what we're that's the world we live in now.

You know, it sounds kind of like a conspiracy theory, but there's tons of research on it.

I know it's not a conspiracy theory because we live in this world and it's all you, all you need to do is turn on the TV and and just.

See.

Turn it off and see what happens.

Like when you start to get bored and go through withdrawal symptoms, which is actually very real for a lot of people.

And it's like when you go on vacation, the first few days you're like, Oh my God, this is amazing.

Then you get the itch and you're checking your phone all the time and you're like, and you're thinking about work or you're thinking about other things and you can't actually relax.

That's what's happening to us as a culture where we're moving further and further away from our own ability to restore.

That is so true.

That's so well said.

And this is part of this.

This is a lot of the work that you're doing, right, Scott?

Like day-to-day is helping people to come back to that place of, of connectedness, right with yourself.

Yeah.

And making rest a practice, making peace, like peace a priority in your life.

Like, what does that mean exactly?

Like, I didn't know what peace was until I would say the last year of my life.

Like, I feel like I'm embodying peace.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I never used to be in that place to say that, you know?

Well, and, and that's amazing.

And as we recognize, OK, what are the conditions that allow any of us, including you, to find the embody or experience rest or peace and to recognize what are the ways in in which we're getting in the way of our own peace?

How are we contributing to our own life?

That is difficult.

And, and people will come at me after I say things like that and they're like, you're, you're shaming and blaming me.

You're making me the victim.

And I was like, you should read my book.

It's called Addicted to Drama and right, it's and and there are conditions and there are shitty things in the world and there are mean people.

And none of that is untrue.

And here's the thing, like by the third meth addict that I dated, I had to ask myself here.

Who am I contributing to this?

Yeah.

What's the common denominator?

Oh, my gosh, it's me.

Were they still on meth?

Yes.

Was it awful?

Yes.

But why did I stay and why did I allow my boundaries to be crossed so many times over and over again?

That is my contribution to this equation.

And so even if the world is hard and it is hard, and even if people are mean and maybe incapable of loving us in the ways that we want, what in US is the mechanism that keeps us involved in that?

And that's part of the the same mechanism that we're talking about in addiction to trauma.

So you, you are like a practitioner and teacher of somatic and you've got a body lab.

Can you tell us about somatic therapy and somatic practices just in like really simple terms?

Because this is like the word itself.

I don't people, a lot of people don't know what it is, but I like, I would love to learn more about that.

Yeah, when we're talking about somatics in terms of therapeutic therapy, we're talking about like body based therapies.

So soma means Greek means body and somatics is the practices of coming more into our body and that's that.

So it's a radical shift from the idea like we're just we're heads, we're brains that are just being carried around by our body.

Like we know that's no longer true.

Like, thanks to many great books, like the Body Keeps a Score right, that our tissues hold memory right.

This is not, this is no longer some like some funny idea.

This is like, this is all the where the science is demonstrating.

It's like the body keeps the score right.

The your muscles, your breath, your cells are reenacting the historic past in every moment until there's some type of shift.

For example, when people say, oh, I'm triggered, right?

Which is such a funny word because like what they mean is I'm having emotional past and I'm living out my history in my past as though it was currently happening in the present.

That's really well said, yeah.

And thanks.

And somatics as a tool and a technique helps us reconnect to the present moment, to our breath in this moment, to the sensations and feelings in this moment.

And even be able to discern what is the emotions from the past that are acting as though it's in the present.

And what are the actual sensations and feelings and emotions happening in the current moment.

When we think about, I think one of the easiest ways to understand somatics is in relation to trauma.

So trauma is the great fragmenter.

It cuts us off from feeling our own body, our own intuitions, our own sensation, from feeling relationship.

And all of these things that are fragmented, cut off, can only be refound through the body.

If we're dissociated, if we're disconnected through the body, we're not going to come home and suddenly feel like we can ground in our body or feel safe here unless we have the practices that allow us to experience that.

And it's not a cognitive thing.

Like go ahead and tell yourself you're safe when you're watching a scary movie.

Try it, See how well that works for you.

But if you connected, for example, to the sense of the blanket around you that you're holding, or the person next to you that you're leaning into, or the chair underneath you, then you can be feel both the fear, but also the sense of security and safety that only can be felt through the body.

And so in this sense, you suddenly start to feel safe as opposed to think your way into safety.

You can't think your way into safety and you can't think your way into healing the all the fragmented parts.

You can only feel your way in to heal.

And so when you're talking, Scott, I, I think I'm understanding this in a new way because you know, like traditionally it's like talk therapy.

We could talk it out, right?

We're like, all right, let's go into that memory.

Let's like even, you know, with my own therapist, we do.

Well, I think maybe it's, it's a combination of somatics because it's like we go into meditative state and go into that place, go into that memory.

So it's possible that it's a lot of different things all at once, but it makes me think like somatics is.

And you, please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's like you're intentionally going into your body to heal stuff that that is trapped.

You don't know, right?

So you're doing movement, you're whatever it is that you are doing.

It's like trying to locate that stuff that you would not have otherwise been able to do with, like with talk talk therapy, for example.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, here's what we know is that like a new thought, for example, is so fast, like milliseconds, and then an old thought takes a little longer to like longer to form.

Excuse me, a new, an old thought takes is very fast.

A new thought is even longer to form.

And to contact or connect to a sensation in our body takes about 10 times longer than the formation of an old or new thought.

And why that's important is, is it means we have to slow down to actually get out of the patterns of our thoughts.

We have to slow down to be able to feel the sensations, to feel the things that we never felt.

One of the things about trauma is that it's not what happened to you.

It's not the event, it's how did it happen and how did it get stored and what was missing and what didn't get to be processed.

And when you're actually healing trauma, you have to go back and feel and move, metabolize and move through what never got to be felt.

And you can't think your way into feeling.

You can only.

A tune into yourself, into your body, the place where feelings and sensations happen and feel your way through it.

And it melts all of those, you know, like they're like cysts almost in your body, right?

That those memories, those experiences that never got to be processed and that's taxing on the body over time.

And it's, you know, in the same way if you break your, let's say you break your foot, right?

And all of a sudden and you're like, you know, you're, you're not putting much weight on it, you're being very careful.

But all of a sudden in like 3 weeks, your back starts hurting and your hip is hurting.

You're like, well, what does this have anything to do with my, my injury?

But the whole body is connected and compensating constantly for the injury.

The same thing is true for emotional injuries is you're in constant compensation for the emotional injuries.

And, and this is where it becomes really challenging because not only do we have to address the injury, but the compensations.

And that's really the power of semantics is it allows you to identify what's the compensations like our attachment style and what's the actual root pain and be able to then process and metabolize that as well, not just the compensational or behavioral pattern.

Wow, that's amazing.

It makes me think of two things while you're saying this.

The first is like, I remember this was a few like quite a few years ago.

One of my really good friends runs five rhythms workshops and it's like like 2 day I signed up and I was like, all right, let's do this.

I've never done anything like it, right?

So it's like free dance and just like free, like whatever.

Like she's, she's a DJ.

And so the music's pumping and then it's slowing down and you're just moving along among.

I was like probably 50 of us in this big hall and one give at one point in time.

Like I was just having a great time really.

And some of it was intense.

Some of it was just like and at 1 moment I remember like just, I had all of a sudden I just started crying like bawling, calling my eyes out.

And I'm like, what the heck.

And like and she's seeing, but she's talking to all of us as a collective and going just feel the feels whatever, like just.

And I'm, I'm trying to, I think I was judging like why am I crying?

But then I was like, I just have to let this out.

Whatever it is, it's coming up for me.

So I cried, cried and then within 20 minutes I'm feeling really good again, like just light, but it because it passed, but that was that was locked in me somewhere somehow.

I don't know what I was crying about and I guess it doesn't matter.

It really doesn't, right?

The end of the day, you.

Don't have to know.

That's just it though, right, Scott?

Like that must be the experience for a lot of people going through this.

It's like something's coming up and maybe you will get a memory, maybe you will have something, some cognitive understanding, but at the end of the day, doesn't really matter.

Like you're releasing it, right?

That's how I understood it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean this is the interesting thing that happens in trauma.

One of the things that fragments is our our memory systems fragments.

So the part of our memory that's involved with that, that holds the emotions, that holds the sensations and experience what's called the implicit memory.

And then which is different from the declarative or autobiographical memories, which is or narrative memories, which is like the story of what happened and what in trauma happens is those two become separated.

So we and it makes it much harder to process your emotions when you it's not related, when it's just floating around right away from the story that so when someone tells you a story or talks about a relationship or divorce and then just sound flat, that's what it's like.

It's like it's so separate the emotions from the the memory or on the other side, someone can have like big kind of emotional responses and it is related to the memory that's been fragmented, but they, they don't have a container, a place to put it.

So it just is like this chronic crying or depression.

And so what's really what is beautiful is that one of the things we do in somatic trauma work is we bridge back the memory system.

So, and sometimes we are not able to have the narrative memory, like narrative memory means like there was a beginning, middle, end of the story.

We don't necessarily have to have that if we allow for it to just move and process through the body, the emotions.

I mean, and that's what you did.

Like the dance was the container was the thing that held you, then your body was the container as you moved that allowed for that to metabolize and just move through you.

And sometimes we have experiences that are really emotional that happened before ages.

We can even remember it.

And sometimes the emotional memory will never meet or connect back up with a narrative memory.

And that's OK too.

We can still process it.

Wow, I've really like Doctor Scott Lyons.

I love talking to you.

I've learned so much in this hour.

I really have.

I really appreciate everything you're doing.

And I just thanks, like, I just love your presence and the work you're doing because you bring a lot of levity too.

Thank you.

You know, like you really do too.

Like some serious stuff.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah.

It's funny because I remember I was talking to Ester Perel recently about this and she's like, I no longer.

I'm interested in trauma, I'm only interested in joy.

And I was like, oh, I, I really get what you're coming from.

And she, we talked through it, but like, I was like, I wonder if I could start saying that too, of like.

But my, my way, my, my shift in language around it is like the things that get denied from us as part of trauma is things like play and levity and joy.

And here's the thing, it's like we could try to force that on ourselves and it wouldn't do anything.

But if we can find play, and this is really interesting because this is research that's been coming out more, is that one of the most effective trauma healing practices is play.

It doesn't surprise me at all.

And not me either.

And there's there is a parallel between somatic therapy and play because it is more, there's a lot more curiosity and investigation and sort of sometimes movement that that's also associated with play.

So it's very restorative.

I can't imagine my life without just a shit ton of joy and play.

You know, I, it's, it is part of my life.

It's just laughter.

I just, I like, it's just so important to me.

It's like one of my, my top values.

It's funny, I've never written that down, but it's, it is play and joy and fun because like what?

How else?

What do you deal with life?

It's hard.

Well, and this is the thing, and it's like if we've had tough experiences and we've had a lot of trauma, it freezes us and it's really hard to push past or move through the freeze in order to find play.

But at the same time, play can help defrost us or thaw us out a bit.

Yeah, and sometimes it's just like it doesn't have to be, you know, there there's so many ways that we can play.

Like my idea of playing is like sitting down with like my friends or a partner or even my kids and doing like Angel cards.

I mean, come on.

Like that is fun.

Like to me, that's like, let's let's play with some Angel because angels are going to tell us some great stuff.

Yeah.

That kind of thing, for instance.

100% So this last year for my birthday, I took like 2025 of my dearest friends.

We're all adults.

And we went and did laser tag for a couple hours and it was like, and every, so many of them were like hesitant.

They're like, I don't know, this is for kids.

And I was like, we are kids and adult bodies.

And by the end everyone was like, we have to do this so much more.

This is like therapeutic.

And it's, it's like, I haven't felt this level of joy in such a long time.

And I was like, yeah, play is play is my jam.

Oh, that's that's so fun, Scott.

Well, thank you, Doctor.

Scott Lyons.

My pleasure and.

I know you're not feeling great, so I really appreciate you.

You, you made your champion.

I'm holding up your book again because I think it's amazing.

And I hope everybody buys it in audio too, so they can hear your voice and your stories and your laughter, because that's that's that's a big part of it too.

Thank you so much, what a pleasure.

I'm going to close with a blessing with your sentiments and your and my learnings through you this week.

May we support our loved ones that are addicted to drama, understanding this is often from a deep, wired reaction to pain within.

We've really learned that today.

May we, while supporting others, hold space to support ourselves, creating clear boundaries and doing practices that restore and recuperate our own energy and our own peace.

And may we understand that healing is about letting the parts of you that hurt finally feel safe.

Safe enough to stay.

I love that.

That was a quote that we took from your book and I just think that is beautiful.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So thank you, Doctor Scott Lyons.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here with us.

Let's Talk Love is brought to you by Real Love Ready and hosted by Robin Ducharme.

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