Drama

Would you say that you're surrounded by drama? I'm not talking "To be or not to be" drama. I mean the kind of drama that every high school girl says she hates and somehow ends up constantly involved in anyway. The he said, she said. The single element that keeps reality TV alive.

Urban dictionary defines drama as (among other things): "A way of relating to the world in which a person consistently overreacts to or greatly exaggerates the importance of benign events"

Drama is a huge negative in terms of your health - in all areas of your life! 

Spritually, drama separates you from God because there's no room for overreaction when you're close to someone who's all about grace and mercy the way God is, and there's no room for grace and mercy when you're set on making every issue into the end of the world. 

Emotionally, drama wreaks havoc on your ability to properly process and react to normal life situations. When you're used to a life of drama, the smallest thing is a federal offense. This drives other people away from you, isolating you on top of everything else. 

Financially, constant drama can lead to poor choices and overly emotional decisions. This can be as small as making an extravagant purchase on your credit card or as big as divorcing your spouse. 

Mentally, an excessive amount of drama can limit your ability to think logically in the future and give you a warped sense of reality (which, by the way, will only lead to more drama). 

Physically, drama raises adrenaline levels unnecessarily, burns off blood sugar way too fast, produces unresolved tension in your muscles, inhibits your ability to sleep well, and creates stress. Stress leads to a host of mental, emotional, and even medical problems, some of which can become life threatening if left unchecked. 

All of that isn't even the half of it! 



All in all, drama is bad! Most people understand this, yet so many still find themselves stuck in a cycle where everything is always falling apart around them and everyone is always out to get them. Sound familiar? It can be hard to recognize in the moment, but if you're constantly surrounded by drama there's a good chance you're the source of it. 

Whether you're the source or just the victim, you can take hope in the knowledge that it's possible to limit and even stop the drama in your life. You can take control of the situation and stop the cycle. How?

1. Remove dramatic media from your life. You are who you hang around and books and TV are just another way of hanging around people you've never actually met. Reality shows, romance novels, and most sit coms are so full of drama! In fact, if you blacked out all of the drama in a romance novel, all you'd be left with is the sex scenes - which amount to porn, which negatively affects your life in a lot of ways. We'll talk more about that another time. Consuming dramatic media alters the way you react to situations around you because it alters your perception of what's normal. Remove the dramatic media, and you'll see a huge chunk of the drama happening in your life simply disappear. Here's some identifying common themes in dramatic media, to get you started:
1. Infidelity
2. Lying
3. Gossip
4. Revenge
5. Constant lack of trust between characters.
2. Check how reasonable your reaction is. Think of someone you know who has been a moral compass for you. Maybe it's your mom, your grandma, or your pastor. Generally this will be someone whose presence would make you completely uncomfortable with swearing or lying. Once you've figured out who this person is, ask yourself "what would _____ think of my reaction to this?" If that person would tell you that you're being unreasonable (maybe they'd say "calm down" or "take a breath"), then it's time to choose a different response.
3. Assess the value of your words/actions. Is what you're about to say or do going to *actually* help anyone? If you tell Stacy that you overheard Ashley talking bad about her, you'll just hurt Stacy's feelings and make Ashley mad. That's not helping anyone. If what you're about to say or do isn't going to create something good for the people involved, don't say or do it.
4. Mind your own business. Really. Keep your nose (and your mouth) out of other people's issues. Let them sort it out on their own unless they ask for your help and you can genuinely improve their situation. Don't make things your business when they really aren't. For example, your friend's ex-boyfriend's behavior really and truly doesn't become your business if she's not in physical danger - no matter how much her feelings were hurt. 

Generally, these guidelines can be summed up with a simple rule of thumb: If what you're about to do or say is what someone on TV would do or say, don't do or say that. Your life isn't a TV show, you don't need to create plot points to keep your ratings so you can go on existing.