The seven habits of highly dramatic people

Here’s a quick and handy two-step process to make sure you get your M.D.R. (minimum daily requirements) of worry and chaos.

by Scott Kalechstein — 

Do gratitude, contentment and inner peace sometimes creep up on you and undermine your ability to indulge your anxiety?

Here’s a quick and handy two-step process to make sure you get your M.D.R. (minimum daily requirements) of worry and chaos. Step One: Believe and act like your safety, security and happiness are dependent on people and forces outside of you that you can’t control. Step Two: Try to control them.

For those of you who prefer to keep it complex, here are seven habits that will help you go deeper into your practice and guarantee a daily overdose of adrenaline. Allow me to be your drama director as we shout out the traditional opening words: “Lights! Camera! Re-action!”

1. Harness the power of negative thinking — Everybody accentuates the negative on occasion. What if I can’t pay my bills or lose my house? What if I get sick? What if I’m alone for life? What if I’m in this relationship for life? But, as your drama coach, I want to inspire you to master “The Secret” by focusing all of your attention on the most negative possible outcomes all the time. When this discipline has been achieved, you can relax into the certainty that you will always find something to freak out about in any situation, and fear will never abandon you again.

2. Be busy till you’re dizzy — Being too busy to still your mind and care for your body is an essential part of being on the path to drama-realization. Temptation is everywhere — health food stores, spas, gyms, yoga studios, meditation classes — and it takes courage to maintain abstinence while the whole world is stretching, sweating, chanting and going organic. Remember, as our parents tried to warn us, engaging in meditation can lead to blindness, losing sight of all the things right in front of you to worry about. So wake up painfully early, splash cold water on your face, brew up your caffeine and go, speed racer, go! Have you answered your e-mails? What’s on TV? Make sure your life and your mind are filled with clutter and free of those annoying empty spaces between your thoughts that can disturb your absence of peace.

3. Have a swinging good time — In the 1960s and ’70s, a swinger was a person who relieved the monotony of monogamy by attending a variety of extra-curricular relationships. Nowadays, the term has broadened, and is often used to refer to “drama majors” when they are swinging like pendulums from one extreme to another, churning with the thrill of constant crises and skillfully sidestepping the boredom of emotional stability. Would you like to be able to create a soap opera drenched in drama anytime you want? Just stuff your feelings till you can’t hold them, and then explode without restraint or concern for anyone, especially the ones you care most about. As a practice, try being 100 percent nice and sweet. Stretch to accommodate someone as much and as long as you can, and then take the lid off and let the steam out, like Mt. Saint Helens does once in a while. There is nothing as satisfying as having a good eruption after being good and silent for a spell.

4. Leave your inner child alone without parental guidance — When the child inside the adult gets scared, some really juicy drama can happen, but only if we withhold our compassion, re-assurance and loving boundaries. When we can resist such mushy self-help nonsense, our inner children will wreak havoc trying to get those things from others, usually through very exciting acting-out in the drama department. When two or more people abandon their little kids at the same time, oh boy, that’s when the fun begins. The adults have left the vehicle, and you can guess who’s in the front seat, banging on the horn, flooding the accelerator, yelling out the window and playing extreme bumper cars. Yippee!

5. Set huge goals; maintain unrealistic expectations — There is nothing more beneficial to your lifestyle than the habit of reaching for the stars, falling short of your lofty goals and feeling like a colossal failure. Taking big leaps and falling flat on your face is paramount for maintaining healthy, low self-esteem, which is the foundation of all good drama. Go for the mountaintop, and don’t look down at your feet on the way. One step at a time is for people satisfied with proceeding at a snail’s pace, always leaving behind a slime trail of serenity, gentleness, balance and other dismal downers that drama kings and queens take royal pains to avoid. You can do better than that!

6. Judge your judgments — Every human being judges, but only the ones who have learned the art of judging their own judgments excel in creating melodrama. Have you ever shamed and blamed yourself for feeling afraid and stuck, telling yourself that there is something really wrong with you for not moving forward? Good! You are on the right track. Now, take your next step. Judge your judgments. You should know better than to shame and blame yourself. Heap on truckloads of guilt because you stooped so low — to the curb of self-criticism — yet again. This will make you an energetic downer that can’t help but suck energy from those around you. You’ll be the lifelessness of the party.

7. Get grounded in the three B’s: blame, blame and blame — Blaming yourself has already been covered. But don’t rest there. Blame everyone else too. Life’s not going the way you want? Blame, blame, blame! Blame first, ask questions and take responsibility later, if at all. Appropriate targets are mom and dad, friends (if you still have any), your mate (if they are still around), the government, big corporations, small minds and, of course, God. Self-responsibility can lead to finding solutions for issues, which flushes good drama right down the drain. Instead, be generous with the blame dispenser, letting it overflow on everyone, uncontained, uncensored, unedited. Blame, blame, blame!

Affirmations for good drama

Every day in every way I am stressing out over everything, real or imagined. Everything is working to bring me the worst possible outcome. Life is against me and I am doomed. This, or something worse, is now manifesting for the highest cost to all concerned. I no longer have to work to create drama. Drama happens effortlessly and naturally, all around me. Whatever calamity I can conceive, I can achieve. I always have everything I need to manifest everything I don’t want, and all is hell in my world.

Scott Kalechstein is a counselor, coach, minister, inspirational speaker, recording artist and modern-day troubadour. Scott’s writings are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any illness or medical condition. If while reading you laugh your head off and your heart opens, but symptoms still persist, please see your doctor. 415-721-2954, [email protected] or www.scottsongs.com.

Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 27, Number 4, August/September 2008.