We all experience negative emotion. It is a natural part of life. Not only would our lives be boring without the ups and downs of our emotions, but negative emotions are how we learn and grow and become better, stronger human beings.

Think about this. Without experiences that trigger such feelings as fear, hurt, loneliness, anger, depression, and inadequacy, we would live in a world devoid of the qualities of character that we consider most noble—courage, determination, fortitude, faith, hope, trust, honor, resilience, compassion, and so on. Such qualities are forged not when life is relaxed and easy but in the midst of negative emotion.

Grief

But I want to distinguish between two types of negative emotion. One is grief. This is real emotion that you feel in your body when you experience some sort of loss (relationship, illness, job, well-being, hope or dream, etc.) Feeling grief is usually a process that includes a myriad of emotions, including some form of anger, depression, anxiety, inadequacy, hurt, sadness, etc. Letting yourself experience grief is cleansing. It is the way you work through and let go of negative emotion.

Drama

The other form of negative emotion is drama which is exaggerating or creating an excessive and unconscious display of emotion. It often involves creating conflict, engaging in compulsive behaviors to avoid feeling or withdrawing from relationships in unhealthy ways. The purpose of drama is to distract yourself from your underlying pain of loss or unresolved issues. It’s often a response to the internal discomfort of loss rather than the loss itself.

Grief vs Drama: An Example

Here’s an example. Perhaps you were abused by your mother when you were a child. That fact causes grief which includes a myriad of emotions such as hurt, anger, fear, depression, shame, guilt and sadness. You let go of this grief by processing it. Of course, you’re too young to do this as a child so you cope the best you can. But hopefully, as you get older you can process the grief by letting yourself talk about your experience including the thoughts and feelings associated with it. By feeling the grief the feelings begin to dissipate. By examining the thoughts associated with it you can put it in a better perspective and eventually let go of it. Not that you forget what happened, but it’s no longer a dominant theme of your life.

How Grief Becomes Drama

But if you don’t process the grief, it can become drama that affects your current relationships. You may keep yourself at an emotional distance. Or you try so hard to please. Or you feel inadequate and undeserving. Or you blame yourself when things go wrong. Or you over-react and get into wrangles when things don’t go your way. Or you resent others for being happy or taking care of their needs. There are many ways it can happen. Drama is not clean and healing pain. It is negative emotion that makes you feel like a victim, have difficulty trusting others, or struggle to make a place for yourself in your relationships.

Here is the most important thing about drama. It is not only fueled by what originally happened but by your thoughts, the stories you continue to tell yourself about the meaning of what happened and what you have to do to protect ourselves from pain in the future.

The Way Out

The way out of drama often involves surfacing and processing your feelings about what happened in the past. But as important as the feeling work is the thought work. As an adult, your mother is no longer abusing you. What makes you unhappy today is not her abuse nor that from other people, but the story you tell yourself about your worth or power, or how other people treat you, or what it means to be in a relationship. Although stating this may seem harsh, you are the one who is keeping your drama in place and you are the one who can end it.

When I teach this principle the place people want to go is “I’m such a bad person for doing this to myself.” No, that is not true. It is not about blame of others nor blame of yourself. It is about taking accountability for the choices you’ve been making and recognizing you can make new choices.

If you have a lot of bad feelings, if you feel like a victim, if you are unhappy in your relationships then I want to invite you to consider your part, how you are abusing yourself by distorted thinking that does not serve you.

Do you abuse yourself by replaying this story in the same old way? How can you look at it differently today? What false conclusions did you come to as a child about life, relationships, and yourself, that you know, as a more rational adult, are not true? What conclusions did you come to about men or women? How you have to be in a relationship? About your own strength or worth?

Create an Empowering Story

To stop the drama you have to change your thinking. In what way can the abuse you suffered as a child make you a better person today? How is your mom not the person you believed she was when you were a child? Then consider how you’d like to feel about yourself today; how you’d like to feel in your relationships today; the good you bring to your relationships today.

Now come up with some thoughts that will produce the kinds of feelings you want today. Write these down. Pick a few that really resonate and look for all the evidence that they are true. Create a new story based on these thoughts. Rehearse this more empowering story and be willing to talk to yourself about it when in a new key moment and you’re tempted to go back to your drama.

I get that recognizing drama and giving it up is not easy. It is often a process of becoming more aware, allowing yourself to grieve about the past, seeing how you came to some false conclusions about yourself and relationships and learning to change your thoughts in ways that allow you to feel more empowered in your life today.

Often, doing this work requires a safe place and guidance from either a loving partner, friend or even professional. I’d invite you to realize you don’t have to do it on your own. In fact, your drama was created in relationships and so often your healing also happens in a relationship. So don’t be afraid to reach out to someone who will treat you with sensitivity and love.

Remember, you deserve to heal. And there are people who are willing to support you in your healing journey.