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Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them. Not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now. As she breaks down the fairy tale health story, you have been chasing all of your life, indispensable action steps and lasting change.
Courtney Townley 0:28
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley. As always, I’m thrilled that you’re here with me. Before we get into today’s episode, I want to remind you, in case you’re not on my email subscription list, and perhaps you didn’t listen to last week’s Podcast episode, that I am hosting my annual Healthiest Year Yet event on February 13th, through February 17. This is a free event. And it’s honestly the biggest free event that I do all year. Normally, I do it in January. But this year, I decided for a lot of logistical reasons to do it in February. And it’s really rooted in helping you to bring simplicity and ease and joy back into your process. Because creating any kind of meaningful change in your life is never going to be a clean, linear process. Not with relationships, not with finances, certainly not with your health and well being the path to change, truth be told, is going to have all kinds of unexpected twists and turns and provide you with a tremendous amount of opportunity to rumble to wrestle with hard things. And having worked with a lot of women over the years, the rumbling is where we often suffer unnecessarily. It’s where we often quit on ourselves. It’s where we make the journey Oh, so hard. And so if you are someone listening to this Podcast today, who could use a little bit of help with those unexpected twists and turns, you could use a little help in making the path to behavior change. A little more grace filled, I would encourage you to join me in this event.
Courtney Townley 2:28
Again, it runs February 13 through February 17. If you cannot attend live, you will still get access to all the course content. This is five days five powerful lessons, tons of support. And it doesn’t cost you a dime. So if you’re interested, you can sign up by going to graceandgrit.com/healthiestyearyet. Once again, that’s graceandgrit.com/healthiestyearyet.
Courtney Townley 3:03
All right, so let’s get into today’s episode. Today, I would like to talk about drama. And to be more specific, I’d like to talk about ditching drama. Why? Because it doesn’t help us. In fact, it hurts us. It causes us a lot of unnecessary harm. It makes the road so much more difficult to travel than it needs to be. And we’re at the root of it. We are the ones who are creating the drama in our lives. And look, life is full of stressors. And while I would never say that the goal should be to completely eradicate stress. Because there’s a beautiful side to stress. It’s what makes us more resilient. It makes us stronger. It grows us as humans.
Courtney Townley 4:07
What I would encourage you to do is look for ways to live with less distress. And I do believe that it is very probable that you right now can live with less stress than you’re currently carrying. And how well by ruthlessly editing the stories that you’re telling yourself about who you are and about the life that you live. In other words, by ditching the drama. So at the end of this episode today, I’m actually going to teach you a really simple four step formula for doing just that, that you can start implementing right away.
Courtney Townley 5:00
You can begin to minimize the distress in your life and use the resources that you would normally be dedicating to all that stress to the things that you really want to be showing up for. And ultimately, so you can show up more confidently to do the work that needs to be done to keep moving your life forward. So I’d like to start this conversation around drama with a few definitions.
Courtney Townley 5:32
Drama, according to Google, is a literary composition that tells a story, usually of human conflict. So we are telling ourselves stories all day long, every day, about our life, about other people’s lives, about our own possibility about so many things.
Courtney Townley 6:03
Now, I had to giggle when I was doing research for this Podcast, because when I was looking up the word drama, I saw that Merriam Webster actually has a definition for drama queen. I don’t know why I thought that was hysterical. But I just did not expect that to be in the dictionary. So what Merriam Webster defines drama queen, as a person given too often excessively, excessively emotional performances, or reactions.
Courtney Townley 6:34
So dramas are reactions. And that’s really important to keep in mind. And I would encourage you to consider from the outset of the show today, where in your life, are you dedicating energy, to excessively emotional performances, or reactions. And, look, none of us are immune to this. I mean, we’re all engaging in drama, in some way, shape, or form in our life. And I feel like the definition of drama queen pretty much defines my young adult life.
Courtney Townley 7:13
I’m telling you that because you are just so not alone. If by listening to this Podcast today, you start to identify some areas of your life, where you are conjuring up these really dramatic storylines unnecessarily, to the detriment of your own life. So in my young adult life, everything was dramatic. I was an amazing performer, I was incredible at reacting to every emotion that came into the arena with me. And it’s, it’s funny, because my, my family always pointed this out to me, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but they would literally call me a drama queen. You know, and I would always argue back and say, I just feel things more than most people. I was literally rationalizing my drama by saying that I felt things more than most people. So I was looking for justification.
Courtney Townley 8:19
The truth was, I was co signing on every thought that passed through my brain. I believed everything that I thought, because I didn’t realize that I had a choice. I didn’t have to cosign I didn’t have to believe. So every thought that passed through my brain, especially the ones that made me feel terrible. I didn’t just buy into those. I then elaborated on those thoughts to weave together an Oscar worthy script, about how I was doomed to fail. How terrible someone had been to me, or how hard my life was.
Courtney Townley 9:16
And I was always the victim in these stories. Never the victor, which is really funny and interesting. Because that isn’t what I projected to the world. I masked my insecurities with an air of confidence. So essentially, I was one person on the inside and I was someone else completely on the outside. So I was living in a very incongruent space. I was in a whole lot of integrity pain, which you longtime listeners are probably very familiar with that term. In congruence with how I am showing up in the world is always going to create integrity, pain, and integrity, pain creates a lot of dis ease in the body. We don’t feel comfortable in our skin. There’s, it’s like this constant friction that we’re wrestling with.
Courtney Townley 10:25
Now, of course, the people that I lived with, saw this internal struggle, my parents saw it more than anyone in my young adult life because I trusted them more than anyone. And so often isn’t that the case where we show the worst of ourselves to the people that we trust the most. And, of course, when I got married, my husband saw this side of me. And honestly, I was the last person to see that I was the one creating a tremendous amount of unnecessary suffering for myself, through the stories that I was telling myself, and eventually I got myself into enough enough pain, and enough suffering, that I actually sought out help.
Courtney Townley 11:19
So I hired a therapist, I hired a coach, these actually weren’t exactly at the same time, I hired a therapist originally. And then I started working with a coach. And to be honest, when I finally saw that I was at the root of so much pain of so much of my pain, I was pissed. Because I thought, What am I been doing? Like I was holding this key, this amazing solution for my entire life, and I never knew how could I have lived nearly 40 years on the planet without learning about this incredible power that I had to choose my thoughts. And, look, this Podcast isn’t about me. But I’m sharing the story. Because I’m willing to bet everyone listening can identify with that story in some way.
Courtney Townley 12:26
I have talked on so many episodes of this Podcast about the powerful toll that too much stress can have on our health and well being. And so much of the stress that we are carrying, is perceived stress. It’s stress that we are conjuring up in our own brain that doesn’t actually exist. So I’m speaking to worry. And sort of pre traumatic stress, we’re anticipating things that might happen in the future. I think this is where a lot of anxiety comes from. And the brain doesn’t know the difference between real and perceived stress or threats. The brain just thinks it’s all true. And so it is going to ignite the nervous system to act accordingly. If you are actually running from a tiger, or just imagining that there is a tiger chasing you, the brain and the nervous system are going to respond in the same way. And weaving elaborate and painful storylines. In other words, creating a lot of drama in your life is a very problem focused orientation to life. Right?
Courtney Townley 14:00
We’re focusing really hard on the problems and why they’re problems, which robs us of being able to turn our attention to finding solutions. So being problem focused, creates more problems, not solutions. And this is sort of the I always think of like just complaining. Complaining is often just rehashing a storyline over and over and over again, but not actually taking initiative to change that storyline. So drama, like any stressor, can become a habit. It becomes an automatic reaction to the things that happen in our life. And remember, a reaction is something you do without having to think. So it literally becomes a way of being. It’s not intentional, you don’t mean to get caught up in drama. But if you’ve been practicing, weaving together, complex and dramatic storylines, about your life, for most of your life, it makes a whole lot of sense. That that is the way you react to difficult situations. And drama, like any habit can become an addiction. Think about it, when we complain about something.
Courtney Townley 15:46
When we spend time, rehashing stories that may or may not be true, it does offer us some temporary relief, it feels good to share, it feels good to complain briefly. Until it doesn’t. And in my view, it’s almost a way of self soothing, right when we kind of marinate in the story for a minute. But like a lot of self soothing techniques that we use drinking alcohol, doing drugs, eating a lot of food that we aren’t necessarily hungry for. It has long term consequences. It’s just a temporary solution. But it’s not actually solving a problem. It’s just offering a tiny bit of relief.
Courtney Townley 16:41
When we are addicted to emotional drama, either consciously or unconsciously, we do a lot of unnecessary emotional labor. I mean, it we stir up a lot of big emotion, when we are thinking up really painful storylines. And in that work, we are utilizing energy that we now can’t use for other things. So I can’t believe how much energy that I had for other things in my life, when I started learning how to better manage my brain.
Courtney Townley 17:26
And I want to say here that changing our actions, which is always kind of what we’re taught in the world of behavior change, of course, is important. Right? No one’s going to argue that changing your actions is a really big piece of behavior change. But we tell ourselves, that I’ll just change my actions, right, I’ll stop complaining. Maybe that was a New Year’s resolution for some of you. I won’t express my emotions. This was a big one. For me, especially early on in my marriage. When I got into arguments with my husband, I would say things like, well, I’ll just stop expressing myself, I’ll just stop telling you how I feel as if that action was going to solve the bigger problem. So you can stop complaining, you can stop expressing yourself. But internally, you’re still reading the same script, you’re just holding it all in. So you’re still engaging in drama. It’s just all internal.
Courtney Townley 18:37
And eventually, with enough of that internal drama, you are going to need self soothing, because it’s a lot of stress, and it starts to feel achy. And this is where we start turning to things to try to make ourselves feel better, that are just temporary solutions. So I was speaking with a client, actually, just recently, it was actually yesterday, who was she booked a session with me initially because she was feeling out of control around food over the past month. And this is someone that I have worked with, historically. And I knew that you know, she had been doing so well with food for so long. And when we really started getting into it. She shared that she was going through some pretty big relationship stuff. And one of the storylines that she was co signing on and elaborating on was I don’t know how to do this. I can’t do this. She kept repeating that those phrases or some variation of those phrases. And think about how you feel when you use that language on yourself. I don’t know how to do this. I can’t To do this, you feel powerless. And when we feel powerless, it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel secure, it doesn’t feel safe. And so we turn to things to make ourselves feel better. And in this case, for her it was food.
Courtney Townley 20:27
So let’s get into a formula for how to ditch the drama. And this is really basic, you’re going to want to make it super complicated. And you don’t need to make it complicated. keep it really simple. And you could literally, if it starts to feel complicated as we go through it, I just want to remind you that just start with the first step. Practice that for a while, then move to the second step. Practice that for a while. And eventually, you’ll be able to combine all four of these things.
Courtney Townley 21:02
And of course, if you need more help than that, this is the deep dive work that we do inside of Rumble & Rise, and I will be sharing more on this inside of this free event that I told you about at the start of this Podcast today, Healthiest Year Yet. So get yourself registered if you want more on this.
Courtney Townley 21:21
So the first thing we want to do, and build a practice of is shining a light on our storylines. I interviewed Dr. Sarah Serkis several years ago, about the power of journaling. And one of the things that she had shared, I can’t remember what Podcast episode it is, but you can probably look it up on my website. But she shared that, you know, honestly, Courtney, she told me about 94 or 95% of our thinking is subconscious. And the reason this is so important to recognize is because I have so many women that I work with who tell me I know what I think I don’t need to write it down. I don’t need to talk it out. And yet, when you look at that statistic of how much of our thinking is actually subconscious, you start to understand why writing things down and talking things out actually starts to expose a lot of the subconscious thinking that you’re not aware of.
Courtney Townley 22:31
So step one is shining a light on your storylines. And that looks like putting pen to page and writing about something you’re rumbling with. Or, and or it looks like talking to somebody who can sort of remove themselves from the situation. So you, I don’t think it’s always useful to talk to someone who is also going to buy into your storyline. And we do this a lot with our friends, right? We’re sharing a story so we can kind of feed off of each other’s drama around the story. But it can be really helpful here to have somebody outside of that who doesn’t have such an emotional connection to your story. Because what you’re looking for is to have that story reflected to you. And this is what therapists are amazing at I think it’s what really good coaches are great at is reflecting to you your own storyline.
Courtney Townley 23:28
So I’m gonna give you an example here. This is just an example from a conversation many months ago, I was just looking at previous things that we’ve talked about. And I thought this was a great example. So I was speaking with a client, who was feeling really stressed out and really worked up. And so we started to get into what it was coming from. And she started to do basically this download on me, she started to shine a light on what was truly going on. And it sounded something like this. I got an email from my boss. And he said he wants to have a meeting tomorrow. And I’ve been working on this project that has really had a lot of unexpected challenges. He’s annoyed and probably thinking that he should have given this project to this other woman, Elizabeth, who never seems to have any challenges on projects. Man, this was my chance to prove myself to him and I totally blew it. Maybe I’m not cut out for this. That’s probably why he’s scheduling the meeting. I’m gonna get fired. And this is terrible timing because financially, I can’t handle getting fired. So do you see how quickly that story escalated?
Courtney Townley 24:45
We started with I got an email from my boss that says he wants to have a meeting. And literally within just a few minutes of her telling me the story. She was basically living homeless on the street. And this is all perceived stress. Because she conjured up this storyline, very little of this is actually factual is actually true.
Courtney Townley 25:15
So this moves us into step two, which is we neutralize the situation. And I like to think of neutralizing the story as removing all the color from the story, what are just the black and white facts of the story? Not your opinion, not what might happen, not your assumptions.
Courtney Townley 25:42
But what are the actual facts? And the facts of that story that I just told you are actually really simple. She got an email from her boss that says he would like to have a meeting tomorrow at whatever time. Those are the facts. And here’s what’s beautiful about neutralizing storylines. When we look at just the facts, that alone starts to offer us a little bit of relief, like, Ah, okay, I got an email from my boss. And these were the exact words in the email, end of story. And that alone can be challenging, because that’s not what we’re used to doing. We have the facts. And then we get into story writing mode. So just those two pieces I’ve given you so far can be incredibly powerful. Shine a light, on what you’re rumbling with, write about it, talk it out, so you can hear your thoughts, you can see your thoughts. And this is going to expose more than you just thinking your thoughts.
Courtney Townley 27:04
So get the thoughts out of your brain in some way. And then neutralize the storyline. What are the facts, remove the color, and just state the facts. And that may be as far as you get. But that alone is going to help offer some relief. I got an email from my boss. This is what it said. No more storyline needed. But eventually, and with not all stories, but some stories, you’re definitely gonna want to start poking holes. This is a phrase from Brene, brown, poking holes in your own stories and love that. We’re just poking holes to see what’s true. And The Work of Byron Katie, if you’re familiar with her, Byron, Katie will say right? Ask yourself, is it true?
Courtney Townley 28:00
So let’s just look at that storyline again, and just pull out one of the thoughts. He’s annoyed and probably thinking he should have given the project to someone else. So poking a hole in that story would be asking the question, is it true? Do you know with 100% certainty that he is annoyed, and probably thinking that he should have given this project to somebody else? In this situation, you don’t know that’s true. You cannot say with 100% certainty that you know what anyone else is thinking.
Courtney Townley 28:41
And here’s the great news. When you cannot say that it’s 100% true that thought, then that means there must be other possibilities. And that alone can offer some more relief. If this is not 100% True, what else might be possible. And your brain starts to go to work, looking for other possibilities? Well, it might be possible that he wants to talk about something else. It might be possible that he wants to help me. It might be possible. Fill in the blank. There’s 10,000 other ways you could complete that sentence. So step four, is that you take responsibility for editing your story. You become the editor. You’re not cosigning on every thought that comes through your brain. You’re not buying into every story. You are taking the stories examining Ma’am, neutralizing them and then deciding. If you just want to keep it neutralized, you just want to focus on the facts. Or you want to think about it in a way that’s more useful to you.
Courtney Townley 30:16
So just to quickly recap those four steps, number one, shine light. And I said at the very beginning, this is a practice, it really is a practice. Doing this one time is not useful. I mean, it might be useful for that one, one circumstance. But really, I encourage you to, to really build a practice of doing this. And aware awareness practice of shining a light on what you’re truly wrestling with.
Courtney Townley 30:43
Step two, we neutralize, we remove the color from the story, we remove all the drama. That’s essentially what we’re doing. And we’re just stating the facts. That may be enough.
Courtney Townley 31:02
If it’s not, we start poking holes. This is step three. Is it true? Do I know that it’s 100% true, if not, what else is possible.
Courtney Townley 31:18
And that brings us to step four, which is we edit the story to make it less dramatic and more useful to us. I might be wrong. I love that entry to a new thought to a new storyline. I might be wrong, that he doesn’t think I’m doing a good job. I might be wrong, that there’s more challenges than there should be in this project. I might be wrong that I’m going to be losing my job tomorrow.
Courtney Townley 31:58
So shine a light, neutralize poke holes and ruthlessly edit. I hope that’s helpful.
Courtney Townley 32:09
And again, if you want more help with this do not miss Healthiest Year Yet. It’s coming up February 13 through 17th through the 17th It’s totally free. And you can register by going to Grace & grit.com forward slash Healthiest Year Yet. Have an awesome day my friends and I will see you again next week. Take care
Courtney Townley 32:36
Thank you for listening to the grace and grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story. And it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit anything is possible.
