This is Going to Be FUN: the Podcast
Episode 36: Your Brain is a Drama Queen
Episode Summary:
Your Brain is a Drama Queen
Your brain is always looking for drama, and for good reason. Its job is to keep you safe and alive.
Learn three ways your brain is a drama queen and why things might not be quite as bad as your brain makes them seem. Maybe your teen isn't disrepectful, your husband isn't selfish and you aren't the worst mom ever after all.
Find out why worry might actually be a sign that your life is kind of amazing and how you can channel your inner drama queen to create the life and relationships you really want.
I have a picture of my daughter when she was about 2 years old sitting at the top of the stairs looking cute as a button in her cute little sundress and giant hair bow. But, she had her lip out in a full pout and was shooting a very angry glare my way.
I had put her in time-out for something and she was NOT happy about it. I remember thinking to myself that this girl was all drama as I got out my camera. I knew, even then that this girl was destined for great things. Everything was big with her: big feelings, big ideas and big love!
Your Brain is a Drama Queen
Just like my spunky little daughter with her pouty lip, dagger glare and irresistible cuteness, your brain is also a drama queen: and for good reason.
The human brain was created for survival. Its whole job is to keep you alive. It is constantly scanning for danger so it can keep you safe. That is your brain’s main job.
Your Brain is Trying to Keep You Alive
And that was super useful back when people had to go out and kill their food and be on the watch against predators 24 hours a day so they could stay alive. Their brains had to be on high alert…not only to keep them safe from danger, but also to conserve energy and make sure they could meet their basic needs: food, shelter, community and reproduction.
It makes total sense, right? They obviously couldn’t survive without food. Without shelter, they were open to all the elements and wouldn’t be able to rest safely. If you didn’t conserve energy you wouldn’t be able to escape predators when you needed to.
Community was vital to safety and conserving energy by sharing responsibilities and of course, without reproduction the human race would be extinct.
But now we live in a world where most of us rarely, if ever, encounter life-threatening physical danger. Yet our brains are still hard-wired to look for danger all around us, and they don’t know the difference between actual danger and perceived danger.
Your Brain Hyper-Focuses on Perceived Danger
Another important thing to know about your brain is that it was designed to focus more on the potential dangers than anything else. There are so many things we see, hear, taste, smell and touch every day that if our brain didn’t filter most of it out, we wouldn’t even be able to function.
If you were in a store to buy Tylenol and your brain didn’t filter things out, you would notice and read every single label of every single bottle: you would notice the colors, the packaging, the warning labels, the prices. It would take you hours to get down the aisle because you would be so busy processing everything you saw.
Instead your brain is constantly filtering out all the things it doesn’t find relevant or important: background noise, traffic, other peoples’ conversations, the pile of stuff you put on the kitchen counter to deal with later. But potential danger is always relevant to your brain, so none of it gets filtered out.
It isn’t that you are a pessimist or a Debbie Downer…your brain was intentionally designed to hyper-focus on the potential dangers.
Your brain was designed to be a drama queen and I want to talk about the three most common ways I see this come up for myself and for my coaching clients.
1. Your drama-queen brain makes things seem bigger than they are
Last week we had a really busy weekend. Everyone in the family had commitments throughout the day: sports, work, chores, friends. I woke up dreading the day and already feeling exhausted because there was just so much on the agenda.
My drama-queen brain was working hard to get me to conserve energy by making it seem impossible to do all of the things because the whole day was jam packed and double booked. It offered me lots of helpful suggestions like, “you should just stay in bed and pretend to be sick,” “Nobody will notice if you just don’t go to the baby shower.”
But when I actually looked at my calendar, I only had to show up for one thing at a time. I had planned in plenty of time for travel, everyone had ways to get where they were going, we had made all the needed preparations and most of the activities were actually going to be fun.
I see this with my clients too. They come to me feeling overwhelmed by everything they have to do, but when I ask them to tell me what “everything” is so we can make a list, it is really just 3 – 5 things.
Their drama queen brain was working hard to keep them safe from doing anything hard by making 3-5 things feel like 1000. Has your brain ever done this?
Another way I see this happen, especially for parents, is when they feel like “everything” is falling apart. Their teen is having some friend drama or making some choices they don’t like and they feel like their whole world is collapsing around them.
This is the drama-queen brain doing exactly what it was made to do. As I coach clients who are experiencing this, we slow it down and talk through what is really going on. There are usually one or two legitimate challenges they are facing, but everything else is fine.
Last fall two of my kids were dealing with significant injuries and we spent a lot of time meeting with doctors, getting x-rays and cat scans, and doing physical therapy. It felt like these health challenges consumed our whole lives. It was all I talked about and thought about.
But in reality, these health challenges were really only impacting a few hours each week. Out of 168 hours in a week, I spent maybe 10-15 actually dealing with these health challenges.
Your brain does this so that you can hyper-focus on the challenge so you will invest all of your energy into resolving the things that threaten your safety and survival. If there was a lion chasing you, this would come in very handy.
You would want to invest all of your energy and resources into escaping. But when the lion is really just some friend drama, a few doctor’s appointments, or your teen making some choices you don’t like, focusing all of your attention on those things is actually making those challenges seem bigger and harder than they need to be.
2. Your drama-queen brain loves to worry
Your brain is so good at looking for danger that it will find danger even if there is no danger to be found. That is what worry is. It is your brain alerting you to potential danger that doesn’t even exist yet (and may not ever exist).
Worry is when your brain can’t find any problems to alert you to in the present, so it looks to the future for potential problems it can alert you to. I wish my kids were as resourceful and committed to doing their chores as our brains are to alerting us to potential danger.
Truly though, your brain is just doing its job trying to keep you safe, but worry is not ever useful. Worrying is totally normal, but it doesn’t actually help you at all, so when your drama-queen brain starts offering you all the potential problems to worry about, you don’t have to go along for the ride.
Often, worry is actually a good sign that you are safe in the present moment: that the only danger your brain can find to alert you to is something in the future that may or may not happen.
If you are a person who worries a lot, I want to challenge you to see if this might be true for you. If the fact that you are a worrier is actually a sign of safe and comfortable life.
There is also the possibility that your brain is looking to the future to find problems because it doesn’t want to deal with the problems in the present moment or it feels like there is nothing you can do about those problems.
If that is the case, it would still be more useful to focus your attention on the problems that already exist than the ones that may or may not ever exist.
If you are a worrier, go listen to episode 2 to learn more about worry and how to get out of the worry cycle. There is also a whole mini-course on how to stop worrying in the Enjoy Coaching Community.
3. Your drama-queen brain is a master story teller
When my kids were little, I loved to read them stories before bed. My oldest was active and energetic and struggled to sit still, so we needed fast-paced books that would keep his attention. Dr. Seuss books were some of our favorites.
The first time you read a Dr. Seuss book it's a little choppy. Right? You're trying to figure out how to say that made-up word, how to follow the rhyme scheme, and what is the rhythm that makes that rhyme work.
But, the next time you read the story, you get a little bit better, and by the time you have it memorized - which you almost always do if you have a child who loves that book - you have all the voices and you create all this anticipation as you lift and drop and swell.
All of that happens as you tell the story and get better at telling it every single time. The same thing happens with our brains every time we tell a story – whether we tell it to someone else or to ourselves.
Every time we go through something that happened in our brains or out loud, our drama-queen brain gets better and better at telling the story.
We add more drama and intrigue. We add more details that support the surprise ending. We add more interesting details and build the anticipation. We leave out the stuff that might disprove or contradict the story we are telling.
Your drama-queen brain is a master story teller and it tells a very convincing story. But that story doesn’t always serve you. The dramatic stories you tell can make you feel victimized, justified, angry, resentful, abandoned or rejected.
Those stories can keep you stuck in old patterns, prevent you from resolving conflict, and make you miserable. Just like a murder mystery novel is way more exciting to read than a news article presenting only the facts, we get caught up in our own stories and they can hold us back from the life we want. So be on to your brain, and be willing to question the dramatic stories it is telling you about your life.
This is what I do as a coach…I help people find the stories that are holding them back and then question them. The stories about how you are failing as mom, the stories about how irresponsible your teenager is, the story about how your spouse isn’t helpful, the story about how you don’t have any friends, the story about how you don’t know what you are doing with your life.
I help my clients turn the riveting novel into a boring news story outlining the facts so they can put their amazing brain to work telling their story in a way that creates the life they want, the relationships they want, the fulfillment they want.
Your brain is amazing! It never takes a break from doing the work of keeping you alive and safe. Knowing how it works empowers you to let it work FOR you instead of against you. This is the kind of support you will find inside of the ENJOY Coaching Community and I would love for you to be a part of it!
Mentioned on the Show:
Podcast Transcript
Have you ever wondered what in the world is happening inside your teen’s head? Or felt frustrated because nothing you try seems to improve your teen’s behavior? Today’s podcast episode is going to shed some light on why that is happening and what you can do about it, but before we jump in, I want to let you know about a FREE workshop I am teaching as a follow-up to today’s episode to help you take the frustration out of parenting. I will teach you why your teen does the stuff they do, what is normal teen behavior and what isn’t and how you can work WITH biology and brain development to make parenting a whole lot easier and more effective. You can go to the link in the show notes right now while you are listening to register and get all the details. https://client.jenbelltate.com/teenbrainworkshop We recently got home from a family vacation. As a mom of 6, family vacations have always been fun, but they never actually feel like a vacation for me. Even getting ready to leave on the vacation is a lot of work as a mom. You have to make all the vacation plans, book the hotel, activities and transportation. Make plans for all the stuff you are going to miss while you are gone. Find someone to watch the dog. Get the house clean-ish so you don’t come home to a nightmare. You have to plan all the grocery shopping around not having a bunch of food going bad while you are gone, but having food up until you leave and good snacks for the car or plane. And, of course, you have to get all the laundry done before you can start packing. When my kids were little, I used to pack everybody’s suitcases so I could make sure everyone had clothes that I actually wanted in my vacation photos and not just character pajama tops and bright neon basketball shorts. And still, the number of times we arrived at a destination with a broken pair of flips flops as the only pair of shoes that child brought are more than I can keep track of. As the kids have gotten older, though, I have figured out a better system. I have a packing list on the notes app in my phone and I customize it for the trip we are taking and then print a copy for each child. I always have good intentions of checking their bags to make sure they packed what was on the list, but the reality is I rarely get to that because I am busy packing my own bags at the last minute. I have learned though, that not being specific with the packing list will always result in frustration when we arrive on vacation because unless I am really specific, the kids often pack the wrong kind of stuff for the vacation we are on. Let’s imagine together that someone surprises you and tells you to pack your bags for a 7 day vacation. Immediately you are going to have some questions, right? Where are we going? What will we be doing there? How are we getting there? What will the weather be like? Without the answers to these questions it would be pretty challenging to pack your bags. Now imagine instead they tell you to pack your bags for a 7-day vacation to California in May. You would have a much better idea of what to pack, right? You would have a general idea of the season and styles of clothes you would want to pack and you’d be sure to put in some sunscreen and leave out your big fluffy coat. You’d probably make sure you packed a swimsuit and some flip flops. But you would still have a lot of questions. Are you going to the beach? Does the hotel have a pool? Will you be going to Disneyland? What other activities are on the agenda? Are you driving or flying there? But imagine they tell you to pack your bags for a 7 day vacation to Anaheim, California in early May. The weather is expected to be low 80s the whole time you are there, no rain in the forecast. You will spend 3 days at Disneyland, 2 days at the beach and the other 2 days you will be traveling because it is a road trip. You will be staying at a hotel with a water slide. They don’t provide beach toys, but they do have towels and beach chairs you can check out. You have reservations at a fancy restaurant that has a dress code for dinner one night and your hotel room has a kitchenette with a full size fridge. How much easier would it be to figure out what to pack in this scenario? The more you know and understand about the trip you are taking, the better you can prepare and pack the right stuff for the journey. So why am I sharing all of this with you? Because, I think this a perfect illustration of why so many parents struggle when it comes to raising teens. When you found out you were going to be a parent, you started learning everything you needed to know about having a baby. You might have taken a parenting class or read a parenting book or two or three. Once they were born you took that baby to the doctor regularly…and they sent you home with pages of printed information to get you through the next few months until your next appointment. There are a lot of resources out there to support parents in caring for a brand new baby, toddler or school aged child. But as those kids get older and approach the tween and teen years, the doctor’s visits are spread further apart. And instead of a packet of printed information you get a half sheet basically telling you that if it is hard, that is totally normal and there’s really nothing you can do about it but provide a stable, consistent home environment with rules and consequences. There are books about raising teenagers, but they all seem to offer conflicting advice….set firm boundaries and hold fast to them no matter what, don’t have any rules or your kids will just break them, demand respect, be your teen’s best friend. There also aren’t as many people sharing their personal experiences with teenagers online…except the horror stories and the cautionary tales. Or even less helpful, the anecdotes from parents portraying their perfectly behaved, honor-roll teens who are the star of the team and seem to never do anything wrong. Basically heading into the teen years it is like the invitation arrived telling you to pack for a 7 day vacation with a warning that you need pack with care so you are prepared, but with no additional information and no return address. So there you are left to figure it out on your own. You got a lot more detail about packing for the infant vacation and the toddler vacation and the pre-school vacation and the elementary school vacation. And so you figure this vacation will probably be similar so you pack a lot of the same stuff and hope for the best. But those vacations were to California. And this one is to Alaska. If you show up in a small frozen-over town in Alaska with a suitcase full of shorts and t-shirts and flip flops, you are going to be ill-prepared for the snowshoeing adventure or a snowmobile excursion that are planned for you. And as you stand there shivering and probably sustaining frost bite in your fingers and toes, it is likely to be pretty miserable. Understanding your teenager The strategies that worked when your child was little, just don’t work when they are teens. And it isn’t because they aren’t good strategies, it is because you are trying to wear shorts and a t-shirt to a snowmobiling adventure in Alaska. Understanding your teenager is the key to making the most of the teen years. It is the key to making parenting easier, more effective and more enjoyable. Knowing how their brain works, being aware of the factors that are influencing their behavior and understanding what they need and want is going to change the way you approach parenting them. Just like knowing the details of your vacation helps you pack more effectively, understanding how your teen’s brain works will help you parent them more effectively. 4 Ways you might be Making Parenting Harder than it has to be As I coach parents of teens, I have noticed a few common roadblocks that significantly decrease the effectiveness of their parenting strategies and make parenting way harder than it needs to be. 1. Misinterpreting your teen’s behavior 2. Unrealistic expectations for your teen 3. Misinterpreting compliance 4. Overcorrecting from one extreme to another Misinterpreting your teen’s behavior So many parents are misinterpreting their teen’s behavior as dangerous, problematic or intolerable when it is actually a part of their teen’s normal, healthy development. Because they see their teen’s behavior as a problem, they tighten the reigns and end up slowing down their teen’s healthy development. Because they are misinterpreting their teen’s behavior, they are creating more tension in their relationship which causes their teen to push back and act out more. Unrealistic Expectations for your Teen When parents don’t understand how the teen brain is wired to respond and react during adolescence, they end up having unrealistic expectations for what is normal. They try to solve problems that were never actually problems to begin with and get frustrated because nothing they do works. They are left with disappointment, unmet expectations and a giant wedge in their relationship with their teen. Misinterpreting compliance Misinterpreting compliance is one of the most heartbreaking mistakes I see parents make because they don’t realize the long-term effects it could have on their teen and their relationship. Certain personality types are wired to want to please at any cost so they are obedient and compliant even when it is at their own expense. Parents think that the strategies they are using are working well, but in reality they are unintentionally damaging their teen’s self-concept, intuition and confidence. They are unknowingly fueling feelings of shame and resentment in their teen that will continue to build over time. Overcorrecting from one extreme to another If you were one of those kids who complied at their own expense you might still be healing from the wounds of shame and self-doubt as a result of the way you were parented. So many parents who have trauma from their own teen years often struggle to trust themselves and their instincts and end up overcorrecting from one extreme to another. Because they lack confidence and don’t trust their own intuition, they try all sorts of different parenting strategies and when one doesn’t work, they move to the opposite extreme. This creates confusion and inconsistency for your teen at a time when their healthy development requires stability and consistency. Avoid the Roadblocks When parents really understand their teenager, they are much less likely to fall into these traps. Part of understanding your teenager is really getting to know them for who they are: listening to them, learning about them and opening the lines of communication with them. And the other part is understanding how the teenage brain works and what healthy teenage development looks like. We like to think that because we were once teens ourselves, we already know this stuff…we get it. But we really don’t. Things are different for our teens than they were for us, but also, traditional methods of parenting work against healthy development in teens. And unless you have done a bunch of coaching or therapy, you might not even realize that ways that kind of parenting is still impacting your life and relationships. Understanding your teenager will help you be more compassionate and patient. It will help you foster a closer, more connected relationship with your teen that will last long after they leave the nest. But more than that, it will empower you to tailor your parenting to work WITH your teen’s biological development instead of working against it. It will help you get better outcomes with less frustration. If you want to understand why your teen does the stuff they do and how you can work WITH biology and brain development to make parenting a whole lot easier and more effective, I would love for you to join me at the free workshop I am teaching to help parents understand the inner workings of the teenage brain. I will be teaching the workshop live so you can ask questions and get help applying the information to your own situation, but you will also get a recording in case you can’t make it live or just want to listen a few times to soak in the information. Make sure you register at the link in the shownotes to get the link to join and the recording afterward. And if you are listening to this episode after the workshop has already happened, you didn’t miss it! The recording of the workshop will be posted inside of the ENJOY community so you can get immediate access to this workshop as well as all the other amazing resources to help make parenting easier, more effective and more fun when you join. https://client.jenbelltate.com/teenbrainworkshop
