Dr. Scott Lyons

I think it's really important to recognize that we contribute to our own suffering. And that's such a hard thing to hear because when the world feels like it's against us and we're in that place of victimhood, which so many of us do, that is one of the essential qualities of this addiction to stress, that the world is coming at us. That it's coming for us, but it's not with us.

That sense of being alone. And that is that child who's burning down the village to feel the warmth, to feel that comfort, to feel supported, to fill the gap of those underlying needs, childhood needs that were missed.

I would go back to the question, how, if at all, did we feel loved as children? How did we understand our value and our worth? Was it freely given to us? Did we have to do something in order to get something? And oftentimes, even when a parent is unavailable or they're busy on their phone, as a child, we turn it around at ourselves. Oh, they're not available because I'm too much.

And I have to prove that I have value to them And so I'm going to stay busy. I'm going to be a perfectionist. I'm going to go do that other grad school program. I'm going to keep earning everyone's love and keep dismissing myself and keep abandoning myself in the meantime to try to get them to come to me. Meanwhile, I have continued to leave myself. And that is a significant issue.

So of course, this idea of worthiness, of busyness, if I'm busy, then it means I have value. If I'm doing something, I have value. And if I have value, then I'm worth something to someone else. Maybe eventually even to myself.

I would go back to the question, how, if at all, did we feel loved as children? How did we understand our value and our worth? Was it freely given to us? Did we have to do something in order to get something? And oftentimes, even when a parent is unavailable or they're busy on their phone, as a child, we turn it around at ourselves. They're not available because I'm too much.

And I have to prove that I have value to them And so I'm gonna stay busy. I'm gonna be a perfectionist. I'm gonna go do that other grad school program. I'm gonna keep earning everyone's love and keep dismissing myself and keep abandoning myself in the meantime to try to get them to come to me. Meanwhile, I have continued to leave myself. And that is a significant issue.

So of course, this idea of worthiness, of busyness, if I'm busy, then it means I have value. If I'm doing something, I have value. And if I have value, then I'm worth something to someone else.

I'm going to just pause with that question. What is the first thing we do in healing this addiction to stress, this

Do you have all these thoughts come up? Do you have this impulse to sort of bulldoze the opportunity to kind of reflect? And that's where I would start actually, is in what happens in the pause, what happens in what we might call boredom, what happens when there isn't a stimulus to keep us going or some type of something that we're seeking or attaching to that relieves the pain for us.

What happens when we stop trying to manifest situations and relationships and environments and that take away, that create that endorphic pain-free response and have to come back to ourselves? So that first step is self-awareness. That first step is going, oof, this is uncomfortable. You know, when I was navigating my addiction to drama, which is, I'll be honest, it's an ongoing process.

It is an ongoing process. But I remember sitting in a bathtub and having this impulse of like, oh, I got to go pick up my phone and call someone or I got to go read a book or I got to do this or I got to do that. And I simply turned around and I asked myself, what am I running away from? What's under the hood of this impulse to distract? And it was too much to actually deal with by myself.

That's what I came to clarity about. It's like, oh, it's so much stored up that never got seen, that never got felt, that never got experienced, that never got held, that never got supported, that that's what I need. I'm going to eventually be able to do that for myself, but maybe not right now. So finding someone who can hold you in the discomfort of,

of silence, the discomfort of not being in an activated stressful state or the anxiety or the trauma or the busyness and just say, I'm here with you. This is scary. This is scary because the moment we start to settle in our nervous system, there's an alarm that goes off that says it's not safe. A lot of these skill sets you will learn with someone else.

I sit with people all the time and I don't know how many times I've had to repeat to them. And that was then and this is now. And that was then and this is now. And it's not something that they'll understand cognitively. They have to embody it. They have to experience it in the same way. You might know you're safe, but unless you feel you're safe, you're not safe.

And it takes time to rebuild and reestablish safety as something that is safe. Calmness, settledness as something that is safe. And stress as something that is safe. We want to have the full range of that human experience with the baseline of safety, which so many of us have never truly experienced.

I don't think you're going to like my response. which is if you're already looking at how you can help others, what are you avoiding in yourself still? How are you using that nether version of busyness to keep avoiding, to be out of touch with the things that need to be held, seen, supported, and felt within yourself? Lord knows I'm a psychologist. I went to a lot of school.

I've helped a lot of people through the last 30 years. And my goodness, there's no better way to avoid yourself than to help someone else. And it is a form of control. So I want to just name that. Oh my gosh, my neighbor is addicted to drama. They're so busy. They're so stressed. It's so hard to be around. What comes up in you? Come back to you first. Can you stay in yourself?

Because until you can, you can't address or connect with them. Any type of change or transformation takes relationality. And if you're not home in your own process, in your own experience, in your own groundedness, there is no relationality to go and do some type of intervention with someone else.

We're done.

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