With empathy humor and unique insight a psychologist examines drama addiction and charts a
path for healing in this groundbreaking book.Do you know someone who seems to thrive on chaos
a person who manufactures crisis where there is none makes mountains out of molehills and
whose very presence feels like an inescapable whirlwind?You may even label them a drama queen.”
This person might be someone close to you. This person might even be you. In this
groundbreaking book clinical psychologist and mind-body expert Dr. Scott Lyons turns the
notion of the drama queen” on its head showing that drama is actually an addiction and those
who are suffering with it are experiencing a much deeper psychological biological and social
pain. For a person addicted to drama the intensity becomes their way of coping. Their life is
a constant cycle of crisis chaos and chronically high levels of stress. They may never be
able to relax without an internal alarm going off sending them spiraling back toward chaos.
Drama is the stirring the excitement the exaggeration the eruption the unrest and the
medicine to feel alive in relation to the numbing of the internal and external world around
them. For a person addicted to drama the drama is often how they survive—or think they do.
With studies primary research and patient stories Dr. Lyons deconstructs this
little-understood addiction sharing: what drama addiction is and what it is not how to
identify patterns of drama addiction in yourself and others the somatic effects of drama
addiction including chronic fatigue autoimmune disease joint and muscle pains and other
conditions the origins of drama addiction— and how we are heading towards a global pandemic of
a dependency on crisis and chaos accessible exercises for recovery and healing Rather than
dismiss addiction to drama as just attention-seeking Dr. Lyons offers clear-eyed empathy
humor and practical strategies to help us all understand and break free of the drama cycle.
