If anyone tells you to stop bringing so much “drama”, this post is for them. There is no such thing as “drama”. You have a right to feel and express the way you feel- we all do.
Everyone around us, also, who we may consider “drama queens”- they are expressing as a reflection of something we have in ourselves. We’re all here to learn from those expressions. Allow yourself to feel the way you feel minus the invalidation of what you (and others) feel. The more you allow yourself to feel true emotion and the more you validate other’s true emotions, the more “oneness” will occur.
Everyone has a right to feel their emotions. “Drama” is just an expression of unprocessed, invalidated emotions that people ignore until they come out so fast and furious that they can no longer be ignored. It comes out in what seems to be an overreaction to the circumstance, especially from the outsider’s perspective. But what this reaction really means is that the person’s subconscious has mirrored itself into their reality (and yours) because it wants to be integrated. It longs for the person who is expressing it to become aware of it. The subconscious or our “inner child” can become like a toddler pulling one’s pants legs in need of love, attention, and understanding.
But what does a toddler do in the worst-case scenario when her needs aren’t being met? She will melt down into a full-blown tantrum, aka what we as a society like to call, “DRAMA”.
Does the toddler care that she is in the middle of the grocery store and that her Mom needs to shop, or that perhaps the Mom needs some attention herself or a much-needed nap? No. Why? Because her needs have been unmet for so long that she is in survival mode. Therefore, after trying for so long to get our attention, she melts down and does something that screams, “ME, ME, ME- I NEED YOU, NOW!” That’s what it appears to be on the surface when our loved ones melt into drama. But who do they really need? Themselves.
They need to be shown that it’s okay to need something. That is where you come in. In a society that shuns outward expressions of anything “negative”, they need someone to come in and hold that safe space for them to show their emotions, whether positive OR negative. Dramatic or not! This is why we as a society like to have therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, church clergy, life coaches, healers/shamans and spiritualist teachers in our lives: because they are creating a safe space for us to show all of the emotions we need to show that society frowns upon.
However, let’s think for a moment about what would happen if, EUREKA, it was totally okay to express this “drama”. If we became our own safe person. And if others showed us that it’s okay to show an emotion that may be considered negative or dramatic if it means it helps us heal. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing? If we all helped ourselves and each other hold that safe space to be who we are as opposed to being told the following things:
1) “That’s so dramatic. Stop being a drama queen.” Doing this shuts down and invalidates one’s inner child on the spot, especially if this person IS a child. You may as well have just said to the person (and to their inner child), “Your emotions aren’t important to me”.
2)”It could be worse” (insert the worst-case scenario here). Many of the most well-meaning people use this one. For example, a person just lost their pet. “At least you still have your children”. A person just lost their car, “At least you still have your home”. A person just lost their job, “At least you still have a savings account”.
3) “Well I remember when I (insert story of loss or pain) but I just focused on the positive only. You know what they say: fake it till’ you make it”. That actually doesn’t work, no matter what anyone says. The only thing this fake strength and fake positivity does is help you succeed in suppressing your emotions so much that they don’t heal and you’re then left with defense mechanisms and walls around you, not healing or peace.
Inner child word (aka shadow work) is nothing more than making our inner child (aka shadow or subconscious) fully conscious and the unacceptable actually acceptable. The integration of the subconscious with the conscious leads to complete and total awareness, followed by healing.
Anyone who tells you that you have too much “drama” is invalidating your right to FEEL, which ultimately invalidates your right to be human, as that is the main reason we are here: to learn lessons via processing, expressing and then integrating our emotions. Therefore, if someone around you is showing you what we as a society like to call, “DRAMA”, stop, sit down with them, listen. Validate their emotion. Be there with them in the emotion. Let them cry, get mad and share in their right to be human.
THAT is functional. Calling someone’s expression “drama” is not. THAT reaction is invalidating someone else’s heart and trying to take away their right to be human.
If we invalidate that by calling it drama, it will keep happening until it becomes downright dysfunctional. Humans are becoming “dramatic” because they aren’t getting what they need to heal. It’s a cry for attention. If someone is there for them and says, “I hear you. You have a right to feel that way”, over and over again, eventually, they heal. But if we just say, “Suck it up buttercup”, they remain in pain and the expression of that pain becomes even louder. Everyone’s hard time is “legitimate” because pain is relative.
Narcissists are an entirely different story. They are born to parents who don’t validate their emotions, hence why they are that way once they reach adulthood. They do what they were taught, and they sure as heck are not taught love or self-love. Therefore, if parents were to validate children from a young age and teach them love/self-love, and not attempt to dominate/manipulate/control them in negative ways, a child would not become an adult narcissist.
It all begins with love and nurturing. Narcissism happens when a person has very little resources for love. This is not a natural state of being, and mainly occurs when a person has to become completely focused on LACK of love and lack of allowing for self-love in their lives. Narcissists do NOT know how to love themselves so they take and take from those who do know how, because they subconsciously feel their life depends on trying to get you to give them what they lack (which normally is love, affection, self-love, validation, power, and attention).
When you don’t give them those things their inner child desires, they feel lost, frustrated, angry and scared. But if you will take a moment to truly consider why they are doing this, you will have compassion for them, for they are but a small child inside: one who is so broken, so unloved by themselves, so needy, that the only way they know how to get what they need is via narcissism.
They are internally emotionally starved, therefore, expecting the starving inner child to NOT go get what they need to survive (emotional food, love, and power) is the same as expecting a physically starving child to not steal food from others if this is their only known option. People who are absolutely giving to an extreme and thereby can be considered “selfless” and narcissists, who are emotionally starved, both come from the same place of lack (lack of self-love), therefore this is why the narcissist is attracted to the more compassionate, self-less, extremely giving type of person and vice versa.
When one is completely in alignment with Source and with one’s self, there is no need to attract narcissists, nor will they be attracted to you. Because at this point, you are aware that the stream of love coming from Source is absolutely limitless. There is no lack in the love Source has to give us. The best and most self-loving thing one can do when approached by or involved with the narcissist, is to know that only the narcissist can heal himself or herself via connection to self and to Source energy. In order for the narcissist to heal, he would need to admit the deeply embedded trauma to the subconscious that has caused him to become the way he is today. The pain that causes this trauma is so painful that most narcissists would rather avoid it, find a way to blame the person he is interacting with instead, project it, manipulate others with it, etc.
A narcissist has very limited capacity to have a truly reciprocal intimate relationship with other human beings unless he can admit to the trauma that caused this lack of self-love in the first place, and then begin to take steps to improve upon the ways he interrelates to others. They would need to change their beliefs about their own self-worth. If they can then feel a connection to others, they could possibly then relate to others as being safe to love as opposed to being threats to their own perceived self-worth (or lack thereof in this case). Secondly, they’d have to heal by learning how to operate from a place of abundance as opposed to operating from a place of lack. They would need to view money, love, safety, intimacy, friendship, etc as coming from a place of abundance and infinite resource as opposed to viewing these resources as limited.
Most narcissists began as children who did not live up to the rather fantastical expectations that one parent or more had in place for them. This is how a true narcissist is created. The child cannot figure out how to please the adult(s). The child was then likely treated as being stubborn and difficult and could have even been labeled as the problem child in the family. The parent(s) then likely took the child’s behavior extremely personally and developed resistance to the child, then likely punished the child in direct and indirect ways. This resulted in the child then being seen as subconsciously a threat to the adult(s).
This created a hostile and unsafe environment between parent and child on an emotional and possibly even physical level. This environment could have caused the child not to form bonds of attachment to her primary attachment figure(s), hence causing a lack of intimacy and a lack of attachment to adults at some point later in her life. The inner child of a narcissist does not inherently trust adults, but instead, they develop a hostile and selfish world view (because they still feel unloved).
We attract the people to whom we are most aligned, especially in terms of self-love.
This is why the narcissists are likely to attract those who unconditionally GIVE love: because both are coming from a place of LACK. The compassionate, overly giving person views love as a limited resource that can only be had when they GIVE love.
Therefore, they attract a narcissist because the narcissist also views love as limited. This can all be changed by aligning to receive and give love in a way where we believe there IS no lack. This can be changed by understanding that love comes from an infinite Source and cannot ever be depleted. The best way to do this is by starting with ways to love ourselves and to feel love from Source. The more we heal our own inner child traumas, the more we will be aligned to attract people who can be reciprocal in relationships and the less we will be aligned to attracting narcissists into our lives.
Regarding energy vampires, I’ve received so many questions lately about how to protect ourselves energetically from people who seem to “drain” us of energy, who seem to be so much about themselves that not only do they have nothing to return to us emotionally speaking, but they are wallowing in so much lack of love from Source and self, that they actually seem to feed off of the negative energy they are creating either for themselves or from our reactions to them.
I’d like you to consider that it could actually be impossible to give away your life force energy to anyone, and it could be actually impossible to take someone else’s life force energy. You are connected to your soul, and your soul is connected to Source energy.
You are only being fed energy from your soul and stream of consciousness, which is being fed by Source energy. You’re only taking energy from your soul and stream of consciousness, which is also being fed by Source energy. What happens when a person is “drained” of energy when interacting with another person, is that said person is thinking thoughts that disconnect himself or herself from Source energy, then said person is drained of their own energy thereby. The person they are connecting to acts in such a way that is “perceived” as negative or draining, which causes the other person to think thoughts that create resistance, and thereby disconnect them from their OWN flow of Source energy.
I had a new client come to me recently who said, “THANK YOU for not reacting to the way I’m FEELING right now and then projecting it as an outcome for my future path.
Thank you for not being empathically reactive, but independent and connected to Source in the way you read my future!” This client happened to come to me in a very depressed mood and thereby had a limited perceived outcome of what would happen to her. She was cut off from her own Source energy and thereby, her own intuitive nature. If I had reacted to her energy and projected myself back at her, all we would do is play depression ping pong and she would not feel better. I would also walk away feeling depressed. This could have easily become what so many of you call, “energy vampirism”, which is a term well known in the new age community for something simple: we perceived that another person drained us, but in actuality, it is our own negative reaction to this person’s emotions and energy that caused us to restrict our own flow to Source energy, and thereby end up feeling drained.
Energy vampires, much like narcissists, do not feel as if the Universe is an infinite Source of love. They do not trust themselves to fulfill their own needs so they then take from others. They feel weak, unsafe and desperate for love and attention. This does not make them evil. They don’t have bad intentions. It makes them desperate victims to their own states of mind. Because we live in a reality that is based upon duality, the people we attract are all mirrors to something shown to us that is also in ourselves.
The Law of Attraction is the current dominant law of this Universe. According to the Law of Attraction, only vibrations which match can be aligned and attract each other. If you are attracting an energy vampire into your life, chances are that you also operate in a state of weakness and have that same desperate state of mind that needs love and attention, at least at that moment you attracted the psychic vampire. You as well, are feeling spiritually weakened and unaware of your unlimited connection to Source energy and Source love.
If you attract and are in alignment with a psychic vampire, you will begin to feel a bit internally lost, overwhelmed and confused. Perhaps even exhausted or out of sorts. You will feel depleted and unsure of what hit you. Keep in mind that you cannot solve their problem, because solving the actual problem will not make them feel better. The attention you are giving them in their moment of desperation is what they want to feel better. They are addicted to the endless cycles of being a victim, causing others to feel pity for them in urgent ways and then receiving emotional support and attention.
They FEED off of this attention as if this will heal them, because they know no other way to heal. If you try to direct their attention to ways to heal themselves or be responsible emotionally to heal their own pain, they may even become hostile and resistant towards you. They may blame you even and use many attempts to get you to apologize for allegedly making them feel WORSE with your suggestions. “Don’t you think I’ve tried that?”, “Don’t you see I can’t do that?” and “That will only make things worse!” are their common reactions to resist help and then possibly even blame you for such suggestions. At this point, they may even expect an apology from you for even attempting such positive resolutions or they will say, “You/your suggestion only made me feel worse”. This is because they are addicted to the cycle of energy vampirism to help them and they are NOT looking for true healing.
With all of this being said, many times when someone is doing or saying something negative to another person, it is the other person’s responsibility to “choose” how they react (both in their responses and in their emotions). No one can “make” anyone feel a certain way (with the exception of rape/abuse and things like that). When a person is being negative, the reason it is happening is not only that the person is in pain, but because there is something inside of US that is attracting that person in order to reflect what we are ignoring about ourselves. The best way to handle, “drama queens, energy vampires, and narcissists” is to handle yourself. Manage your own reflections. Figure out what energetic/emotional state you were in, to begin with that created an alignment with a person who is so desperate for healing and thereby, resorted to such desperate measures. What is YOUR inner child in need of? What is she lacking?
Once we work on and heal these aspects of our inner traumas, it will be not only helpful but easy for us to sit still with others and nurture them at that moment. This type of help we give to others could also put us on track to be able to then sit still with the inner child within us, to ask what we felt when interacting with that person and to trace that emotional reaction back to its original sources.
Then and only then can we help others, when we are fully integrated with our own subconscious wounds to our inner child. Then our reflections of who we attract in our lives will change. The narcissists, drama queens, and energy vampires will either bore of us because we don’t feed what they’re looking for or they will accept healing and begin to slowly change in their inward and outward behaviors towards us (and others).
I feel that if we seek to stop and help another person process their emotions, we are also helping ourselves to understand why we attracted that situation, to begin with if we go back and look inside of ourselves. Last month, for example, I asked a lot of people what they associate as negative about me because I was looking for patterns in the type of people/scenarios I attract into my life.
But we can do this with most negative circumstances presented to us once we learn the other person’s point of view. It helps them and it helps us. This especially applies to the alleged “drama queens”. They hate the title, you hate the title. So let’s abolish that term from our vocabulary and stop to give them the love and validation they need to get out of the cycle that is causing them to create the “drama” to begin with.
The toddler in the grocery store, the teenager who just slammed the door in your face and said, “I HATE YOU”, the facebook poster who loves to post vague statuses of woe, they all have one thing in common: they are crying out for validation. And that is perfectly healthy. The toddler is hungry or needs a nap. So give it to her, don’t chastise her for embarrassing you at the grocery store. The neighbor who needs to rant. Let her rant. Maybe she has a husband who never hears her, so she doesn’t feel heard. Maybe others invalidate her and you are the person who will be there to tell her she is heard and loved, and thereby validated. The teenager who just said she hates you needs you to validate that and say, “It is okay that you hate me. I still love YOU.” Let’s not minimize or invalidate each other, but build each other up instead.
Insofar as energy vampires and narcissists, there is a difference between stopping to validate them and subjecting yourself to abuse by waiting to be sucked dry, emotionally. It is a fine balance. I’d say that at first, it would be helpful to stop and say, “I hear you. I can be here with you completely at this moment if you’d like. However, what I’d also like is for you to consider toning down your voice a notch so that I can feel safer in helping you and hearing you.”
This helps out often when a person’s outward expression of emotion has become rather volcanic and is erupting in one’s face. It is helpful to diffuse the bomb instead of allowing it to explode in your face. If you’ve tried to diffuse the bomb and it does indeed explode, back up and put plenty of space between you and the bomb. It is also important to note what about ourselves has aligned with the energy vampire or the narcissist, so that we can learn from them. However, learning from them is only safe if we draw boundaries that are not to be broken. Here are examples of ways to maintain boundaries if you must interact with an energy vampire or narcissist:
Choose your words carefully: nothing is a secret. Anything and everything you say could be used against you, especially words said from a place of vulnerability. Words are weapons so do not give them ammunition;
Choose your reactions even MORE carefully: They feed off of negative attention and cause “drama” and friction on purpose so that they can have anyone and everyone’s attention on THEM. If you are indeed going to give them attention, make sure you give positive, healing attention that involves suggestions for self-love, personal responsibility and steps of ACTION they can take to feel better. As stated earlier, they won’t like this, but if you keep handling their pleas for attention in this way, they will either tire of the way you react to them and not need you any further, or perhaps one day get so disgusted by their own cycle of pain/negative attention-seeking that they will remember your suggestions and take heed. Either way, it’s a win-win situation.
Do not accept or take personally any violence, threats or insults: not only this, but use such negative threats as your cue and excuse to get the heck out of dodge. Literally say to them, “I will not be your victim. If you want support and love from me, you’ll have to do so in a healthy and nonviolent way or I won’t stick around”, then leave the scene. Narcissists, especially, need to understand that there are repercussions to damaging threats and attacks on your ego, otherwise, they will keep right on being threatening.
Do not always say yes: In other words, do not come running every single time they call. You must have your own oxygen mask first in order to even attempt to help and heal a narcissist or energy vampire. Sometimes, the most self-loving thing you can do is to love yourself first, by saying, “I can’t help you right now, I’m sorry.” Get intermittent or even permanent space from them if you’ve done all you can do for that moment and/or you have been receiving too much negative words, threats or attacks from the narcissist or energy vampire.
Be aware of your circles and communities: Narcissists tend to be more prevalent actually, in healing communities, churches, and spiritual circles. People in these circles have low self-defense mechanisms, are easily forgiving and also are there because they are healing from victim-hood mentalities. Many people who find their way into these spiritual spaces are not coming from a space of joy, but because they too, need healing. They lack self-love very often and feel less of a connection to Source energy. Do not become the victim to a narcissist in the name of spiritual healing.
Narcissists in particular, are notorious for picking sides and playing mutual friends against each other, all for the sake of being able to step in and powerfully control the entire circle of friends, making THEM the top priority for everyone involved in the circle of mutual friends. They feed off of the negative attention when friends side with them. Be aware and stay out of such circles.
Guilt is their favorite way to attack, control and manipulate people. Not only does it give them the negative attention they crave, but it causes them to feel in power when you need to apologize and work hard to earn back their trust. This makes them feel powerful because they are forcing you to show some form of apology, acceptance or approval of them as a person. If you find yourself being “guilted” in feeling a certain way or interacting in a certain way with the narcissist or energy vampire, back away. Do not apologize. Maintain your stance and excuse yourself from the interaction. Perhaps you may need to also excuse yourself from further interacts if this is the predominant pattern with this person.
I hope this clears up any misconceptions of the actual meaning of “drama queen” and helps us to realize that everyone is a reflection of the inner child within us, who is crying out for love from Source and love from ourselves.