As regular readers of this publication might know by now, I abhor wellness content. Nothing is less interesting to me than self-optimization, specifically that of the body (yes, I do feel validated by the Huberman news. I do not trust anyone who espouses regulating the feeling of joy). These types of podcasts typically come with ample ad space for drinkable supplements, mindfulness apps, and general fear-mongering. From a marketing lens, it is genius: what wider audience is there than people who will die one day?
My anathema towards wellness content aside, there is one podcast I make an exception for. Yes, there are still ads for AG1, and you would never guess by the look of the marketing (a rebrand is imminent, according to the host’s Instagram content this week) but The Blondefiles, hosted by Arielle Lorre, is all around excellent, especially the episodes about psychology.
Admittedly, what initially interested me in the podcast was Lorre’s personal life: she used to be seriously addicted to drugs and alcohol and almost died several times before starting her sobriety journey in rehab about 10 years ago. Years into her sobriety, Lorre met and eventually married famed show creator Chuck Lorre (Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Cybil, Dharma and Greg, the list goes on) in 2018. While they’re now going through a divorce, little of Lorre’s current personal life percolates its way into the content. Her frankness and lack of emotional projection is impressive in this era of podcasting - I really admire the boundaries she keeps with her own privacy. I have found that Lorre has thoughtful, logical opinions on mental and emotional health, and thus I listen every once in a while depending on the week’s topic and guest. Like Huberman, Lorre has a suite of experts come on as individual guests based on whatever the topic of the episode is. Her A-list adjacent access means that she gets highly educated and credible guests with excellent emotional regulation, and every once in a while they really knock it out of the park. An episode from a couple of weeks ago, titled “Breaking Addiction to Drama, Dependency on Stress, Chaos, Toxic Relationships & More with Dr. Scott Lyons, PhD” might be her best ever, and listening to it twice with some honest self-reflection is what inspired this post today.
In summary, the episode is about how culturally, many of us are addicted to drama, toxicity and outrage because of the physiological effects that feeling those emotions has on the body. I have long maintained that if I could change one thing about how I’m ‘wired’, I would wish to find happy things as mentally stimulating as I find things that make me angry.
There are many modern outlets for the ‘drama’ we’re discussing here, some common examples might be: the rush of adrenaline we get from low-stakes confrontation (like arguing with a stranger on social media), or the frustration we might feel while venting to a friend about another friend or social situation. Because really what is venting, if not presently reliving the anger or frustration of a past situation? Of course, some level of emotional release is healthy, but it’s all too easy to take that too far, especially with our constant access to media and distraction. At one point during the episode, Dr. Lyons even talks about choosing to listen to really sad music when you’re already feeling sad - yes, it can be therapeutic, but like everything, moderation is necessary, otherwise you’re kind of just torturing yourself after a certain point. While that line undoubtedly looks different for everyone, I have brushed up against it and gone straight over it many, many times.
I am currently going through a period of unemployment. Much like when I was recovering from plastic surgery last year, I have a lot of time (some might say too much) on my hands. Over the past few weeks, I noticed I was spending an inordinate amount of time in my preferred online communities, in many cases, doing what some would call ‘trolling’ (to be clear, that’s not how I see it - I’m sharing my opinions passionately in an open forum like anyone else is. The ‘problem’ is that I am not intimidated out of commenting if I don’t hold the majority opinion and that often makes people mad). I am aware of these tendencies in myself, that sometimes I am engaging because I am chasing ‘the rush’, so I have strict rules for screen time and I put my phone into grayscale mode whenever I am feeling like I can’t help myself.
Recognizing that, I put my phone on ice recently and felt ‘cured’ (i.e. emotionally regulated) within mere hours of going cold turkey. It’s very odd how you can go from feeling super addicted to something (refreshing, checking post notifications, liking comments) to wondering what kind of appeal the device held for you at all just days later, after some space and some downtime. It’s kind of like how if I don’t look at my phone much before noon, I don’t really want to at all for the rest of the day. And that is the part that is straight up physiological, because when we feel stress, our pain receptors are blocked. Stress, drama and outrage are highs, sources of temporary relief. I am 100% capable of being addicted to the rush of outrage. A lot of us are.
Most unfortunately, curbing the desire to ‘escape’ our feelings is still possible even without social media or television. I can do it in my brain all the same, no tools or entertainment required. In this case, my brain itself is my playground, my diversion. It’s where I go when I feel disconnected from my body (often). At my absolute lowest moments of OCD fixation, I might even argue a point out loud to no one at all. In more normal, regulated moments, this could look like being in the shower, soaping up and mentally relitigating an argument I had with someone (about anything: pop culture, politics, or something petty). It can be coming up with the perfect retort for a past debate that has long come and gone. It could be playing out an invented narrative around a confrontation I might want to have with someone, but am too afraid to bring up. Who among us hasn’t pictured someone we are mad at while at the gym? I think this is something everyone does sometimes, though some personality types are more prone to it than others (fellow Gemini placements, this work is for us).
In a chat I share with a group of online friends, the round vs. pointy dichotomy comes up semi-frequently. Most of the chat is pointy, but we have a few rounds. We recently conjectured that pointiness itself is the desire to analyze, even at the cost of being bothered, and roundness is the desire to accept as is and remain unbothered. If you’re having a hard time contextualizing this, Larry David is probably the ultimate icon of pointiness. I see so many of my worst tendencies in him, and that is why Curb Your Enthusiasm is so funny to me. David says all of the thoughts I have, but would never dare verbalize out of social propriety. He is a beacon of freedom from a type of repression I intimately recognize. I consider myself very pointy, but I am at a place in my life where I am trying to stay true to pointy-me while leaning towards radical acceptance. This means that I’m probably not ever going to completely stop analyzing social situations, but I’m not going to rely on whatever I deduce from a session of ‘overthinking’ to actually influence my behavior, and I am going to cut myself off after a while.
All in all, being pointy means a bit of the joke is on me: I think there is a rule book for how to engage with others, so when someone breaks the ‘rules’, I am affronted and shocked, despite the obvious gag: no one else is living from my rulebook. We all have our own rules, and we can’t project them onto anyone else’s behavior, lest we become the Larry Davids of our own communities. As much as I love and appreciate him, I don’t want irritation to become my defining characteristic.
I used to think: my thoughts are my own, my actions affect other people, so the actions are what matter. But as I get older and my time becomes increasingly more valuable, I’m realizing it still behooves me to keep a rein on my thoughts, invisible to others as they are, because they in turn affect my energy and my personal capacity to execute on things that are important.
I bring up the pointy vs. round designation because I believe pointy people do have an innate attraction to, or propensity towards, drama. How this plays out varies from person to person. In the example of Larry David, his drama usually has something to do with a lack of adherence to invisible manners. Dr. Lyons says in the podcast episode that his drama was always directed or contained in his dating and romantic life, that was his particular outlet for toxicity. Being in toxic relationships ultimately distracted him from feeling other emotions, like sadness or emptiness or dissonance related to past or unresolved trauma. Sometimes, we supplant one emotion with another. If we don’t feel that our sadness will be accepted or understood, we might choose to react to a situation with anger instead, even if it’s not what we are really feeling. Personally, that resonated with me. I feel that my loved ones are uncomfortable with me when I express anger, and so I often supplant that unexpressed anger with a sort of internal sadness. Recognizing this has been immensely valuable to me.
What is it exactly about sharing an unfettered, uncensored opinion that makes my adrenaline spike? Is it because I can’t always do it in my personal life, or at work, without causing damage? What am I trying not to feel? What emotions or wounds am I masking or numbing? My goal is to have more of an awareness around what I mindlessly seek and why I’m doing it. Ultimately I would like to stop escaping, to always confront what I am feeling head on and to just live in that space, good or bad.
By now I have learned to keep my judgment and tendency to overanalyze mostly away from my own relationships. But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped craving drama and toxicity! I choose reality television, tabloid news, and reaction to public scandal as the outlet for my appetite precisely because it allows me to engage in gossip in a way that doesn’t hurt my personal relationships. But as grown and evolved as that sounds, even an ‘innocent’ hobby has the potential to run wild and be damaging to our emotional state, if our time spent doing it is unchecked.
Nothing is in more demand today than our collective attention, and every time we pull our focus back to what we are meant to be doing (like working on the second draft of my fucking book), we reclaim a small piece of our humanity from this hellscape. It’s so easy to forget that, and to opt for soothing entertainment, to choose distraction over a perhaps ‘unstimulating’ present. The way forward might be choosing boredom. For now, my phone remains in black and white.
This is a well written, nicely reflective post. The degree to which we all avoid facing who we are, and do so by investing in things that don’t matter and in fact are neurotic defenses, is, unfortunately, the human condition. This speaks well to it in a very personal voice.
This really captured my maladaptive 2020 hobby of lying on my living room floor and listening to my college breakup playlists as a way to feel anything other than numb or afraid. And the value religiously watching Love Island now brings to my life.