Are You Addicted to Chaos and Drama in Your Relationships?

David Essel

David Essel, Counselor

Expertise: Counselor

David Essel, M.S. is the best selling author of 9 books, a counselor and master life coach and inspirational speaker whose work is endorsed by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy,... Read more

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Updated: 12 Apr, 2023

Table of Contents

Chaos and drama can be addictive, and many patterns begin in childhood, but you can grow closer by owning your role and inviting your partner to heal together.
Acknowledging your role is liberating because patterns come from family life, and you can deepen connection by owning your part, practicing honest communication, and choosing calmer responses.
Healing with support unlocks growth where a trained counselor helps shift from chaos to connection so both of you feel seen, heard, and emotionally closer.

Most people, when they read the above statement, will answer it the same way, no, no and no!

But is that true?

And how do you know that you’re not addicted to the world of chaos and drama, especially in dramatic relationships?

For 29 years, number one best-selling author, counselor and life coach David Essel has been helping people to shatter their own addiction to chaos and drama in relationships and in love, many times, helping them to shatter something they didn’t even know they were addicted to.

How to stop causing drama in a relationship

Below, David talks about drama driven relationships, how we become addicted to chaos and drama in relationships, signs of drama addiction, why are we addicted to drama, examples of relationship drama, effective ways to end relationship drama, and what to do about overcoming chaos addiction.

About four years ago, a young woman contacted me via Skype to hire me as her counselor because she was sick and tired of attracting men they were constantly creating chaos and drama in her life.

She told me upon our first session, that she was filled with peace until she got involved with a guy who is all about drama and chaos.

As we worked together for a longer period of time, I found out that every one of her long-term relationships that averaged about four years was absolutely filled to the brim with chaos and drama. Most of it coming from her that built into dramatic relationships.

She was absolutely shocked when I was able to show her through her writing assignments, that she was the one that was creating hell on earth in her relationships and also creating drama in a relationship that should have been nurtured with love.

She even brought in her dating profile, and in the profile, it said: “I do not deal with drama and chaos from any man if this is who you are don’t contact me.“

A healthy person who does not want drama in relationship

Over the last 30 years what I’ve found is that people who say that they don’t deal with drama and chaos in their dating profiles, more likely than not turn out to be the one creating the chaos and drama that they’re talking about, that they don’t want. Fascinating.

One of the first ways that I got her to see that the chaos and drama was mainly coming from her, was to tell her that you can’t stay in a relationship for four years and blame the chaos and drama on your partner, because a healthy person who does not want chaos and drama would’ve left the relationship a long time ago.

Doesn’t that just make sense?

In the beginning she pushed back, and continued to disagree that she had anything to do with the dysfunction in her relationships but after she found the truth in my statement, that she could never have stayed for four years in a terrible relationship unless she was part of the problem, her eyes opened up like a deer in the headlights.

She finally saw for the first time in her life the truth that she was at least 50% responsible for the chaos and drama, but as we worked together longer, she even admitted herself that she was the major culprit in all of her dysfunctional relationships.

How about you? Are you addicted to drama?

How about you? Are you addicted to drama

If you look back at your history of relationships and see that most of them fell apart in ways that were filled with chaos and drama, you’ll begin to see that you must have a major role in it because healthy people would’ve left someone who wasn’t healthy fairly soon after they started dating.

Where does all this drama and chaos and love come from?

Between the ages of zero and 18, we are huge sponges in our family environment, and if mom and or dad are in dysfunctional relationships, and most of us are, shocker alert, then we are just repeating what we saw growing up.

So when mom and or dad gave each other the silent treatment, or argued incessantly, or were addicted to alcohol or drugs or smoking or food, there’s a damn good chance that you’re simply repeating the core family values of chaos and drama in your adult life.

Your subconscious mind from birth started to equate “, drama and chaos in love“, as quite normal.

Because when you see something over and over again in childhood, very few people have the strength to be able to actually not repeat those patterns as they become adults.

Sometimes we are victims of our own childhood

Seven years ago I worked with a couple from Spain, whose relationship for over 20 years had been filled with nothing but chaos and drama.

The wife decided to quit drinking, and the husband cut down the amount that he drank dramatically.

But it didn’t help the relationship.

Why?

Because both of them had been raised in just crazy making households, and they were just repeating what they saw their mom and dad do from the beginning of time.

But when I had them both write out the role that mom played in the relationship that was unhealthy and the role dad played in the relationship when they were growing up that was unhealthy, they were shocked to see that they were repeating many of their moms and dads terrible behaviors.

Like impatience. Judgment. Arguing. Name-calling. Running away and then returning.

In other words, they were victims of their own childhood and didn’t even know it.

The subconscious mind is incredibly powerful, but if it is trained in unhealthy ways like chaos and drama, passive-aggressive behavior, arguing, addiction. The subconscious cannot differentiate between healthy or unhealthy patterns, so it just continues to repeat whatever it saw growing up.

The great news?

If you work with a skilled and trained professional, they can help you to see the role that you’re playing in the dysfunctional love relationships you have been in, and shatter this need and desire for chaos and drama.

This chaos and drama become an addiction. The chaos and drama creates an adrenaline spike when we argue, or even during passive-aggressive behavior, and the body starts to crave that adrenaline, so one or the other person in the relationship will actually pick a fight, not because the topic is so important to them, but because they crave that rush of adrenaline.

All of this can be changed, but rarely is it changed by ourselves.

Find a very skilled counselor, therapist and/or life coach and start to figure out how this addiction to chaos and drama began in your life, so you can remove it once and for all.“

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David Essel Counselor

David Essel, M.S. is the best selling author of 9 books, a counselor and master life coach and inspirational speaker whose work is endorsed by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy,... Read more Wayne Dyer, Kenny Loggins and Mark Victor Hansen. David accepts new clients monthly via Skype and phone sessions from anywhere. Read less

(David Essel is also listed in Best Marriage Therapists in Fort Myers)