 Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of the series True Confessions of a Mental Health Professional. And I gotta tell you, I'm very excited about this series because I love to talk real. I believe with every cell in my body that truth, reality is key to good mental health. It cannot be real with ourselves who will. If we can't be real with ourselves, how can we solve our problems? Truth and frankness doesn't just make for high quality relationships, which it does, but also helps us to recover from any mental illness and also helps to keep us sane in an insane world. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been at least 40 years since my life's confession. Yes, my son. So here I go, my very first confession. Are you ready? My life is so, so, so good that I, my mind, makes up shit crap to create drama and have a problem. Stupid, right? I think I may be addicted to drama. I remember many years ago having a fight with a friend. It went on for hours. It was a long fight with lots of argument, lots of yelling, lots of name calling. It went on for hours and hours. And by 10, 11 o'clock at night, I was completely exhausted, emotionally, psychologically drained. And then he dawned on me. This argument had happened only in my head. This friend that I was arguing with didn't even know about it. This thing didn't happen. It had all taken place in my head. In my head. I had made it all up. This person had done nothing. And of course, he was at home doing not knowing anything because nothing had happened. And then I got angry. But not with her. I got angry with me because I was upset about nothing. I hadn't even been able to go to sleep because of this imaginary fight. But nothing had happened. Have you ever done that? Use your imagination to create a problem out of a situation that really wasn't a problem. Or have you seen any of your friends do that? Right? It's easy, isn't it? Well, guess what? After years working with thousands of people across the world, I found that I'm not the only one. This happens to many people. Their mind looks for problems. It looks for drama. It loves problems. This is so common. It also explains why TV soap is like days of our lives. Dollars. Home and away. And all those things do so well. I have even seen grown, mature, older people that they're into the drama so much while they're watching these shows that they talk to the characters in the TV as if they were real. Have you seen that? It's madness, right? So why do we do that? Why do we do that? Because there's a part of us that loves drama. We're addicted to drama. So why are also reality TV shows so popular? I mean, is there anyone on the planet that doesn't know by now that all reality TV shows are scripted? I mean, come on. There's no way a human being can have as many problems so often as they do on The Bachelor, for example. I mean, come on. What about those TV soap operas where they come back to life when they have been dead? How can that be, right? That happens because human beings, we are suckers for drama. We love it. That we get entertained with issues, with problems. The more problems the better it is, the more entertaining the TV show. Even serial killers have their time in the limelight, right? But why? Isn't life hard enough? What's going on? Have we all lost our collective marbles? Why do we have this addiction to drama? But it actually makes a lot of sense. As human beings, from the moment that we're born, our number one obsession is survival. We have a quest to survive. It's very necessary when you're small, right? Because you're defenseless, you're tiny, you're fragile, you're a baby. It's normal, natural and to be expected that that's your number one concern, just to survive. Part of learning to survive is to use a brain's capacity for imagination as a kind of virtual reality field, right? Where we can test things, we can imagine, if I taste this food, what would it taste like? What would happen if I hit the cat's tail with a hammer? Cat won't be very happy. Maybe it'll bite it. I better don't do that. That's how we use this amazing virtual reality room that we have in our brains. So thinking and imagining drama keeps us alive. So it's natural to imagine scary situations when we're small because we're testing things. But, but, but, but, we grow up, or at least we're supposed to. We retain the capacity to test things in our brain with our imagination, but we're supposed to bring it under control, to bring balance to our brains and our souls. In short, we grow up. And when we grow up, we leave the childlike things behind. So while it is normal to obsess about survival, it is also part of the natural plan that we learn to focus on living, on enjoying life, to thrive, to love, to take reasonable risks. Knowing we're not going to live forever. We're not, are we? And we must make the most of this life. That's why we're here. That's what I believe. Now, this was not an easy lesson to learn for me. It took me a while, many years. In fact, a lot of blood, sweat, tears and heartache. I resisted it. Boy, did I resist it. I had a great attraction to the drama. I was really, really addicted. But eventually, I started having a real inner conversation. A really frank one. It was hard, but it did that. And I realized the drama was costing me more than it gave me. Have you noticed that? Your problems sometimes don't work out so well. So I started to dissolve this stuff around it. Using my virtual reality powers in a way that was meant to be used. Not to avoid all risk, but to manage risk. And that way, I could live a full life. That's okay, right? And when you do that, you can drop the drama. Sure, it's everywhere around you and other people would like you to have it, but you don't need to take it on. You definitely don't need to create more of it. You can also use it for entertainment. If you remember, it's just entertainment. And I promise you, it is much more enjoyable that way. I even have a saying now, I don't do drama. And it works really well. Well, I hope you have enjoyed my very first confession. And it has given you some food for thought. So stay tuned for the next one. It's going to be juicy. Talk soon. Be well and live life to the full.