When the Drama Isn't About What You Think It's About

There's a particular kind of spiral I know well.

It starts quietly: a comment that landed wrong, a silence that stretched too long, a plan that fell apart. And then, almost without noticing, I'm deep inside a story. The story has characters: people who let me down, circumstances that are working against me, a situation that is simply, objectively, unfair. The feelings are real. The evidence feels airtight. And yet somehow, the more I build the case, the worse I feel. Not better, not closer to resolution, just... deeper in the dark.

I've come to recognise this as the spiral. And I've noticed something interesting about it.

The spiral always points outward.

When I'm in it, my thoughts are busy with other people: what they did, what they meant, what they should have done differently. Or they're busy with circumstances: the timing, the bad luck, the misunderstanding, the thing that shouldn't have happened. In the spiral, there is always a defendant. Sometimes it's someone I love. Sometimes it's the situation or the universe as a whole.

For a long time I thought the solution was to examine those outward things more carefully. To figure out who was really at fault. To understand the situation better. To find the truth of it.

But I've discovered something that surprised me: that's not where the answer lives.

What I've found, and I don't think I could have understood this without living it, is that when I'm in a spiral of darkness, something else is almost always happening underneath. Something quieter and more fundamental.

I have lost trust in myself.

Not necessarily in my decisions or my competence. Something deeper than that. Trust in my own soul. Trust that I am on a path that is right for me. Trust that I am held by something, call it what you will: God, the universe, your higher self, life itself. And that this force always leads me on the path that is good. That quiet inner knowing that I am fine. I am where I'm supposed to be. I am moving in the right direction.

When that trust is intact, I can weather quite a lot. When it frays, even slightly, everything starts to look like evidence of disaster.

So now, when I notice the spiral starting, I try to do something counterintuitive.

I stop examining the people and the situations. I turn inward instead. Not to blame myself (that's just another version of the same trap) but to ask: do I trust myself right now? Do I trust my path? Do I feel connected to something larger than this moment?

And when the answer is no, when I find that crack in the foundation, that's where I focus. Not on the drama unfolding in front of me, but on restoring that inner ground.

Sometimes it's through stillness. A prayer. Sometimes it's a conversation with someone who sees me clearly. Sometimes it's just naming it out loud: I have lost the thread. I need to find it again. Sometimes I use awiri rapé (a Brazilian plant medicine) with the intention of clarity.

What happens next is the part that still surprises me, even now that I've seen it many times. Once that inner trust is restored, once I feel reconnected to myself and to whatever I believe is holding me, the external drama shifts. Not always because the circumstances change. But because I change. I find I have more grace. More compassion for whoever was cast as the villain in my story. More genuine curiosity about what they might be struggling with and how we might be serving each other in this crossing of our paths.

And often, more often than I'd expect, the problems that seemed so pressing simply dissolve. Not because they weren't real, but because I was seeing them through the distorting lens of inner disconnection.

The issue was never really the issue.

There is one particular version of the outward-pointing spiral I want to name, because it has become so common and so socially rewarded that it barely looks like a spiral at all.

It's the story where your ex, or your current partner, or your parent, is a narcissist. And I'll say I played with this quite a bit myself, so I am not just pointing fingers. It is very prevalent in internet culture and very easy to fall for.

I want to be careful here, because I'm not dismissing real pain. Relationships can be genuinely toxic. People hurt each other badly, sometimes very badly, and by the time things fall apart the hurt on both sides can make everyone act in ways they're not proud of. None of that needs a clinical label to be real and valid.

But the narcissist narrative has become something else in our culture. It has become a way to make the story permanently clean. To assign roles, villain and victim, that never need revisiting. To borrow the language of psychology in a way that feels like self-awareness while actually replacing it entirely.

Because if he is a narcissist, then the relationship failed because of what he is. Not because of anything mutual, or worth examining, or that might ask something of you. You don't have to look at your part in the dynamic. You don't have to ask why you stayed, or what you were looking for, or what patterns you might be carrying forward.

The diagnosis closes all those doors at once, in a way that feels like wisdom. That lets you be right and righteous. And also disempowers you, makes you a victim, and blocks any hope of growth.

The truth is almost always messier and more human. Most people who are destructive in relationships are not psychopathic masterminds consciously scheming to cause harm. They are people who were hurt first, usually long before you arrived, and who have built walls and patterns and ways of surviving that damage everyone around them, including themselves. Often especially themselves. That doesn't mean you have to accept harmful behaviour. It doesn't mean boundaries aren't needed, or that leaving isn't sometimes exactly the right thing. But it does mean that "monster" is rarely the full picture.

And here is the part that matters most to me: even when someone genuinely has caused harm, the most useful question is never the outward "what did they do wrong?" It is looking in: what am I here to learn? How can I grow? Where have I been the "monster" myself?

Sometimes that learning is about boundaries. Sometimes it's about recognising patterns earlier. Sometimes it's about understanding why you chose this person, or stayed, or kept hoping. Some of it is genuinely about recognising that many things we blame others for, we subtly do ourselves.

And mostly it comes back to the same question: where did I lose my trust in myself or in something greater? Because once you have that trust, all solutions become clearer, easier, and more able to hold compassion.

Letting go of the victim/villain storyline and looking inward is the only kind of reflection that actually moves you forward.

The spiral dressed in psychological language is still a spiral. It still points outward. It still keeps you stuck, just in a way that feels, from the inside, like finally seeing clearly. And in some ways it is more dangerous, because of how solid, smart, insightful and air-tight it can seem.

I'm not saying this is easy. I'm not saying I always catch the spiral before I'm inside it. I don't.

But I've started to trust the pattern enough that even when I'm in the thick of it, building my case against the world, the moment I step back a little, some part of me whispers: go inward. Find the trust. Everything else can wait. And magically, it not only waits. As my distortions dissolve into clarity, my spirals shift into something better than I could have imagined. Sometimes solutions become easy and clear. And sometimes there is just nothing left to solve.