Sadramble Shutdown Strategy #1

I once had a client who made me want to claw both our faces off. 

Never in my professional career have I experienced the magnitude of neurotic looping that this fellow spun in. He was completely impossible to treat. He demanded the exact opposite of what was therapeutically advisable, but was completely shut off to suggestion. When I gently explained my therapeutic approach, he would launch into his neurotic loop, picking it up whatever track it happened to be on at the moment, completely a propos of nothing I had just said.

He was actually an interesting and kind person, and in my usual codependent, people-pleasing, ego aggrandizing way I still thought that somehow I was benefiting him. But every time he popped up on my schedule (my clients can book themselves online) I would cringe and a dark cloud would hang over that whole day. He was a sadramble fission reaction. I almost ruined my referral relationship with another therapist in town by desperately handing him over. This therapist has better boundaries than I and after their first appointment promptly dumped him back in my lap with a stern, “I’m going to get you back for this.”

Realizing that I needed outside help on this one, and because I was unwilling to fire him (due to my own sadramble) I turned to my friend "Rob" who is an enormous bear. Like an enormous bear friend that any girl dreams of, there is not a single inch of this mountainous man that takes shit from anybody. However, since he is a massage therapist like me, he has very stealthy ways of accomplishing this.

*Cue my sadramble* “Rob,” I moaned, “how do I get this [sadramble] to shut the #@!% up? Or at least listen to me? The neurotic loop is driving me crazy!! He launches into the same weird theory of why he’s in pain every time I see him, and I know that it is exactly the opposite of what he thinks it is. He’s completely hypermobile and he’s stretching himself out even more when he needs to be toning! I want to STRANGLE HIM!” 

“You know what I do? I knock them sideways.”

Notice that Rob didn’t commiserate or launch into a story of his own sadramble clients. He just went straight for the solution. I like this man.

“I have a few clients like that, and when they get into their loop I interrupt it. I stand up from my desk and I make them stand up and I say, ‘OK! Let’s have you walk around the room so I can check your gait. Great!’ And every time they orbit back to their [ramble], I just knock them sideways again.”

Knocking your sadramble sideways is one of the most effective ways to avoid getting sucked in. Picture their story as a semi truck of soul crushing nonsense rushing toward you, and you are grabbing the sadramble and launching yourselves both out of the path of oncoming destruction. You can even shout, “LOOK OUT!” in your mind and picture yourself knocking them sideways at the knees. Do a subtle little motion associated with this, like genuflecting or warding off the devil; it will help you anchor this response and cue you to interrupt and disengage every time you sense a sadramble approaching.

Shortly after my conversation with Rob the client filtered himself off my schedule, not surprisingly since “my” treatments weren’t working for him. I also have the opposite of whatever a poker face is, so I’m guessing he picked up on my contempt after 8 or so sessions. However, I think the real reason he dropped me was that I began knocking him sideways in our last two sessions and it stopped feeding the voracious sadramble inside him. He had to go off and look for another source of nourishment.

If you find you cannot immediately disengage, begin knocking them sideways. If you're lucky, you'll knock them out of your orbit completely.

The Sadramble Primer (There's a sadramble standing in front of me. Now what?)

The Sadramble Primer

In dealing with a sadramble, the most important and humbling thing to accept and keep always at the forefront of your mind is that sadrambles came into your life because you attracted them. They are a mirror of your deepest insecurities and neuroses, and they are easy to laugh at because they are such a bombastic magnification of those parts of yourself that you secretly find ridiculous and make you uncomfortable.

I always laugh when I am uncomfortable.

But you do not deserve, nor are you serving anyone’s highest mission, to continue to cosign a sadramble’s bullshit. When you nod and say, “Uh huh. Mmm. Yeah, that is sad. No, go on. I don’t have anything better to do than hear you tell your story again…” you are slowing down their evolution. You are keeping them comfortable in their downward, stagnant loop. You are enabling them. You are engaging in codependent behavior out of a fear of hurting them.

This is not your fault. We are raised to silently resent and squirm, but not to say, “Stop. Just stop talking. You tell the same story every time I see you. You KNOW what you need to do and you are not doing it, so there is nothing more than I can tell you because you are clearly unwilling to help yourself. The fear of change still outweighs the pain of your everyday mediocrity. You’re boring me.” It’s almost as bad to do this as to outright assault someone, and yet by failing to say these words we conspire with them to slowly kill themselves.

When you agree to listen to and “help” a sadramble, you are announcing to the universe that you are just fine with being stuck, thank you very much. And the universe will agree with you and continue to send more sadrambles your way.

Sadrambles are often the people we love the most. In the early days of sobriety, many alcoholics describe their feeling of being bereft as akin to a breakup. Alcohol and drugs have been the most sustaining, consistent relationship in their lives, and so it is temporarily devastating and heartbreaking to experience the separation.

Going cold turkey off a sadramble requires an actual end to a relationship, but like alcohol and drug dependency, sadrambles keep you small, dysfunctional, and sick.

Here’s a handy, simple system for extracting sadrambles from your life.

Avoid their phone calls. You will be doing them a tremendous service. And they WILL find someone new to sadramble at.

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I believe that we are at the dawning of a great energy ramble. All pointless conversations from here on out must be related to the intense transformational process we are undergoing. All bullshitting is in service to the great shift that humanity must undergo if we are to survive another 100 years. All directionless chit chat should be related to growth and abundance. All trivialities should enlighten.

Sadramblers:  your time of purpose on this earth is ending! Please shut up and get to healing yourself. Thanks.

Sincerely and With Ultimate Compassion,

A recovered sadramble

What is a sadramble?

[sad-ram-buhl] 

v. to buy into and reinforce victimhood via neurotic repetition of one's sad, sad story.

n. a person who engages in sadrambles, often at the expense of others' growth and learning.

Ex. "I really enjoyed the latest seminar on breakthroughs for abundance, but that one lady who sadrambled at the mic and wouldn't shut up even when the speaker started clapping her off made me really uncomfortable."

Sadrambles are everywhere. They are our clients, our families, our friends, and most uncomfortably, ourselves.

A sadramble is often denoted by a deadening of the eyes, a change in the register and tone of voice to something younger and sadder. A sadramble is a well-worn ring in the carpet of neurosis. It is a saggy mattress that shifts its owner straight to the broken down, creaky center of stagnation.

Sadrambles are particularly uncomfortable to face when one has just had a breakthrough in personal growth and development. They are the thing we most fear encountering after our latest inspirational lovefest seminar.  We check out of our hotel rooms with a sense of creeping dread. How will I keep my newfound positivity safe from the sadrambles back home?

The thought of cutting off all sadrambles in our lives, including those that live within us, often terrifies. On one end of the spectrum you have personal development coaches suggesting gentle extraction over a long period of time and a gravitation toward more positive influences. On the other end you have the ruthless, type A firebombs of anti-codependence exhorting you to STOP TAKING THEIR PHONE CALLS from this day forward.

I've always embraced the middle path. This blog teaches how to extract the sadramble in all of us so we can stop attracting the sadrambles in everyone else.