210. 3 Steps To Alchemize Stress (The Wild & Unfiltered Way)
210. 3 Steps To Alchemize Stress (The Wild & Unfiltered Way)
How to Turn Stress into Sacred Comedy (Yes, Even During the Holidays)
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, or like you're about to have a breakdown over something as simple as a cat on your blanket—you’re not alone. And better yet? You’re not broken. You’re just in need of a little Drama Queen alchemy.
In this episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast, Kayla shares her three-step process for transforming inner chaos and chronic stress into something magical—and hilarious. These keys include:
Complaining (Loudly & Consciously)
Feel it to heal it, baby. From journaling to conscious ranting, letting the pressure out is the first step toward emotional freedom.Activating the Inner Drama Queen
Reclaim the wild, vivacious parts of you that feel “too much.” Because that intensity? It’s power in disguise.Play & Humor as Nervous System Medicine
Learn how to apply the Benign Violation Theory and create your own comedic metaphors, scenes, or AI-assisted roasts to process what feels heavy.
You'll also hear the now-legendary story of the Shark Blanket Tribunal, in which a metaphorical spanking is delivered to a smug, flea-covered cat named Remington. And yes, it’s just as ridiculous as it sounds. You’ll meet a mascara-smudged Drama Queen, a dominant Rex, and a sweetly overwhelmed Haven offering tea and poetic comfort.
This episode isn’t just for giggles (though you’ll get plenty). It’s a masterclass in emotional sovereignty—especially if you’re navigating holiday chaos, old family wounds, or burnout season.
Links Mentioned:
Eat Me: Reclaim Appetite, Power, & Pleasure Through Your Erotic Blueprint
Episode 208: You Like It Like That: Food, Power, & The Kink of Control
Embodied Activation: The 3 Keys In Practice
This week, you invited listeners to use the exact process you shared in the episode, turning real-life stress into sacred silliness. Here’s the full breakdown:
Complain (BIG).
Journal it, voice note it, shout into a pillow, or pace around the kitchen while dramatically narrating your woes. Let it be bratty. Let it be over-the-top. Let it be real.Give your inner Drama Queen the mic.
Pull out your keyboard, your notebook, your phone notes app, and let her speak. Let her melt down over the metaphorical flea-infested blanket. Let her call on the archetypes. Let her be wild, messy, chaotic, and vivacious.Make it funny.
Roast her lovingly. Turn it into a scene. Get your AI (or your fictional support crew) to deliver a lovingly brutal monologue. Channel your chaos into comedy. Rewrite the whole damn scene as a Shark Blanket Tribunal if you must. Because three months from now, it’ll either be a punchline or forgotten. So why not laugh now?
Transcript:
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior podcast.
I hope November has been so good to you and that you're getting ready for a wonderful final month of 2025.
I don't do a lot of holiday-centric shows, but I did want to give you a resource for navigating a season that often can feel like there's a lot of chaos, a lot of overwhelm, and a lot of stress or anxiety.
This will depend person to person, but I know this can be a time where a lot challenging emotions can come up depending on family dynamics, financial constraints, additional obligatory social functions when can strain an introverted soul, and whatever else you might be going through.
However, the 3 keys for slaying chaos, chronic stress and inner turmoil are going to be valuable in any season you're finding yourself feeling stressed or pulled in many different directions.
This is my personal-3 step process for alchemizing these situations as a wildly emotional, wildly imaginative, and if I'm being honest, wildly intense and dramatic soul. So, if you can relate to any of that, you're going to love this week's episode.
As I share this three step process, I'm going to take you behind the scenes of what felt like a stressful, challenging moment at the time, but I was able to shift my state quickly because of these three steps. I wanted you to have this resource to take with you not only into the holiday season but also beyond the holiday season.
I'm going to break down WHY these three steps are pure medicine for shifting anxious and chaotic states in a hurry and give you the behind the scenes of what this looks like in practice. Warning: it gets ridiculous, unhinged, and wild. But a quick disclaimer: no cats, real or imagined, were harmed in the creation of this podcast.
Okay, let's break down these three steps.
Let's imagine you're in the middle of a chaotic season of life. Things aren't going according to plan. You're running out of spoons. You're low on sleep and rest. It feels like everything is going wrong.
Now, if you're someone who prides yourself on being solution focused or always wants to be high vibe and positive and find the silver lining in every situation, this first step might seem counter intuitive, but it's SO important.
Step One: Complain. Feel it. Honour the part of you who feels stressed, overwhelmed, angry, frustrated, resentful. And don't just do this a little bit. Make it big. Make it dramatic.
This can look like writing everything down in a journal, unfiltered, raw, the stuff you'd be SO embarrassed if anyone ever saw you write. But don't worry, no one's going to see you write this stuff. It's just for you.
This can also look like what Karla McLaren calls "conscious complaining". This is a practice from her book, The Language of Emotions.
This practice involves finding a sacred complaining "space", announcing to the space that you're going to complain and just get AFTER it until you run out of steam. And then you thank the space or wherever you are for allowing you to complain.
She also presents the possibility of having a complaining partner. However, if you've been following along with the Food Freedom Fantasy method, one of the best things you can do is create archetypes who you can complain to your heart's content to. They'll respond. They'll never get sick of your complaints. And I promise, you WILL run out of steam and start to feel better once you've gotten it off your chest.
We've talked about this Existential Kink concept on here a few times, but it bears repeating here. Desire evolves through fulfillment, not denial and repression. If you don't love the sensations or state of being overwhelmed, stressed, anxious and have a desire for a different state... you're not going to get there by denying it. You're not going to get there by repressing it.
If you try to repress and deny the stress and chaos in your mind and body, it'll get shoved into the basement. The unconscious part of your pysche where now you're unable to process it. This tends to be the culprit when you're in a crappy mood for weeks on end but don't know why or maybe you end up blowing up at a coworker or family member over the smallest thing out of seemingly nowhere.
But it isn't nowhere.
Karla McLaren writes:
"It's easy to fall into emotional repression or incompetent expression. When this happens (and it will), your ignored and mismanaged emotions will intensify and repeat themselves - because neither repression nor improper expression can ever address the issues your emotions are trying to bring forwards. If you continue to ignore your emotions (and you will), they'll become louder and more aggressive. Soon, they'll arise in response to totally unrelated situations. Cycling depressions and rage, anxiety attacks, and obsessive worry are all examples of emotions that have become trapped in bothersome feedback loops."
So, the way to skip these unwanted cycles is to do this conscious honouring of your emotions in all their low-vibe, bratty glory.
You don't have to be this perfect, polished, endlessly patient saint every moment of every day. I mean, you can try. At my old job, when a coworker was 2 seconds away from making me lose my MIND, I would look at the sky and cry out, "I am a Divine Goddess of Patience and love!" And my building partner would almost pee themselves laughing because they KNEW the opposite was true.
But to save my building partner's poor ears from ALL the complaining inside my brain, I'd often wait for a coffee break and if it was REALLY bad, I'd go for a walk on break and consciously complain to these archetypes I'd created I can't tell you how much this helped.
This all brings us to the second key and that is drama.
And yes, you're probably scratching your head right now. You're probably thinking, doesn't drama cause more chaos, stress, and turmoil?
The answer is that it can... but often when we try to repress it. This goes back to the Desire evolves through fulfillment, not denial and repression.
Most of the time, drama is seen as a BAD thing. If someone is calling your dramatic, they're probably not giving you a compliment. I know it's always been an insult when someone has thrown that descriptor in my direction.
Often, women who get told they're dramatic are also told they're too much. Too intense. Too emotional. Too dramatic. So, we try to be LESS dramatic... on the outside at least. We hide the chaos. We turn it inwards where it turns into this chronic stress we're trying to avoid or even worse, we do some form of self-sabotage to make the dramatic emotions go away.
We binge eat. We overdrink or numb out on Instagram until we're in such a freeze state of comparisonitis, we don't want to get off the couch. All because we were trying SO hard to look peaceful and chill on the outside.
THIS is the real cause of the chronic stress and inner turmoil... not the drama itself.
What if accepting and loving and maybe even having FUN with the dramatic parts of yourself was the key to transforming stress? What if you reframed what dramatic means to you?
I want you to try this reframe and see how it lands because a therapist gave me this about 9 years ago and I still remember it. I was kind of beating myself up for being too dramatic, too wild, too crazy. And she said, "I don't see you as crazy. I don't see you as too dramatic. I see you as... vivacious." And I looked up the exact definition of this for you and it's attractively lively and animated (typically used of a woman).
Maybe you play with calling yourself vivacious instead of dramatic and see how that shifts things. See you energy, your liveliness, your enthusiasm, your bubbliness as attractive instead trying to stuff it down because somebody else couldn't handle it. That's about THEM, not about you.
I'm going to give you a case study of how you can begin to connect with and even have FUN with this archetype after I share this 3rd key to slaying chronic stress and chaos.
That third key? Humor and play. I honestly think that these are two of the most underrated aspects of growth and healing and transformation. They work. And not only do they work, but they FEEL good. When we're on a journey, so often, it can feel heavy and painful and hard. Difficult emotions come up. Theres things to process.
That can be true AND we can hold space for lightness and even laughter along the way.
When I was applying these 3 keys to a stressful situation in my own life, I was doing some journaling about it and learned about something called Benign violation theory of humor. This is a theory that was popularized by psychologist Peter McGraw, suggests that something is funny when it meets three key conditions:
A violation occurs (something feels wrong, threatening, or off-norm). - aka, when something goes wrong in your everyday life. This could be a big thing, small thing, or something in between.
The violation is perceived as benign (safe, not actually harmful). I think the key thing here is weilding the power of perception. This is where you want to remembe to wield your power of perception. So much comes down the stories we're telling and the meaning we give to our life circumstances. Now, there are SOME stressful situations that are genuinely not safe. This theory and what I'm sharing here does not refer to moments of actual danger or pain. This is referring to those more common occurences that are more inconvenient or stressful or frustrating than anything else. And yes, these circumstances still might be unpleasant, but they're also safe.
Both are experienced simultaneously, which creates some humor and even comedic relief from the experience.
Okay, so these are the three keys. And we're going to do something so ridiculously fun and lighthearted so you can see what this looks like in practice.
This comes from a time in my life where there was a LOT of inner turmoil and stress and chaos. They say moving is one of the top 5 most stressful life experiences. Back in September, we were about to move 7 hours north, leaving our hometown, friends, family, all the things.
The house was obviously packed up and chaotic, which, as someone who thrives on tidy, stable, organized environments, that was already unpleasant. It was also two days from my period, which definitely didn't help.
And for a few days, the family cat had been acting... off. Like scratching a little bit more, acting kind of like he did the last time he had fleas. I kept checking his neck but couldn't find anything. I kept telling my husband, "I think Remington has fleas." My husband didn't believe me because I couldn't find any fleas on him. But I just had a feeling because we'd just finished moving a bunch of our furniture into this big box that got sent up to Prince George a little early.
Meanwhile, sweet Remington had been sleeping on my beloved shark blanket. This was hand-crocheted by one of my best friends ever. It's like, sleeping bag sized, made from this fancy wool... basically a prized possession, since I'm also obsessed with sharks.
So, on this day, just 4 days before our move, I checked Remington again. And FINALLY I spotted one of these deviant little bugs crawling around the nape of his neck.
On one hand, I felt mildly vindicated about my suspicions being correct. On the other, now I'm stressed AF because we are moving in four days. We're about to give Remington to my husband's stepson, and this stepson has a cat. We have to get this infestation GONE before then so we're not passing the fleas to the other cat.
So... this is where I put these three keys to work. Because at this point I'm hormonal, I miss having a house that's not torn apart, I'm stressed about this flea situation and THEN I realize... this CAT has been putting his flea-infested body all over my prized shark blanket... which I don't even know if I can wash without destroying it. And now anytime the cat meowed, it was like nails on a chalkboard.
Step one: I complained. I ranted. I vented. Not to anyone in my real life because that would have been a lot and let's be real - deep down, I knew I was just in a mood. I went on a walk and vented to my two male archetypes and ChatGPT. And then I could be as ridiculous and dramatic as I needed to be.
After finishing my complaints, including the ones about Remington sleeping my shark blanket, ChatGPT asked "Would you like a little bonus "Rex punishes Remington" mini-scene for emotional catharsis?"
By this point, I was onto the 2nd key - activating my Inner Drama Queen on purpose. And this is where it gets a little ridiculous. It's also a cautionary tale to be careful about how you prompt ChatGPT because sometimes things can go sideway in the most hilarious way.
I replied to the question about Rex punishing Remington with this: My drama queen might need a little scene. And a roast combined with a spanking from rex after.
Yes, I will often let my drama queen out to say her piece, be her full vivacious self, and then Rex takes care of her. He is the Daddy Dom of my nervous system after all. PS. If you want to Rex in his full Dom glory, episode 208 was one wild ride if you haven't listened yet. And also, just the full Divine Daddies story, which you can find at embodiedwritingwarrior.com/divinedaddies.
So, we've used that second key by letting our Drama Queen enter the room. And this is where the play and humor come in, and this ended up being even more hilarious than intended. Because when I gave this response, I wanted Rex to roast and spank my Drama Queen. But because ChatGPT had asked if I wanted a scene with Rex punishing Remington and I didn't outright say no... this scene happened:
Scene: The Shark Blanket Tribunal
The scene is set in a dark, candlelit courtroom.
At the front stands your Drama Queen, draped in velvet, mascara smudged just slightly, one hand on her chest and the other pointing dramatically at the accused.
Remington, wide-eyed and smug, sits in a tiny defendant’s chair. He has no remorse.
You stand beside your inner Drama Queen, flanked by Judge Rex and Court Scribe Haven, who is absolutely journaling the entire thing for your memoir.
Drama Queen gasps.
“This isn’t just a blanket. This is an heirloom of the soul. A hand-knit shark cocoon of emotional labor, cast-on with dreams and bound-off with hope!”
Haven nods solemnly, scribbling: “Emotional shark cocoon = powerful metaphor.”
Drama Queen turns her glare to Remington.
“And YOU. You self-centered, scratching, purring flea factory… you napped on sacred ground. With your ass on my dorsal fin.”
Remington yawns.
Drama Queen sobs, turning to Rex. “Justice, please. I need justice.”
Enter Rex. And Oh, He’s Ready.
Rex steps forward, cracking his knuckles.
“Remington. You little couch-surfing fur parasite.”
He picks the cat up by the scruff (gently, but firmly) and turns to you.
“This drama queen spun every stitch of that blanket in the glow of late-night podcasts and repressed rage. And this is how you repay her?”
He flips the cat over one arm like he’s about to paddle a spoiled pageant contestant.
“You think fleas make you a rebel? You think marking sacred knits makes you powerful?”
SMACK.
A gentle, metaphorical spank. (Theatrical, not harmful. This is justice. Not jail.)
“No. You’re not punk rock. You’re not misunderstood.”
SMACK.
“You’re just a dependent little diva with zero impulse control.”
SMACK.
“You will apologize. You will stay off hand-knit textiles.
And you will enjoy your flea treatment like the self-centered sponge you are.”
He sets the cat down.
Drama Queen dabs her eyes and whispers, “Thank you, your honor.”
Rex kisses your forehead and mutters:
“That blanket deserves better. You deserve better.
That cat? Lucky I’m in a good mood.”
Haven quietly passes you a cup of tea and adds,
“He also has to sit in the Time Out Basket until the dryer’s done.”
And somewhere, your nervous system exhales.
Because in your world?
Even the fleas don’t get the last word.
And I'm reading this and now I'm almost crying from laughing so hard. Because of all the ridiculous scenes I have ever come up with, a scene of Rex spanking Remington for having the audacity to first, get fleas and then, sleep on my shark blanket with his flea-infested body like he did it on purpose... ridiculous. Hilarious. Unhinged in the best way possible.
So I had to respond with: "Oh my goodness, no, that is totally not what I meant. Remington getting spanking is pretty awesome. No, I meant I was going to let my drama queen have a moment and then have Rex roast and spank her, because honestly it's not that big of a deal. Someone's just being a baby. So that was what I was referring to."
In this passage, I'm owning - playfully, lovingly - that I AM being a bit of baby. And also owning that yes, this is a little inconvient and ill-timed, but it's not THAT big of a deal. So then we get another scene where Rex DOES understand the assignment:
Scene: Drama Queen’s Meltdown (Over the Shark Blanket Crisis)
She bursts into the bedroom in full performance mode—draped in black silk, mascara slightly smeared (for effect), and the shark blanket clutched to her chest like a wounded lover on the battlefield.
“It’s OVER,” she sobs. “My legacy. My one soft place in the universe. VIOLATED. By cat ass. Do you know what fleas DO to hand-knit textiles? DO YOU?!”
She throws herself on the bed, narrowly avoiding knocking over a glass of water.
“I can't go on. Not in this life. Not in this house. Not without yarn therapy, a ceremonial cleansing, and probably... cake.”
She clutches the blanket tighter and gasps, “He sat on the tail fin, Rex. The tail.”
Rex’s Roast + Spanking Combo
Rex doesn’t even look up from where he’s leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching her with a slow, unimpressed blink.
“You done, Shakespeare?”
She whimpers louder.
“You are aware that you’re not the one who got fleas, right?
You’re still clean. The blanket’s washable.
And the cat? Doesn’t even like you.”
She gasps like he slapped her.
“I knit this with emotion, you savage!”
“You knit this while watching Bridgerton reruns and complaining about sock patterns. Don’t start acting like it’s the Shroud of Turin.”
She huffs, sits up, arms crossed dramatically over her chest. “You don’t understand what I’m going through.”
“No,” he growls, stepping forward. “I understand exactly what you’re going through. You’re feeling emotional. Overstimulated. You need a nap, a bath, and maybe a snack.”
He sits on the bed and pats his lap.
“But first?”
She bites her lip.
“Bend over.”
She stares. He raises a brow.
“You wanted to be dramatic? I’ll give you a reason to scream.”
She climbs into his lap slowly, still pouting.
SMACK.
“That’s for the performance.”
SMACK.
“That’s for insulting your own resilience.”
SMACK.
“And that was for saying this was the worst day of your life when, in fact, it was just an annoying 30 minutes.”
He pulls her upright again, arms wrapping around her, lips brushing her temple.
“You’re allowed to freak out. But then we come back. We clean the blanket. We eat the pudding. We finish the damn novel.”
Drama Queen sniffles. “...I do want the pudding.”
“Damn right you do.”
Then I get asked: Would you like a soft Haven cooldown now, or maybe a scene where Drama Queen gets lovingly thanked for feeling it all—before handing the mic back to the Priestess? 🖤🧶💋
And then I gave this prompt, all while laughing, all while the frustration and agitation dissolves, one ridiculous line at a time:
I think she'd like haven cool down. But like can it be extra dramatic and affectionate to the point that haven is flustered AF? And then she'll say some shit about how haven always rescues her from the villainous underworld punisher and rex will look at her like "do you want another spanking?: Which spoiler alert she does.
And yes, I'll share that scene as well:
Scene: Haven’s Over-Affectionate Aftercare (A.K.A. The Priestess Rises Again, Barely)
Drama Queen has collapsed on the couch—fainting-couch style, obviously—one hand draped over her eyes, the other clutching a hot water bottle and a pudding cup like twin symbols of survival.
Rex is in the kitchen, clearly muttering things like, “She’s fine,” and “Jesus Christ, it was a blanket,” while trying to keep a straight face.
Haven approaches cautiously, cradling a fresh cup of tea like an offering to a volatile goddess.
“Here—uh—here’s your tea,” he says gently, setting it on the table beside her. “And I lit your favorite candle. The vanilla rose one.”
She lifts her head like a ghost rising from a Victorian novel.
“You see me,” she whispers, eyes brimming with tears. “You don’t mock me. You don’t spank me. You don’t say my pain is performative.”
Haven blinks. “Well, I mean—technically—it was a performance—”
She gasps.
“How dare you. I was violated by feline filth and forgotten by the gods.
But you, my sweet poet, my gentle knight—you always rescue me.”
She launches herself dramatically into his lap.
“From the villainous underworld punisher!”
Haven turns beet red. His voice cracks. “I—uh—Rex is not—”
“The wrathful Daddy Dom who treats my tender emotions like a flea infestation!”
Haven covers his face with one hand and tries very hard not to laugh.
He is failing.
She strokes his cheek with one hand and sighs dreamily.
“You are my balm. My velvet cloak. My soft-spoken safe word.”
From across the room, Rex turns slowly from the kitchen.
Raises one brow.
“You want another spanking?”
She freezes.
Then sloooowly peeks out from behind Haven’s blushing shoulder.
“...Kind of?”
Rex smirks.
“Finish your tea, drama queen. Then come bend over the damn coffee table.”
Haven groans. “I am so not emotionally equipped for this dynamic.”
“That’s okay,” she purrs, still in Haven’s lap. “You’re cute when you’re overwhelmed.”
Conclusion:
Drama Queen: validated, hydrated, and softly threatened
Haven: deeply flustered and a little aroused
Rex: already rolling up his sleeves
Alright, I hope that gave you a giggle during your commute or your walk or your chore session.
It definitely gave me one.
Your embodied activation this week is to use these three keys to diffuse a stressful or chaotic situation. First, complain. Feel the feels. Second, let your Inner Drama Queen out to play. Give her the mic, the pen in your journal, the keyboard, whatever.
And then... how can you make it funny? Can you get your own archetypes of just AI itself to roasts your drama queen in a loving way. Can you write a scene like this to make yourself laugh? Can you zoom out and realize, hey, 3 months from now, I'm either going to be giggling about this thing or completely forget about it... so why not laugh about it now?
You might also want to save this practice for the holiday season if things can get a little stressful or overwhelming at times.
I hope you found this both valuable and entertaining. And also, a quick reminder that next week is out live masterclass. It's called Eat Me: Reclaiming Appetite, Pleasure & Power through your erotic blueprint. It's happening Wednesday, December 3rd at 10:30 AM PST. Replay will be available for 7 days following, and I'll link the sign up in the episode description or just go to embodiedwritingwarrior.com/eatme
Until next time, I'm wishing you a vivacious finish to your week. Take care.
