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Because verbal blockades and conversational resistance reminded me of Jiu-Jitsu, DramaGuru was born.
In 2008, quite unexpectedly, my boxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu journey started. At that time, people referred to Mixed Martial Arts (made famous by the UFC) as cock-fighting. Those were the early days before Ronda Rousey caused MMA (mixed martial arts) fans to open their minds to the idea of watching fierce women fight.
By 2011, I started working on an idea for a science fiction game involving code words based on conversational positions and attacks.
By 2014, the next leg of this journey started when I created a deck of code word cards and presented DramaGuru to my friends as a science fiction game.
When I first started thinking about code words and creating cornerman cards to disentangle conversations, I was Christian, but I wasn’t interested in going to church.
I did, however, speak to Jesus and the Holy Spirit conversationally in my mind.
But other than that, I had no concept of prayers or praying. At that time, I got my spiritual info from reading tarot cards.
Next Leg of the Journey: Spiritual Encounter
Two years later, in 2016, Jesus stood behind my right shoulder as I sat typing on my laptop, creating cases to test the code words. He whispered something to me about DramaGuru being a mission.
Out loud, I questioned him gruffly. “A mission! What kind of mission? You know I don’t go to church, right? You must have the wrong person.”
He suddenly said, “GO TO CHURCH!” loudly in my ear. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Once I collected myself, I quickly typed “churches near me” into my computer.
Without that specific direction from Jesus, church wasn’t in the picture.
Because I took that first step towards learning how to practice my faith, I’m now able to bridge the gap between science fiction (what I thought I was doing) and theology (what Jesus wanted me to do).
At that time, I didn’t understand the strange terms the Christian community used, like “under the blood of Jesus” and spiritual warfare.
Plus, I had no idea that Holy Spirit had already laid the path by guiding my steps towards creating DramaGuru Academy.
What follows below is how Demon Spotting became the game it is today with code words and the newly added Courts of Heaven Prep Questions.
Origin Story (History): Written in 2014, this is my DramaGuru journey.
Notes from 2014: No one likes to feel confined, blocked, trapped, or pressured by another person. Even worse, no one wants to submit or be “tapped out”.
But in some perverse way, that’s what makes Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fun.
For more than five years, I practiced boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Combined, my sport is referred to as Mixed Martial Arts or MMA.
Over time, I learned to apply what I learned on the mats and in the ring to help me recognize how to escape or deal with verbal blockades and resistance (from anyone).
The L Street Boxing Gym: No girls allowed
Jimmy Farrel was my first boxing coach. An Irish boxer from South Boston, he discovered me walking by his gym one day.
When he smiled and said, “You’ve got a long reach,” I smiled back, then realized I didn’t understand what he said.
That sentence didn’t sound like the usual casual comment men make to start a conversation with a stranger (a woman).
Jimmy repeated what he’d said, and added, “You’ve got long arms. Perfect for boxing.”
He gestured towards a solid metal door behind him emblazoned with a small sign that said “Boxing”.
So, disregarding all warnings about following men you’ve just met into buildings without windows — I took my first step into a masculine combat sports domain.
As I stepped confidently into the boxing gym, I felt maleness engulf me. Yikes!
This was man-world. They all stopped to look at me warily, as if to say, “No Girls Allowed”.
Feeling the need for protection, I stepped closer to Jimmy, who is a small guy weighing around 135lbs.
Disregarding the looks, Jimmy helped me place my hands into some old, stinky boxing gloves. Then he showed me how to punch the bag.
I loved it! A new passion was born. My boxing journey began in that moment of meeting Jimmy. I trained withhim three times a week for about a year.
Me and Jimmy, we came from different worlds.
Jimmy’s journey: I had to struggle to understand some of the things Jimmy said to me in his gruff voice. Speaking in a low tone and breathing through a nose that had been broken several times, I missed a lot of what he said.
One time, as he was teaching me how to deliver an effective left hook, he told me the story about a time in his earlier life, when he was, in fact, on the lam. He meant, of course, that he was actively evading the police.
Because I was really focused on my left fist and where he was holding the pads, I was only half-listening to his story.
After a few minutes, the words “on the lam” filtered through. I stopped punching and repeated, “Lamb?”
He continued on with his story regarding his checkered past. Apparently, in his younger days, he evaded the law for a period of time in Belize. That’s a long way from Massachusetts.
I kept punching his raised mitts, and suddenly realized he wasn’t talking about food.
“Say no more, Jimmy,” I said, not wanting to hear any more details of his former life as a criminal. Say no more.
Next stop on my journey: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Training one-on-one with Jimmy led to him suggesting that I train at Peter Welch’s boxing gym in South Boston. I loved that gym too! The classes were excellent.
I started my martial arts journey by joining a jiu-jitsu academy in September 2008, right before my 50th birthday.
After sampling boxing, I felt the need to explore the passion I found smashing my fist into a heavy boxing bag at a grunge gym with rough guys.
From learning how to handle myself with boxing, I took my new physical combat confidence to a martial arts school run by UFC fighter Kenny Florian and his brother, Black Belt Jiiu-Jitsu Instructor, Professor Keith Florian..
Both men are black belts in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Jiu-jitsu is a ground fighting skill. I felt out of place in a man’s boxing gym, but learning how to fight from a flat on my back position, felt even more weird.
It sounds odd, but from the very beginning, I felt comfortable with the men in my jiu-jitsu class. Since we all started learning at the same time, we grew in skill level at the same pace.
Even so, I constantly had to fight my mental resistance to having a partner purposely try to crush me and bend my joints in the wrong direction to make me submit (tap out to be released).
However, I soon realized that for me, as a women, understanding how to fight on my back on the ground (the mat) is an extreme confidence boost.
But the journey from novice to confident wasn’t easy.
On your jiu-jitsu journey, you really do have to earn your stripes.
I found boxing to be a perfect fit for my temperament.
Jiu-jitsu, on the other hand, was a struggle: emotionally, mentally and physically.
Learning what to do — physically — to escape, sweep, disrupt, block and submit another person (even men larger than me) gave me physical confidence.
My jiu-jitsu journey gave me physical weapons for combat training, and mental skills for engaging in difficult discussions with people.
Jiu-jitsu is complicated and effective.
But when you combine it with striking, it’s so much more fun.
Pattern recognition is a key skill.
Practice is the only way to get better at spotting your opponent’s patterns.
Everyone has a pattern and a blind spot.
That blind spot is your access to the hole in their game.
Next step on the journey: Physical Sparring vs Verbal Sparring
As my journey continued, I compared my physical sparring with a classmate (usually male) to my verbal interactions (as in debates or skirmishes) with people.
I noticed an amazing similarity.
Striking, meaning boxing and kickboxing, felt like those quick angry exchanges — like when someone steals your parking space after you’ve been circling the block for 10 minutes.
Jiu-jitsu feels like those dreadful conversations that leave me feeling physically squashed or tied up in knots.
After an emotional conversation like that, I felt utter frustration and completely flummoxed.
Toddlers know what to do when they feel this way. They wiggle and push and kick — all the things I’ve learned to do on the mats — until they are free of your grasp. Instinctively, they know exactly what to do.
From two different combat sports, boxing and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I learned about limits.
In each sparring or jiu-jitsu rolling session, you have to assess your partner’s ability.
At no time are you allowed to punch too hard or hold a submission position after the person has tapped out.
Warnings are issued.
If not heeded, offenders are no longer welcome to spar.
Outside of the gym, the rules are not as clear.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as Disruptive Thinking: The Game is born
How I explained DramaGuru back in 2014
To parapharase Malcolm Gladwell in an Inc. article, “disruptors reimagine their world by reframing the problem in a way no one ever framed it before.”
Jiu-jitsu practitioners combine moves and give them a name. That makes it easier to repeat and to recognize when someone else is working that move on you.
Each attack generates a defensive move to thwart the attack (just like chess).
I’ve taken this approach and used it to create a science fiction game, “DramaGuru Revelation”, designed to teach people how to recognize what’s happening when they feel “under the gun” in a situation with another person or a group of people.
I reveal attacks that are fairly recognizable once you see the frame of it.
I created DramaGuru in the context of a game because these attacks are emotionally upsetting.
Family members, friends, people we work with and strangers — anyone on the planet can use these attacks against us.
We all use them.
We learned them at home or on the playground.
DramaGuru as a game provides a safe place to practice defensive moves.
Interrupt the Pattern, Change the Game
DramaGuru: The objective of the game is to study your opponent in order to see the pattern of their behavior.
Once you understand the steps leading up to the attack, then you can take an action to interrupt the pattern and change the game.
Basically, you want to get away unharmed. Without causing harm to anyone else.
DramaGuru Revelation Attacks: Where did the names come from?
Because these attacks have been around since the time of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, I used classic movie characters to illustrate the attacks that people use on each other on a regular basis.
If you can learn how to see these three attacks — earlier — you escape the consequences.
Sneaky Millie:
Named after the main character in a black and white film noir entitled “Mildred Pierce”, released in 1945. The main characters in this movie illustrate how one sneak attack leads to another with dire consequences.
The Baby Jane:
Another black and white movie entitled “Whatever happened to Baby Jane?” Baby Jane terrorizes her wheelchair-bound sister, Blanche, by serving her a rat for lunch (picking on a vulnerable person). Chaos!
The Eddie:
This attack is named after the infamous Eddie Haskell: The bully from a black and white TV series entitled, “Leave it to Beaver”. When Eddie attacks in private, he makes sure that he fawns all over the parents and teachers to create an impression that he’s a good boy — and couldn’t possibly be a bully. When Eddie decides to punish you in public, he loves an audience watching him do it.
By learning how to avoid the traps that people set, I’ve been able to find ways to protect myself.
And then I apply the “each one, teach one rule” by helping someone else from being ensnared.
Continue the Journey: DramaGuru’s Next 15 Years
Curious about what happened next?
Here’s another post to fill in the gaps with some overlap in the time frame (2011 to 2026). The story continues with a specific focus on the development of DramaGuru as a game.
- DramaGuru 15 Years In: Savoring History and New Revelations (2011 to 2026 – history continues)
- Demon Spotter! Forgive Yourself 7 Times and Gain Standing (my book, published in early 2025)
