Why do some people attract much drama?

[VerifiedAccount]

I know some people make their own drama either on purpose or through poor choices but there also seems to be a whole group of people who just seem to attract it.

For instance, there is a woman on my FB who I dont follow/interact with but who keeps coming up because I read her posts. In the last month she has taken legal action against her son's school. She suddenly stopped talking about it after naking a big deal over seeinv a solicitor so I guess it went nowhere. Reckons a teacher in another school assaulted her daughter with witnesses and on CCTV but there was no action taken against him and is now kicking up a fuss over someone walking into her and getting upset that the police aren't treating it as assault. Something about BTP too. Then the police apparently threatened to arrest her. She also regularly moans that she is being discriminated against different organisations. It must be exhausting being her.

Then a few years ago there was another lady who seemed attract drama. Don't get me wrong she clearly liked playing the victim but she also had a lot of bad luck and had a few awful cards dealt to her eg her daughter died, someone she thought was a friend ripped her off, there was something about a misunderstanding over church funds etc

I see this in real life too. Some people seem to go from one crisis to another. An ex friend had a crazy time for a few years with various housing issues, boyfriend issues and health issues. I suspect it's still ongoing. She isn't hugely resilient so I don't know whether her "dramas" would have been such big deals for other people but still drama.

Are you someone who just can't seem to live calmly? Or does someone who know crash from one disaster to another? Why do you think that is?

I agree with this. These threads are usually just an excuse for people to feel how “superior” they are. You’ll get the “my entire life crashed and I just got on with it” types and the “I’m so much more resilient (such a bogus word) than everyone else” people.

In fact, it’s so much more complicated than that. My mum is an “I just get on with it” person. She would describe herself as being “strong and resilient”. In fact she is miserable and makes others’ lives miserable, when actually if she would just share how she is feeling she would get some relief. I have a neighbour who has a who series of what people would call drama have happened to her. She shares her entire life on Facebook, good and bad, and I’ve had to mute her because it is relentless. But it’s her way of coping with a really shitty hand she has been dealt. When I see her face to face, it’s all about her and what’s happening with her. I listen, I sympathise, I let her know she can ask if she needs anything. She is textbook for what people here would call a drama queen seeking attention and lacking resilience.

Frankly the fact she is still standing with all she has had to deal with is impressive. Many would not be. If sharing all that with everyone helps her get through it, I’m glad that’s what she does.

Trauma.

People like this don’t attract drama, they create the drama. This isn’t always done deliberately and can be the result of poor choices they’ve made, but regardless, drama follows them because of them, their personality and their choices. And in my experience, a huge number of people who say they hate drama and want a peaceful life choose to live their lives in the completely opposite way- posting attention seeking posts on social media, falling out with people left, right and centre and making sure everyone knows their side of the story, being confrontational to shop workers and school staff etc, and inserting themselves into other people’s situations or terrible events.

@BoredZelda I obviously can’t speak for anyone else posting but I certainly didn’t post to feel superior. In my case, both people I referred to were affecting my mental health. Both people would demand immediate attention from me off the back as something as innocuous as a car failing its MOT (I have many other examples but won’t list them out here) if I didn’t reply in a timely manner, or didn’t quite give them the response they wanted, or if I was trying to deal with my own stuff they could get quite nasty and accuse me of not caring. It was actually quite suffocating.
It’s always good to have empathy of course, and I would always support a friend in need but I am learned not to do it to my own detriment. Empathy without boundaries never ends well.

I think some people make "drama" their personality because they feel they're not very interesting otherwise. I know someone who constantly has drama with her colleagues and family and feels the need to vent about them constantly, but none of it is exceptional - just minor annoyances and personality clashes. But it's basically her only conversational topic. She doesn't contribute much when the conversation turns to politics or books or art or travel or anything else much, really.

Drama is mostly a choice. There's always a tipping point in fraught interpersonal situations where you can choose to escalate, or not. Some people always choose to escalate.

As someone who thoroughly dislikes drama and conflict in my own life, I feel like I've recognised so many of these escalation points, thought about the satisfaction of escalating it in the moment and then backed down because it's more trouble than it's worth.

Give me a minute...

Humans all have a bucket that we have to keep fill of water for our self esteem. It leaks and overflows at times. Everyones bucket get a few holes, and sometimes we need help from otherpeoples buckets to keep topped up while we fix the holes and rust etc.

Some of us are born with naturally stronger buckets and some of us have life experience that will give us more holes than others but of our buckets are created in childhood from our caregivers on how to deal with disappoinment, and stress and rejection without it causing long term issues.

.... however... some people through some serious or generational neglect have no bottom to their bucket. They don't know what it is like to fill full they were never helped to process the crap things that happen to them when they were children. The result is that they need constant attention form others to keep the sense of self-esteem. And when they have drained the people close to them or been cut off they have to find another source and this feels like a trauma to them because they don't have the capacity to reflect that it is them.

Donald Trump for example is just a hoop...

Some people post every single aspect of their personal problems online because they have absolutely no shame whatsoever

It’s a lot to do with people’s actions and reactions. I go through life quietly, ensuring I only associate with good, decent people, keeping out of gossip and ensuring my lifestyle fits my income.
I have another friend who has never gone quietly, associates with all sorts of people who to me are obviously dramatic types though good fun, everything has to be her way or the highway so she is no contact with most of her family, she has a high-risk hobby so big accidents and resulting medical interventions, married a very handsome foreign man who had never had a stable long marriage or children so accordingly got divorced a few years later.
I line her to bits but these are choices that lead to drama!

Some people do thrive on drama.

Which is odd because I tend to find that those who have been dealt awful cards in life and gone through some unimaginable things, are the least dramatic people I've ever met.

So imo drama has little to do with the actual problems and far more to do with how people react to them.

And of course there's the enablers who hang on the dramatic person's every word, because they find it better than a soap opera.

I don't have social media, and it's because of drama queens like this. People are so exhausting. I don't know why people think that others are interested in what they had for each meal, what their kids are getting up to, and what all their various dramas are.

I think social media has truly made some people think that they're famous / the star of their own show. Everything is a drama for some people. Everything has to be "posted". Everything has to be "liked" or people feel depressed and let down.

It's the absolute worst part of society by far in modern times. The fact that so many people think they're so important.

I think some people need to feel important and it really stems from deep insecurity. You see it with the needy types who post performatively on FB. I was friends with someone who when I was going through a really difficult time and struggling with stress made it all about her. Because she was volatile and made sure everyone knows every last detail of what was going on with her she just couldn't see that someone else was different and the polar opposite. The drama llamas of this world just don't get taking something on the chin, thinking how they could have behaved differently and, shock horror, that maybe they were wrong about something.

I know one or two and in their cases they are just so damned aggressive. Everything's a fight in their eyes. They're either winning or they're losing. They kick off at everything, everyone who isnt kissing their arse and doing whatever they want is out to get them and they go on the attack.

They see attacks everywhere. If you say hello in what they perceive as the wrong tone (maybe you're tired, ill, distracted...) oh my god. You're being funny with them and WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM YOU FUCKING CUNT

Followed by sad vaguebooking about people creating drama, they just want peace and I'll pm u hun.

They are exhausting.

They create the drama. They take offence at everyday occurrences and blow it out of all proportion.

They go to A and E every time their kid falls off a trampoline or something and then complain about the NHS.

Their kid not getting a class award or being told off becomes a big drama.

They thrive on it and social media makes it worse because they get constant validation from people who are like them and then anyone who isn't is dismissed as a hater.

And so because of that they create even more drama and post further furious comments about that hater who said maybe their neighbour wasn't out of order complaining about them playing music loudly and how dare they and theyre sick of Karens and haters and why won't they leave them being as all they want to do is live their life and round and round it goes.

@VerifiedAccount some people are just born into the wrong family, their drama always affecting you. You only get peace when you go NC which is a hard decision to make.

My old best friend was like this but never took accountability when she was wrong for example her ex she cheated on him almost every week with different men and then would say how vile he was when he would kick pff how he didn’t trust her I brought up to her about the cheating and she was like you don’t fucking get it. He took a picture once of his new puppy and his mums friend daughter was in the background and she sent him a text once with the picture back like I’ll tell everyone your a pervert and he replied well I’ll tell people one of her secretes and she sent it to the few grouochatw we were in together on how he was using her old abuse against her and her children as she logged into her abusers emails whilst court was going on and he said he could report her for that and wouldn’t. I had to distance myself she now has a cancer scare and I feel terrible she’s alone during it but mentally I’m exhausted by the 10 years of friendship we shared before

My sister has been like this for decades.

She's had some very bad luck, and I sympathise hugely with her for that, but she also consistently makes very poor choices without thinking through the consequences. She's an awful judge of character and very self-destructive.

Some people certainly do attract the drama, but a lot of time time don’t do anything to help themselves, eg not setting boundaries or keeping on going back to the same people, same problems.

Others just love the attention, I swear. A friend of a friend complained about every single schoolteacher their child had, fell out with the PTA every year. Then fell out with their neighbours, so moved to get away from the drama, then fell out with the next lot of neighbours. At a certain point you start to think maybe it’s not other people that are the problem…

, I don't think is just one thing. Some bad luck is clearly linked to bad decisions (even if they are quite far in the past), or general coping styles. But I worked with enough people in psychiatric hospitals to know that sometimes it's just sheer bad luck, and none of us have infinite coping capacity.

I think that 'attracting drama' is one of those things where we tend to locate the 'problem' or the blame with the individual person and not think enough about the context.

It is easier to avoid conflict and stress in life if:

• your finances and housing situation are stable;
• you're not dealing with stressful situations in your personal life, like children whose needs aren't being met or parents who are relying on you or a partner who is abusive;
• your physical and mental health are pretty good and don't make it hard for you to do what you want to do;
• you feel reasonably confident and secure in yourself as a person, without feeling like there is something 'wrong' with you or something you need to constantly prove / make up for, eg through 'winning' or 'showing up' others;
• you feel reasonably confident and secure around other people, without having developed the default assumption that they cannot be believed or trusted, or that they won't listen to you, or that they will trample all over your boundaries, or that they will hurt you;
• you feel reasonably confident and secure in the world - that it is a reasonably fair and safe place for you most of the time, and that you don't need to be constantly fighting it;
• on a basic practical level: you know how to communicate effectively with other people so that disagreements don't escalate into conflict needlessly, and so that you and the person you're interacting with can both understand one another;
• your life feels pretty fulfilling and meaningful to you without conflict in it.

There are a lot of life factors that can make these things more difficult - from seemingly big, obvious factors like experiencing childhood abuse and trauma, to more subtle factors that impact on how a person has developed and how they see themselves and the world.

I'm not saying this makes the 'drama' a good thing or that we should accept people treating us poorly because of what they've been through. I do think that sadly people with a reputation for 'drama' can end up without anyone having much empathy or compassion for them though, and can end up pushing people away...which can reinforce all the negative beliefs... which makes them feel vindicated that their way of seeing the world is right. Again and again.

Whenever someone is doing something that I don't understand, or that seems really harmful, I try to ask 'what is this giving this person?' or 'what is this helping them to shut out?' Obviously I can't keep that up all the time and I can be a regular bitchy and judgemental individual like anyone else in this world, but it can be an interesting way to think about situations when you have the mental energy for it!

My mother LOVED drama! When we were kids and it was any day out, family gathering or similar we walked on eggshells in case she had one of her "wobblers" as we called them. They were triggered by the slightest thing. Now I realise they were panic attacks.

As she got older most of the dramas concerned her health. She had a whole batch of complaints both real and imaginary. She loved the attention of doctors, nurses, health workers and anyone she could rope into listen to he tales of woe. She seemed to be forever in and out of hospital and would treat it like a major expedition. She would sit by the phone and tell EVERY member of the family when she was going in, what for, and so on. If she could not reach you first time she would ring and Ring and RING until she got you.

By this time I was living in another city and employed on a European project which took me abroad about every few weeks. I used to tell her I had to spend 50% of my time in Paris or Brussels to account for not answering. or returning her calls Thank heavens there were no smart phones then. I never told her I had a mobile issued by the uni.

My sister and I both grew up with an aversion to health problems and have to be more or less dragged to a doctor or hospital.

I can see this among my teenage DD's friends. Some are calm and some are always going through some kind of emotional upheaval! Luckily my DD is the former.

Some people seem to need drama to survive, it's almost like an addiction. And it starts young.

There was a small group of girls in DD's class who would create drama about absolutely nothing, it was an everyday occurrence which seemed to take up a lot of staff time dealing with 'she said.. '.
The common feature with these girls seemed to be a slightly chaotic home life, with mums on their 2nd/3rd/4th partners, children moving between their parents homes on an almost weekly basis after some falling out. Chaos is their norm and they seem to struggle to function without it. It became really obvious to me when one of DD's friends came to stay with us for a few weeks after her relationship with both parents breaking down. We have clear boundaries and expectations for behaviour, things are quite predictable in our house. And DD said after a week of her being with us the drama at school was much less.

Oh god I had one of those who judged friends on who was the fastest to message her if she put something dramatic on Facebook!! Exhausting! I wasn’t a good enough friend!!

Just be glad you don't have all this and mind your business. You have no idea what is going on with people. It's not your concern.
Life isn't easy and I'm sure they would rather live calmly.

This analogy is perfect. I would also add, I no longer try to fill other people’s buckets unless mine is full first. I have learned over the years that if I do that very un-British thing that women hardly ever do, and put myself first, my bucket overflows and I can then help others. Starting with immediate family, then friends.