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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think some people dramatise everything?

93 replies

HexagonalQueenOfTheSummer · 25/03/2012 13:57

A woman I've come into contact with via the school seems to make everything into a drama. She has two girls; one is 5 and one is 2. Her mum comes round every single morning to look after the 2 year old as it's 'not possible' to do the school run (to a school a 2 minute walk away) with 2 children.

If her children have a cold, she says it's flu. If they are sick once, they have 'gastrointeritis'. She talks about her labours with both girls and said they were so traumatic and painful even though from what else she has said they just sound like normal labours. She said there was 'no time' for an epidural with her youngest DD yet she was in hospital for 12 hours in labour before having her. She volunteers all this information btw. The mum had back pain the other week, just a lower back pain from picking up her youngest but when she picked up her eldest from school that day she was saying how the doctor had told her to come into the surgery for a very urgent appointment. Everything is dramatic.

AIBU to think some people dramatise normal everyday things? Why the flip do people do this?

OP posts:

turnbacktheclocks · 26/03/2012 22:14

I am in two minds about this.

MIL is definitely a catastrophizer. She once told me to have lots of children in case one of them died . She constantly sees death and danger round every corner. It is draining and difficult but I can see she is not a bad person, just a highly anxious one who takes a lot of the good out of her life by thinking in this way. I do bitch about her, even though I see that it is a pain for her too...

On the other hand, I consider I am relatively positive as a person.. but I went through a period of stress and depression a few years back and honestly I swear everything that came out of my mouth was like this. So it's hard to think of how it puts people off you, I lost a lot of friends in that period.. yet I couldn't see it and couldn't help it. I tend to think that this sort of stuff is borne of low self-esteem and/or depression ever since..

Whatmeworry · 26/03/2012 23:52

Psychologist friend was telling me about Munchausen's syndrome Wkipedia the other day, seems to fit some bills.

Apart from the common-or-garden Drama Llamas that is...

spartafc · 27/03/2012 00:35

I know someone who referred to the process of having a mole checked (think it was a trip to the GP) as 'my skin cancer scare'.
It must be pretty exhausting to feel things so deeply all the time.

HugADalek · 27/03/2012 08:08

I didn't think it was called Munchausen's syndrome any more. Fabricated and Induced Illness (FII) as far as I am aware. That's slightly different to people who genuinely worry about being ill and catastrophise symptoms, they are people who are making them up entirely, and would consider that a genuine mental health problem anyway.

Hypochondria is a recognised mental illness. Health anxiety too. And the problem is that psychosomatic problems from stress will give the worrier something to worry about.

pohara · 27/03/2012 11:11

Catastrophiser? Excellent, thanks for that label. I can now apply it to the many irritations who pop up.

Catastrophiser's FB update- "Nightmare visit to hospital with baby"

cue many comments, "Oooh what happened? Are you ok?"

Transpires baby had cold and they decided to take her to hospital to be checked. That's it.

A month down the track she referred to it as "that was when catastrophiser-baby was in hospital". I wanted to say, "she wasn't in, IN is when you're sick and they admit you"

But I didn't..

spartafc · 27/03/2012 13:28

Pohara - we might know the same person! That's exactly the sort of thing I get. Texts to say 'I'm exhausted, spent the day at the hospital with DS. Again' (always an 'again' in case I forget that this is An Ongoing Trauma). Turns out it was a trip to a&e. They were home within 3 hours.
There are always threats of redundancy and health scares. And these take precedence over, for example, my actual redundancy, or my DH's actual health problems.

hermionestranger · 27/03/2012 13:34

YANBU drives me mad! I know several people like this. I just nod or say oh dear.

pohara · 28/03/2012 00:09

spartafc - I think we do. She has almost everyone in the world on her FB account.

She is so busy, so stressed, so tired. OK I don't like to get competitive but I'm going to. I have 2 children and a ft job. She has 2 children, a husband, a live-in nanny, 2 sets of grandparents always on hand, and a pt job.

So I do find it hard to relate to her endless "Everyone look at me, my life is so hard" crap.

spartafc · 28/03/2012 09:22

Oh, shame- it's not the same person. That could have been fun!
I don't mind the attention seeking so much, well, actually - yes I do. It's ridiculous. But what I find most difficult is, say I - in a moment of madness - chose to tell her about something I'm dealing with, it's always countered with 'well, of course I have been through so much worse and blah blah blah blah'. I pulled her up on it once, and said 'you know, that's not really empathy, that's Top Trumps'. She said it wasn't and carried on. Thick skin for one so sensitive!!

pohara · 28/03/2012 22:15

So true. I have often noticed how those most sensitive to their own needs are the most insensitive to others.

I think I would mind less if she was honest e.g. "Feeling very worried about baby as she has bad cold" rather than "Another trip to hospital with baby"

or "I'm finding it much busier than I imagined" rather than "My life is crazy"

HillyWallaby · 29/03/2012 03:50

So true. I have often noticed how those most sensitive to their own needs are the most insensitive to others.

That is soooo true! I have know a few people who blurt out incredibly insensitive or overly direct comments to others, and they seem to totally lack the ability to be discreet or diplomatic, and yet they are extremely over sensitive and manage to find offence in the most innocent of things that are said to/about them. Bizarre.

sunshineestate · 29/03/2012 04:22

My mum is a catastophiser and it's had a really bad effect on our relationship. I never want to tell her anything about my life as i know it will get dramatised to neighbours/friends/family/hairdresser etc. For example I commented recently that my DH work had been slow the last couple of weeks. I then went to a family gathering the following weekend and had numerous people come and show their concern about my DH pending redundancy. It's really frustrating and brings me down. I look back at how anxious I was as a child and I think it's because I was brought up to think that everything was or was about to be doomed.

cory · 29/03/2012 08:20

Very brave and insightful posts by HugADalek.

I wonder if there is such a thing as an internal catastrophiser. Dd doesn't go on about it and bore her friends, but I know that inside she freaks out at every little twinge. Like Hug, there is a history both of early anxiety and of childhood problems (in dd's case a genuine medical disorder which was misdiagnosed as psychosomatic). She is having CBT, which is helping, but it is taking a long time. In dd's case the combination of a genuine medical condition, which is quite limiting in itself (and incurable), and the extreme anxiety, which makes her interpret every twinge as a sign that she is about to have another episode, is pretty well making her incapable of dealing with life at all.

My grandma was the same with her asthma. Nobody denied that she had it- she obviously did- but the thoughts of it seemed to be taking over her entire life. And of course they didn't have CBT in those days.

HugADalek · 29/03/2012 08:30

Oh gosh HillyWallaby I have to stand up and be counted again with being insensitive to other people, purely by accident most of the time, but it's like the ability to see people's emotions and understand how they might be feeling, unless I can turn around and relate it to my own experience, is completely missing from me. The only way I can make their emotion feel real is if I can match it against something of mine. I try so hard, but it's like a big wall between me and others and I can only cross it if I can find the correct emotion in my own catalogue.

So I get worried about what people think of me, because I'm usually committing five dozen social faux pas per week and then when I do manage to empathise I end up making it about me. There's a reason I don't go out into the real world as much as I used to, lol. I can laugh about it, but I have to again have people be blunt with me about when I start doing things, so I can stop myself, as I don't seem to have that little voice in my head that says DON'T DO THAT! Like yesterday, my Mum told me off about half a dozen times because I fill silence with pointless rumination about my health, and she knows not to try to hug me (although I do give hugs) and that if she's upset and crying I don't join in or really know what to say, and sometimes what I do try to say is completely inappropriate and usually about me to change the subject.

Writing it down is embarrassing, but one of the reasons I am so very over-sensitive is because I wouldn't know diplomacy in a real life situation if it whacked me on the head, so I am on high alert all the time.

(know this is all about me, again I am trying to peel off the surface and show you what's inside, rather than make it all about me and all that shizzle)

pohara · 29/03/2012 10:07

Come to think of it, one of my closest friends is a catastrophiser. Or maybe she is just super unlucky (endless round of car accidents, break ins, work stresses, neighbour stresses, people coming to stay stresses etc)
I love her to bits and probably collude quite a lot a bit as she is so sweet and funny. I can forgive almost anything for funny.

She is super sensitive to her friends though so no issues there, very loyal and caring between dramas.

takingiteasy · 29/03/2012 10:09

Christ there's a mum at school like this, always sees to attract an audience as well, all keen to hear the latest installment of what is essentially quite a dull existence.

takingiteasy · 29/03/2012 10:16

I work with one as well. She found a lump in her boob, it was a full blown cancer scare with her talking to as one at a time at work to 'fill us in' just in case we were wondering what was wrong. This was all after her first appointment with the GP. I understand it's a worrying time but I barely know the girl, let alone like her, and it was so awkward. Anyway she got sent for more tests and it was nothing, cue a 3 page text message to the whole team telling us. All in under 2 weeks. Her sister went through breast cancer, masectomy and everything last year and I genuinly think she wanted some of that attention.

I announced my pregnancy. 3 weeks later she'd had a miscarriage. She'd went to the loo and heard a 'plop' and decided it was a miscarriage.

Sicko.

Jidget · 29/03/2012 20:29

takingiteasy, I can't believe anything my catastrophising colleague says.

Within a week of my ex being diagnosed with Aspergers (dismissed by 2 GPs, waiting to see private consultant, eventual v. expensive diagnosis), her brother was 'diagnosed' too. He apparently was told by a friend that he had AS , just went to his GP and voila - he has it too.

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