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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 attract/create drama wherever they go

40 replies

Schooldidi · 20/02/2013 22:20

and it must be exhausting for them.

Every little thing that goes wrong is blown up into a major disaster. How do people survive the stress when even a flat battery in the car makes your day the 'worst day ever'?

OP posts:

MoelFammau · 21/02/2013 02:20

My mum, my ex-DH and his father are all like this and it's exhausting. I tend to have complicated shit happening but my technique is to laugh it off and it works out fine usually anyway. But there is no sense of humour in it for mum, ex-DP and ex-DP's dad. It's all anger, and screaming and swearing...

Which is why ex-DH is ex-DH. Just couldn't be arsed any longer.

I do understand mental health though and do sympathise. Though the flip side is that living with my mother and then my ex-DH caused self-harm and feelings of suicide on occasion, so this stuff can truly be toxic.

AuntLucyInPeru · 21/02/2013 02:43

Yes, and they're fucking annoying.

MrsLion · 21/02/2013 03:30

My MIL doesn't attract problems. She creates them.

Usually to put herself at the centre of attention if she feels knocked off her matriarch perch - or as a means of manipulating others when things don't go exactly her way.

I have known her 7 years and have literally lost count of the number of petty rows, huge arguments, episodes of not speaking she's had with friends and close family members including myself.

Aside from her, I'd be hard pressed to name more than 3 people I've ever 'fallen out' with, and certainly none since I left high school. I come from a family where we behaved in exactly the opposite way- drama was avoided. Problems solved rather than exploded into catastrophes. So I find it particularly hard to tolerate.

Then there's the lawsuits, cutting off her sister (for a very insignificant reason) and contributing significantly to the break-up of two marriages.

People like this are extremely exhausting and don't realise that it drives people away. I tried very hard to like her, forge a good relationship and focus on her positives.

Tbh, I'd rather just keep contact to a minimum now and I only make a minimum effort with her for the sake of my dc and dh.

It is truly a shame, as she does have some fantastic qualities, but honestly it's just not worth it.

MercedesKing · 21/02/2013 07:11

Exhausting, it seems that I am the state as well recently. How I wish I could move away as soon as possible!

Fairydogmother · 21/02/2013 07:17

I work with someone like that and she's a complete drain on everyone. There's never a day goes by without her turning (late) that she hasn't got some take of woe or disaster. They generally involve her teenage son who needs a good boot up the arse

MrsLouisTheroux · 21/02/2013 07:34

They do it for attention. It's manipulative because it plays on guilt.
If you ignore their (many) woes you are seen as heartless.
The people I know with the biggest problems don't have the energy to talk to every man and his dog about them.

varicoseveined · 21/02/2013 08:26

MrsLion we may just have the same MIL! She and my sister always take stuff way too personally and get offended at every damn thing. I try to keep minimal contact just so things can be civil.

That kind of mindset is so alien to me and it just winds me up no end. Such people think other people's problems are insignificant because they aren't as dramatic as theirs

CalpolInMyEar · 21/02/2013 08:55

I know someone who does this. Every restaurant she didn't absolutely love gave her "The worst experience ever." I once called her on it after the fourth time she'd said it in a weekend and she cried for an hour as she couldn't see why I was being so harsh and horrible to her.

I don't see her much anymore. In her case it is undoubtedly an attention thing, I remember the night she got in between a verbal fight in a club and someone threw a drink which splashed her. For WEEKS we had to hear about how she went to a local late night cafe in tears and asked to wash her hair in their toilets and they gave her a cup of tea and she was considering going to the police.

Obviously any MH problem is different but she really thrives on the drama and can't cope with not being the most important person in the room.

DonderandBlitzen · 21/02/2013 09:44

I have to really limit the amount of time I spend with my mum as I just cannot be bothered with her crises and dramas over nothing.

KellyElly · 21/02/2013 09:54

I used to be like this - product of a really fucked up life. I've found having DD, getting help for my issues, cutting toxic people out of my life and being on my own for a couple of years have helped me to change/cope better. It is exhausting being one of those people and as draining as they are on other people they emotionally drain themselves as well! I still have the tendency in my for sure but try to take a step back and have a word with myself when I feel the drama queen coming on. I think for me it was a craving for attention and a need to feel cared about/loved. Funnily enough after a while it achieves the opposite.

Snootymum · 21/02/2013 09:58

Calpol, I know a couple of people that can't cope with not being the most important person in the room, and I find them infuriating.

I know someone from a parenting forum who is like that. She has dominated the group since day one of our pregnancies and literally cannot cope without being the centre of attention. I'd say 75% of us had PND to some degree, but because she made such a song and dance about hers, it was her that everyone was asking about all the time, and everyone remembers all the details to it. Most of us just got on with it. Even now several years later if someone posts about something that has happened to them and they get attention, she will pop up later that day and essentially trump their problem with a huge problem/issue/worry/crisis that gets the troops rallying around her.

Another drama llama that I know is someone that I know locally but the majority of my contact with her is via FB. She probably does 5+ statuses per day about problems and issues, airing all her dirty laundry, and getting het up about everything. She has tons of people replying to her and offering her support. In fact yesterday she posted that someone had been slightly rude to her at a self service till, and she did a big long status about how upset she was, and how it had ruined her day which had apparently been going well until then, and she was worried incidents like that would re-trigger her depression. She got over thirty replies.

I think sometimes the people facilitating this kind of attention seeking behaviour are just as bad as the attention seeker. If people didn't pander to them, they'd stop doing it, or would at least do it quietly in the comfort of their own home!!

Fairydogmother · 21/02/2013 11:40

I bin people like that from fb - I call them mood hoovers lol

Snootymum · 21/02/2013 11:43

Mood hoovers!! Love it!

HollyBerryBush · 21/02/2013 11:44

I have another friend who just attracts world events!

Massacre by the pyramids? An out break of Dengue Fever? volcanic eruption? massive floods and landslides in Venezuela? Tsunami in Sri Lanka? Coup - been there done that.

She's a professional hazzard!

CMOTDibbler · 21/02/2013 11:50

I know three people like this - no MH problems, but hugely attention seeking and over dramatising. I hate it, and I have to work with one of them

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