To find people who insert themselves at the centre of other's dramas and tragedies really annoying

[daisywellies]

I've a colleague who does this all the time. When her SIL's mum died she carried on as if she was nearest and dearest next of kin; when another colleague's father was sadly killed in a car accident she just kept banging on and on about how shocked and shaken she was at the news, and even had family members ringing her to see if she was alright; and for the past week she has been going on about how it 'could have been me' re the 7/7 bombs because she once had a part time job for about two months that involved getting a tube at Edgeware Road - several years before the bombings I might add.

AIBU to think some people are self absorbed drama queens who see themselves in a starring role in every tragedy, even when it has little or nothing to do with them?

SolidGoldBrass - the funeral planner I know is most definitely not a professional funeral planner. She just really seems to like planning funerals! I think maybe it's the attention and praise she gets from the newly bereaved relatives? I really don't get it.

motherofmonster, so sorry about your poor sister.

Do you mean when you were trying to support people someone rang up and lied about having two people die there? How did you cope with that conversation? My blood would have been boiling!

My mother.

When I was very ill in hospital earlier this year she posted all over Facebook saying how terrible and worrying it all was, even though I told her I didn't want all the details plastered all over social media.

She didn't really want to know once I was getting better and the drama was over- apart from to tell me she'd thought about getting stuck into planning my funeral- which no doubt would have been engineered to put most of the spotlight on her!

She's a strange woman.

toomuchtooold Why didn't you punch her? I on't know - but if you want to punch her now for it, I'll hold your coat and give you an alibi tighter than a ducks arse...

SolidGoldBrass I think you're right. As was the poster who linked it back to Diana's death when ostentatious displays of public grief seemed to be expected.

I remember watching rolling news coverage of the 7/7 bombings, when the TV stations were encouraging people to send in text messages in that were then displayed at the bottom of the screen. The number of people who were from the other end of the country, but visited once London to go to Madam Tussauds in 1997 and were therefore convinced it could have been them!! was amazing. It was so disrespectful to the actual victims and their families.

In Spanish a person like this is described as wanting to be

" The baby at the christening, the bride at the wedding and the corpse at the funeral"

An older version is "The parsley in the sauce, the baby at the christening, the bride at the wedding, the corpse at the funeral "

Obviously wanting to be centre of attention regardless of the circumstances
You are NBU

ImperialBlether

Luckily it was on line. But she was very convincing in her grief which was scary.

I must admit it put me off for a while, i still do a bit now as it was so hard at the time, although the Police were brilliant especially with my parents i was only 18 at the time and found it hard to cope. My parents were overcome and mentally just shut down. I was thrown into being a adult and arranging a funeral, identification,coroner courts, media, public enquiry. and also wonderfully had to for almost two years sit on the same train, going past the crash site back into london each day to hear somethings that even as a adult now i wish i didn't have in my head. I saw a grief councilor but it felt fake as i knew that she was incapable of knowing what it was all like. I didn't grieve for a long time as i couldn't risk the floodgates opening.
There seemed to be a lack of understanding on how a child/younger person copes in these situations so it felt good to do some feedback that hopefully went on to help other family's in later incidents. Some of which i am privilaged to know

My new favourite phrase. I know one of these, very much the type to wear a giant black bee keepers hat to a funeral.

I worked with someone like this. I was diagnosed with breast cancer and she seemed supportive. However she said to me, "You'll look back and wonder why you made such a fuss." She is no doubt there still being at the centre of people's crises saying things like that. I hate her.

Totally.

When my dd was badly hurt along with other school friends a mom whose dd hadn't been involved in the incident explained to me in great length how hard it had been for her dd being left out!

Bear in mind there had been one death and several spinal injuries and paralysis of children.

WTAF.

derxa I hate her too on your behalf.

Fucking hate it.

DH's SIL is like this. The MOST TENUOUS link to any kind of illness/tragedy/disaster is ramped up at every opportunity in order to generate sympathy and compassion towards her.

A year or so back, a child in the same town was hit by a car (fortunately fine now). SIL had met his Aunt very briefly twice. Loads of 'sitting here shaking' updates on FB in order to illicit all the 'so sorry hun. Stay strong' bollocks.

She is also someone (as is BIL) who never talks about anything 'real' or 'worldy' only other people. Every time we go round there, I am bored fucking rigid by the conversation. Me and DH never know any of the people they are talking about and couldn't give a flying fuck, but still they look at us as though we are mad if we try to talk about anything that's going on in the world/films/books etc.

I think the two go hand in hand.

Grief wankers is exactly right.

Grief porn..... It's obscene

Ruledbycatsandkids6 - i am at that.

It should be legal to whack these people over the head with a jaggy stick and shout stop being a grief wanker

Slight tangent perhaps:

I did a PostGrad Counselling Diploma.
One of my fellow trainees became pg.
One of the lecturers spent the entire year of the course 'examining her feelings' about the fact she couldn't become pg and the pg student 'had to be in HER group, didn't she?'
Now I have suffered fertility issues myself so I have a lot of sympathy with those who have had trouble starting a family / not managed to have children.
But it was DEFINATELY an excuse for 'emotional wanking' from a Uni lecturer who was teaching Psych grads how to become empathic Counsellors and was shocking.

MIL once phoned gleefully to tell H that an old friend of hers was dead.
When he was going through a very very difficult day himself (as she well knew). He almost put the car off the road. Turned out the friend had been the one to take him to school as a tot, as MIL 'couldn't', so the woman had been the person who he'd seen all through his childhood, twice a day, when MIL sat at home. Yak.

My own mother took the train to lay flowers at Buck House when Diana died. She had never met her. She doesn't speak to most of her own family but Diana was 'like family' to her. No, she wasn't!

Is there such a thing as the opposite of an emotional vampire/grief wanker?

I know someone who refuses all offers of help, won't let people come and visit etc so she can post on FB and moan to close family that nobody's there for her and nobody comes to see her.

I work with someone like this, who I believe has NPD. An old colleague of hers, well known in our industry, died recently. She carried on as if she had lost a close family member - several days off work, reams of posts on Facebook about how devastated she was, she immediately leaped in to organise a condolence book at a big industry event, banging on about 'what a comfort' it would be for his widow (like she would know), when really she just wanted the attention of being seen to be in the thick of it. I'm sure she was sad he died, but it just negates any sympathy you feel when they carry on so much. It is just one symptom of her narcissistic behaviour.

Chronically - I think rather than a grief wanker, they're just the regular variety wanker.

That's your common garden martyr.

Again, all about the attention.

I have a friend who is a bit like this. There was someone murdered in the UK a few years ago and she was all into it as the woman had some connection with where my friend grew up (they didn't know one another at all, my friend had moved out of this area a few decades ago, and the murdered woman was much younger than my friend. It was a very very tenuous link).

She also went to a funeral of someone she was a client of. She sent me a text to say "We buried XXX today". WE! She had never met the deceased woman and did not know the husband socially (and I thought it was intrusive for her to go to the funeral in this instance - it is not unusual in Ireland to go to funerals of aquaintances to offer support for the family, but the client-professional relationship in this instance would have made it awkward for the grieving husband I think.). As it happens the woman was cremated not buried. I was tempted to correct her in a text .

She currently knows someone who had a relative that was killed in the Tunisian massacre. God help this poor woman.

I don't know if anyone saw the documentary about the 9/11 faker, who pretended to be a victim of the 9/11 attacks. A bit of info on here here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Esteve_Head

"Alicia Esteve Head[2] (born July 31, 1973)[1] is a Spanish woman who claimed to be a survivor of the WTC September 11 attacks under the name Tania Head. She joined the World Trade Center Survivors' Network support group, later becoming its president. Her name was regularly mentioned in media reports of the attacks. In 2007, it was revealed her story was a hoax: Head was not in New York on September 11, 2001, as she was actually attending classes in Barcelona"

Thanks glo and fenella I guess she is a common garden martyr wanker, it just struck a chord that people might think I was the grief wanker, sucking up the emotions then abandoning her when she needed me most, when she's the one that pushed me away.

At a pub where exh and I used to drink there was a man in his 60's who drank there. One day one of the locals told us his sad story, he was a soldier in the Army and was based in Belfast and his wife was one of the 10 people who were killed in the Shankhill Road fish shop bombings in 1993. Everyone in the pub was really sad for him and felt sorry for his loss.

ExH is from Belfast and grew up near the Shankill Road. He knew straightaway that the story was complete bollocks as only local people died in the bombing (including the bomber). ExH actually knew somebody who died in the bombing. There was no army wife killed at all.

We didnt really say anything to anyone about it but ExH did sort of talk to this man and let slip that he knew his story was bollocks.

Why? I just dont understand it.

I was walking my daughter (5 then) to school with my son (3 then.) He had a health problem called Reflex Anoxic Seizure, which meant if he got a shock, he stopped breathing, eventually having a seizure. He was chasing my daughter and almost ran into a tree (that would be enough to kick it off.) My friend was with them; I'd gone back to the car for a lunch box. When I turned back from the car, another car was double parked and a crowd of women were in a circle on the pavement and my daughter was screaming. My son was on the ground, at first not breathing (so blue lips, terribly pale etc) and then he had a fit.

I thought he'd been knocked over by the car that had double parked - it took me about a year to get over that shock.

Anyway... I drove him up to our local cottage hospital. I was in the waiting room and there were doctors around us when a woman burst in, sobbing and breathless. She's run the mile from the school. I vaguely knew her - she was the friend of a friend - but hadn't said more than hello to her, if that, really. She was just someone who I'd see at the school.

It was then all about her. She couldn't cope. She'd heard he'd died. (He had looked like he was dead.) She felt so terrible, etc etc. She wasn't there at the time (always late for school) and didn't know me but I ended up somehow comforting her!

It was quite funny later when the doctor asked (in his room) whether I wanted her in there. I said, "I don't even know who she is" and we both burst out laughing.

I worked with someone like this. I recall another colleague's dad died suddenly, and she (his daughter) was the person who found him.
Drama Queen started saying to me, oh if that happened to ME. I managed somehow to say reasonably nicely, yes, but it didn't happen to YOU. It happened to X, so let's think about her, and see can we help.

Another tore off to Rome with her mother when the Pope was dying, in 2005, no idea why. Glad I don't work with either of them anymore.