To wonder about people who always seem to have a lot of drama in their lives

[Bollocks2Covid]

I’ve a work colleague who’s life always seems to be full of drama and ‘disasters’ (I use the term very loosely) and in the beginning I really felt sorry for her because she seems so unlucky, but as time’s gone on I’ve started to realise that she almost thrives on it and the attention it brings. We all have shit going on in our lives bit most people don’t go on about it in the way she does, she massively over shares and I knew her life story within a few hours of meeting her and she makes sure everyone knows how terrible her life is.

I can’t work out if I’m just being a cow or not, but I know other people who really do have awful stuff going on and never go on about it half as much. In fact they barely mention it at all.

AIBU to think it’s just about attention with a lot of people?

I worked with someone who was perpetually lurching from one crisis to another. Disastrous relationships, lodgers that stole her jewellery and did a bunk, family feuds, drug-taking truant children, businesses she started that went bankrupt because the person she was in partnership with turned out to be a crook, terrible landlords, cars that turned out to be lemons or cut-and-shut jobs, horrendous neighbours - you name it. Everything she touched went pear-shaped. She made one terrible choice after another. All of the above happened in the 18 months or so that I knew her.

One of my friends is an oversharer. It probably stems from difficult family relationships growing up. She hardly seems to notice she does it and is genuinely puzzled when people remember bits of her story and mention them to her in conversation, she's immediately on the defensive and wonders how people can possibly know such-and-such about her. Er, because you told them?

It gets tiring, and sooner or later will come back to bite her on the arse as she talks very freely about her financial business and someone is bound to take advantage at some point.

I worked and was briefly friends with a girl like this .

She'd make up ( or over exaggerate) a plethora of medical issues (both physical and mental) or friendship issues

I put up with most of it and tried to see the good in her but what really took the biscuit was when one of our lovely colleague's wife was dying of cancer. Suddenly this girl had some of her own 'cancer' symptoms and pushed the Dr's for a scan, which unsurprisingly showed nothing wrong with her.

During her whole 'ordeal' she kept openly taking about it at work in front of the guy who's wife was dying. She would text him in the evenings asking for advice and about how worried she was about possibly having cancer. It was fucking sickening to witness and I lost all respect for her after that.
She even managed to get an invite to the funeral when his wife died( never even met her) and of course we heard all about that.

She would frequently cry at her desk for no damn reason, pull her own hair out and then tell people her hair was falling out with stress. Film herself having the 'shakes' and send it to people for no real reason, tag herself at the local hospital without explanation. She thrived off the attention and drama. Also had multiple affairs or at least love interests because she had an addiction to attention.

I had the misfortune of working with her in more than one company and my family member ended up working with her at a 3rd place ( completely by coincidence) and the pattern of behaviour was the same everywhere she went. She went through jobs and friends more frequently then she changed her clothes.

The thing is she probably did have some mental health issues, or Munchausen's. Just not the ones she wanted to have.

I'm so glad she's not part of my life anymore and steer clear of anyone remotely similar.

I have a colleague like this, she’s 41 so not young. I’ve spent so many hours helping her but she goes from one disaster to the next

I cannot stand drama llamas!

I used to work with this woman who loved a good drama, and would exaggerate/lie to make things sound more exciting/dramatic.

I remember once she got a message from her landlord saying that she was being given notice to move out of her flat. She went on and on in her typical dramatic fashion about what she was going to do about it, but later on as we walked out of the building together she told me that actually it had worked out really well because she was going to go and stay with a friend, would have cheaper rent etc etc.

The next morning, she greeted a colleague who had not been there the day before with "oh my God, you didn't hear what happened yesterday! My landlord has messaged me and I'm being made to leave my flat, oh my God, oh my God!" etc etc

So I just said "oh Sarah, I thought you said it was all sorted and you had somewhere better to stay?!". She gave me such a filthy look

I once worked for someone like this. She was so inappropriate in terms of oversharing details of petty dramas. I think it was all about the attention.

The worst was when she and I interviewed a candidate for a job together and she even spent 15 mins of that banging on about herself. Any 1:1 I had with her would be spent talking about her and her amazing, perfect boyfriend (who then left her, thankfully after she'd left us). Cringe.

Yep..and its usually one long list of poor decision making, impulsiveness and "woe is me I'm so unlucky". Um no..you just are incapable of learning from your mistakes.

I think they are behaving within their comfort zone.
If they've had a chaotic and perhaps dysfunctional upbringing it will be there 'normal' and unable to cope with calm.

Attention seeker.
Probably has no more dramas than other people but overshares for attention.
Only solution is to grey rock. If they say something bad has happened say “oh dear” and something good say “how lovely”. Say both in as bland a voice as possible and then continue on with what you were doing. Hopefully they will get the message. Wearing headphones to listen to music and sticking them back on after saying “oh dear” would surely get the point across.
People like this, perhaps not intentionally, are absolute grade 1 bores! Life is too short to listen to someone else drone on about their latest drama of the day!

I work with a woman and I have learnt never to say how are you instead of hello. She has had some pretty serious health issues and a bereavement, but no-one can offer any comfort or support. She bats away any advice or suggestions of counselling. She's like a tape recording you can't switch off, and she has absolutely zero empathy or compassion for anyone else struggling with similar difficulties.

Another workmate's mother died very suddenly recently and all this colleague could do was point out that her mother's death was harder to deal with because she had been ill for years. She even said workmate was lucky her mum died suddenly and insinuated her grief wasn't nearly as profound as hers was.

Worked with many women like this and a friend of mine is like it. If I’d say I’ve got a headache she’s thinks she got a brain tumour! Everything you say hers is worse, it’s very draining.

I had a friend like this. Every relationship was absolutely chaotic, she’d throw herself in headlong, there’d be huge fights and drama & they would crash and burn relatively quickly (including two engagements). All played out blow by blow to her friends.

I cottoned on why when for some reason she said “and that’s how you know you love each other, all great relationships have massive rows. My mum and dad are like that, they’re madly in love & have been together for 30 years”.

The 3 girls around me all mumbled no, their parents don’t have blazing rows, it’s maybe not normal. Somehow she’d absorbed her parents relationship as the ideal and had to generate the drama & rows for it to be “the one” in her mind.