Naturally dramatic life - unworthy of friendship?

[SparklingBalls]

This is coming off the back off a few threads I've been reading across MN, and yes, I am a long-term poster and have NCed for this.

My life has always involved drama. For the most part I had nothing to do with why - abusive home, sexual abuse as a teen and young adult including multiple rapes, homelessness brought on by shitty friendships and lack of relatives who to this day give a shit, relationship abuse followed by single mum pregnancy, abusive marriage including an attempt on my life through him, escape from this, now financial difficulties.

I know that people always say that drama attracts drama, but honestly, I'd love nothing more than a simple life. Very little of my life drama is of my own making (suicide attempts and OCD-related disorders may be, but stem from childhood trauma, which won't cease to rear its ugly head despite meds and therapy), but the main thing in my life is, I am being constantly shat on from a great height.

I have always tried to do the right thing, got a job, got promotions, kept the kids, supported them as a single mum. I have tried again and again to build up friendships and relationships, but the continuous onslaught of shit happening in my life drives them all away. I try to stay upbeat; I have tons of gallow's humour; it is hard. But it seems I am doomed, not just through more shit happening by the month, but also by lack of friends, family, anyone.

On here people always say that it's people's own fault if their life is dramatic. But mine could fill several soap operas without me trying.

It pushes people away, I guess. So my AIBU - is it me, is it always people who are dramatic who have dramatic lives?

I'm sorry you have had such awful experiences.

I think maybe it is less the things that happen and more the high expressed emotions that make the difficulties of life seem like "drama"? Maybe also the context that awful things are shared in?

My personal experience is that I find it best to never speak about previous experiences of abuse to others. It is an uncomfortable topic, people do not know what to say. I talk to my partner, or if I needed I would speak to a therapist.

I'm not saying this is right, but I definitely fine it is the best approach for maintaining friendships.

It's not your fault. I have someone very close to me who is similar - lots of trauma throughout their life and it does seem like the shit always falls on them. It genuinely isn't their fault, there's nothing they could have done differently.

But they do struggle because even with gallows humour or trying not to mention it at all, it's there (and their CPTSD is too).

People find other people's pain and trauma uncomfortable and I suspect there is a suspicion eventually by others that it's somehow their 'fault'. Which is 100% unfair, but I do think it happens.

It makes getting back up and keeping going so much harder when you don't have a network, and I really feel for you.

wholeheartedly agree with @Stompythedinosaur

Crikey OP, what an awful time you’ve had, enough for several lifetimes. I’m very sorry to hear of all you’ve been through. Absolute credit and respect for you for turning your life around and getting promoted and being a great mum. It seems to me at the people you’ve formed friendships with haven’t been great friends, they sound pretty shallow to let your experiences put them off. You can’t help what’s happened to you. I really think it’s not you that’s the problem it’s them. I hope that as your life progresses you will find better people to be friends with

No I know what you mean. My mum was abusive and we weren´t in contact, and she died recently, and people don´t know what to say to me, and I wonder if they are judging me because I didn´t have much contact with her in the time leading up to her death. It seems like the last slap in the teeth that it would put people off me - and then I think, well maybe I should disclose the abuse, but is anyone really that interested? I feel as if, unless you are already really good friends with someone, they don´t really want to know that much about a sad back story, and people don´t want to borrow trouble, it´s just easier to be friends with people who are uncomplicated.

I think sometimes as well, like this happened to me with a circle of friends I had - people want to get together and complain about small things. And when all your things are big things, it kind of sucks up all the oxygen, and guess whose fault that ends up being? I know I wasn´t fun in the year when I had two miscarriages and my dad was dying and my company was making half of us redundant but I hoped for a bit more from my friends than awkward silence, a "that´s awful" and then change of subject and not invited out for drinks again. I think some of the problem for me is that I missed out on making childhood friends and the sort of friendships you make as an adult are far less likely to go that deep. I feel as if my whole life my abusive upbringing has caused me to lean harder on my friendships and romantic relationships than I would have otherwise, and in order to actually make any (healthy) relationships last I had to fool people into thinking I cared a lot less than I actually did.

It's not your fault and you are worthy of friendship. It needs to start with you- be kind, compassionate and understanding to yourself. Your relationship with yourself is more important than your relationship with other people. As you're kinder to yourself your relationships will improve too.

To me it sounds like you haven’t processed what has happened to you enough to be able to get on and enjoy friendships and shrug your shoulders with current/ future difficulties and enjoy the moment. No need to bare your soul, just be honest if needed but otherwise have fun and relax. Otherwise it’s too intense for most people.

You call it drama, but it isn’t drama and your own flippant description may be signalling to others it doesn’t matter to you.

It sounds like you have patterns of accepting people into your life that shouldn’t be there/not trustworthy/ and bad people. You may need to work on figuring out what positive and healthy relationships look like. If you are continually drawing in the wrong types in to your life, the drama and pain is likely to carry on indefinitely. It’s not all bad luck op, but bad judgement and low expectations too maybe?

Maybe it's nothing to do with your experiences? Maybe people are flaky and unreliable or maybe your strength scares them or maybe they think you don't want them around as you have loads if depth. Who knows. But I am curious why you gave jumped to self blame immediately?

Drama is a very passive way to describe what you have been through. I have a pretty similar background to you and haven't really experienced 'driving people away'. That phrase is putting the blame squarely with you/your experiences and you are being unfair to yourself by insinuating that you have a fundamental flaw that drives people away. Maybe it's a them problem & not a you problem? Or as @Blessedwithsunshine says maybe the wrong kind of people are coming into your orbit because you can't filter out the shits? But whatever the underlying reason is, jumping to self blame isn't the answer

Op I have very different life experiences but ones that are pretty dramatic and not by my doing. I seem to collect stalkers and weirdos and find myself in some very odd situations. I certainly don’t entertain them or lead them on but something about me seems to be magnetic to them. As a result I have many quite dramatic stories. I tend not to tell many people because I when I have I’ve been accused of lying, creating drama or attention seeking. None of which could be further from the truth.

Like you I didn’t ask for any of these things to happen but I am aware my experiences do stand out from the norm and as such to boring brenda at baby group
it can seem as dramatic, especially when having a baby has been the highlight of
her life.

We shouldn’t have to hold back about our experiences but people don’t want scary or sad life stories they want boring Brenda bitching about bad boy Barry in accounts. Our lives are so alien to them it scares them.

i look out people who have different lives for friendships. People whose experiences stand up to mine in wtf-ness and we all have dark senses of humour about our experiences where we laugh at shit most people will recoil at because if you don’t laugh you’ll cry.

Thanks all. Yes, I definitely used to attract the wrong sort into my life and I have been working hard to change that.

Making new friendships is where I struggle; I am very conscious that people have enough going on in their lives without needing to hear the latest issue that's been happening, but likewise it feels wrong not to mention anything when people ask what I've been up to that month, if that makes sense? It always feels like such a huge balance act, even if my general demeanour is quite upbeat.

It's not your fault at all, it may be that your early traumas have caused you to have difficulty in forming boundaries, attachment disorders perhaps, self esteem issues etc which mean you are vulnerable to people who would do harm - it is not your fault, however it is something you can address and work on to unpick the issues and form healthy boundaries and self esteem and seek to "let go" of the past, it will always be part of your story, how you got here, but it is something for you to overcome to create your next chapter.

@MiddleParking what makes you say @StinkyWizzleteets is unpleasant? I didn't get that impression, in fact I can relate to her, and the OP.

Maybe it's people like you who drop all us poor unfortunates with stupid dramatic lives?

@MiddleParking

I totally agree there is nothing in@StinkyWizzleteets post that is unessarey or unexpectedly unpleasant, 🤔 quite Contrary really,
I hear you @StinkyWizzleteets I get totally what you say, I know exactly what you mean,

I totally get it,

@Stompythedinosaur
I hear you , I get it,

I say this kindly – maybe you have to be less selective about your friendships, or look elsewhere. I face lots of difficulties in my life due to mental health issues, I'm not the kind to moan or be dramatic about it (am embarrassed to in front of my friends with highly functional lives in fact, which is why I see them a bit less frequently now because there are only so many canned answers you can give to questions about your life).

I was resigned to not having any close friends anymore, but as it turns out my current best friends have fallen into my lap... They're others with depression and other issues (but trying their best to manage) in a similar life stage to me. We're a dysfunctional motley crew but can be supportive and honest with each other. Maybe we'll outgrow one another one day – different folks for different seasons in life I suppose – or maybe we'll stay fast friends even if we get better.

Yeah it’s just lovely to refer to other women at baby groups as ‘boring Brenda’ isn’t it. Really weird how that isn’t landing so well as a friend-making strategy.

Like you, I have had a lot of drama. It has been horrific. People I meet fall in two camps: (1) They want to know everything about my trauma - they are sadistic voyeurs who want to know every single detail; and (2) those who have never known trauma and want to insulate themselves from it - which means they want nothing to do with you.

I had a psychiatrist tell me that she didn’t believe me when I told her about my childhood.

I avoid discussing my trauma in my relationship. Anything I do randomly share (I.e. happy memories) is met with “you know that wasn’t normal?”

In your case I would suggest you don’t share your trauma with your friendships. You need to understand any friendships can be grouped in three ways:

Proximity based friendships - these are friendships based on proximity such as work colleagues / neighbours / parents of your children’s friends. These friendships often die when you are no longer in close proximity.

Superficial friendships - These are relationships where you may meet up at parties or in a hobby and speak on a casual basis and rarely see each other outside of these social constraints.

Ride or die friendships - These are friendships where you are best friends and are as close as siblings - you do everything together and share all of your feelings.

Historically, my friendships have been proximity friendships (people I met through work and became close to or people I have lived with) - with a few relationships going into ride or die friendships. But I recognise that I don’t like people getting too close because I don’t trust them and often I will cut people off if they have exhibited behaviour that I don’t like (I.e. if they become abusive, unstable or unkind).

Currently, I only have superficial friendships - these are people who maintain friendships of my partner that I will speak with at events but would never dream to share anything private with.

There are people that go through life without any trauma but there are people whose trauma is so great it makes the evening news on a regular basis. I fall into the trauma category. If you google my real name articles will come up. I don’t share my trauma. Instead I will share enough information that people will think I am sharing but really it’s only superficial stuff that doesn’t matter to me. I don’t like people getting too close as I distrust most people because emotionally I can’t be bothered. People drain me. I have difficult giving empathy - particularly when people don’t cope and need to be held up on a regular basis.

I’ve had a friend that has been through a lot of trauma and I’ve not cut her off - although we are not currently close. She falls into the proximity based friendship category and we currently live some distance from each other (which is why we are no longer close). She has borderline personality disorder and out of all of my friendships I actually like her the best. She’s fun, interesting and her drama doesn’t bother me.

Once you understand which category your friendships fall into you will be better equipped to know what you can and can’t share. You need to know that not everyone will be able to handle your trauma and they may want to exit the friendship.

The thing with trauma is that it's not just a bad thing that happened to you, it's something which happened to you which has a distorting effect on your personality. When the traumatic event happens, different areas of the brain shut down as a protective mechanism. Something like ongoing abuse, where there are lots of instances of it happening, means that the brain learns to shut those area down. So for example, someone suffering cptsd may have an impaired sense of risk twenty years later, because in a risky situation when a non-traumatised person's brain would process the danger and tell them to get themselves out of the situation, a traumatised person's risk processing area of the brain would sense the risk but then shut down as its learned response, meaning that person stays in the bad situation with all that ensues. It's not really their personality to be a risktaker, but it would feel that way to them (as the trauma has altered their brain so erased their knowledge of how they would have acted before the trauma), and it would look like that to someone on the outside.

An added problem is that predators and other wounded souls recognise the distorted personality - like an injured fish in the sea twitching in a way that attracts sharks and repels healthy fish. That obviously multiplies the chances of more drama, and is also incredibly lonely.

There are good books, like The Body Keeps the Score which explain this in more detail, and a good trauma therapist will be able to help you unpick what your brain is doing in different situations so you can start to separate yourself from your learned response. It's a tough situation to be in op, and it sounds like you're really trying to overcome things so all credit to you.

Sorry to hear you've had such trouble in your life. There's been some good advice here. I just wanted to add something that might help. When people ask how I've been, I tell them about a couple of things I've done recently that are fun/interesting (a nice day trip, a good book, trip to a new restaurant in town). I never mention any personal difficulties. This is because I think they are asking that to start a nice conversation and not necessarily because they want an accurate picture of all my feelings and experiences that week.

I am sorry to hear about your terrible life experiences and difficulties in making friends. I hope you take this post in the spirit it's intended as I think you're after honest opinions.

It seems to me that you have a lot of unresolved trauma from your childhood that has led you to make decisions in adulthood that have created a lot of 'drama' and difficulties. The homelessness, the single parenthood, ending up in an abusive marriage, all of these things involved some input and decision making from you at some point. I'm absolutely not saying that these things are your fault or you're to blame, but just the fact that you see yourself as a completely passive player in your own life is potentially frustrating for potential friends.

I have friends who have very troubled and traumatic childhoods that have spent a long time and a crazy amount of effort trying to work through their trauma and break generational cycles of behaviour. Obviously they have ups and downs but generally they live pretty stable lives and make good decisions regarding supportive partners and friends. I also have friends who have a similarly difficult childhood but just move from one difficult situation to another. The difficulties seem to compound each other after a while and they get more and more trapped in this cycle of events that they blame solely on bad fortune. I find it difficult to maintain these friendships because it's really hard to watch bad things happen repeatedly to people you care about. Reaching out doesn't really seem to work and it's hard as a friend to know how to help or support them effectively.

Naturally dramatic life is a fairly accurate description of our employee’s life over the last 6 years.

I have posted about him before, working with his parole officer to keep him out of jail. Got a wee car sitting here for him when he has his licence so he can get to and fro work… he never actually has his licence though. The GF burns his stuff including work uniforms, birth certificate and his temp licence is now missing because she doesn’t want him to come to work. Apparently. I could go on..but it gets to the point of being unbelievable.

my point being, in some cases, the drama never frigging stops! It’s one thing after another. Our fellow is 35, at times it feels like we are dealing with 2 x 15 year olds.

so what I want to ask, are you making changes to your life or are you stuck in trying to improve things for yourself ?

I wrote earlier about looking in a different place for friendships but I second @Camillialane 's advice. I have an upbeat "gallows humour" type friend, but sometimes I just want a nice normal answer, not dark/depressing stuff in the guise of humour and then brightly change the subject each time (I don't think this is trauma dumping but it kind of gives me the same feeling)... Or not even a subject change.

I do however appreciate that so much of her life is/has been trauma and shit stuff that this is her version of normality (and to a lesser extent this applies to me) which is why I suggested maybe getting into a different kind of supportive group even if just for now.

I’m very sorry you had to experience that op.
Drama attracts drama is a very privileged point of view, very likely coming from people who have no idea what it feels like to grow up with trauma, low self esteem, a lack of support and how this influences your chances in life and how predators can smell this from a mile away. I hope you can make some genuine friends with empathy for what you have been trough xxx

I agree with the posters that say it’s very hard to maintain a friendship with someone who consistently seems to make terrible decisions that negatively impact their lives over and over again. It’s hard to watch this self destruction take place.

This may also just be my experience but most people that consider their lives to be full of drama are also the ones that over share every aspect of their lives, even with people they don’t know very well. Trauma dump is a horrible phrase but it sums it up in some cases.

I wonder at what stage of the friendship you share the drama.

I have friends that I made at the school gate that I only found out about childhood stuff after 10 years.

While the friendships start, keep things light. You can have some friends that are for the fun moments that may develop into close friends over time. Not all friends need to be confidantes. You don't need to tell everyone all the bad stuff. Be selective when the time is right. One to one rather than on a group night out which brings the mood down.

And even close friends may lose sympathy if you keep choosing shit men or don't learn from your mistakes and keep repeating. It can be draining. Sorry.