Why do some people attract much drama?

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I know some people make their own drama either on purpose or through poor choices but there also seems to be a whole group of people who just seem to attract it.

For instance, there is a woman on my FB who I dont follow/interact with but who keeps coming up because I read her posts. In the last month she has taken legal action against her son's school. She suddenly stopped talking about it after naking a big deal over seeinv a solicitor so I guess it went nowhere. Reckons a teacher in another school assaulted her daughter with witnesses and on CCTV but there was no action taken against him and is now kicking up a fuss over someone walking into her and getting upset that the police aren't treating it as assault. Something about BTP too. Then the police apparently threatened to arrest her. She also regularly moans that she is being discriminated against different organisations. It must be exhausting being her.

Then a few years ago there was another lady who seemed attract drama. Don't get me wrong she clearly liked playing the victim but she also had a lot of bad luck and had a few awful cards dealt to her eg her daughter died, someone she thought was a friend ripped her off, there was something about a misunderstanding over church funds etc

I see this in real life too. Some people seem to go from one crisis to another. An ex friend had a crazy time for a few years with various housing issues, boyfriend issues and health issues. I suspect it's still ongoing. She isn't hugely resilient so I don't know whether her "dramas" would have been such big deals for other people but still drama.

Are you someone who just can't seem to live calmly? Or does someone who know crash from one disaster to another? Why do you think that is?

Unlikely that KP will be involved in misunderstanding over church funds.
A blessing

So in your first example I’d be taking a lot of that with a pinch of salt and say actually 90% of that is probably fabricated and or exaggerated for attention.

Some people just get a boost from drama, some people (like strings of bad exes etc) will be in a cycle of low self esteem and dependency on dysfunction.

I don’t think people actually attract drama.

They tend to be people who are impulsive, fail to consider consequences and lack the ability to de-escalate situations, going at everything like a bull at a gate rather than in a calm, considered manner.
You see it a lot on here. "My child wasn't invited to a party, so I texted the mum and told her how upset he was, and then she told another mum I was rude, so I called her out on it in the playground..."

Well said @5128gap.

I suspect most of what she says is nonsense but I don't know how much she actually believes is true though if that makes sense? I dont think she intentionally lies. She bounces from one thing to another and then never mentions that first thing ever again.

My MIL is like this. Luckily my DH is an emotionally intelligent person so even though we've been together 15 years he's never given her my phone number.

i think some dont always realise they cause the drama or they think in any given moment they are doing the right thing etc

Sounds like my stepdaughter and her mother. There is always drama. They seem to thrive on it

My XSIL is like this. Loves to whip up a storm over nothing and create a load of drama, whilst having an interesting relationship with reality and telling the truth. My XMIL (her DM) always quietly went along with it and never pulled her up on her behaviour. She doesn’t have many friends…

I stopped trying to be her friend decades ago…

One of my neighbours is very much like this; she's a sixty-something woman who's weirdly like a teenager that can't control their emotions, and she seems to have made a hobby of falling out with people and acting the victim.

Just this week she was on about how she'd been unjustifiably banned from a (very nice) cafe that's recently opened in town because she'd had a blazing row with the owner who was a total arsehole and how it's all so unfair. The owner in question is an absolute gem; one of the nicest men you could hope to meet and who does all sorts for the town, so this seemed odd. Turns out what actually happened is that his 15 year old daughter - who was only helping out as they were short staffed - made a very minor mistake with her order. Rather than accept the genuine apology and wait literally 2 minutes for the mistake to be rectified, my neighbour instead kept on having a go at the daughter to the point where she was crying, and both the mild-mannered owner and some of the clientele were telling my neighbour to fuck off and not come back.

This is the latest in a long line of tales with a similar theme. It's a small town where we live - big village really - so she's really not done herself any favours by falling out with most of it for no good reason.

Histrionic personality disorder is a condition, it is related to BPD and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Many of the examples described above could be attributed to this. I am surprised that in this day and age it is not more widely known about. Often people are called Narcissistic- casually rather than official diagnosis- when HPD would be closer to the mark.

I backed off from a friend who once the penny dropped I realized her life was one big drama after another. She went from crisis to crisis. After about 3 years of this I was exhausted. She got a perfectly nice playgroup leader to resign her post by accusing her of speaking to the children in an unacceptable way. None of us other mothers ( to my shame) stuck up for the playgroup leader. She created drama in everything she got involved with, kept her own children off school for the most spurious of reasons.She was taken into police custody overnight for going to her ex partners house at 1am and screaming and banging on the door because she thought he had a new girlfriend in the house ( They had been separated for a few years by this time) I got a phone call at 6am asking me to collect her from the police station.Never a dull moment. So glad not to be involved anymore. She engaged with mental health services for a short while , but stopped as soon as she was given a diagnosis of Borderline personality disorder.

Just to add she had a terrible childhood of neglect and abuse, her Mother abandoned the family when she was 5.

Behaviour breeds behaviour. People who are like this often grew up like this, where "my nerves are wrecked" was followed by a constant stream of drama and attention seeking public sharing of the drama. I work in a setting where I see a lot of women like this and it's a very hard cycle to break. One woman who had had a lot of counselling told me when you have been raised on a constant bed of drama you seek it as you can't thrive without it.

I think this speaks volumes.

Oh without a doubt. I’m a very private person and I’m horrified at what is shared.

I'm taking 'drama' to mean MN-type drama, not actual tragedies, just to be clear!

Well - they're badly brought up people who've been spoiled, indulged and led to believe that they are the centre of the universe. I'm sure it can also be because they're mighty insecure and perhaps crave attention because they somehow didn't get it in childhood. On MN there are the grown women (they are women) who, despite getting flower, chocs and a nice present, and sometimes an evening out too for their birthday, are in floods of tears because it's just not ENOUGH. Their partner should have known they wanted to go away for the weekend, and it's just awful for them.

The sort of people I mean are those who just cannot go to a restaurant and order something off the menu like most human beings. There has to be a long discussion with the waiter...and then endless drama about what they can and can't eat, why no-one caters for them etc etc

I went off someone (colleague, not friend) when she took umbrage in an Italian restaurant because the lovely waitress kindly and sweetly correcter her pronunciation of a dish. This woman was furious, was rude to the waitress and spent the evening planning how she was going to get her own back. Most people would have just thanked the waitress and learned something new.

Or those who take offence about every little thing. Not only that, they go looking for offence, and therefore find it. You get them on here with an OP which asks 'Is this offensive?' Er, well, there's no such thing as 'offensive' in an objective sense - it's only YOU who can say whether YOU are offended. And let's face it, life is often offensive, but these people think it makes them special to point offence out, even where most people wouldn't think it exists.

I have no-one like this in my life now...I used to have, but I just let the relationships die.

No thought that vulnerable people are often a target for others?

That trauma affects ongoing life and health? ACE scores passed you by OP?

I've had a lucky life and I know it...I don't demand "quiet, quiet" from people that haven't 🤢

I grew up in that kind of environment which is why I made the decision to be calm, easy-going and not sweat the small stuff in my life.

My children had a very different upbringing to mine. My mother had her own issues, and I don't blame too much her considering that, but I have never sulked, held grudges over time, been snide, manipulative or tried to guilt-trip my children. We never had rows in our family - I don't think the kids ever heard raised voices or real anger. Irritation, a bit of nagging, impatience, exasperation yes - but not anger.

My mother, once I left home, would give me endless grief because I didn't visit as much as she wanted me to. I have never done this with my children - the best way to get people to want to see you is to give them freedom and not pressure them or make them feel guilty. Actually, now mine want to visit more than is really convenient!!! But that's OK too.

You don't have to repeat your family history.

I know someone like this and all I can say is that it must be some kind of curse because she seems to encounter the absolute worst kind of people, and terrible things happening to her all the time. She doesn't do it to herself. Sad so much victim blaming on here

No you don't have to repeat your family history, but many people don't have the foresight to recognize what has happened in the past isn't necessarily the best way. Most people in toxic cycles (and I mean proper toxic stuff, not the Mumsnet 'toxic') only realize it's toxic after there has been some sort of break from the people involved, or they have had some sort of counselling, or meeting new people who behave in a way that isn't typical for them.

Don’t get me wrong she clearly liked playing the victim, but she had a lot of bad luck and had a few awful cards dealt to her eg her daughter died…..

• *How did she ‘like’ playing the victim? Maybe she had had some really shit stuff happen to her before you knew her. Your child dying isn’t attracting drama ffs. It’s something you never, ever get over. Life might carry on, because it has to, but that gapping chasm of where once you had a bond so strong, a love so deep it’s beyond words, ripped away from you, can never fill in the hole. Yes some people to bounce from shitty thing to shitty thing, meanwhile others float from one good thing to another. For everyone one person being in the right place at the right time there will be another in the wrong place at the wrong time. luck? Fate? Destiny? Call it what you will doesn’t = drama. Being an arse and constantly falling out with people, or being dramatic over silly little misunderstandings or minor issues, sure those people are probably best avoided.

I dislike the word 'drama', because it's very often censorious. There's a notable trend on MN of this accusation as a ruse to shut women up. See also: 'I couldn't get "worked up" about that'.

Sometimes people do lurch from disaster to disaster. My mother died (young), then I experienced a succession of miscarriages, then I suffered a near fatal accident, then DH was diagnosed with cancer (also young). This isn't 'drama'. It's merely shit bad luck. And it wasn't played out on social media, other than a Facebook message I posted from hospital because some people had heard about my accident and were asking my relatives after me.

Those who thrive on conflict and toxic gossip? Not my people. I don't have time for this so never encourage it and stay well away.

Smacks of covert narcissism, and it's not just some women who are prone to this; I've known men who thrive off the attention and sympathy gained from the drama they embroil themselves in too.

Had an ex whose whole life was a series of tragedy and stress starting from trauma when he was a young boy (which he refused to get professional support for, but would mention it frequently - usually as a casual explanation for his poor behaviour, anxiety, or shortcomings) through to how he'd been unfairly and inexplicably excluded from the job market and now his business was a constant strain and he was always at war with his customers, then his dog got ill and he couldn't cope etc.

I realised there would never be space for me emotionally with all that going on in his head so ended it after a few months. Of course he tried to make that into a big drama too.

Isn’t this people who do make drama though?

My brother always has a drama going on around him but he doesn’t create it as such. He is really unlucky (will start a new job and then the train will be cancelled and he’ll be late etc.)

a lot of it is that chaos feeds chaos and if your life is chaotic it can be hard to get the chaos down to an acceptable sort of level.