The Drama

[Orangesandlemons77]

Has anyone see found their elderly parents to have become full of drama / relishing drama, perhaps through boredom? Along with their friends?

My elderly MIL loves drama and creates its where there isn't any. Sometimes seems to like it when things go wrong / catastrophises.

I'm finding it a bit exhausting and just wondered off others had this too. I've managed to get their friends being dramatic too- yesterday had one ring to tell me they are stopping all their blood pressure meds etc and asking me what to do. For example.

My DM tells me, word for word, conversations she’s had and fall outs with people. All the time I’m saying ‘I don’t care’ over and over in my head

Catastrophising seems to be almost a hobby -eg every word the doctor says is analysed to see if there could be some awful undiagnosed disease about to be revealed. I’m exhausted by it all the time, on and on.

Are you me? 🙃

Oh yes absolutely. An elderly relative I care for said she was really worried about an insignificant item that had gone missing, one she doesn't need and has never used, so I ended up saying 'well, if it makes you happy worrying about it good, but if it upsets you don't worry about it'. I've just about had enough!!!

To be fair, at any time there appears to be one post on AIBU asking whether the poster’s trivial rash/lump/spot/itch/slight ache could be the symptom of a life threatening disease.

I realised my father needs something to worry about. So solving one problem just seems to leave space for something else to worry about. I think I’m probably the same.

Mine excelled herself this week. I'm having an operation soon and there is a lot to organise - sick leave from work, school-age child to get to school and back etc etc.

Told elderly relative. Who instantly changed subject to the exploits of a neighbour and their hospital appointment. Tried again, straight onto a different topic involving drama with someone I've never met and couldn't care less about!

And I KNOW when it gets to that point, she'll be creating drama about my operation to her friends!

Yeah my DM used to do it. I think it's when their lives become quite empty and dull they fixate on tiny events and blow them up into scary important problems. It's sad really and I don't want to end up like that. My DM would phone me then tell me all about a much younger friend at her church and her 3 daughters. On & on about their lives & what the girls were up to. Then quickly ask me how the DGC are then hang up. As if she cared more about a friends kids than her own DGC. I guess it was just more current in her memory towards the end. My ILs don't like hearing about (our) bad news either. They will change the subject. I tried to tell them both twice the other week about my lovely Uni friend dying recently from cancer (only 49 💔💔) and how myself & DH had recently been to her funeral etc & both changed the subject immediately. V v odd. Not a word of 'I'm so sorry' nothing. Yet my FIL can chat for ages about anything & he never moans about his health at all. Old folk are just a bit weird imo 🤣

My MIL does this. I believe it’s all about attention seeking

She develops random “allergies” to things so has to have special treatment in restaurants, she once had a “panic attack” because she knew that her phone contact list had details of someone who had died in it and it made her too upset to use the phone (yes really), she refused certain medications as she was just going to “be better” etc etc.

I refuse to tell her anything I think she can use to create drama so all our interactions are very superficial.

And this is why I don’t want to fully retire when the time comes. I no longer have my DM but I remember when I’d come back from a holiday and go to tell her about it and she’d give me a daily weather report from her week at home. 🤨

ExHs Step-mum used to lie a lot. Every time she came back from a trip in the car she had a story. She had to pull over because the police were in a chase with a car. She saw someone get run over. Some woman asked her if she'd ever worked in (location here). A police officer stopped her and asked her if she'd seen (incident or person here). (That was a common one) There was a fire in Morrisons. It went on and on.

I just used to roll my eyes. I think she was lonely and bored. She grew up as an only child who was spoilt rotten, so I think she tried to get the same amount of attention from us. She's now in a senior living home and my exFiL has died. I no longer have anything to do with her which is a blessing.

I catch myself talking to my adult DD about things that have happened since I last saw her: I don’t want to bore her! I save up funny stories/things we can discuss. Avoid the trivial!

Honestly, the generalisations about the elderly that go on around here are batshit. Some people dramatise their lives, some don't, irrespective of age.

I'm 72. My son nearly died last month of sudden arrythmic death syndrome. His heart stopped, he stopped breathing, and it was sheer luck there was someone there who knew CPR who kept him going till paramedics arrived and got him back. He's now waiting for a defibrillator to be implanted. DH and I are still traumatised about it but we aren't going on and on about it to everyone we know, let alone going on and on about the weather or our neighbours.

All the drama queens I know have been younger or my age ?

And most people talk endlessly about trivia. I guess it's easier if it's trivia about people you both know ?

Sounds like you just don't like them that much to be interested in their life?

My parents obsess over minor detail rather than getting to the point.

Mum: Ooh, I didn’t tell you; Margaret rang on Monday…
Dad (interrupting): Monday? It wasn’t Monday!
Mum: It was, it was Monday!
Dad: It couldn’t have been Monday; we went for 20% off at the Shanghai on Monday,
Mum: Are you sure that was Monday?
Dad: They only do it in a Monday!
Mum: Ohhhh… so maybe it was Tuesday she rang…
Dad: I don’t know if it was Tuesday…
Mum: FFS, who cares when it was - just tell me what Margaret rang about before we all bloody die!!!

Have a heart, they’re probably leading pretty boring lives and have no other conversation. Would you rather they sat and said nothing?

With mine yes frankly. Tedious.
No interest in me or my children and I'm an only one.
Absolute interest in their neighbours lives and the price of bread.

Sounds like a whole new post 😢

My aunt used to do that. “Ooh, I tell a lie, it was a blue dress-she was wearing”. I was still a child so she would have been late 30s.

I sometimes wonder why most of us will read novels, watch films, tv series etc, all about people we don’t know, yet if an elderly person presumes to talk about a neighbour we haven’t met …
If you start asking questions and enter in to the conversation, it gets a lot more interesting.

My dad would talk non-stop, (in his case mostly conspiracy theories about British Gas), and not ask about us, or not wait for the answer if he did ask. I realised he’d had enough of listening - he listened to the radio all day - and needed to talk. So I started telling him all the family news by email, and then family entered his conversation a lot more.

Oh my, this made me laugh in a I know your pain kind of way! Yes, the irrelevant detail about things & people you don't even know. I just nod & smile

Ideally, yes. I'm an introvert who interacts with a lot of people at work and has a child who is at the non-stop talking stage. My life is full of people
who want my attention. My close friends, when I get a chance to see them, we often talk a little bit but spend the time in companionable silence too.

That's why I find it very difficult coping with a parent talking endlessly about the neighbours.

@StockpotSoup THIS 🙄you can never grasp their story, its exhausting, meanwhile they dont listen to more important stuff💁

Yep my mum..I know every day what the neighbours are doing and what problems or issues they are having and if Lorraine bloody Kelly says anything about anything its gospel truth and must be adopted into our lives...it is exhausting and pointless,monotonous and boring. Too much time on her hands has my mum ..

My parents do this all the time. We affectionately call them the "fact vacuums". They could go on for hours in this manner

Mine starts making up stories around people e.g. in cafes, oh do you think that's his girlfriend? for example. Also has started saying men have been chatting her up and trying to kiss her e.g. at bus stops. She's 81, it is a bit unlikely but I just nod and o along with it. I think she is missing her husband.

I got run over many years ago and when I rung my DM from A and E to tell her she said ooh I’ve never been run over !!!