Everyone knows what a drama queen is and everyone knows what drama is, however, a lot of people overlook how it starts and how it continues. The reality is that once someone becomes infected with the drama plague it can spread rapidly until it leaves a ton of people with negative emotions while having them waste time and energy either thinking about or dealing with the supposed drama.
It is possible to become immune to drama or have heavy defenses that stop it from spreading and that’s what we will tackle here in this article. Once you understand the cause of drama and how it spreads you’ll be able to quickly identify and stop the pattern of it. Drama is often not a real thing, just as anxiety and other feelings are self-created and perpetuated, because it is typically someones exaggerated perception of something that never really happened or really wasn’t that important. Then it is spread around negatively to other people in a way that causes them to become emotional or take action on what is being said. The goal is to leave other people feeling guilty, angry, or sad. This gives the originator control over other people.
Drama is necessary in life, the word itself is not inherently negative, it only represents the emotional triggers of events and acts that are played out. Drama could be both happy and sad but in today’s world when people refer to drama it is usually a form of unwelcome negativity.
As in every play and act, the key to stopping drama before it starts is to identify the protagonists in your life, or the primary character in the drama, the fire starter, if you will. The second thing to do is to identify any deuteragonists, those that are not quite protagonists but secondary important characters, the fire spreaders, if you will. A good protagonist is great at identifying deuteragonists to spread the drama around. Deuteragonists will typically be very emotional people while the protagonist will be very emotional but also manipulative or vindictive, there only purpose is to cause the drama and to see how far they can spread it. Protagonists are typically very unhappy and negative people and they get their thrill out of seeing other people struggle and be unhappy which is a form of sadism.
Your goal in stopping the drama is to do several things. First, avoid and ignore the protagonist. Don’t let anything they say affect you and definitely do not give them any attention, it’s what they seek. Your next goal is to avoid all deuteragonists. Deuteragonists are the people who will come up to you and say “did you hear about this and this”, just ignore them as well. You get the choice as to whether or not you’re going to act and play a role in every life drama, so don’t act or play the role. It’s that simple. The protagonist, if given the chance, will use the catastasis (the climax preceding the catastrophe) to get the largest emotional impact on others involved. This is precisely what a good actor of a play will do. Protagonists are no different than someone you see on stage, except their stage is right here right now, nobody is getting paid to play in their act, and nobody bought tickets to go see it.
You may initially feel compelled to defend or set the record straight if you or someone you know becomes a victim of an attack during a drama, but typically, the best defense for this is truly none at all. Now if you’re in high school and the drama starts, kids and teenagers can be brutal, but if you don’t participate in their play eventually people forget about it and find someone else to pick on who will participate in their drama. The more you fight back anything, the more you’ll get of it, and this is what we want to avoid.
I’m reminded of a story I read once that doesn’t have to do with an individual, but rather a business that was accused of having rats in their facility by an unhappy customer. Finally, in response to this attack, the business decided to run an advertisement about how clean their facility was and they ended it with, and “no we don’t have rats”. The result of this advertisement is that they lost a lot of their business and almost went out of business. Why? Because when they ran that advertisement they became the biggest deuteragonist to exist in this self-created drama. Virtually no one had even heard they had a rat problem before this major advertisement.
You see, sometimes, you think the problem is bigger than it is. That everyone is in on the drama and everyone is talking badly about you. For this business it was a handful of people at best. Why was it only a handful of people you might be wondering? The answer is simple! The vast majority of people do precisely what I am discussing in this article, they ignore drama. If you notice in your high school circles or circles of friends, there is typically only one group of people that you would really call protagonists or deuteragonist, and they usually all hang out together so its rather easy to identify them. In reality, the rumors and drama, although they may be widespread, are ignored by the vast majority of people and eventually forgotten. This is why there is a need for new drama frequently; weekly, daily, or even hourly.
If you respond at all to drama or what is happening bothers you to the degree where you feel the need to talk about it or discuss it with people around you. The protagonist has won. If you’re wasting your time and mental energy to think or talk about it, then they’ve won. It’s that simple. So drop it, ignore it, and move on with your life. There are over 6 billion people on this planet, to spend your time and energy focusing on a few people, who in the long run, really don’t matter; is ridiculous.
If you’re in school, guess what? School ends and you’ll go on to bigger or better things.
If you’re out of school and know people like this, guess what? You’re an adult, get new friends who add to your life.
Never stay around someone who doesn’t bring something to the table and add to your life. If they are a burden or take away from your happiness, get rid of them. There are plenty of people who will add to your life out there. This applies to family too. If they don’t add to your life, then ignore them at the family get together, but don’t let them get to you. If you don’t show up, guess what? They’ve won.
Don’t be afraid to man up. Show that they don’t matter, you’re not intimidated by them, and they sure as hell aren’t going to rain on your parade or control you.
The “Drama Queen” a form of attention seeking. When a person is insecure with themselves, they seek attention due to low levels of self-esteem and low self confidence. The “Drama Queen” uses any situation to get attention by inflating the importance, to crisis proportions in order to be the center of attention. It is a form of Emotional Immaturity. Not unlike the “Victim”, or the “Manipulator”, the “Drama Queen” has found a method of of attention that works for them.