success with drama

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mickey

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To me, "drama" means "adversarial expression of negative emotion." There must be negative emotion, it must be expressed, and it must be expressed in a way that positions the person expressing it as my opponent rather than someone trying to build something with me co-operatively.

Drama is different from conflict. Conflict can be totally non-emotional, as it often is in lawsuits, which are about as adversarial as things can get. Conflict also sometimes isn't expressed, as the people in conflict work behind the scenes and never directly confront each other.

Drama is also different from confrontation (which is different from conflict). Confrontations don't have to be adversarial and can be highly co-operative, plus it's possible to confront someone without expressing any negative feeling or even _having_ any negative feeling.

I have a tendency to do non-dramatic, non-conflict confrontations a lot. They're good stuff, in my opinion. As for conflict, I pick my spots. Even if someone is taking steps against me, I enjoin conflict only if the issues are important enough to me. The rest of the time I couldn't care less about letting the other person win because I value peace of mind and peace more than victory.

But I HATE drama. Just despise it. It totally rubs me the wrong way. So when drama starts to happen, one of two things happen. If someone else is causing drama, I ask them to stop, and, if they don''t, I stop having any contact with them until we can have contact again without drama--if that's feasible. On the extremely rare occasions when I'm the one starting to cause drama, I stop myself and tell the other person that I'm not rational and need some time to myself to sort out my thoughts and become rational again. There has never been a situation when anyone has refused to give me space when I say that.

Over the last six months, my practical skill at avoiding, preventing and stopping drama have greatly increased in number and strength. I'm now pretty damned good at those things. Yes, I do slip up from time to time, but the slipups are becoming extremely rare.

I realize that this isn't any kind of absolute good, but, because it's something I care a lot about, I consider it an accomplishment.

Thanik you for reading.
 
Good for you. It seems like there are people who conjure it up wherever they go for their own sick kicks. The more you can cut that out of your life the better.
 
I have to be honest, I grew up in a family that LOVED drama. We were specialists at making mountains out of molehills and we could start an argument over literally anything. As I've got older, I've learned to control the majority of my negative emotions and I stay away from those family members who refuse to raise their emotional maturity level.
 

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