Addicted to the drama: How to co-exist with a person who exaggerates their travails

An innocent “How’s it going?” can be interpreted by some people as the perfect occasion to dump their misfortunes on the unsuspecting inquirer. Such venting can be sincere, but even real problems can wind up being over-emphasized in these situations. There are many life stages in which we can run up against complicated moments, difficult patches — sometimes, it’s impossible to overstate how bad we feel. But that’s different from the outbursts of drama addicts, people who are experts in making mountains out of molehills. The folks for whom any everyday inconvenience becomes a huge roadblock, because they’ve taught themselves that the best way to get the attention of those around them is to overstate their travails.

It’s an operatic tactic — soap operatic, in fact. Minor hurdles can be a good tool for generating narrative tension on a daytime TV series, but nowadays, overreacting in real life is also commonly employed on the telenovela of our prosaic existence: social media. Influencers have popularized the practice of relating their minor issues to the camera, even crying while they trauma-bond with their followers. Many defend themselves by saying that they’re normalizing emotions seldom shown in public. But some viewers might have very real doubts as to whether this “naturalness” is true. On the internet, anything is possible.

But pessimistic and overly dramatic attitudes are hardly unique to our time. Everyone can identify the people in their inner circle who rely on latching onto drama in order to anchor an audience to their stories. This is not always a conscious behavior — and the truth is, it often works well when it comes to generating interest in a tale, be it on a TV screen or real life. But the problem of living dramatically is that one can wind up being seen as someone who drowns in a glass of water by those around them, a person overwhelmed by any kerfuffle who doesn’t know how to channel their emotions.

The phenomenon does have a scientific explanation, says Laura Bezos Saldaña, a clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma. Pessimism and the excessive dramatization of reality is a tendency, not a pathology nor a problem in and of itself. “The truth is, everyone is the way they are, and the goal is not for everyone to be the same. In certain situations, a dose of functional pessimism can encourage critical thinking, i.e., facing the truth even when it is unpleasant. However, people who have a generalized and rigid negative attitude can develop psychological problems that limit them in their day-to-day lives,” she says. “Just as there are people with a positive outlook on life, there are others who construct negative interpretations of what has happened and what will happen,” says Bezos Saldaña, who works at a private mental health center in Madrid called Mind to Mind. It’s not that they feel more comfortable casting their world in the negative, but rather, that they have learned to judge reality using a lens that in certain ways, has worked for them, even if it has also led to suffering.

Of course, some people who exhibit chronic pessimism can be experiencing a mood disorder like depression, which tends to lead to a constant negative analysis of one’s present. But even among individuals without such a diagnosis, there will always be those who see the glass as half empty. What factors lead them to be the way they are? “The predisposition to have a negative view of reality is the result, on one hand, of a series of beliefs that we form throughout our lives about the way we are (low perception of self-efficacy), how we see others and how we see life and the future (lacking hope),” says health psychologist Rosa Prieto Miguel. On the other hand, the specialist explains, excessive pessimism can be a consequence of what in cognitive-behavioral therapy is known as cognitive distortions. “This construct refers to errors we make in processing information. Pessimistic people regularly employ two kinds of distorted thinking: believing that the future will always be unfavorable to them and selective abstraction towards the negative, which is to say, defining an entire experience by one negative detail, ignoring the more important facts of the situation,” she says.

Being a dramatic person can oftentimes present a sharp contrast with the toxic positivity that proliferates in today’s society, as epitomized by the use of phrases like “everything will be OK” and “If you feel bad, it’s because you want to feel bad.” Neither extreme is effective in facing real life. People who tend to make a pessimistic analysis of their situation only worsen their perpetual negativism by making themselves feel guilty for their own discomfort.

Learning to co-exist with this kind of drama addict can involve attempting to empathize with them and try to take the heat out of what is happening in their head. According to Prieto, it is important not to invalidate their emotions, because such people tend to be constantly reprimanded by others when they talk about their thoughts and feelings. “We can help them to try to find alternative explanations for their negative thoughts,” says the psychologist.

For example, if someone is worried or upset because a friend failed to call at the time they said they would, we can help them to see that it doesn’t necessarily mean something cataclysmic has happened, but that they may have run out of phone battery or simply forgotten when they said they’d call. However, if you find your own state of mind affected by such attitudes, it might be time to start setting limits, or even suggesting therapy to your loved one, in extreme cases.

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