If you’re struggling with keeping a certain dramatic person in your life content, you may benefit from knowing just how to deal with the drama queen.
We all know one person in our lives that is a complete drama queen. They overreact when it comes to everything and annoy the living crap out of you. If one person came to mind when reading that description, then you definitely have a drama queen in your life.
They’re not the easiest people to please, but they can be useful for some things. Drama queens never make light of your hard situation. You’ll always have someone to vent to who will get just as mad as you do. Even about something that doesn’t matter to them.
How to spot a drama queen
Drama queens can be very good at disguising themselves as a concerned friend. You may even encounter one and not realize she is a drama queen until you’re in too deep to get out. Learn to spot them early on in order to deal with them properly.
In order to discover if someone is a drama queen, pay attention to how they react about little things. Do they roll their eyes a lot? Make a spectacle out of their annoyance when normally they would just keep it to themselves? These are all signs of a true drama queen.
Dealing with a drama queen in your life
As you can imagine, having someone like this in your life can be really, really annoying. Coming from someone who puts up with a few drama queens *in my family *, I know exactly how you to deal with them.
You’ll need to follow certain rules ensuring you don’t actually lose this person as a friend completely. Here is how you deal with having a drama queen in your life.
#1 Calm them down whenever possible. Drama queens tend to go off and get really worked up about a situation that isn’t a big deal at all. In order to deal with them you have to calm them down whenever you can.
Ask them to stop talking for a minute and just breathe before they explain what happened to you. This gives them an opportunity to slow their breathing and panic rate so they won’t come off as super dramatic and annoy you. [Read: 15 tips to be nice and loved by all instantly]
#2 Ignore their dramatic episodes. A drama queen looks for attention from any source they can get it. If the drama queen in your life approaches you with a ridiculous story so beyond dramatic it couldn’t possibly be true, ignore it.
Stop fueling their fire so they begin to learn being dramatic—no matter what the situation—won’t get them attention. This slowly teaches them that a dramatic episode won’t give them the attention they desire and they’ll stop.
#3 Counsel them when they need it. Drama queens have a hard time differentiating when something is a big deal and when they’re getting upset for NO reason.
When there is a situation that is actually serious, be there to counsel them and get them through it without having them throw a huge fit about it. Make sure to keep your own composure so they can’t feed off of your reaction either.
#4 Don’t encourage gossip. Drama queens love their gossip. It fuels their dramatic fire and allows them to steal the limelight from the people they’re actually gossiping about.
In order to deal with a drama queen like this in your life, don’t listen to the gossip. Never ask them any details about the stuff they gossip about and just ignore it when you can. They can’t be dramatic if you’re not interested. [Read: 12 ways to ignore someone who mentally stresses you]
#5 Talk to them about their childhood. As much as you might not want to fuel the fire driving their dramatic behavior, talking to them about their childhood might have the opposite effects. Most people who tend to be dramatic had a childhood where they didn’t get any attention.
By having them talk about it, it helps them work through these issues and see how their dramatic behavior could stem from their childhood. It shouldn’t affect the way they live today.
#6 Reinforce that you care about them. This also helps with the fact they had a childhood where they weren’t really cared about. By reinforcing the love you have for them as your friend, they feel like they don’t have to work as hard for your attention, halting their dramatic behavior around you. [Read: The 8 kinds of friends everyone needs in their life]
#7 Be gentle with them. Drama queens are people who have been hurt in their past and just don’t understand that they’re being dramatic. To them, the things they’re making a big deal about really are a big deal.
They don’t have the ability to know the difference and can be extra hurt if you lash out because you’re annoyed with their behavior. The best way to deal with having a drama queen in your life is to be gentle with how you react to their dramatic ways.
#8 Have them relay WHAT happened and not how they FEEL. When they come to you in tears and are freaking out over what happened to them that day, make sure you don’t pay attention to what they say they FEEL.
Have them tell you exactly WHAT happened. By making them say it out loud helps them to see the situation really isn’t that big of a deal, and they don’t need to be so dramatic about it. Just be sure you’ve calmed them down first.
#9 Make sure you get time away from them. Everybody needs time to recharge after a day with someone who sucks the energy out of them. In order to have the energy to deal with having a drama queen in your life, you need to spend time apart.
This can just be at home, at work, or anywhere that they can’t contact you. I would also advise against living with someone who is a drama queen if you want to maintain a friendship. The drama they bring, won’t allow you to relax much if they’re in your home. [Read: 10 tips for setting boundaries with difficult people]
#10 Make yourself less available to them. Don’t answer your phone when they call, be busy with other friends, and do just about anything you can so you’re not available when they have a dramatic episode. This makes it easier to deal with those situations when they do arise.
#11 Set limits. All friendships need limits and having a drama queen in your life means you have to set stricter ones. Make sure they know that they can’t just call you in the middle of the night when they have an issue.
Set limits and then stick to them so they take you seriously. Make sure they know when they can contact you, and when they need to have someone else deal with their issues. This ensures that you don’t get overwhelmed with drama. [Read: Justifying your life choices – should you worry about it?]
#12 Keep calm. Overall, keep calm when you have a drama queen in your life. They tend to be overwhelmed with emotions, and you have to be stable so that your calm behavior rubs off on them. You also never want to become so irritated that you blow up on them and give them more reasons to be so dramatic.
[Read: 10 simple ways to calmly deal with difficult people]
Drama queens aren’t always a bad thing in your life, but too much of them can exhaust you quickly. These tips for dealing with a drama queen in your life will grant you some much needed relief.
