The word drama gets tossed about regularly these days. Nobody wants it and yet, like rubbernecking the scene of an accident on the highway, most of us have a hard time looking away. When we get too close to a person acting out their drama it can be quite easy to get sucked in and find ourselves as actors on the stage reacting in shock, trying to intervene, or discussing the spectacle of it all among the other onlookers. The quickest way to get in it up to your eyeballs is at the point when the primary actor marches up into your personal space and casts some blame, accusation or criticism your way. From the moment you feel the heat of the spotlight on your face and recognize that everything outside of the blinding light encircling you and the drama-maker has become very difficult to see, you have about 2 seconds to decide whether you are going to accept a larger role in the play, step down and take a seat among the audience, or to attempt the role of a director.
To Dance or Wrestle…
“Don’t dance with a crazy person, because people watching won’t be able to tell who’s crazy and who is sane.” “Don’t wrestle in the mud with a pig because the pig likes it, and everyone gets dirty.” It seems everyone has a different variant on the way to express it, but the wisdom conveyed is sound: You will regret it if you let yourself get sucked into someone else’s drama. The passive, audience option is fine until the drama is in the work group you manage or inside a circle of friends or family where doing nothing means objectives will be sacrificed or people will be harmed. So, what can you do?
Self-Manage Through the Triggers
The hole into which you are most vulnerable to fall is created by personal offence. The drama-maker is unconcerned about how much they blow up, so they will lob emotional grenades in multiple directions until they get what they want. Usually this is attention/sympathy for themselves, or the agreement of others with their grievance. To resist these triggers will require good self-management skills. When being blamed and personally attacked by others I’ve had to keep the thought repeating in my head, “This is likely not about me.” If I can control my instinct to react and fire back I leave the door open to possibly being a part of the solution rather than just another *red shirt casualty on this dramatic episode. (*Expendable crew from the original Star Trek series. Of the 59 crew members killed in the series 73% were wearing red shirts).
Discern Deeper
You’ve heard it before I’m sure: Hurting people hurt people. This happens all the time, but it’s not limited to abusers and candidates for anger management classes. The reality is that when people come at you with blame, accusation or criticism, their real issue is seldom directly about you. When people experience personal pain and don’t know how to clearly identify the source of the pain or what to do with what they feel, they often respond by externalizing; finding obvious and easy targets to hit with anger, mistrust, disappointment and rejection. The people who initially react and join the dramatic episode with argument, correction or counter offence, are inadvertently distracting the drama-maker farther away from the true internal source of their unhappiness. Like the couple that argues late into the night, moving from one resentment to another until they cannot any longer recall what sparked the initial fight, drama-makers who find people willing to be offended will be kept miles away from seeing the true headwaters of their deep pain and unhappiness.
Get Skillful at Directing
Dramas can be engaged directly (getting sucked into a major role) or ignored passively (watching from the audience), but there is also a third way. You can attempt the role of a director. People with higher capabilities in emotional intelligence are not just able to name and manage their own emotional data; they are also able to help others name and manage theirs. “Tell me what’s going on with you?” is 
a question that will sometimes work to pull the drama-maker out of attack mode and get them to assess their actions against some of the life issues they are facing. You would be surprised at how many times short tempered outbursts in the workplace are not work-related at all. Health concerns for aging parents, financial stresses, poor choices being made by a teenage daughter all lay in the deeper, murky waters of a person’s emotional pond. I’ve even seen people give uncharacteristically hostile reactions to co-workers that ended up being related to the loss of a family pet. You don’t have to play therapist, but if you want to help rather than dance or wrestle, some inquisitive empathy will generally yield a positive movement away from drama.
Part of a director’s role is to keep track of the movement and clarity of the story. If you can help a drama-maker to stop fixating on an event or specific people, they will be more able to consider the larger movements of their own life and the needs and feelings of others. The more you can direct and influence them in this way, the better chances you will have in helping them relate to others as people rather than the negative caricatures they have created of them.
Dramatics or Drama-Addicts
I am regularly seeing people post comments about getting tissues ready for a cry-fest while they watch the current episode of “This Is Us.” I’m not sure why we invite the pushes and pulls of emotional reactions, but we do seek it in music, literature, plays and movies. Something is being fed in the soul of the person who is regularly introducing drama into their workplace relationships. Ostracizing only tends to exaggerate these behaviors, so we need to find better ways. Perhaps creating an organizational culture of care, notice and support would mitigate some of the drama that erupts out of an individual’s personal life and onto the larger stage of office complexes, factory workrooms and warehouses.
I’d love to hear your thoughts…