Dealing with drama queens

[3DOCTORS]

Paperclip.

Not sure these ideas will help or not.

1. Perhaps the first place to start is inside your head. How much of your time is spent re-living what the drama queens say or do, before, during, and after meeting with them? We need to be careful with “resentment” like behavior. It helps to realize that we often “assent” to these memories; we often replay the tapes interiorly. Treat these moments as actual “decisions” that you make to replay the events. They may not be made with great deliberation, but they are voluntary. It’s not easy but try to experiment a bit and see if you have any luck with minimizing the replaying of these unfortunate events. And I hasten to point out, I don’t doubt that the drama queens are really out of bounds here.

We are to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, strength…this includes our memory and imagination. How are we using our imagination and our memory? What do we fill them up with?

This was a struggle for me…and I am still working on it.

1. Maybe when you witness a drama moment, you quietly acknowledge the presence of God with you there and then, and convert that moment into a prayer. Sanctify the moment. Say to your Father “Give me a hint, how to handle this”. The “raw material” of the drama moment that God gave you, can actually be converted, with God’s grace, into something supernaturally good.
2. At that moment don’t change your facial expression, don’t acknowledge the drama…don’t positively or negatively react. And at the earliest possible time, though, add something positive to the conversation. Find the silver lining in the moment and in a quiet humble way turn the conversation constructive. Smile and set the quiet, CALM, SERENE, example.
3. Your goal is to spread peace, calm, and joy in a very gradual fashion, without showing up the person(s). Small wins and influences.

Good luck, these ideas may or may not work for you.

One of the absolute best posts I’ve ever read! It will help me deal with some people who I get irritated with. I know the irritation is lots of times within myself.

To the OP - pay particular attention to #3 - if the people you describe want attention, to give them any would be to add fuel to the fire. If they are truly manipulative people, they may up the ante to try to get a reaction out of you. Have a few backup strategies in your bag of tricks, such as changing the subject, drawing in another calm person to the conversation who you’ve observed is able to handle these gals gracefully, etc.

 

[Apollos]

Apollos, with all due respect, if you don’t have anything constructive to add then don’t bother adding anything.

And yes, it’s a burden, I’m just here to see if there’s anyway to stop it affecting how I approach the ministry and interact with people in it.

Listen, Paperclip.

• There is *no *way to stop it affecting how you approach the ministry and interact with people in it. You need to understand that there are some situations in life where the right thing to do is to walk away. Based on what you’ve written, that’s my advice, and I am not the only one who agrees.
• The “spit-take” was meant to be a joke, but with a serious message. The joke part is that I was acting like a drama queen myself. The serious part, though, is that when you say things like “I’ve put two years of my life into it … I love it too much” (#6), you are using the same excuse that countless abused girlfriends use to justify going back to their abusive boyfriends, and that is the dead giveaway that you are not looking at the bigger picture here. You’ve never watched any daytime talk shows where the abused gf tearfully says, “But we’ve been together for X number of years and … ah luuuv him”?
• The bigger picture is that this is a university community, hardly anyone is there for more than four years, you’re not supposed to go there for the sake of “giving” yourself to a ministry, the student ministries exist to serve the students, not to be served by them. You are there to get your degree, and if the ministry is dominated by the problems you describe, then it is failing in its mission. You have gotten yourself into a sick situation, and you are playing mind games with yourself if you consider X amount of time spent in it as constituting some kind of “commitment” that handcuffs you to it and overrides the harm being done to you.
• But just as abused girlfriends make excuses for their abusive boyfriends, like “But he don’t *always *beat me” and “But he nice when he not drinking”, I predict that eventually you will start making excuses for the disorder in the ministry, like “But there isn’t *always *drama” and “But the ministry operates well when the drama queens are on their best behavior”. Remember, the drama was a big enough problem for you to bring it up in the first place - are you going to spend the rest of your college career dealing with an unfixable problem, or are you going to admit to yourself that it is a no-win situation and move on? Because remember, this is not about you breaking a commitment to the ministry, but about a sick, disordered ministry unable to fulfill its mission. Find a ministry that has its act together.
• Finally, if you want something “constructive”, then you are asking for a solution to an unsolvable problem. The drama queens aren’t going to stop their destructive behavior, you don’t have the power to change them, and you’re not going to ask the priest to do anything. So, checkmate. Right?