What Causes Family Drama

Ever seen The Young Victoria? There is a scene where the mother leaves the table in a huff after her brother-in-law, the king, berates her in front of the whole dinner party. Someone at the dinner table leans in to their neighbor and says, “Families, who’d be without them?” This may not be historically correct, but regardless, I think it’s fair to say, families from the royal to the humblest of homes, know their own drama.

Man, I love that scene. And whenever I have family drama in my family I think of that scene.

My friend Susan and I were talking about families one time and she said to me, "families are the perfect learning place, it is a place to learn love, forgiveness, patience, kindness and pain. We were given friends to help us cope with families." Okay, okay, I added that last part. But truly friends have a place too and can be just as instrumental as family members (it is convenient that we get to choose them). 

I don’t know of anything that can rip a family in two as fast or painfully as “drama”. Drama, as I’m defining it, includes actions or words people do or say to stir the pot and cause harm to other people. It isn’t problems that a family is working though, it isn’t a baby out of wedlock, it isn’t even someone making a choice that isn’t religiously popular. It is our response to those things. It’s dirty looks we give, the unkind words we spread about said person, or our idle opinions that aren’t meant to make change or help but just to gather support against someone. 

It Starts in the Heart

How many of us have had a good friend that made a poor choice and the second we found out about it we went to tell everyone? I’m guessing, not many of us. We would want to help our friend, find ways to lift them up or maybe lovingly point out to our friend the dangers the direction that choice is taking them or pain it is causing. However, can the same be said if we find out something about someone we don’t know or love? 

Hey, did you hear what John did? We do this, not so we can help him, but because it makes for good conversation.   

Love and understanding brings us together

Now I’m guilty of this too! A major shift that has started in my family is the fight against drama. And honestly it's been awesome.  Bad things happen. Yes, but does drama have to follow? Often feelings get hurt and we want to fight back, in fighting back someone else gets hurt and the cycle continues. Truly we don’t want to hurt each other, but even more so we don’t want to be hurt. How many of us where taught to say to the offending party, “Hey! That really hurt and wasn’t nice.” Vulnerable words. It’s almost like saying, "queue up and hit me again". When we expose our pain, we invite the other party to consider what they have done or said. And if they choose to care too, it can actually bring us together.

Juan and I have really gotten into “connecting” and asking “why” in our parenting (click here for more information on that) and it’s shown that when people act out it is typically because of a deeper issue. Then when we react to this sort of behavior not only do we validate it but we can actually hurt the person more.

For us to have the patience to find out, or even want to know, we must care. We must care about the person and what’s going on with them. And in that sense, it starts in the heart.

 
When we take the time to care about someone, ask them why, we will be able to find a way to connect and care. Sometimes it’s longer than one conversation but here’s the thing, trying to work it out is constructive not just simply growing the wedge. There might be times when we must choose, for our health or mental stability, to have some space from some relationships, but even that can be done without drama.

Closing note. There will probably always be someone in life, maybe even us, that causes drama. We choose how we will respond and move on.