As you have seen, there are two distinct kinds of Histrionic vampires, the overly dramatic Hams and the Passive-Aggressives. On the surface, they seem so different, but underneath, they are quite similar. Both kinds of Histrionics lose themselves in the roles they play, and both get desperate when the audience is not appreciative enough. Rejections, no matter how slight, are severely punished, usually indirectly. Whether Histrionics are drama queens or adorable waifs, they are about as effective in combat with the people who love them as Navy SEALS are with terrorists.
Think for a minute of the many subtle ways in which a person close to you can signal that he or she is irritated: sniffing, snorting, sighing, eye rolling, choosing words and phrases that imply criticism, or even saying nothing at all. The list is endless, and Histrionics use everything on it to clobber unsuspecting friends, lovers, and family members. The most common pattern goes something like this:
Vampire: (Snorts, sniffs, or whatever.)
Victim: What’s wrong?
Vampire: Nothing.
Victim: What do you mean “nothing”? Whenever you make that sound, you’re upset about something. So tell me, what’s wrong?
Vampire: (Long pause) Nothing.
Victim: (Growing agitated) You always do this. You snort and sniff and make faces, then you say nothing’s wrong. I know something is bothering you, so why don’t you just tell me what it is?
Vampire: (In a voice tinged with ice) I said nothing is wrong.
Victim: (Shouting) I know something’s wrong! I demand that you tell me what it is instead of doing what you always do, just sitting there making faces and saying nothing’s wrong!
Vampire: You really need to get control of your temper.
The only way to parry this sort of attack is to use psychological jujitsu.
Vampire: (Snorts, sniffs, or whatever.)
Victim: What’s wrong?
Vampire: Nothing.
Victim: Oh, okay. (Goes to another part of the house.)
A relationship with a Passive-Aggressive vampire can be draining and difficult, a perpetual battle of the inarticulate against the indirect. I hope this chapter will help you to be more adept in fighting—or, preferably, avoiding fights—with the Histrionics in your life.
Carly’s mother (please call her Liz, not Mom) wears all the latest styles; however, they’re for 18-year-olds and Liz is 52 and a bit beyond pleasingly plump. She also has a stud in her nose, a tramp stamp, and two bright orange streaks in her hair. Liz is loud and exuberant, and often inappropriate. She flirts unmercifully with any man she sees, regardless of age, and runs on and on about the tiniest travails as if they were the labors of Hercules. Still, everyone seems to like her, not as BFF, as Liz would like to believe, but as, well, a curiosity. Carly loves her, but she is so embarrassing.
The few times Carly has tried to say something to Liz about her clothes or her behavior have been disasters. Nobody takes her seriously, but Liz just doesn’t get it.
Maybe it’s Carly who doesn’t get it. If there is a Histrionic Ham in your life, it’s easy to be embarrassed and irritated by the sheer transparency of their attention-getting ploys and their utter disregard for being seen as ludicrous. Yes, Liz is outrageous, but that is what she chooses to be. If Carly is outraged, she is the one who will be drained.
The reason Carly is embarrassed is that she imagines how awful it would be if people thought she was as clueless as Liz. Just the thought makes Carly cringe and not want to be around her mother in public. She also feels guilty, because Liz is really a nice and generous person who really works hard to get people to love her. She’d give you the tank top off her back.
This is the dilemma you will face if you have a Histrionic Ham in your life. You just can’t imagine being seen as a buffoon, and think that deep down, she (or he—we will discuss male Histrionics later in this chapter) doesn’t want to be seen that way, either. What you must remember is that for Histrionics, there is no deep down. They are the role they’re playing, and that’s that. They will do whatever it takes to get attention. You can suffer their embarrassment for them, or, like everyone else, you can sit back and watch the show.
Carly does have another choice, but it is more difficult and much more expensive. She can try to create a new role for Liz by buying her a couple of really chic, age-appropriate outfits and making her an appointment at the best hair salon in town (having first conferred with the stylist about what sorts of cuts to avoid). If Liz thinks her new look is really becoming, she may adopt the behavior that goes along with it like an accessory. Or she may be back in tank tops in a week; there are no guarantees.
If you are going to try this strategy with the Ham in your life, you will also need to take her places where she can be the belle of the ball. If enough people compliment her on how glamorous she looks, she may embrace the new style.
Getting a new look for your Histrionic Ham should never coincide with an event, like your wedding, when you want to be the center of attention. Start months before, so that she has time to get comfortable in her new role.
There are other Histrionics who are not as harmless and lovable as Hams.
Vampire Lauren calls Amanda. In the midst of the usual chitchat, Lauren mentions that she’s worried about Stephanie. “She’s acting so strange lately, like she’s depressed or something. Have you noticed anything?”
“No, not really,” Amanda says. “Well, come to think of it, she seemed a little crabby the other night, but I don’t think that means she’s depressed.”
The conversation goes on, and Amanda thinks nothing of it, until two days later she gets a text from Stephanie:
I hear ur mad at me. WTF?
Before she texts back, Amanda calls Lauren. “I just got this bizarre text from Steph. She thinks I’m mad at her.”
“I told you she’s been acting weird,” Lauren says.
When there is a storm among her friends, Lauren always seems to be in the middle of it, calm and concerned, ready to hear everyone’s point of view and to offer helpful advice. It takes Amanda a long time to realize that Lauren embellishes everything that people tell her and passes it on, then lies through her teeth about doing it.
“Did you tell Stephanie I said something about her?”
“No. What makes you think that?”
Amanda, stop! She’s doing it again.
Gossips never admit that they told anybody anything, and even in the midst of their denials, they can elicit more information to pass on. If there are rumors flying around your group of friends, you can be sure that there is a Passive-Aggressive at work. You may not be able to tell who she is, and any attempt you make to find out will result in more gossip about you.
There is only one defense against a skilled and devious gossip: never say anything about one of your friends to another, especially anything that could even vaguely be construed as negative, and never try to get specifics about anything you hear about yourself, no matter how bogus.
If you follow this strategy, you will be out of the loop, but that’s exactly where you want to be.
Depression comes in many forms. Most typically, depressed people are sad and withdrawn. Not Histrionics. Their depressions often seem like a frantic search for someone, anyone, who can make them feel better. If that someone is you, at first your heart will go out to them, until you discover that trying to make a depressed Histrionic feel better is a full-time job.
“I just don’t see the point in going on,” Tanya says, in her typical monotone.
“Come on, Tan,” you say, a bit less enthusiastically than you’d hoped. “Don’t think that way. You have a good job, you have friends who care about you, and it’s a beautiful day for a walk in the park.”
“I know I should want to,” Tanya says. “I know I have no reason to be sad. There are lots of people who are worse off than me. … But when I walk in the park, I see lovers hand in hand, and I wonder what’s wrong with me that I can’t find a relationship. It’s probably the way I look.”
“That’s ridiculous; you look fine.”
“If you like fat.”
“You’re not fat.”
You can’t talk depressed Histrionics into feeling better for more than a few minutes. Don’t even try. It will only wear you out, and it won’t do them a bit of good. Even worse, you will become The Only Person Who Understands, thus assuring yourself of many more futile conversations, often in the middle of the night or at some other totally inconvenient time.
The phone rings just as you’re going out the door. It’s Tanya, crying.
“I’m really sorry, Tanya,” you say, “but I don’t have time to talk now. I’ve got to get to the bank before it closes.”
“It’s okay,” Tanya says. “I don’t mean to be a burden.”
You don’t have to be a psychologist to recognize that in a conversation like this, both of you are saying the opposite of what you mean. Your unavailability is not okay with Tanya, and, for that matter, you’re not particularly sorry that you can’t talk with her. Each of you is too worried about the other’s feelings to say what you really mean. You may not even know what you really mean. One minute you’re irritated at Tanya for being manipulative; the next, you’re beating yourself up for having uncharitable thoughts about someone who is obviously in pain. Tanya is undoubtedly doing the same thing. Back and forth your emotions go, between guilt and resentment. Just two short sentences spoken, but they can reverberate inside both your heads for days. One of the dangers of trying to help a Histrionic is that it can make you think and act like one.
To get out of this bind, you have to do what Histrionics are incapable of doing: recognize that guilt and resentment are not separate; they are two sides of the same feeling. One cannot exist without the other. You can’t blame yourself without blaming someone else, or vice versa.
You also need to recognize that you can’t make a depressed Histrionic like Tanya feel better for more than about ten minutes at a time. What both of you really need is to pay less attention to what she feels and more to what she does. This is the way therapists treat depression. I am not suggesting that you try to be a therapist to the depressed Histrionic in your life, only that you understand how depression is treated so that you don’t get drawn into actions that will make things worse for both of you.
The point of psychological treatment is not to make depressed Histrionics feel better, but to make how they feel less of a factor in their day-today choices. If depressed people start thinking better and doing better, they will usually feel better as well, but it’s merely a positive side effect.
The first thing you should do is make sure Tanya is getting professional help. Stand firm on the point that you are not qualified to treat her depression.
Once she is in treatment, you won’t be out of the woods. She will undoubtedly tell you that her treatment is doing her no good. Her therapist is not nice, and the medication she is on doesn’t work.
There is no doubt about it, antidepressant medications can work wonders. For some lucky folks, they can even make the whole disorder disappear. Usually, this is not the case for Histrionics, which will lead them to believe that the medication doesn’t work at all. The actual purpose of medication is not to cure but to make depressed people feel well enough to do the things that will cure them.
If there is a depressed Histrionic in your life and you want to help, your part in this process is to encourage her to keep doing.
One way to look at depression is as a lack of positive reinforcement. For whatever reason, the circuitry in the brain that makes people feel good is not working properly. Depressed people have a broken feel gooder. They don’t get much out of doing what they used to enjoy, so they stop. They want to wait until they feel better to do the things that will make them feel better. The problem is that if depressed people do only what they feel like doing, they will become even more depressed. The second step in treating depression is to disrupt the downward spiral by getting people up and moving. They will see any activity as absolutely pointless, so don’t try to explain; make them do it to humor you.
They won’t like it, but so what? They don’t like anything. Their software for liking has crashed, and they need you to help them reboot. Let them mumble and mutter, as long as they’re moving. Even when depressed people start feeling better, it will take them a long time to realize it, and even longer to admit it to you. Helping the depressed is a thankless task. Literally. If they thank you, you’re probably not helping. Better they should be slightly annoyed with you for pushing them.
“Seems like you have a choice,” you say to Tanya. “You can sit in here and feel lousy, or you can go out and feel lousy in the fresh air. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to the park. Want to come with me?”
“I guess one waste of time is as good as another,” Tanya says, reaching for her jacket.
Now that you understand your part in the treatment process, we can go back to those inconvenient phone calls. Here are some suggestions that will help you to be part of the solution rather than perpetuating the problem for both of you:
Ignore the undercurrents, no matter how obvious.
It’s pretty clear that Tanya is ticked off because you won’t abandon your needs and minister to hers. She’s not aware of these hostile feelings; she’s just acting on them.
As she cringes at your rejection, Tanya actually believes that you are treating her like a burden because she is one, that you’re only giving her what she deserves. She feels hostility toward herself, but not toward you—at least, not consciously. Never in a million years would Tanya accuse you of being the sort of person who’d let a friend down. You have to do that to yourself.
There is only one way to keep from being sucked into this neurotic morass: take her absolutely literally. Let therapists worry about unconscious meanings. What you want is a relationship with Tanya in which she asks for what she wants, and you are free to say yes or no. Sanity lies in playing by those rules yourself, even if you suspect she isn’t.
Think like a psychologist, but never talk like one.
The concept of manipulation as we use it today is a relic of the human potential movement. In that simpler world, in which we were not put to live up to other people’s expectations, manipulation, whether conscious or unconscious, is bad, so histrionics don’t do it. Manipulation, by definition, is unconscious. As I have said, there is no first-person form of the verb to manipulate. Manipulation is something parents do to us, not something Histrionics do to others.
To avoid senseless arguments, erase the word manipulate from your vocabulary. The way to be effective in the situation formerly known as being manipulated is to respond to what people are doing, not trying to explain it to them.
There is no way another person can deny your feelings. If you have to talk about the emotional bind people like Tanya put you in, do it something like this:
“Tanya, when you say you’re a burden, I feel stuck. If I go do what I need to do, it’s almost as if I’m admitting that you are a burden. If I stay and try to convince you that you’re not a burden, then I have to cancel my own plans, and I get upset.
“I know that none of this is your intention, because you did tell me to go ahead. Still, I end up feeling like the kind of person who lets down a sister in need. But I guess that’s my problem, isn’t it?”
There are times when addressing the issue in this way can clear the air between people who are close. Tanya has a face-saving out, and you get to leave without feeling quite as selfish.
Generally, it works better to skirt the issue altogether. Just tell Tanya what you’re willing to do, and let the guilt fall where it may.
“Tan, I have some errands to run, but I’ll be free at 7:30. Call me and we can talk then.”
Take a tip from your friendly neighborhood therapist. We have regularly scheduled times to talk with our clients, and we discourage emergency calls when there is no immediate danger. This is mostly for our own benefit, of course, but it is also the most helpful thing we can do for high-maintenance people like Tanya.
Step back and look at the larger picture. Tanya’s emergencies are usually overreactions to day-to-day frustrations. She replays events in her mind, expanding their implications and making herself more depressed with each retelling. Eventually, she feels she can’t take it any more, so she picks up the phone and calls you, hoping that you will make her feel better.
If you are always available, you become an emotional landfill where she can go to dump her loads of distress. If you’re not there, she must at least figure out how to manage her feelings until you get back.
If you have a friend or family member like Tanya, it will help both of you if you put limits on your availability for discussing emotional issues. I’m not suggesting that you avoid them, but that you set specific times for the beginning and end of your talks about how she feels. At other times, do something else, like going for a walk in the park.
Male Histrionics are not as rare as you might imagine, given that many Histrionic behaviors fit so well with what we think of as the feminine stereotype. Barbie, Madonna, and Cheerful Patient are only a few of the roles Histrionics can play to the hilt.
Male Histrionics play stereotypical male roles, like Pro Wrestler, Ward Cleaver, or Family Comedian (or Pathetic Clown, depending on your point of view).
Pro Wrestlers act like testosterone on steroids, but it’s all for show. You don’t have to be afraid.
Ward Cleavers go to work, play golf, and sit with pipe and slippers, dispensing aphorisms. And that’s pretty much it. Sitcom dads are exempt from conflict and all other emotional engagements, but when they give you the look, you’d better pay attention and shape up.
Family Comedians are not funny. They’re like your uncle who tells lame jokes over and over, mistaking polite laughter for guffaws. If you let yourself be annoyed by or embarrassed for them, it is you who will be drained. You might try giving them some better material.
These roles are different on the outside, but similar in that they require more showmanship than thought. Male Histrionics are not deep thinkers. Don’t attempt conversations more intimate than “How ’bout them Dodgers?”
The goal of these male Histrionics is less to get attention and approval and more to get peace and quiet after a hard day of work. They are masters at avoiding anything they don’t like to do. Don’t bother them with unimportant details like your emotional life, especially if there’s a game on TV.
Histrionics, male and female, are what they are. You may not like what they are, but you probably can’t change them. If you try, you will be drained, and it will somehow end up being all your fault.
The best defense is to know the patterns of the dramas Histrionics create, and use that knowledge to avoid joining the cast as the bad guy.