Episode 83 - The Drama Triangle with Andrea Parks

Have you ever felt stuck in the same patterns in your relationships, unsure how to break free? In this episode, I sit down with Andrea Parks, a therapist who dives deep into the hidden dynamics that hold us back. Andrea shares how we can shift out of these roles and start truly healing and reclaiming our power. Tune in as we explore how these patterns can keep us stuck and how, through her unique perspective, Andrea helps guide people toward healing and empowerment.

Andrea is a therapist and facilitator who specializes in trauma, codependency, and life transitions. She owns Bloom Healing, where she creates spaces for individuals to come together, heal, and reconnect with their authentic selves. With a background in counseling psychology, somatic bodywork, and developmental trauma, Andrea brings a wealth of experience to her practice and a deep commitment to fostering growth.

Through her work, Andrea helps people break free from the roles they’ve taken on in relationships and empowers them to live more fulfilled, connected lives. Her passion is to create communities where healing is possible, allowing people to find their voice and power in a supportive environment.

Find Andrea Parks here:
Bloomhealingaz.com

Find Sara here:
https://sarafisk.coach
https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/
https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/
https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333
https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach
What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!
Book a Free Consult

Transcript

0:51

You are listening to the ex good girl podcast, episode 83, having a conversation today with one of the people that I probably have the most consistent, repetitive conversations about human nature, about growth, about how to, get from maybe this place of pain and confusion to maybe a little less pain and confusion. And that person is my dear friend, Andrea Parks. Hello there. Hello. What do you want people to know about you and what you do? Well, I am a therapist. I work a lot with trauma and I think trauma and codependency go hand in hand. So I do a lot of work with trauma, codependency, family of origin work, childhood wounds. And yeah, we spend a lot of time talking about that. How, how do trauma and codependency go hand in hand? I think codependency is a response to trauma and it's a response to try to balance the equilibrium of your life. So, what they kind of learned when they started studying families with alcoholism or addiction is that there would be, the activating event might be the father who's an alcoholic or the mother is an alcoholic and then all of the other members of the family. Then pick up these other roles to try to, like, write the shit. So, what I find is that oftentimes when somebody has trauma, they had to take on a lot of roles in order to survive that. Which is where I think what we're going to talk about today kind of ties in, because I think the drama triangle is It's really rooted in, you know, dysfunctional low nurturance families or families with trauma. So the drama triangle is something that we have talked about, and I actually didn't even, I'd heard it before, uh, you talked about it, but you so often kind of oriented our conversations about relationships and roles and who does what. In the drama triangle, it's taught me so much. I wanted to have that conversation for everyone today. So give us just an overview of what the drama triangle is. Okay, so the drama triangle I think is a really good starter tool. It's not the end all be all for relationships, but whenever I work with people and I've been in private practice for 12 years now, it's something I teach almost a hundred percent of the time within the first month because it's such a common way of interacting. So in the drama triangle and it's shaped just like a triangle, so you can picture there's three points, there's three different roles. So one role is the victim. The second role is the rescuer and the third role is the persecutor. And I think a few things to note about the drama triangle is that when you are in it, it takes a little bit of practice to learn that you've figured out that you've gotten in it. Once you figure it out, you'll know it almost immediately. But when you're in it, there's no progress. There's no healing. Nothing comes from the drama triangle that's actually positive. And All 3 of the roles influence each other, so as we talk about the drama triangle, I think it's important to note that there's roles that get kind of villainized more than others, but they're all kind of equally sick and they each participate in the stuckness of the whole system, if that makes sense. So how, how do the roles influence each other? How are they each equally sick? Because even in those names, victims tend to get more sympathy and rescuers are the heroes and persecutors. That's the bad guy. Right? And so let's start with how are each of those. Roles equally sick. Okay. And before we start with how they're equally sick, I think it's important to know that I think with tools like this, it's easy to kind of label people on command. You're a victim. You're a persecutor. And it's important to understand that each person came by that role from a point of pain. It's the body, the soul's response to pain. So a victim oftentimes has been victimized. These are people who have been legitimately victimized, disempowered, and they can be victimized and disempowered by the other two roles in the drama triangle. So a persecutor might victimize them with criticism or. You know, control or even violence and a rescuer can victimize them with, like, helicopter parenting or disempowering them, not allowing them to find their own power. But victims, some primary, like, pieces of the victim is that a victim feels powerless. And it is legitimate. So I describe everything how it feels in the body. For some of you, that might not be how it works. But for me, a victim spot would feel stuck. I don't have choices. I don't have power. There's no solution to this problem. That's one way I'll almost always know when I'm working with a client that they're in the victim spot is if any suggestions for a solution are almost immediately like, no, that won't work. No, that couldn't work. That wouldn't work because victims really do feel like there is no solution to this problem. I'm stuck. They don't feel like they have ability to do things or they feel incapable of doing things. They feel uniquely broken. Sometimes, like, I'm different. I can't solve this. And they often attract persecutors and rescuers. So, if you, for instance, are someone who maybe your primary role in the drama triangle is a victim, if you look at your relationships and notice that you seem to have a lot of these, um, motherly type friends who kind of take care of you, or you seem to be in relationships a lot where you get controlled or criticized. That's a pretty good indicator that your primary spot in the Dharma Pringle is the victim. And persecutors and rescuers need victims, so they will seek you out, if that makes sense. Some statements that a victim might say would be things like I have more problems. I'm not worthy. Victims can get a little resentful of other people's success or other people's power. They have a real deep fear of being alone. it's like a core fear of, doing things on my own and being alone and things. They can have a hard time speaking up or asserting themselves, even sometimes have a hard time knowing their own thoughts or opinions on things because they've often been in relationships with either rescuers or persecutors who take over the thoughts and opinions. Any questions about the victim? I think that's a decent summary. This is where I would think that a lot of people pleasers could identify, they are in this role of having to kind of chameleon or pretzel themselves accommodate. And it feels threatening or heavy if they don't, it feels like there is some kind of, punishment, like, they're going to get in trouble if they don't. And so I always try to think about, like, why would someone stay in the role of the victim? Or what, what, what are the benefits? And although it doesn't feel good to feel powerless or to feel stuck, I think sometimes that feeling is just so well known and it's just the one we've practiced for so long that it feels better than, either getting out of the victim role or even taking the role of a persecutor or a rescuer. But are there any other benefits to staying in this role of victim? There is always a benefit or we don't stay in, but I do think that it's important to know that empowerment isn't something that's natural to most. So if and If you think about how a child develops, you would need hundreds, maybe thousands of encounters with empowerment to be able to know how to like inhabit that space. And you would need to have a space where you can make mistakes, be held, but not flooded. So, a child that maybe has some, proper supervision, but not criticism or getting in big trouble if they make a mistake or getting rescued out of a mistake. So, a lot of times it's an experience that they've never even had. We know that when someone has been victimized. There's almost a trauma bond to that role where now I go back into that role over and over and over again. And I think I'm going to do it different this time and I'm not capable of it. So working with someone like I'll speak as like a clinician, working with someone who's in the victim role of the trauma drama triangle is going to be a little bit like they're going to have to reparent themselves. They're going to have to give themselves opportunities to make mistakes and be held. They're going to have to give themselves opportunities and really work on not being in relationships with people who step in those two roles. So that would be one of the first things I would do with someone that was in the victim role would be noticing when they get in that dynamic or someone, Oh, I'm in that dynamic again. She's jumping in and trying to save me. And then practicing learning how to say, I don't actually need any help in this. I'm going to hold it or practicing like this doesn't feel good. This dynamic doesn't feel good. And I'm going to step out of it for a little bit. So I can find my power, find my voice. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. It does. And for that, they would have to tolerate the potential disapproval of a rescuer because a rescuer, as I'm sure we're going to get into needs that the dopamine hit of being the rescuer. And if somebody doesn't want to be rescued, I can imagine that it's going to cause An interesting dynamic in that relationship. And so for the victim to get out of that victim state, they're just going to have to learn to tolerate a different type of discomfort. Yeah, I can give you an example. I have a client that I started working with about a year ago, and this client came in with, some pretty significant clinical depression, but after working with them for a little while, what I started to realize is that this client was the victim. To their mother's rescuing and that this dynamic, I hate to use this word, but it feels it was a bit parasitic that mom needed this child to stay in this role so that mom could feel like she had a place in the world as this client has had amazing growth over the last year for the first time in their lives, went back to college, got a job, started getting independence, got their own apartment. Mom did not know how to handle that because as we'll see, as we get through the roles, mom needs a rest or a victim so that she can stay in her role that makes her feel good and valuable. And so it's required a lot of asserting on my client, but also some work to just be able to understand their mother. Yeah. Mom's not going to be able to give you the empowerment you need because it would be threatening to yeah, the last thing I'll say about victim before we go into rescuers, I felt like a lot of the things in my life were happening to me. And that is another part of this. I just want to share. It's like, why is he doing that to me? Why is she doing that to me? And that was a lot of the way that it kind of sounded in my head. And so again, that was where a lot of the resentment that I felt toward other people came from is this idea that all of this outside. Action was just taking place on me and I didn't have a way to influence or change it. And I just had to go along to get along. And yeah, there's a lot of resentment for me was there. I think, you know, and we can talk about this later when we talk about how to solve the drama triangle, but I think that, victims need to hear a few sentences phrases that are helpful. One would be, you always have choices. Now you may not like. The choices available to you, but if you ever find yourself in a spot where you think I don't have choices, it's pretty certain you're sitting in the victim spot. So you always have choices. And the 2 things that help get a victim out of. The victim spot is accountability. And empowerment. So often a question that victims don't necessarily find comfortable, but I think it's useful is okay. But what's your part in this? How are you responsible for what's happening right now? Where can you take accountability for this? Where do you have choices? Where can you have some power or some influence? We just want to look and it might just be a little bit. I mean, really, there are quite disempowered situation. So it's not to minimize that that's real, but finding maybe the only thing, for instance, with this particular client, this is a client that lives at home, doesn't have any, autonomy over their home environment. Didn't have privacy in their bedroom. There were a lot of things, but they found that there was a park bench they could sit on where they could be in control of themselves. Right. So I can go to this park. Nobody, my mom in particular, can't invade my space there. And I can have a little bit of time to myself. This was a beginning decision of just how can I have some power in my life? That's so interesting because just that little bit, like the park bench doesn't seem like a whole lot. But taking. Ownership for, my part is that I can go to this park bench, or I can stay in my room where I have no privacy and feel resentful. Or I can go to the park bench and feel a little bit more freedom than I have. And they created a little, like, kind of like a bulletin board that they put in their car and it was like my one space. Like they just started finding ways to kind of claim some space for themselves as well. So what about rescuers? Okay, so rescuers are, I call them the sweethearts of the drama triangle because they're one everybody likes. And they get praised for their role. That's why it's the hardest role to break. And it's why I often say it's the most toxic role in the drama triangle, because it's the prettiest, sparkliest, nicest role that everybody aspires to. If you come from any kind of communities that, value martyrdom, you're going to be the queen. As a rescuer. So rescuers are fixers, helpers, caretakers. If you work in a helping profession, you probably have some rescuers somewhere in your past. It's glorified and they have kind of a, like a holy cause behind it. They believe in the virtue of their role. So. It's hard to convince a rescuer to give it up because I think a lot of times rescuers really believe like, no, everyone needs me to do this. And the whole thing would collapse if I stopped. And, that's not being kind or loving or Christian. If I don't take care of everybody else's problems, rescuers can feel, their boundaries are very, transparent. So they just kind of energetically take on everyone and they can sniff out a problem a mile away. And jump in and start helping without even being asked, like, it's just kind of their role. Some of their sentences or beliefs would be like, I do for others what they can do for themselves. I take on the burdens and responsibilities of others. I help keep other secrets. I tolerate too much. Rescuers are also afraid of being alone. I feel guilt. Rescuers feel tremendous guilt. They're often riddled with guilt. I feel guilty if I'm not helping more. I feel guilty if I'm not taking care of everyone else's problems. They can often play the intermediaries in their family. They can be peacemakers. I feel guilty if I say no to anything. Like no is a really hard sentence for a rescuer. And when I'm angry, instead of being direct, Rescuers can often withhold love or have like a coldness, but they don't know how to do that direct kind of communication. And there's a deeper pain of like, my needs aren't as important. I'm more capable of holding pain than they are. So I'll just take it on me. Yeah. And I can do without, I can have less needs than they can. So I'll just sacrifice myself. And there's a belief in that, that if I do this long enough, it will fix everything. And then everyone will really appreciate me. So rescuers can often get resentful because it's like I've sacrificed myself on this altar for years. Yeah. And no one even really values it. Are we just like calling all oldest girls? Yeah, right. And if you are type A oldest dog. Or come from a, religious community, you probably. Yeah. Yeah. And I hear it a lot of times as I'm strong. Like, I'm the strong one. I don't need help. I can, I can do it. And the way it showed up in my head was. Because I have the capacity to do this, I should do it right. That's right. And as I'm a recovering all 3 of the roles, I can relate to all 3. But my, primary role is rescuer probably in the role I would get in secondary would be victim. And as a rescuer, mine got kind of wrapped up in my religious beliefs, but it was like, this is my duty to mankind. Right. And also it would be the most cold and cruel thing in the world to see suffering and not immediately pick it up like it's mine to carry. And so it was tricky to unwind it for me. 1 of the things that really helped me unwind it. Is that when I was able to see, and I think I saw it clearer in another person than I was able to see it myself, how it was actually pernicious, how it was helping people stay sick, and it was like participating in their sickness. I think that's when I really started to grasp this is not holy at all. Like, there's nothing in what I'm doing here. That's actually coming from like a really pure place. It's wrapped up in a lot of not trusting others. You know, infanticizing people who don't need to be. Disempowering people who need their power to make it in this world. The only way they're going to make it is if they have their power, and here I'm coming in and taking it away from them. I had to take it in a pretty harsh light to be able to give it up, because it's such an addicting role. You get so much external praise as a rescuer. And people push back. When the rescuer changes more than any other role in the drama triangle, you will get the most pushback. So one of the most common things I hear from my clients when they start to heal, the rescuer role is therapy has made you mean, yes, you're, you're different. Now, you used to be so loving and you're not anymore. And really, that's not the case at all. Like rescuing is not loving. Oh, that's just. You have to have such a sturdiness, such a real, like you said, understanding of the perniciousness, the dependence that it creates, the sickness that it perpetuates, because that's really hard to hear, like, especially if you're a human who's been socialized as a woman. To be kind, to be giving, to be available, to be open, to prize, connection and helping and giving above everything else. That could make that just really, really difficult. I think some, some ways that were helpful for me, I had this realization that if I were to heaven forbid, but if I were to like die unexpectedly, I would just leave my kids in particular without the skills they would need to make it without me. Because I had been stepping in and carrying things that they needed to learn how to carry and that helps me to see, like, that's reckless. Like, I need to power them. It also helped me to start looking at, the fruits of rescuing, which was resentment. You know, rescuers are the most resentful. They often have, a deep well of anger in here because they're not having needs. They're not getting to take care of themselves or even know themselves. They're known in relation to who they're taking care of. And so I started to see that the end game of this isn't gonna look good. I'm gonna have saved everyone and they're all gonna hate me'cause I'm a bitter, resentful woman. it's so interesting because the thing that I hear the most often when I talk with women about reducing people pleasing is. I don't want people to be mad at me and I don't want to be seen because, you know, for a woman, the worst thing you can be called is selfish. And there's just this connection between a woman who does not put other people 1st does not put other people's needs above our own. That that is selfishness. And they think that when we stop people pleasing, what I mean is that your needs now matter the most, that your needs are the biggest in the room, that you don't care what other people think. And it's just such an interesting commentary to me on we don't know what it's like to live, that our needs are on the same level as everyone else's. Yeah. Let's forget making them the most important. Although I think that could be nice. Yeah, but what if they were just equal? Right? I think, we talked about how you, you heal a victim is accountability and empowerment. How you heal a rescuer is boundaries and trust. So here's a couple of things to think about when you think about being a rescuer, is that boundaries mean just having a boundary that gives me a moment of pause. before I step in. I'm going to question, am I doing this because I'm rescuing or because I want to? And you can still choose to do it because you're rescuing, but at least you know your motivations and you know that it won't actually fix anything because nothing is accomplished in the drama triangle. So if your motivations are rescue, it most likely won't get you what you think it's going to get you, but you can at least go in knowing that. The boundary also helps me to not take on other people's opinions of me. Intellectual, emotional, energetic boundaries are about, I get to decide if I'm selfish, not you. So if my, my family members all think I'm being selfish, I get to kind of check that in with myself a bit. Is it true that me taking an afternoon off to take care of my own things makes me selfish? Well, I don't, think that's true anymore. So they can think that that's where the boundary kind of protects me from their opinions. And then the last thing I'd say about it is trust that I can trust other people to actually have wisdom and goodness inside of them. To solve their own problems. I don't have the only store of wisdom and goodness. Like they have it too. They can solve it. And do I want to reflect to them in my behavior that I think they're weak and incapable? Or do I want to reflect in my behavior that I think they are strong and powerful? So when I'm rescuing all the time, I'm non verbally telling the people I love that they're weak and incapable and they know it, they can feel that. And when I say something like, I know that's really hard and I'm here for you if you need me, but I also have a lot of faith in you, that you can solve this. Imagine how that would have felt as a little person or have that in a friendship to go through a difficult time and not have everyone around you get flustered and fluttering, but to be able to just say, I see how strong you are and I'm here. Yeah. I don't know that I ever heard those words. I know how strong you are. I know you can. And, and the other way that this trust can make sense as a healer for rescuers is that a rescuer is so externally focused. That really the only way to tell if this is an experience that's motivated by selfishness or not is by what's happening internally. And it doesn't matter what other people are saying to you. If you have had the opportunity to connect to your inner experience. You will know that this isn't an action or a situation that's being motivated for me by selfishness or by the ability to just be mean. And I'm just going to have to trust that what I'm feeling about me and my motivations is right. No matter what other people are saying. I think rescuers, we talked about, victims need to hear that you always have choices. They have some statements that are helpful. I think some things that are helpful for rescuers are I trust others with their path. I can be loved without offering anything. I am lovable as I am, or just bringing my energy is enough. Like I don't have to always show up with a casserole. I'm comfortable alone. It's healthy. This is probably the one that's the most important for me is it's healthy to not force peace. Conflict and space are part of peace. So this idea that I have to fix it all up and get peace here right away. That's not real peace. That's pretend peace. Real peace is when everybody's heard and everybody's safe. And I say no with ease without guilt. That's a, you know, aspirational kind of one I'm working on it. but rescuers were bred to be rescuers. They need the same kind of reparenting that a victim would need. They would need lots of opportunities to say no, to claim space for themselves, to have boundaries and have people in their lives that can respect that. And that's, not easy for a rescuer because usually everyone in their life is going to push back at first. So if you can get one friendship. Even the relationship you have with your coach or your therapist, like one place where you can practice that it can start to heal. It is really hard. I'm thinking about, you know, things that have happened to me personally and working with clients where there are people who benefit from your rescuing, who will not like it when you stop. And they have a lot invested in you continuing to do that. And so that really kind of sturdiness. That that the difficulty of hearing what they either have to say or experiencing other people's disapproval when you stop rescuing is going to feel hard at first, but it opened. So, what, once you, once you step out of that rescue or role, what is then available to you that isn't available when you're stuck in it authentic, you know, it's authentic relationship. These are relationships that are built on a house of cards and they only work really. When you were a rescuer, and I'm sure, you know, from working with your clients, and I know from mine and my own personal life that when I changed that role, I lost people and there's just no way around it. So we grieve that we grieve that we thought, I think a lot of times we think those relationships are maybe healthier than they are, but they're not. But the reality is that I get to be a person in the world with needs. And I always think of it as like this reciprocal relationship where I get to pour into you and you get to pour into me. We get to like, love and take care of each other instead of it all being based on me. But I think the main thing is you get to have relationships that are honest and authentic. Rescuing relationships are neither of those things. That's so good. Yeah. That's where I get to be a person who falls apart just as much as I fix. I can have my own pain, my own problems too. Hmm. Yeah. There is so much private pain in a rescuer. Yeah. Yeah. And for me, I think one of the things that really helped me as I was healing, that was actually seeing those relationships fall away. It was a report card like, okay, these weren't as real as I thought they were. Yeah. Because really, people who love you are okay with you having needs and boundaries. Yeah. Yeah. And I hear that sentence, you know, through my own brain and then simultaneously through the brains of people that I work with. And there is some fear, there's some initial fear there because you're right. That report card. And oftentimes I think people have a sense, they just have a sense about which relationships are not going to survive. They're getting to a healthier place with boundaries and trust. And then I think there are some surprises and then there are some surprises on the good side of. Relationships that are willing to adjust and change with you. I did have some relationships in which I was the rescuer. And once I stopped, I found that the other person on the other side of that was willing to, adjust with me and my boundaries and the trust that I wanted to have in them was better all around for both of us. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of a small example, but I think when I married my husband, I was definitely more of a rescuer than I am now. And there was a point a couple of years ago when our youngest child was in school and I was doing all of the driving and I recognized like, this is not good for me. This isn't working. So I went to him and I was like, I don't want to do all the driving anymore. I definitely think there was some pushback on his side. I think he was used to. Him getting a little stressed out and then I would rescue. Okay. It looks like you're too stressed out. I'll just cover it. And I didn't do that at that time. I said, well, I have complete confidence in your ability to solve this and I'm going to kind of hold the line. But what was really cool was at the end of that school year. He said, I'm so glad that you held that line because I have loved getting to see her and spend time with her and it would go and get a doughnut together and it was a small thing, but it was really like my rescuing also was preventing him. I was disempowering him as a father and it was preventing him from having. The relationship that she needs to have with him, and he needs to have with her. So it's a small example, but I think if you can just kind of hold onto the idea that this triangle is not holy. And nothing good comes out of it. So if you want goodness in your relationships, you're going to have to really hold onto the idea that doing it this new way will cause some pain and some conflict in the beginning. But long term, that's how we get healthy relationships. And we'll talk about that more because the, the solution to the drama triangle is healthy relationships. I think that just before we leave this rescue and move on to persecutor, the thing, the place it's been the trickiest for me is with my kids. Because there were so many times that I wanted to be rescued and I thought what I wanted was to be rescued by my parents. And what I really look back and want is I just wanted more communication and more. Vulnerability with them to even be able to tell them about some of the things that I was going through that I, didn't think either they would approve of, or be able to help with, but, but I took on that rescuing role of, like, I just have to do this. So I can't talk about them with this hard relationship that I'm in that I know they can't solve, but I'd really love to tell them about it. I just have to kind of hold it and the pain of it and the confusion of it. And so that's a big place where I've been doing, you know. Adult children. It's a whole, it's a whole thing. It's a whole different world where my, adult child self really wanted more communication and being held by my parents. And I have kind of turned that into rescuing, kind of jumping in and doing some saving of, my now like 22, 23 year olds in a way that I'm trying to take a look at. Yeah, I think I almost heard you say there, you didn't need, you didn't want rescue. You wanted support. Yes. And I think that's a beautiful difference. Yeah. There is legitimate rescuing that needs to be done. And that's not the drama triangle. You know, one of the criteria for rescuers is I'm doing things for others that they can actually do for themselves. So you know, if someone's in a crisis. If someone is, you know, in a life threatening environment, yeah, we're stepping in. As a parent, as a friend, as someone who loves you, I'm going to bang down the door and I'm going to do whatever I need to do to keep you safe. But I think for me, it's a very nuanced shift, rescuing and not rescuing. It's not a major shift. It's just a pause inside of me. Because I do IFS and that's a part of how I speak to myself, I don't know if you're, listeners are aware of it, but I would say something to myself like, it's scary, isn't it? To love these adult kids. Yeah. Ooh, they're doing some big stuff right now. And then I would just take a breath before I stepped in and it might be a question instead of launching into advice. I have some ideas about this if you want them, but I also understand if you don't. Yeah. That sentence. Even just a question, are you open to some feedback? And really I have to mean it. I can't say are you open and if they're not be mad, but like, are you open to some feedback or do you kind of feel like you got this? And then just that pause inside of me changes the urgency. How I know when I said that we know in our bodies, victim always feel stuck, trapped, kind of dark, rescuer. I always know I'm in rescue because it feels urgent right now, tightness in my job, my hands, my face, my heart's beating. It's like, I got to jump in right this second. That's when I know, no, I don't take a breath. Yeah. I think that sentence for me, it's scary to love an adult kid is a big, Yeah, that's a big, that feels like a yes. And I totally identify with the urgency of like, we got to do something about this right now. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a dream of mine that I could somehow spare them all of the suffering I went through. And if I just, I can spare it for them, but the truth is that's not, it's not even possible. Not even possible and definitely not going to be healthy in a way that contributes to the healthy relationships that we're going to get to. So, before we do that, let's cover persecutor. Okay. So, persecutors get a bad rap. If rescuers are the sweetheart, persecutors are the villains, but the truth is, is that persecutors often came from a place of deep unworthiness. Uh, grew up in a system or an environment where they didn't have a lot of control and so they overcompensate with lots of control. They blame and criticize as a way to hide from their own feelings of unworthiness. Just like, rescuers don't know they have needs. Persecutors don't like to know they have weakness. admitting weakness or admitting fault feels catastrophic to a persecutor. So they can usually be very critical and very unpleasant to be around. Underneath it, there's a lot of pain. Persecutors feel very uncomfortable in their own feelings. they sometimes can come across, they'll even like have this pride about, well, I'm just sarcastic or I'm just blunt. I just say it like it is, but it can be very, minimizing and diminishing to the people they're in relationships with. Persecutor, some of the messaging of a persecutor might be, I look for who's to blame in any moment. If something's going wrong, I'm going to find who's to blame. I'm afraid of feeling powerless. So this is a way to to kind of balance or store it feels in power. I use control as a way to feel like life is safe. I can interrogate others. I can be passive aggressive. I demand respect. I can act aloof like I don't care when really I actually do care. Sometimes it can be this relentless teasing or shaming others for their mistakes. Yeah, that's persecutor in a nutshell. Uh, yeah. I totally identify with, acting aloof. Yeah. Like, I just don't care. I'm looking for who's to blame. That was a big part of a growing up dynamic of, I just don't want to be the one who's to blame. If there's someone else to blame, I'm not going to get in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. I can really identify with like. Consolidating all of the evidence about why this is not my fault and why it's really someone else's fault. I'm afraid of being the 1 to blame or the 1 with a weakness. Definitely. Yeah, and the solution for a persecutor is so the, of the 3 places in the drama triangle, it actually goes ABC. So victims are accountability and then power rescuers are boundaries and then trust. Persecutors are compassion and self love. So it's love for self and love for other. But it starts with self. Oftentimes persecutors have to be willing to go and, and actually acknowledge their weakness and give it some love. Yeah, inside of themselves and if they have an issue with taking, accountability, there's some accountability. There's sometimes for persecutors to, instead of being able to own, I like to project it out, but a lot of times my work with persecutors has been, if they can just start having some self compassion, it's much easier to extend it to others. Persecutors are almost always, if I could pin it down, almost always acting out of fear. So first thing I do with a persecutor is before you do any action, getting grounded, breathing, calming yourself down, getting kind of sorted because they usually act out of this place of some sort of deep fear and then lash out at others. That makes a lot of sense. I just wrote this down. I said, I feel most like a victim. Among friends and extended family relationships, the rescuer really comes up for me with my kids and persecutor feels really familiar when I'm talking about, the first 10 years of my relationship with Dan, because I was so deeply afraid of my own unworthiness. This was when I was really head down, in Mormonism and Just always kind of this idea of not doing enough was nipping at my heels every single day, every hour that I was awake. And I was so afraid of my own unworthiness that I turned that on Dan and tried to get him to be better and tried to control his actions and tried to overcompensate by kind of shaping him into the pinnacle of Mormon worthiness. If you're a male in, all the different checklist things. And I think, you know, the checklist. It is transferable. It doesn't matter if it's a religious. Or somewhere else, but, but I still remember and I didn't know, I honestly didn't know that it was fear of my own unworthiness. I just thought I've got to do fucking everything in this relationship. I have to be the one to make sure that we're doing it right to be the one. And so I don't know if that's like a persecutor rescue or blend, but it was really heavy on the criticism and the shaming and blaming. I mean, here's a perfect example. Notice how in the last example, I would say, it's really hard to love these kids that are adults. Isn't it scary? A persecutor would need that self love that some of the You're carrying a lot right now, aren't you? It's a lot to carry. Notice how different a persecutor would feel if they were able to extend themselves some compassion, but there's none for themselves or anyone else. And I see this sometimes come out with like our same gender children. Where it's almost like all of the things I don't like in me, I'm going to now try to fix in you. Oh, yeah. And I think that generally, if we can start with all the things I don't like in me, and offer some space there, then I've got a lot more space for that and other people. So when I look at this, persecutor, the vulnerability that it would have taken to look at that unworthiness. And to realize that it's almost like I couldn't even think about it because that made it true. And so I just tried to distract and pretend I didn't care and exert control over other areas of my life. I think that if someone had said to me, wow, you're carrying a lot right now. And if I could have believed that, that just feels like it would have just undone, you know, the whole thing. I think that persecutors are the one that I feel the saddest about because I think they slip through the cracks the most. If you resonate at all with being a persecutor, you need a skilled therapist or coach to work with because they can really get villainized. Like, oh, that guy is just. A dick. Yeah, the truth is, is that there's so much hurt underneath it. So someone who would be able to say to a persecutor, it sounds like you're carrying a lot, you know, can kind of look underneath angers, you know, secondary emotion. Like, there's something underneath it. Like, what are you afraid of? I have several persecutors in my practice. It's not my most common that I see, but I found that persecutors often need someone who's not going to be ruffled by their kind of fuck you wall that they put up. So someone who can kind of sit with it and then say, sounds like you might actually be really afraid or really hurting in there and be able to kind of hold their anger. Cause usually their anger is just such a put off. People just kind of write them off. Yeah, I think this is one of the places where women get misunderstood, especially because of our conditioning around anger, not to be angry there's all kinds of religious ideas about how it's wrong and and social ideas about how it's wrong and I see it in the way that a lot of people pleasers are, are kind of blamed and shamed for this pleasing behavior when it's really about safety seeking and belonging, and. No, 1 ever taught us how to have self love. I think compassion certainly, I think a lot of the women I work with who are socialized from the beginning as, deeply good girls, they can have a lot of compassion for other people. But the, the self love part of it is. That's just like, that's not a skill that we get taught. I know I really liked the book, the dance of anger. I think the author, her first name is Harriet. I don't know her last name. It was actually recommended on a podcast I listened to years ago with Brene Brown. And she said it was her favorite book she'd ever read on anger. And it's an old school book, but it's an excellent book for making sense, especially of female anger. Again, it's really villainized and put in a box, you have to work with someone who knows how to, love it and make space for it and hold it so that you can get underneath to the emotion that's usually hurt and fear. Yeah, Harriet Lerner is author of that. So if one of the sentences for a persecutor is it looks like you're carrying a lot right now, what are some others? I can ask for help. I can know my own needs without shame. I'm scared. I'm unsure, there's some similar energy to rescuers. I see this sometimes in my clients that are really trying to prevent their kids big mistakes. So they'll step in this kind of, like, what they really want to say is I'm really scared right now. Yeah, I'm going to lose you, but instead they say. You up once again, right? It feels good to cry and helps regulate your nervous system. Breathing feels good in my body. I'm actually really scared of being alone. I can show softness and not be taken advantage of. My softness and my vulnerability are not weaknesses. Anger is just one of my emotions. I actually have access to all of them. It's okay to release. That's a big one for persecutor. I just hold it all in tight bodies. Bad gallbladders, like they just kind of explode from the inside. And so lots of like softening, allowing myself to be supported. Allowing someone to put their hand on my back and say, it looks like you're carrying a lot. And you must be really worried about your kids. You must feel really out of control right now. That's really scary. Persecutors don't know how to even ask for that. So that's the practice., I mean, all of those sentences feel so good to hear. I feel kind of like a little melting with each one of those. Is there a place for persecutors? Like you said, you start with some compassion and self love. If you're trying to introduce a person to this idea of self love, where do you start? Well, if they're a parent, I think the easiest correlation is your kid. Would it be, how would you feel if someone said this to your child or how would you feel? Would that be okay for that to happen to them? I think that the first step with persecutors, before we even get to self love, It's for them to notice how they feel when it's over. I've never met a persecutor that when that moment's over, they don't feel terrible inside. Like it doesn't feel The moment of persecution. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I'm on my, flying carpet trying to get control here, trying to get everybody to make the world feel safe again, but when it's over, I feel terrible. So a reminder when we're trying to break habits in the drama triangle with a persecutor would be fast forward how you're going to feel in 20 minutes. And then let's find 20 minutes before we say anything. Let's blow off steam. Persecutor is the role in the drama triangle that usually has to move things energetically. So it's very in your body. So with my clients, I have a punching bag, but I recommend like go for a walk, hit the pillow, scream into a pillow, take a cold shower, find some way to energetically, physically move that feeling. Cause fear in your body feels so uncomfortable. I jump into control, criticism, blame. So we want to move the energy first and get in the habit of doing that. And lots of repair work. So you're going to mess up. So after the fact, going back and saying, I think what I really needed to say was I was scared. I think what I actually wanted to say is, is I don't know how to admit I'm wrong and feel like I'm still going to be loved. I don't know how to let other people be in control because it feels like if I'm not in control, the whole thing's going to fall apart. Right. So we just want to get in the habit after the fact of repair and then it will come more, primary eventually over time. Yeah. And that, that is what self love looks like. Self love looks like giving yourself space to make mistakes and then go ask for a need. One of the, affirmations I used to use for myself is, just like everybody else, I get to make mistakes. I had a lot of room for my kids mistakes. I knew that they were going to like color on the walls and do stuff, but I didn't have a lot of room for my own. So I would blow my top or say, or do something I didn't feel good about. And I would sit in my closet. I put my hand on my chest and I'd say, you're still good. You get to make mistakes and you get to learn from them and you're worthy of forgiveness. And then I'd go and do repair that making a mistake, being angry, doesn't make me bad at all. Those are just big feelings. I'm listening to you and, having the experience of hearing you and also remembering it's just those big feelings and not knowing what to do with them, not knowing how to sit with them without feeling bad or guilty or ashamed that was a real obstacle for me in, in even just. Admitting that I have them, you know, I, I would pretend I was quote unquote, not mad. I'm not mad. I'm not mad. I'm not mad, but I was really mad. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. That's right. And I think if you are a persecutor, you most likely grew up in an environment where it wasn't okay for you to have big feelings, to lose control. And so giving yourself the same thing we'd want to do for each of the other roles, like giving yourself permission to make mistakes, reparent. We're going to learn how to hold these big feelings. We're going to learn how to release them, and we're going to learn how to get underneath it I'm thinking of one client in particular, who I think when he first came into my practice, I think he just lived primarily in the persecutor role almost all the time, and he had a life and a career that kind of supported that. And so the most common question I would ask him the first year of our work, he would come in and he would report. These calm reigns of terror that he done where it's just all persecutor and I would listen and then at the end I would say, and what were you actually afraid of? We would just get to the fear of it. And over time, he started learning how to pause, take a breath, and then stay this fear with people in his world. I'm actually really afraid right now. I'm actually feeling like I'm going to lose you. I mean. People who love you can show up for that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you've said that the way to fix or the way to heal the drama triangle is healthy relationships. Yeah. So a healthy relationship is like a three legged stool. It's got accountability, boundaries and compassion. And if you find that you're leaning too heavily on any one of those legs, then it's probably not what you're actually doing. Right, so if I'm only using compassion, that's probably codependency. If I'm only using boundaries, I'm probably cutting everybody out, right? This isn't interdependence. This is. Complete independence. So the work of healing the drama triangle is learning how to create this dynamic. So I'll use the example that helped me a lot when I, was divorced in my 20s. And I'd come out of a relationship that was pretty toxic. There'd been a lot of infidelity, a lot of things that I think most people from the outside could look at and just be like, wow, that was terrible. And you were done wrong. And I went to a therapist and I told her the whole story. And I told her all the things he had done, all the ways he had done me wrong and hurt me and whatever. And at the end of my story, this therapist said. So what's your part in this whole thing? And I remember being so mad at her. And I got in my car and I drove home and I was like, never going back there. But a little later that night, I just kind of kept hearing that question in my head. What's your part in all of this? And I think it was probably the single most important question I'd ever been asked. Because I needed to recognize that this dance that had been happening in my marriage was a dance with two partners. Or I was going to recreate it. I probably would have done the same thing again. So I needed to start looking at all the ways that I didn't speak up when I needed to. All the ways I tolerated too much. I allowed myself to get in some of these situations. So, I think how we're going to change the drama triangle, especially if this is a way you've been interacting and living for a long time, is it takes time. It takes practice, but we can start. Working on if you are a victim, learning to hold yourself accountable, looking for ways that you have choice and power, and you're going to have all 3 of these roles, like you said, you might step into some in different places. So, when you find yourself stepping in, so, when I catch myself getting in rescuer with my kids, a couple of my questions I would ask myself is what boundaries am I not setting inside of me? Where am I not trusting them or me? Like I'm not trusting me to be able to tolerate their distress. That takes work to be able to tolerate other people's distress, right? So maybe that means I need to go for a walk. Maybe that means I need an appointment with my therapist or to take a bath or do something to kind of work on my distress. That makes sense. It does. And the question that she asked you, what is your part in this? I had The exact same question asked to me in a different way. And I've talked about this in another episode that I did with Dan about how, when his porn use really became an issue and we were sent to this, AA style meeting. And luckily we had people who were actually trained to administer the AA program, in the way it's supposed to. At first I was so mad that I had to go through like, I have all these meetings to go through because you're looking at porn. That seems wildly unfair, but there is a step where you have to do a searching moral inventory and it's exactly that question. Okay, what is your part in this dynamic and in all of the areas of our marriage that I really wanted to blame him that I wanted to kind of elevate myself above him because I was better because I. You know, I might be angry and critical, but at least I'm not looking at porn because I felt like that was a horrible thing. At that point. I had to answer that question over and over, like, what is your part? And it changed my life, right? Yeah. I think when I did that process, it was very hard to admit. I think I went through the process of looking at that for a long time, but I was even able to kind of trace it back to the decision to marry him. I think on some level I was looking for someone broken. I could fix, right? Like the rescuer in me was seeking out someone that I could fix because I think the rescuer in me thought, well, then they won't leave me. Yeah. Right. Like I can have a lot of compassion for that version of me that she was trying to create safety for herself, but there's no safety that comes in the drama triangle. So I was using tools to give myself safety and actually created the thing I was most afraid of happening. Yeah. Left. Yeah. It's fascinating. So if you're the victim looking for places to be accountable is the first kind of step out of that. Uh, if you're a rescuer looking for where you are not. Having boundaries, not having boundaries and not trusting and for the persecutor action. Yes, compassion for our own vulnerability, and I think, especially for, family members who have victims in their world. We kind of want to approach it with some care, like, it doesn't feel good when you're in a tough spot to have somebody like, well, what's your choice? But I do think something like, I know you have some choices in there, right? We can, we can approach it with some gentleness, like, Let's see what choices you have. Let's just write them down. We just want to start expanding your vision just a bit because victims in particular, feel very trapped. I don't see any way out of this. And so helping them, it's like opening a window, just see one option, one choice you have. Let's try that on. Well, this has been, one of the things that you've taught me that is probably Helped me most just to make some changes where I wanted to. So thank you so much. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that? You just want to make sure you say kind of before we wrap up here. Other than I just hope that it's a tool that you use for compassion, you're going to see yourself in these roles and that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It's most likely the way almost all of us, I think we're raised just to step into roles instead of being authentic. So it can just be a gentle tool to help you find some freedom. And I love what you said at the beginning and just want to reiterate it that each of these roles comes from a place of pain and is all motivated by just the human need for safety, for connection, for belonging, for having a place. And knowing that that place is secure, right? That, we will be met with, love and taken care of, but I just think it's one of the fascinating things about human nature is that when we find ourselves in these roles, we actually preclude getting the thing that we want. We, we don't get real safety. We don't get real connection inside of these roles of the drama triangle. You're all Band Aid fixes. Yeah. So, the hardest step in the beginning is stepping out and feeling like you don't really know what to do, but if you can keep remembering that nothing heals in this triangle. So as long as we're in it, and it only takes one person to step out to disrupt the drama triangle. So you don't need everyone else in your system to step out, even if you step out. I'm no longer going to step in and be a rescuer. I'm no longer going to allow people to do for me things I actually know I can do. If one person steps out, the entire drama triangle starts to shake up. It's pretty powerful. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking about, if Dan's listening to this, my victimhood around him fixing my tech things, though, that's the exception to this, right? I actually can't do it. I actually can't. Thank you so much for having this discussion and sharing. Thanks for having me. It was great.