Are you inside a drama triangle? How do you know if you’re inside one? What is the drama triangle anyway? If you’re having negative thoughts or negative emotions, if you’re feeling bad in your relationship or in your family, or if you’re feeling bad or angry all the time, you’re in a drama. And there are three roles that people play in it – the victim, the rescuer, and the persecutor. Frederic Gobeil and Christy Whitman break down each of these roles to help you step out of the drama triangle and walk into a circle of love, happiness, and freedom.
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The Three Roles People Play In The Drama Triangle
We’re going to talk about how do you know if you’re inside the drama triangle?
What is the drama triangle?
You know you’re in the drama if you feel bad.
Feel bad about what?
If you feel any negative thoughts or emotions, if you’re feeling bad in your couple or if you’re feeling bad in your family, if you have a bad perspective. Feeling negativity at all, feeling fear, resentment, hurt, frustration. You don’t feel you’re free to be who you are. You don’t feel free to speak what your truth is. If you’re feeling angry all the time, you’re in drama. What happens is and this is not the way it is supposed to be set up, most humans have learned a way of relating with one another that is in three roles. There are three points to this drama triangle. There are three different ways you can be set up. As a child, you were given this role. You are going to play the glue, the rescuer. I am going to play the victim. You are going to play the persecutor.
There are these three roles. This is from the Karpman Drama Triangle from the ‘60s. The one role is the rescuer, “Let me help you. Can I do everything for you? I don’t want you to be upset, so let me do everything. Let me make sure that I’ve got things figured out ten steps ahead of you without asking. Let me try to anticipate whatever needs you’re going to have so that you don’t get upset. Let me walk on eggshells. Let me make sure that everything is fine and everything is to your liking. Let me try to control the universe around you so that you’re okay.” That’s playing a rescuer and it’s exhausting for both sides but to a victim, you can never do enough. You can never show up enough. You can never rearrange the world and control the world enough because the victim, “The poor me nothing ever goes right. That’s not enough. I’m angry because nothing ever goes right.”
There’s always something that comes up, something that needs to be done or repaired.
It’s always something they complain about, someone else to blame. These two roles, the rescuer and the victim, they play off each other. When you’re in a rescue role, “I’m going to do everything for you.” The victim doesn’t appreciate your help, then the rescuer becomes the victim. I’ve done everything for you. I’m always doing stuff for you. I’m trying to rearrange the world and make you happy and you’re never happy. It’s never enough, so now you’re playing the victim or there’s the persecutor. That’s the bad guy that’s bad, that sucks and complain. The government’s this, my boss is this. Everything is bad.
The world is falling apart.
That’s also a very angry role that, “Nothing is going the way I want to, so I’m going to revenge. I am going to make this person pay for this. I’m going to show that person.” That’s the persecutor. It’s the place of, “I’m going to show them or I’m going to show you. I’m going to make you pay.” If you’re holding onto resentments for something that your partner did, you’re playing a persecutor role. “I’m not going to forgive you because I’m going to make you pay.” It’s a form of punishment. When we are in the drama triangle, this is the only way we know how to function. Most human relationships because most of us were raised in the drama triangle, that’s how most people function. When you step out of the drama triangle and you are in this circle of love, the circle of happiness, where there are choices and freedom. How do you know you’re in the circle of love? You feel good. The drama triangle always feels bad for a lack and limitation. A circle of love, you feel good, you feel free, you’re allowing.
You feel that your choices of what you need to do are being respected. The solutions that you come up with are the ones that are being respected. The things that you decide that you want to do are actually being done. It’s coming from you. It’s not coming from the outside perspective of anyone else.
It is amazing that when you have very connected people to their own wants, their own desires, to their own feelings of connection, they both can get what they want in a relationship. It is amazing how that happens because we think, “If I’m getting what I want, he’s not going to be able to get what he wants or if he’s getting what he wants, that might be different than what I want.” If both people are aligned and connected to this stream of energy, love, compassion, freedom, abundance, success, and we have our own individual connection with our divine self. We are so creative that other options that we can’t even think of in our minds will come about so that both people can be getting exactly what they want in the relationship. That is freedom. That is living outside of the drama triangle, knowing that there are preferences and we respect those preferences.
There are options, solutions and choices. You actually feel free. I at one point and in all of my relationships, whether it was with my mom, my sister, my dad, boyfriend’s friends. I always felt very constricted and there was this feeling of, “I’ve got to pack a bag. I’ve got to get out of here.” It was like a cutoff almost because I would feel strangled in the roles I was playing, tired of the roles. Tired of playing the victim or tired of doing everything and feeling the rescue and that nothing I did ever mattered or being that persecutor where it’s like, “I’m so mad and so angry at this person.” When I finally learned this information and even we learned it together in our relationship and got out of it, I feel so free to be who I am. The freer to be who I am, the more allowing he is of me. The more we have this freedom of love and this beautiful exchange and the more options, choices and creativity that comes about as a way of doing this.
Is it safe to say that when we’re with someone and we feel after spending so much time with that person, all of a sudden we feel like, “This doesn’t feel good. I’m looking for a way to leave. I want to get away from that person now that I spent maybe a couple of hours. The interaction doesn’t feel good?” That’s when we start feeling that we’re in the drama triangle with that person. Look into, “What am I feeling? Am I feeling anger? Am I feeling fear? What are these emotions that come up? Is it the emotion of feeling strangled and controlled?” That’s how I felt with my mother as well. I’ve always felt like I’m feeling controlled. I was saying to my wife there’s a lesson. It’s always about having a lesson and being lectured to. Its ask, there’s no permission.
What’s your perspective on that? It’s like, “This is what you need to do and this is what you should do.”
That was very much draining and, “Here goes the lecture again.” That didn’t feel good. I had to understand that at first because I had a hard time understanding I was in the drama triangle also when we started working together with that. I was in so involved in it that it was something that was normal.
Start to think about yourself in the roles that you play in your family. For me, I played the rescuer. I played the person that had to make sure that dad was okay and mom was the victim and dad was the persecutor. He was the bad guy. If I didn’t do everything I needed to do to make sure that everything was okay, he was going to get mad and explode and then my mom would get yelled at. We shift the different roles in there. It doesn’t feel good. When you get out of the drama triangle and you start learning a new way of relating to one another, one that is truly in divine because our divine makeup is to be in the right relationship, to have an outpouring of love and allow it to come back where everybody wins. Everybody has options and choices. One of the laws that I’ve been talking about the Seven Essential Laws is the Law of Allowing. “If you would change, then I would feel better.” You are only not allowing, but you are also in the drama triangle. You’re expecting someone else to perform or do or say something different so that you feel a different way. That is a recipe for disaster. It’s a recipe for a bad relationship, “If you would make more money or if you would take more responsibility, if you do more around the house.”
How many times does that work?
“You change and then I can feel better.” No. Choose to feel good. Choose to be in control of your own thoughts, emotions, alignment and you automatically are out of the drama triangle. Your joy, happiness, connection, connectedness doesn’t depend on anybody or anything. It is a choice that we make from day-to-day. There are people out there that have horrible conditions and circumstances or have been through horrible things in their lives or a lot of things that they’ve had to overcome or obstacles and they still find that inner joy.
We all have things in our lives that have happened to us or that are happening to us.
It’s the decision to be joyful. You could have someone that has everything that’s perfect and I have clients like that. It’s like, “She’s complaining about the builders. She’s building this big mansion with all of her money in the bank and her husband adores her and her kids that love her.” She’s complaining and playing a victim about the builder won’t call her back. You could have every condition and there’s always something to complain about. It’s where you put your perspective. You could have everything perfect in your life and still not feel joy, but why not feel joy and create all the conditions around you. You have that power to do that. It’s a choice. It’s an option. My dad, when I was a kid, used to pay me. I would sit there at the kitchen table and he would look at me with pure exhaustion. He would go, “I will pay you a quarter if you are just quiet for one minute.” I would last for ten seconds and I’d go, “Is a minute up yet?”
Give her the freedom to speak. This is part of what I call our nucleus in the family. For us, I’ve always said the nucleus of the family is our energy together. What we create together inside that beautiful loving energy then everything else that’s around us is created from that energy of her and I. It’s not the other way around. We don’t take the energy from the kids for example.
We don’t try to suck into the kid’s energy.
Our kids feed off of our nucleus and anything else. Buying a house or coming to the studio, we are feeding off of our nucleus, our energy together.
The Drama Triangle: When you are opening your heart and you’re allowing the true energy of love to flow out of you, it connects with your partner.
In that nucleus, it takes two people. It’s not our energy collectively. I bring energy into that nucleus. He brings energy into that nucleus. If one or both of us are off, it shifts everything in our lives. That’s why it’s so important. Everything must start with your own inner connection and your own choice of how you want to feel and how you want to perceive the world and what thoughts you’re thinking and opening your heart instead of closing down your heart. When you are opening your heart and you’re allowing that true energy of love to flow out of you, it connects with your partner. It creates that beautiful nucleus. It extends to your kids, your animals, your work, your money, your projects. It all starts with our own inner connection. When you’re there, you’re not in drama. You’re out of the drama triangle.
Another way of seeing that you’re not in the drama triangle, you’re not involved in drama, is that you’re creating healthy boundaries. You’re not stuck in the role of brother, sister, husband or a coworker. You’re in your own individuality feeling what your preferences are. Once you realize all that, you’re not in the drama triangle.
We have a course that shows people what is in the drama triangle and what is out and how to shift it. To help you even in the language. One of the ways to know if you’re in drama or not is the language that you use. I would invite you to go to WatchYourWords.com and it’s a 30-day process where you learn the words to say and the words not to say and why. The language that we use is so important. Words have such creative power. When we’re using words like, “You should,” you should do this with your partner. It never feels good to be should on.
It’s like an order. We feel like we have to do them. Do we have to do this? No. We’d rather have a suggestion.
What are my options? What are my choices? Things like that can help give you tips to get in or out of the drama triangle. We’re going to be launching that for couples, how to know you’re in or how to know you’re out and what to do about it. If you want more information, you want some coaching, how can we dive in together and with the Quantum Council of Light to help you shift your relationships, you can go to ConnectedCoupling.com. Thank you so much. Any last words that you want to say?
I appreciate you all being here with us. We will see you next time.
Leave us a comment. Let us know what’s on your mind and what you like us to address, and we’d be happy to do so in our next episode. Meanwhile, just remember that being in the drama feels bad. Feeling out of the drama and into the circle of love feels good and that you make that choice.
