Drama Triangle: You Spin Me Right Round
Karpman's Drama Triangle is a way to visualize how easily our communication patterns can break down. Knowing about the Drama Triangle is a step for getting off of it.
Creatures of Habit
We tend to fall into patterns. It can feel like patterns are the brain’s way of saving space. If we do things in the same order often enough we no longer have to put much effort into paying attention. It becomes a shortcut and takes less brain juice. These patterns happen everywhere from the same routine you may use to get to work or school (ever get somewhere you go all the time and not remember how you got there?), hygiene habits (ever notice how you may start with the same part of your routine every time?), and even how you settle in for the night (just the right arrangement of pillows). Patterns occur in how we communicate. They get particularly tricky when those patterns begin to create or show dysfunction. I am going to borrow elements from Karpman’s Drama Triangle to explore how this might look.
Dramatic Roles
One of the three roles on the Drama Triangle is the role of Victim. This does not mean that the person is actually a Victim or would even self-identify as one. This is the person in the interaction who, often inaccurately, believes they lack power. For there to be a powerless Victim in this social dynamic there must be someone in a role of power. The Persecutor believes they have power over the Victim. They may use that power to strongly ‘suggest’ the Victim agree with them or follow through with their advice. The final role of Rescuer then appears to confront the Persecutor. They believe they also have more power than the Victim in order to think that they are capable of swooping in to save the Victim - that the Victim is in some way incapable of saving themselves. Unfortunately, the situation is not so Black and White or good versus evil as both the Persecutor and the Rescuer may have good intentions. It is unfortunate and dysfunctional because everyone in this Drama Triangle just dismissed the power of the person playing the role of Victim.
And Then It Spins
Individuals often have a starting role. Meaning, they tend to start off playing one of these roles more often than the others. What makes the triangle so tricky is that it spins and soon someone is playing more than just the role they started with. Let’s say Person A starts out feeling as though Person B is persecuting them. Person C sees the situation, steps in, and begins a conflict with person B. Now, Person B may feel as if Person C is their persecutor and looks to Person A to step back into this mess as their rescuer. Person A attempts to address the issue and now Person C could feel as if they have become the victim and that person A is their persecutor for taking sides with Person B. It gets messy fast as the participants begin trading places as the conflict increases.
Next Steps
Let’s say you’ve noticed this pattern is happening and you are accidentally falling into one of the roles. Your responsibility now becomes to change your own behavior and not focus on what the other participants are doing. If you walk in there telling everyone all about how they are messing everything up by being on this Drama Triangle then you run the risk of getting thrown into the Persecutor role. Our focus when we set goals will always be to acknowledge what is within our control. We cannot control how other people attempt to engage with us, but we can practice making positive changes to how we respond to others.
You may notice that when you try to no longer engage in the drama triangle that it feels worse. After all, you are trying to make a system change and that is very uncomfortable for the people involved. Any changes you make will disrupt the system and it may feel like you are ‘creating’ conflict. The conflict was already there. By learning where your edges are and how to express them there will always be initial discomfort (to put it mildly). If change were easy none of us would be in these positions to begin with!
Building healthy ways of interacting with our own internal experiences and the world around us will rarely will be easy, but will always be worth the effort it takes to improve our lives. If you would like help knowing how to identify and make these changes in your own life consider seeking professional help from a trained counselor.
References
https://karpmandramatriangle.com/dt_article_only.html
Vignette
Some Posts have matching Vignettes, fictitious short stories to illustrate an example related to the topic of the post. This post shares more about what Vignettes are and what they are not.
“I told you to stop throwing the ball!”
“I didn’t mean to…”
“You didn’t mean to throw the ball right after I told you to stop?” Father was standing with hands on hips next to the pile of broken glass. The talk radio set up in his work shed could be heard more clearly. It always sounded like there were a lot of angry men in there. Carson did not like being near those noises.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Sorry would be doing what I tell you to do. Sorry would be listening. Look at this mess!”
Drawn outside by the increasing volume Mother moved to stand beside Carson. She could see the ball glove on his hand and the broken glass. “Carson, were you playing near Father’s shed?”
“No! I was way over there. I didn’t mean for the ball to come over here. I’m so sorry.” Tears were welling up.
Father huffed. “Get those crocodile tears out of here. If you cared about anything I wanted this wouldn’t have happened.” Carson began sobbing loudly.
Mother’s head snapped around. “Don’t talk to him like that! He said it was an accident.”
“Don’t raise your voice at me. He did something wrong. He should be punished.”
“It was an accident. Accidents happen! You can’t tell me you’ve never made a mistake.”
Carson looked up from where he was standing slightly behind his mother. He had desperately tried to make the tears stop. He was nearly hiccuping from his efforts to hold his breath to keep any noise from coming out. His heart was racing. His chest and throat felt so tight. His whole face was hot and wet. He had seen this before.
“You are always defending him. I work all the time. I work for our money and I deserve time to myself. Now, I have to spend more money to fix my one place of comfort.”
“Your one place of comfort? Where’s my one place of comfort? You’re sitting in there hiding from both of us. If you ever got around to actually playing catch with Carson this probably would have never happened. But you never do anything with him or me!”
Carson jumped between his parents. “Please don’t be mad! Please don’t fight!”
Both adults glanced at him before resuming the argument that quickly spun into every argument they had ever had.
Carson was silently crying as he wheeled the trash bin, which was bigger than him, toward the broken glass. He wiped at his face with his arm to see better. He wished he had a cape. People with capes could stop fights. People with capes could fly away. People with capes could throw and catch a ball without anybody else. Carson dropped the ball into the bin.