How to get out of the Dreaded Drama Triangle

Test your way out of Stephen Karpman’s Dreaded Drama Triangle.

 Let’s use racism as an example of something that we want to reduce.  And further in our example let’s imagine that we have a high school with a club that has taken on reducing racism as a cause.

 The 3 corners of Karpman’s dreaded drama triangle are rescuer, victim and persecutor.

 The club members all have had experiences of racial discrimination.  They have been victims.

 They want to do something about it, they want to rescue the majority of the student body from that behavior.

 The club members receive a sharp push back coated in denial. They feel persecuted venting and raging privately.  While intellectually persecuting those that they feel have offended them.

 The club members want to rescue and therefor show off that they have a superior understanding of racism. In the mix there is an undercurrent that the majority student population have no ability to control racial slurs and excluding behavior.

 The majority student body don’t see themselves this way and they feel persecuted.  They begin to demonstrate a collective avoidant personality and become hyper sensitive to criticism. Like the worker who becomes unproductive because of persecuting bosses, they quit but still show up.

 In this example everyone is in the dreaded trauma triangle weaving through the different hats or labels of victim, persecutor and rescuer into their ego state, as though there is no way out.

 They feel like the Black Sheep whose wool has no value because you cannot dye it any color but black.

Similar to anxious and avoidant attachment styles it is a negative cycle. The solution; awareness, education and work are required to break free.

But what work?

 David Emerald has come up with a concept called The Empowerment Dynamic. TED. It’s new thinking creating neural plasticity.  The 3 corners of The Empowerment Dynamic triangle are the challenger which replaces the persecutor. Creator which replaces the victim and the coach which replaces the rescuer.

 The distinctions are sutle but helpful.   One of the differences between a coach and a rescuer is a coach asks a player if they want a little help. Plus, the assistance is usually science-based.  In the DDT model the rescuer assumes the person has no ability compared to the rescuer’s skills.  

Using Eric Burns Transactional Analysis the DDT rescuer is like the parent speaking down to the child and the child meekly responding.

 The TED coach assumes that the player has all the ability and just needs a bit of shaping and with each iteration they become stronger and more valuable.

 The persecutor becomes the challenger. I propose that the challenger create a test.

A smart test developed on the ISO methodology: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. A test like; let’s see if we can all go to the end of the school day without any verbal references to skin color or ethnic heritage.

 The coach would participate with verbal definitions and scoring.

 If this test was repeated for many days new thinking would take place.  Neuroplasticity would occur.   Like the way it does in Edward Deming’s plan, do, check, act cycle.  We will have created a new SOP.   We will have become a creator instead of a victim.   We are creating a new standard operating procedure.

 Emerald’s contribution to the Ted triangle with the challenger, coach and creator leave a person in a very positive disposition.

 In the club that wanted to stop racial discrimination they became less like persecutors and more like creators in the process.