Breaking Free from the Drama Triangle: How to Become the Owner of Your Life

Episode 48

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What role are you playing: I'm your host, Zach Spafford

hey, so. There are three basic roles that we often think of as happening or being played by people that we interact with, and I want to talk about those today, and in talking about those, I want to give you a solution.

I want to give you something that is going to help you rise up out of those roles in what we call the three natural roles that we tend to gravitate to. We call these the drama triangle. And I want to give you some concrete tips as to how you can rise up out of those and really take responsibility and ownership over your life.

Understanding how these roles work can really help each of us figure out where we are in this space and then ultimately move out of the triangle into the fourth role that is where we all really want to be. The thing about these roles is that we tend to occupy each of these roles at some point or another.

When it comes to our behavior, and especially addictive behaviors, that we want to stop, this can be a real stumbling block to real progress in the search of becoming the best person we can be. The other thing is that how you move from each of these roles in the drama triangle to the role that you ultimately want in order to maximize fulfillment and minimize the pain that you're feeling and creating is slightly different.

The three roles in the drama triangle, you may have heard of these. They sometimes they call them different names, but for, for today's purposes, we're going to call them the victim, the villain, or the prosecutor and the hero or the rescuer, the role that you want to have. And the one that will bring you the most long term satisfaction is that of what I call the owner.

So let's take a look at each of these roles and we'll talk about how you can move out of the drama triangle and into the role of the hero. Victim is the first one we're going to look at, and this is probably the most self explanatory role. When you're the victim, you feel powerless, you feel helpless, you feel stuck.

For someone who's dealing with pornography use as the user, they might think, I'm an addict, or I'm powerless against my addiction. For someone who is working at a job, they might think, This best job I'll ever get, I can't leave it, right? I'm stuck here. For a spouse of someone who's maybe overeating, they might think, I'm stuck with this person forever, and I'm no longer attracted to them.

At its most extreme, these are people who believe that the world is happening to them. To them, and nothing goes right in their life, and nothing good ever happens. You might describe them as an energy vampire. This is a term that I learned a long time ago with some friends. You know, basically they're always sucking the energy out of life, and they're really, they're unable to give anything back.

The issue with being the victim, as you might have surmised, is that in their mind, at least, nothing is their fault. Nothing is in their control and they can do nothing to make their life better, which is a pretty like dismal view on life. So the next one we're going to look at, we're going to call it The Prosecutor.

This Is the person who is self righteous and they can even show up as a bit of a bully. In this role, the person is taking responsibility for the actions of others and they do this from a judgmental and self satisfied tone. In a marriage, this person might believe, my husband just needs to stop looking at pornography.

It's that simple. At the office, this might look like, if accounting doesn't like the way we're doing this, Then they can come up here to sales and do it themselves. As a parent, you might get something along the lines of, I saved your butt once before on this. You never learn. I don't know why I even try. In that last one you can see how fluid these roles can be in that you see, someone might have been in the hero role here before, but now they're really laying into that person. They're really saying, "Hey, you're not doing it right. You're a bad person."

The third role in the drama triangle is that of the hero or the rescuer.

This person is someone who's taking responsibility for another person's problems and they make it their own, even though in their own life, they may not have everything together. They may not really be someone who should be giving advice

this is a person who will come in and spend a lot of energy in a short period trying to fix someone else's issues. And often they do this at their own expense. Basically they put off what they need to be doing to go fix someone else. So this is a person who may believe something like, "If I help this person, they will appreciate me."

When spouses fill this role, it often looks something like being in charge of your partner's internet browser. It may be that you become their exercise or diet plan creator. This could be a husband who's always stepping in to fix their wife's spending issues.

This may also be a parent who's standing in for a child to keep them from facing the consequences of their actions. Like not getting a good grade and then asking the teacher for extra credit, or arguing for their child that a paper might deserve a higher grade.

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The hero also may resent the people they rescued because they don't feel as though they have been properly thanked or that the person they rescued Doesn't like them enough. Often people in this role feel empty in the end because they're seeking external indications that they're a good person who others love because of what has been done for them

As we'll see, when we talk about the owner, this is a red herring chase for a sense of self-confidence, self-esteem, or self love that can only come from within. Interestingly, to me at least, is that the relationship between the hero and the victim is essentially the plot of every romantic comedy. Person A, usually a woman, has a problem they can't solve.

Person B, usually a man, comes up with a solution. Boom, they fall in love, everyone lives happily ever after. This is also a significant source of friction when we think of young men and young women when they get married, or even old men and old women, right? Sticking with gender stereotypes here for a moment and realizing that this can totally flip, right?

Women often think as the victim and they think, I'll marry this perfect man who will solve all my problems and take care of me for the rest of my life. And then the man often thinks as the hero, I'll marry this amazing woman who I'll take care of for the rest of my life. And again, these are natural roles that we kind of gravitate to, but they're not exclusive to men Or women. Women can seek to be the hero and men can seek to be the victim just as often.

So the final role that I want to talk about is the owner. And to me, the role that we should be seeking to fulfill in our interactions with others and in our interactions with ourselves. In this role, the individual takes responsibility for what's in their control. They recognize what is not in their control.

Or is not their responsibility and they stop arguing with what is. They might think something like when my son yells at me because I won't turn on the internet, that is him dealing with his emotions. I don't need to lose my cool and I don't need to fix his problem. Between spouses, this might look something like when my husband looks at pornography, that doesn't mean anything about me.

As a business owner myself, this has really hit home in that everything that goes on in my organization is my responsibility, but it's not always up to me to fix. I once had a staffer who wasn't able to do the work. It was my responsibility to get it done. It was my responsibility to make sure that work was done, but I still held her accountable for the work, and I was candid in my conversations with her about getting it done.

Meaning, I would let her know when I had to do the work that she had been assigned. She eventually left the company because she knew she was unable to do the work. She fixed the problem because I took on the responsibility for the health of the entire organization. Had I just come in and rescued her and given her maybe lesser duties for the same pay with no accountability, not Saying to her, Hey, this is your responsibility.

This needs to be executed on properly. I would have resented that and she would have eventually resented it because it would have, it wouldn't have been honest. It wouldn't have been the right way to do things. And the work still would have had to been done by me, which is not the way that you run a proper organization.

You put people in place because they can. Now, as an owner, you're not looking outside for someone to satisfy your need to feel love, but creating a sense of confidence and self esteem are your responsibility, and they're totally within your power as you work to create the person that you want to be. So now, the four roles and the fourth is the one that I created, the one that I think makes the most sense to me as an owner, you go in and you are responsible for what's going on in your life and you're not responsible for everything else that's going on.

But let's take a look at each of these roles in the drama triangle and see how you can move from the victim, the villain, and the hero, and talk about how we can get out of each. Because no matter which of the roles you occupy, they all eventually lead to feeling powerless and helpless. Heroes lose their ability to control or rescue victims.

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This person will ask themselves, What do I want? What steps can I take? How can I take responsibility for the outcomes in my life? That's what you're seeking to do. It's important for people who often feel like they are the victims to actively look for things that went right. Find things that they're grateful for each day and really grateful for, not just like, Oh, I'm grateful that the sun came up today.

No, find something that is important to you that went right, that you're grateful that it occurred that day, and that it. Feels good to think about that thing. Start with maybe one a day and increase it over time. Do two the next week and go and so forth. Right? Also look at what you're accomplishing each week.

Look back and figure out what did you do? How did you get it done? What Why did you accomplish that? And feel free to congratulate yourself and be proud of the work that you've done. This will begin to reorient your mind to what you have control over, how you can impact the outcomes that you're looking to create, and it'll also create actions that you can take so that you're no longer stuck in a victim role waiting for someone to come rescue you.

Next, let's talk about the prosecutor role. This is one of reorienting what you are taking responsibility over. For instance, when you're working with your spouse on their pornography problem, reorient from, he's bad, he's not keeping his covenants, why won't he do what I tell him with his internet browsing, which are all things that are out of your control that you are trying to take control of and move to things that are in your control.

So this comes in the form of being firm but fair. So that might sound like if you choose, in a conversation with your spouse, if you choose to look at pornography, I will choose to not be intimate with you until I'm ready. And we've talked about that on an earlier podcast. And I want to be clear here, if you are choosing to withhold intimacy as a punishment, or there is no long term plan for you to get to a place where you are working to return to intimacy, then you may be staying in that persecutor role.

Being firm and fair is a requirement of ownership. This allows you to own your feelings, set clear and achievable boundaries, and recognizes that this is not your problem to solve. So last, let's look at the hero role. When we want to leave this role, just like in the persecutor role, this is a moment to reorient yourself on the responsibility that you're taking over the situation.

When I think about, for instance, my kids and how they might be failing at their classes or not getting the grades they want, I have to place myself in a position to help them succeed by supporting, encouraging, and listening as they work to identify solutions to their grades problem on their own. Encouraging them, coaching them, and stepping back as they seek responsibility for their own grades.

Here, you can ask a lot of questions like, "well, what would you like to see happen? And what do you think you can change to improve the outcomes here?"

You also have to be willing to do nothing. Remembering what your responsibilities are is key.

This question is a good one to ask yourself, regardless of what the issue is.

Is it your responsibility to do X, right? Is it my responsibility to do my child's homework so they get good grades? Is it my responsibility to be in charge of my husband's internet browsing? Or back to the kids again, is it my responsibility to teach my child good executive function skills so they can survive in the real world without me?

Now that to me is a place where I can look at that and go, yeah, that's my responsibility. It's not my responsibility to change my child's grades. Also in the case of kids, I like to remember that it is much better if they fail a thousand times at home, because it will be a softer landing.

You don't have to make it this emotional, the world is ending kind of conversation. It can very much be taking a step back and saying, okay, well, this was the expectation. How do you think that you can meet that expectation the next time, rather than creating a whole plan and giving it to the kid and saying, okay, this is what you're going to do next time so that you don't have a problem.

This is an opportunity to take a step back and let them start to figure things out. When it comes to other adults, this is an opportunity to stand back again and recognize that you can't make the other people's decisions for them. So at work, for instance, if you have a colleague who is consistently failing, and that reflects on your work, be open and clear about that.

Create a paper chain that both encourages them and distances you from their performance. That doesn't mean let the work fall flat, because the work still has to be done. The projects that you're doing, they still have to be done. But being encouraging while still being clear about who's responsible for the work will help that person either move on or get better.

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When you do that, you create self confidence, you become self confident, you become the person that you want to be. Now, does that mean you're perfect? No, not by any stretch, but what it does mean is that when you see, okay, I've made a mistake. I can learn from that and everything is figureoutable.

All of a sudden you become completely empowered to build the life that you want to live and that is a huge blessing and that is a masterful way to move from a place where you feel stuck Or helpless or powerless to a place where now all of a sudden you get to create whatever you want in this world.

All right, you guys, this is always an awesome opportunity. I love doing this with you guys every single week. I appreciate your listenership.

All right. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.