An Introduction to the Drama Triangle

Ah, the drama triangle. It's one of our favorite tools that we use at the conscious leadership group. And it goes like this. Most of us learned how to be in relationship to ourselves, to each other, and to the world around us by being in one of three roles. The first role is called the hero. And the hero's job is to seek temporary relief. Now, the key word is temporary. So we all know the story about the man who's hungry. We could feed him a fish every night over and over again. That's what heroes do. Or we could teach him to fish for himself, which is a whole different kind of taking radical responsibility so that we permanently resolve the issue. We can hero ourselves. Man, that was a rough day. Where's the Internet or the TV or the alcohol or the food or the running or the cleaning or whatever it is that I do that gives me some temporary relief? I don't actually really want to look at what caused all that stress that I'm in at the end of the day. Instead, I just want to relieve it just for a little while, and then maybe tomorrow or the next week or the next month, I've got to do it again. I can also hero you. If there's emotions that you're having, I don't want you to have them. I can tell you it's going to be okay. And I can do a lot of suppressing of what I don't feel comfortable with. So I hero the emotional states of others. We all can can join in and create a philanthropy and hero them over there who need us. It'll work for a little while, but next year, they're probably going to come around for more money because the issue didn't get resolved. The next role in the drama triangle is the villain, and the villain's job is to blame. Now, we can do that three ways. I can blame myself. I should be a different weight. I should have known better. I should have made a different choice back when I was younger than that's blaming this way. Or I could blame you. I wouldn't have these problems if it wasn't for you. In fact, I was fine until you showed up. Or them. We all know who they are who are screwing it up for the rest of us. And depending on whether you tend to lean more to the left or the right, you're usually going to have a different them that you pick. Finally, in the drama, triangle is the victim. And the victim's job is to be at the effect of. I could be at the effect of the weather, the economy, my kids, my job, whatever it is. Oh, the traffic or time. All these things we get at the effect of and we feel disempowered. This is a really popular one. In fact, we might argue that almost all dramas are a race to see who gets to be the biggest victim, who gets to be most at the effect of. So if you want to work with us, we'll help you understand how you play on the drama triangle and what you can do to get off of the it.