Healthy vs. Unhealthy Boundaries

What is the quickest way to go from unhealthy boundaries to healthy boundaries? That's what I'm going to teach you in today's video. We're going to learn how to quickly identify when you're sliding into the unhealthy and how to immediately turn the situation around. For those of you who are new here, welcome to put the shovel down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and this you YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction. In fact, this is the only channel out there that helps you understand addiction from every angle. Our goal is to help you get your life and your family back on track so you can get back to living the life that you actually want to live. And healthy boundaries is a huge part of that recovery process, no matter what side of the issue you're coming from. In fact, everything I'm going to teach you today is helpful and useful, whether or not addiction is in your life at these are just good, healthy skills to have that we can all benefit from. So a really quick way to figure out if you're sliding into unhealthy boundaries with someone is to determine whether or not you're on the drama triangle. Have you guys ever heard of the drama triangle? Now, I made a video about it a while back with one of our counselors, Kim, who is awesome. She's our relationship specialist, and I'll be sure to link it up for you here at the end. But a basic recap is this. In the 1960s, Stephen Cartman came up with this theory called the drama triangle as a way of explaining dysfunctional social interactions. And I love to explain this to people because it's so easy to understand and it has such a concrete visual which really just helps cement it in your mind. So basically, I want you to think of a triangle with the pointy end down. And at the bottom of that triangle, there is a role called the victim. Right down there at the bottom. Now, up here on this side is a roll that we call the rescuer. And over here, the third roll is one that we call the persecut. If you find yourself acting in any of these kind of ways or in any of these roles or demonstrating these characteristics, then this is definitely a surefire signal that you are sliding into the unhealthy zone. And it probably isn't going to end well unless you catch it. Let's start with the victim role. Now, when we're in the victim role, we see ourselves as victimized, helpless, hopeless. It's not our fault. We can't help it, we're stuck in this situation or we're a victim of circumstance. Now sometimes we, we really have been victims of some bad things. But what I'm talking about here is a victim role, as in a mindset or way of coming at or approaching life in general. Basically, it's a way in which we keep ourselves from taking or accepting responsibility for something going on in our life. Now, we can all fall into this kind of thinking from time to time. Like, let's say if you're in a bad relationship or if you have a bad job, or you're in some other kind of situation which you really don't like. Because when we're in this state of victim thinking, we feel hopeless and helpless. We seek out rescuers, which is that other role, remember right up here on the other side of that triangle we talked about. And rescuers love to do what they love to rescue rescuers. When we're in our rescuer zone, we have a tendency to want to help other people because it makes us feel good. The problem is, is that when we're helping people that are in a victim thinking state, we end up doing things that may be helpful short term, but we end up crippling people long because we're doing things for them that they should be doing for themselves. And while it can make us feel good in the short term to be a rescuer or a hero, and it can help the person in the victim role in a short term way, it ends up in disaster. Because guess what? If you're helping someone who's in a victim mindset, guess what? It's not a temporary problem. There's nothing that you can do to help them out of a temporary situation because it's a mindset issue. And what you're going to find is that when a person's in a victim role, it's going to keep happening no matter what help and support you give them, no matter what good things come their way. The whole thing about a victim mindset is you can't see the good things when they come your way. So what ends up happening when you're in the rescuer role is you pour into the person and you pour in and you help and you help and you help and eventually you become frustrated because the other person won't help themselves, or because they aren't appreciative of your help, or because they don't reciprocate in some way. Ultimately, in one way or the other, you're going to find yourself with a lot of Resentment, because you're doing more than the other person is doing. And you have slid out of the helping zone into the enabling zone, which is going to leave you with a bad feeling. And then once you've done that and you have this resentment, guess what's happened to you now you're in the victim role right now. You've helped this poor person who couldn't help themselves, and you've done all this for them, and they don't appreciate you and they're not helping themselves and they're taking advantage of you. You see how you just slid from the rescuer role into the victim role? Yeah. That's what happens is we all fall into all of these roles. Sometimes we just get on the drama triangle in our own head with our own selves. It's like multiple personalities in there, isn't it? And then once we fall into that victim role and we've built these resentments and we're frustrated at the people around us, guess what happens next? A lot of times when you're feeling that way, you can jump over into the persecutor role. Now, persecutor type thinking is this kind of thinking that's like it's all your fault. When you're coming from a persecutor point of view, you're usually setting really strict boundaries. You're angry sometimes you could be acting like a bully. You're judgmental, you're critical, you're upset, and you're running over other people. And guess what? Most of the time, when people do that, they feel justified in doing that and being a bully or running over other people because they feel like somehow they are entitled to do that because they were wronged and some kind of way. So you see, this victim thinking really is at the center of the whole triangle. That's why it's at that bottom point. Because that victim thinking can lead you to acting out, being ugly. And then sometimes after you act out and you're ugly, then you kind of feel bad about it and you regret it, and then you want to make up for it, and then you move back over into the rescuer role. Now we can have all of these thought process and interactions within our own head, like we're having a conversation about something that's going on in our life. We can have these dynamics within our relationships, in our families, in our friends, and in our work situations. If you're finding that you're having thinking of any one of those three roles, that is the quickest, fastest way to figure out that you are probably having an unhealthy boundary, which is going to lead you to some not so great dynamics and very likely lead you into making more bad decisions, which is going to keep you stuck on the drama triangle. Now, what is the quickest way to get off of the drama triangle? Well, luckily there is a solution and it is called the empowerment triangle. And so there is a healthy version for each of those three roles. Now, before we get to that, I will tell you that in the description, I've put a link for you so that you can download my worksheet on communicating positive regard to other people. This is one of the fastest ways to improve our relationship. Now, these are healthy, genuine statements that you can make that are healthy boundaries. Not coming from a rescuer place or from a victim place, but from a healthy mindset to sort of get relationships to start moving back on track. Now, that's going to be a very useful tool as you move into the healthy roles. So let's get into what those are. Now, in the empowerment triangle, the persecutor becomes the challenger. And when you're the challenger, you're firm but fair, you're assertive, you're not critical, you're not domineering, you're not bullying, you're not running over anyone, but you are holding a line and you're holding people to expectations. That's the healthy version of the persecutor. Now, the healthy version of the rescuer is a coat, because coaches are caring and empathetic and they want to help you, but they come at it from a boundary place, from a let me help you help yourself kind of place, which is much less likely to lead you to those resentments and bad feelings of victimhood. And then you won't get back over into doing and saying the ugly things and moving over to the persecutor. All we got to stop the drama at some point, and this is how you do it. And in the empowerment triangle, the victim becomes the creator, the problem solver. They become the hero of their own story. They pull themselves up out of their own bad situation and in doing so, they gain a lot of self respect and confidence, which sure does make it easier to have happy, healthy relationships with other people in your life. Now, like I said before, we all have a tendency to fall into these unhealthy roles from time to time. And most of us have sort of like a primary role where we tend to get on the drama triangle at maybe we jump on it at the rescuer point, or we jump on it at the persecutor point or the victim point. But once you're on the drama triangle, you tend to circle around all of the roles. Now, if you're really interested in making sure you stay off of that drama triangle and you want to learn more about boundaries, I want you to watch these videos next because it goes more in depth on how to have assertive, healthy boundaries with other people. And don't forget that positive communication download that you can get in the description.