Drama Triangle
The drama triangle is important enough that it deserves its own chapter.
I first learned about it from Gay and Katie Hendricks a decade or so ago, and I can’t believe no one taught me this before!
This is 99% of the dysfunction in all human relationships.
Including politics, media, international relations, lawsuits … it’s everywhere!
It’s insane!
And it’s killing us. Literally.
When you’re caught in the drama triangle, it seems like a lot is happening. But in truth, other than insane amounts of energy being expounded on absolutely nothing useful, nothing changes.
Let’s explore.
Three Roles
The drama triangle says there are three roles in all human drama:
1. The victim
2. The villain
3. The hero
The victim is you and me when we believe that our circumstances have any power over us.
Whenever you believe the thought that “when only ___ happens, then I’ll feel___,” you’re in the victim role.
There’s no shame or guilt or judgment in that. We all do it. It’s human. It’s part of our wiring. But the sooner you can spot it and step out of it, the better. For you and for others.
So if there’s a victim, there must also be a villain. The villain can be a circumstance, a person, a group of people, an institution, the government, the weather, nature, anything that you believe is preventing you from having what you want.
And then, my friends, comes the hero.
The hero is probably the most sneaky of the three roles.
The hero is the person who takes pity at the victim and offers to help them in their battle against the evil villain.
That seems noble enough.
We want to help people who are victims, right?
The problem is that the hero role accepts the premise that this person is indeed a victim, and that the villain is to blame.
They end up reinforcing the victim mentality.
Why would they do such a thing? Because it makes the hero feel good.
Typically the hero has feelings of guilt and probably victimhood in areas of their own lives. Putting their attention on other victims helps take the focus away from their own pain and makes them feel good for a moment. It’s a form of mood alteration. It becomes an addiction.
This is why people virtue signal. “Look how good I am! I’m helping the poor migrants. I’m an ally!” It’s all about making the signaler, the hero, feel good, and it does nothing to actually help others. It seems like a very selfless thing to do, but in reality it’s extremely selfish. Sorry to burst your bubble.
A classic example is affirmative action.
It’s meant to make up for past injustices by making it easier for so-called underprivileged people to get into prestigious schools. Thomas Sowell has spoken extensively about this.
The result is that black students are mismatched with institutions, which only causes them to drop out later, costing them crucial years early in their careers. It is hurting the very people we’re trying to help, so that uninformed “hero” college administrators can feel good about themselves.
You don’t make people smarter or more qualified by handing out degrees. You have to look at root causes and address those. Any other meddling actively makes things worse for the very people you’re looking to help. Butonly every time.
I’m not judging people for doing this. I’m pointing out the ridiculousness of the human drama. We’re all human. We all do fucked up shit. When we know better, we do better. Hopefully this will help you know better.
What about the villain? Who would ever want to be the villain?
Turns out there are people who do. I’ve certainly done my share of villain role. With my kids, with my team, with strangers. We step into villain each time we judge or blame or criticize others. Including ourselves. It’s very common.
When discussing politics, we need to notice when we’re caught in the drama triangle of victims, villains, and heroes, and step out of it.
Nothing productive can happen while we’re caught in the drama triangle.
Ending the Drama
What’s the way out of the drama triangle?
Depending on the role you see yourself in at the moment:
1. If you’re playing the Victim, step into the Creator role
2. If you’re playing the Hero, step into the Coach role
3. If you’re playing the Villain, step into the Challenger role
As a Creator, you ask yourself: What do I really want? What steps can I take to get there?
As a Coach, you encourage the Victim to solve their own problems and create their desired future, ie. stepping into Creator.
As a Challenger, you provide loving pressure for something new to be learned or created.
For everyone, you become present with what is. You shift into curiosity, you recognize that everyone has their own freedom and power that no one can take away from them.
No-one is a victim of circumstance.
No matter what happens in your life, you always have the power to choose what it means and what you want to do about it.
The Big Pill
Have you noticed that when you’re in a victim role, you don’t actually want your problem solved?
I’m sure you’ve experienced this yourself. I know I have. Many times.
For many years, I was struggling in my business, and anytime someone would try to help me, I’d just keep arguing for my problems. I’d explain to them why my situation was impossible to solve and why none of their ideas could work.
Eventually, of course, they ran out of patience and gave up, leaving me to my misery. Argue for your limitations, and they get to be yours.
For the first roughly 40 years of my life, I felt unhappy and unsuccessful.
One day I sat down at a local coffee shop in the East Village in New York to write the sales letter for an offer I was making, and right in the middle of writing, all of my feelings of worthlessness and depression and failure overwhelmed me.
I felt like a victim of my own thoughts and feelings. I blamed my parents, the country I grew up in, growing up in the wrong environment, having the wrong class mates, the wrong friends. If only I’d been born in America, in Silicon Valley, had better parents, yadda yadda yadda, then I’d have been just like Steve Jobs.
This thought stream made me so depressed I just couldn’t finish the sales letter. Why would anyone want to listen to me when I was such a depressed loser?! I left the coffee shop and went back home for a session with my coach at the time, Tripp Lanier.
He asked me: “What do you get out of playing this victim game?”
I was flummoxed. “What do you mean what I get out of it? I don’t get anything out of it. It’s destroying my life. It’s not something I choose to do. It’s something my mind does because I wasn’t loved the right way as a kid. It’s my parents’ fault.”
And he said: “No, I think you do it because you get something out of it.”
I was still perplexed. Get out of it? What do I get out of it? I get nothing out of it. In fact, it prevents me from achieving my dreams, from launching this offer, from making money, from helping people. It doesn’t do anything for me.
He insisted. “I think you get to avoid taking responsibility.”
Huh?
That was a shocking statement.
Avoid taking responsibility.
An entirely new thought for me.
But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
This was a trick my own mind played on me because it “knew” it would make sure I never put myself “out there,” which means I didn’t risk being judged or failing.
Oh, the dreaded f-word.
Failure.
Ouch.
Once I saw this, I couldn’t unsee it.
Your mind will play its “greatest hits” that it knows will keep you small, stuck… and therefore “safe”.
Taking risks is dangerous. The job of your survival mind is pure survival. Not thriving. Not pursuing your dreams. Not “success.” Just don’t die right this moment.
And since you’re alive, whatever strategy it used in the past clearly worked! So it’ll keep doing it again and again and again.
This led me to what I call “the big pill.”
Recognizing that all of the stories I’d told myself for at least 30 years about why I couldn’t be happy or successful because of how my parents didn’t love me the right way, or I was born in the wrong country, or spoke the wrong language, or had the wrong friends, and on and on … all of those stories were lies.
That my lack of happiness and “success” were all of my own making.
I’d told myself a story of how my lack of happiness and success were someone else’s fault.
And so in order to prove my point, I had to unconsciously do everything in my power to remain unhappy and unsuccessful.
Because if one day I did become happy and successful, that would be proof that my victim story had been a lie.
Do you see how this works?
When you argue for your victim position, you get to be right.
Recognizing that it was all a lie the whole time is what I call the big pill.
It’s a hard pill to swallow.
And the longer you wait, the bigger it gets.
But the good news is, you only have to do it once.
And once you do, you’re free and you get to become a Creator.
So to sum up, when you’re playing the victim role, you will argue for your problems, and you will fight anyone who tries to take them away from you.
When you’re in Victim, you think you want help solving your problems, especially from people who are willing to play the Hero role. But what you really want is having your victimhood validated.
We all do it. There’s no use in shaming people for being in Victim. There is use in becoming the Creator, the Coach, or the Challenger.
