Karpman triangle! The damn thing has been on my mind a lot since I first encountered it a couple weeks ago.
Any important relationship activates these three drama vertices at various times for both people, or even for three people, when the triangulation becomes real. Because I WAS WRONGED (which would make a good bumper sticker), most often, lately, I have been impaled on the victim vertex.
"Martyr," by someone named merkchen, from DeviantArt
While I was driving yesterday, I started to think of all the tools I have available to move away from that. And what I am already doing to work on being resilient, accepting the facts, learning from what happened and letting go, etc. All that stuff. The stuff that everyone, including myself, wants to happen basically overnight. But it happens somewhat on its own time, with some input. I can assist the process but it refuses to be rushed. The weird thing is, it seems like I can definitely slow it down. Odd how healing cannot be rushed, but we can definitely undo it. The Axiom of Time's Relationship to Creation and Destruction, we could call it, if we wanted to put everyone to sleep. Basically, it takes a long time of care and love to build something. The same thing that took all that love and focus and dedication and energy can be destroyed in seconds.
Anyway, what's the very first thing you do to get off the Victim Vertex? Obviously, since the key phrase is "I'm blameless," eventually the victim is going to have to accept responsibility for his or her reality, one way or the other. But it's a long, long way from A to B sometimes.
In 1990, Acey Choy published the transmuted Karpman triangle with each of the problematic drama roles converted to assets-- it's referred to as The Winner's Triangle, which I find annoying, but it's still a useful schema:
If you are an analytical person to any degree, and tend to be self aware and to enjoy conceptual frameworks and the ideas behind drama, stories, roles and situational strategies, you can see how these two triangles would provide endless "fun." Especially on long road trips. (side note: I wish the phrase "getting your needs met" would be outlawed and its use punishable by the user having to do a year of service work, but more on that another time).
More later on moving from the victim role to new places-- and getting clear without jumping to one of the other drama roles.
When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
ReplyDelete--Henri Nouwen