Lately I have been working a lot with the Victim, Perpetrator, Rescuer Triangle Model in different settings.
I like you to take a look at it and see if you recognize anything for your self here.
Where do step in? What’s your pattern? Is this by choice or unconscious?
The only way of becoming free of the dynamics of this fascinating model is to step completely out! How do you do that?
The model was first developed by a well respected psychiatrist, Stephen Karpman in 1968. He called it the Drama Triangle. Lynne Forrest took it further and has been working with it since the 70’s referring to it as the victim triangle. The model explores the dynamics between three archetypes: Victim – Perpetrator – Rescuer, pouring light on conditions and early childhood programming leading to these roles and why they are so interconnected. Karpman placed these three roles on an inverted triangle and described them as being the three aspects, or expressions of the victim who is at the bottom, looking up. No matter where we may enter the triangle, victim is where we end up, they say. Each person has a primary or most familiar role – what Lynne calls their “starting gate” position, how we get hooked. Although we each have a role with which we most identify, once we’re on the triangle, we eventually rotate through all the positions, and regardless of where we start out on the triangle, all roles eventually end up in victim. It’s inevitable.
Our starting-gate [SG] position on the triangle becomes a strong part of our identity. Our unconscious core beliefs derived from early family encounters, become “life themes” that predispose us towards the unconscious selection of a particular starting gate. We not only act out these triangular distortions in our relations with others, but we also play it out internally through internal parts. Each role has its own language, beliefs and typical behavior. Each role represents a shadow of an archetype. Each has a narrative for their particular journey around the triangle through which the world and ourselves are perceived. All three roles are distorted expressions of positive qualities that we, as humans possess, but deny or repress when living on the triangle.
We enter and stay on the triangle to avoid experiencing difficult feelings. Healing becomes possible when we are able to presence those challenging feelings such as grief, fear, abysmal pain, rage, anxiety, vulnerability, helplessness… and find home for them within us: to allow ourselves to feel them, to give them recognition, to be able to trace exactly how they feel inside, how we are activated and which memories, Images and contexts it brings up in us. When we manage to do this without identifying with the content of the emotions, without sinking into the mud and becoming their hostage, something in us gets reorganized, stabilized and able to release and we can leave the triangle and set ourselves free. The time that it takes to bring the past back into present to melt the trauma into integration, depends upon reaching a certain level of safety that our Nervous System is waiting for. The main tool we have to access deeper layers of coherence is slowing down, so that the energy has enough space. Also, embodied witnessing brings together caring, seeing, and sensing.
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