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toward high-nurturance relationships and families |
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What to Do About PVR
Triangles
Avoid the Persecutor-Victim-Rescuer
Game -
p. 2 of 2
By Peter K.
Gerlach, MSW
|
 The Web
address of this two-page article is
http://sfhelp.org/basics/triangles.htm
Continued from page 1...
The
first page described what three-person relationship triangles are, and why
they're usually divisive. This page offers perspective on stepfamily
triangles, and suggests an effective strategy for co-parents (in any family)
to dissolve them.
Inner and Outer Triangling
To fully understand how triangles function and what to do about them, you
need to know about your "inner family" of personality subselves. If having
normal personality subselves (an "inner family") is new to you, read this
introduction before continuing.
About
Inner Triangles
Here
are some "triangle things" to help you understand, reduce, and
avoid them in your
of
your homes,
and your physical (outer) family:
Triangles can occur within you (among your subselves) and
with each other person in your home and family. From childhood experiences, we
all
grow an
Her/His ceaseless, well-meaning
job is to find fault with our ideas, feelings, and actions (or lack of them).
S/He is our tireless inner Persecutor. Sound familiar?
We (you) also have several
or
Victims, who
receive the Critic's relentless judgments as shaming "I'm 1-down"
Our vulnerable kids bring us intense feelings of guilt, shame,
"worry" (anxiety and fear), confusion, and self doubt.
When
the inner kids feel those things enough, your
subselves (Rescuers) tirelessly spring into action. We each develop
a marvelous array of them. Their steady goal is to soothe, comfort, and
protect your vulnerable inner kids from the mean, vicious Inner (and
outer) Critics. Do you relate?
The
good news: with true
and (perhaps)
anyone can replace their
semi-conscious inner triangles with mutually-respectful negotiations skillfully
guided by their wise, resident
The bad news:
until each co-parent does that, their inner-triangle dynamics relentlessly cause
outer
relationship triangles with other people at home, work, school, and church.
These
diminish personal serenity and health,
and can promote serious
relationship problems.
Triangles
can interlock: Ralph may be
in the Persecutor role with Wanda and Jed, and at the same time feel like the Victim with
his critical mother Trish, while being Rescued ("supported") by his brother
Philip. Being in several triangle-roles at once adds to the emotional complexity of
family relationships, and therefore to the daily
kids and adults all
feel.
Remembering past
"triangle" experiences may reproduce their emotional impacts at full strength.
If Victim (above) remembers Persecutor's biting sarcasm three weeks later, Victim can
experience a new wave of guilt, shame, anxiety, pain, anger, and confusion. Thus one
triangle incident may count the same as 40!
Our tireless Inner Critics perniciously
"make us" review our past "failures" to make sure we don't repeat them, which can replicate the wounds and emotions we all feel.
Incidentally, each time Persecutor (above) remembers Victim's "hopeless" past
failure to pick up their toys, Persecutor again experiences his/her
original resentment, weariness, frustration, ... too. Ditto Rescuer.
This is why "talking things (conflicts) out"
and doing healthy
is
vital for building healthy inner
and outer family (and other) relationships!
About Stepfamily
Triangles
Average
are composed of three
or more co-parents
(stepparents and bioparents), and their several minor and grown kids, living in
two or more homes. Their combined genetic and legal relatives (their
may number over 100
people.
The complex web of relationships
between all these people and their combined emotional, physical,
financial, legal, and other needs guarantees that at any moment there may be over a
dozen relationship triangles flaring in and between their many
related homes. In most stepfamilies (like yours?) they flare and accumulate
unseen.
| Because of this,
unresolved conflicts and
past hurts between divorced co-parents and their relatives and other supporters can
repeat
stressful old triangles, and cause significant new ones. A glaring example
of this occurs each time divorcing mates choose a series of lose-lose-lose
court battles over
child custody,
finances,
visitations,
and
|
Know that often, inner and
outer triangles cause or result from concurrent values and family-loyalty
conflicts, which are unusually prevalent in new and/or low-nurturance
stepfamilies. This means that family
adults do best if they develop effective strategies to spot and resolve
all three of these stressors.
Stepsiblings
form their own complex triangles all the time in and between their
two homes. Because of bioparental love and
stepparent duty and desire to help, these kid-kid-kid triangles invite the co-parents to
take sides - which often generates inter and intra-home triangles and
among
everyone if adults aren't (a) guided by
their true Selves, and (b) aware of these dynamics and what to do about them.
Human-service professionals like clergy, lawyers, mediators,
coaches, teachers, clinicians,
case workers, and doctors
may unintentionally amplify existing triangles, and/or cause new ones. For
example, a teacher or counselor with no stepfamily
training may imply or
say to a bewildered student that their stepparent doesn't need to be obeyed
like a "real parent." That unintentionally aggravates the child's
triangling, which will
probably escalate
the triangles at home. Well-meaning
relatives and friends with little stepfamily
can cause the same thing.
People don't have to be physically present
to take a triangle role. An unmourned parent or mate, a child
asleep upstairs, or a relative across town or a thousand miles away, can animate
relationship triangles through memories, anniversaries, mementos, holiday associations,
e-mails, phone calls, and silences.
A dead
or living fetus or infant can be a full triangle role-holder,
usually the Victim. The two other role holders (or more
accurately, some of their inner-family members) will feel and act for the fetus
or infant.
Sometimes
a group can fill one of
more of the three triangle roles - usually the Persecutor. For instance "Your
whole family (or 'everyone at church') disapproves of my nose ring." can set off
Victim -Rescuer fireworks.
I'd
bet by now you're wondering...
What Can We
Do About Our Triangles?
Help each other (a) understand and
accept them as normal in any family or other social group; (b) avoid them;
or (c) spot and dissolve them, and
(d) encourage other key people to do the
same. Here are some options:
Study and discuss the
example
on page 1 with
your co-parenting partners. Refine the terms so everyone's speaking the same
language. For example, you might prefer calling the Persecutor "the Blamer,"
"Critic," or
"Attacker." Stress that this is not about
blaming anyone:
de-triangling helps everyone!
Make
a high current priority
in and between your homes.
That will provide you co-parents with the
seven
to replace 1-up and
1-down
with
"=/=" (mutual respect) messages.
When
everyone consistently receives credible mutual-respect R-messages,
triangles disappear!
Use these effective-communication skills to help each other become experts at spotting
and shifting from whining, venting, threatening, complaining,
blaming, explaining, defending, fighting,
and arguing to win-win
|
Caution - people
often have major trouble holding attitudes of genuine (vs.
dutiful, or strategic) mutual respect - specially in
and/or
conflicts which are so common in average stepfamilies.
Implication - some family members may need to progress
on Project-1 goals
(inner-family harmonizing) in order to stop causing and/or
reacting to outer triangles.
|
Use the skills and language of
and
to begin to talk
as partners about inner and outer triangles as they happen.
Model this for your kids, and encourage them to learn how, too. Option
- experiment with rotating
the new family role of Triangle Hunter or Scout. Becoming
aware
of triangles and their relationship impacts is ~80% of the solution.
Enjoy
developing your own family "triangle-language."
Help each other get comfortable with the idea
of having a dynamic
of
subselves.
Develop your own terms and language, if that helps. Doing this empowers you all to start becoming aware of, and reducing, your
inner triangles.
They cause the outer trian-gles! The seven communication skills work just as well among
your subselves (voices, or thought streams) as with your kinfolk.
Try it!
Teach and show your (minor and grown)
kids the three triangling roles, and agree on what to call each of
them. Help
younger kids understand the difference between roles and the people
in
the roles. Neither the roles nor the people in them are "bad, " but the
results
of triangling can hurt self-esteems and family harmony, trust,
bonding, and teamwork.
Adults
give high family priority to
learning how to spot and resolve values
and loyalty conflicts in and between your
homes. Help each other (a) develop a common language to describe
and discuss each of these, and (b) be alert for these stressors any time
you spot a triangle - they usually occur together.
These
Options in Action
If
the three people in the example on page 1 had invested time and effort at these
steps together, one or two of three things would have occurred: they would have
(a) spotted the triangle and (b) problem-solved instead, or (c) avoided it in the first place.
Triangle spotted: The biomom (original
"Rescuer") experiences her mate's impulsive 1-down sarcastic message to her
child. Intentionally avoiding her own inner triangle (blocking her Mama-Lion
personality part), Biomom says something calmly like "Whoa! We've got a
PVC triangle
building here, people. Let's back up, OK?"
Stepdad ("Persecutor") would trust from discussion and experience that his
partner wasn't criticizing him, but just alerting all three to their shared risk of a
newly hatched triangle. That alerts him to his inner triangling without undue
guilt, so he says something like "Mm, yeah, your right. Sorry, Toby..."
He
then shifts intentionally to win-win problem-solving, rather than blaming
and complaining. That might sound like...
Triangle
avoided: Stepdad becomes
aware of feeling frustrated and irritated (and ignored - again) when he sees
stepdaughter Toby's toys strewn carelessly on the living room floor again.
He takes a moment to check his impulse to bark
sarcastically at Toby
skill). Then he thinks "What do I
now?"
Taking a few more moments, he decides "I need to ...
-
avoid inner triangles by keeping
my Self
of my inner crew, and affirming my other subselves who are upset;
and I also need...
-
to let Toby know with a respectful, clear "I"
message how her actions affect me, and what I need; and...
-
to keep working patiently at building her
awareness. I also...
-
want to model effective
and
for her again.
And ...
-
I need Nell's (former Rescuer, above)
Self to stay in charge, and give me empathy, cooperation in doing
win-win problems-solving, rather than taking sides in a loyalty conflict."
Lots of scenarios that could develop from this beginning. One
might sound like this
"Toby, when you forget my request to
pick up your toys, I feel really frustrated and mad! I get worried you or someone
else is going to trip and get hurt, or someone'll step on your game and break it. Then
you'll feel bad, and we'll all get into am uproar about you earning enough allowance to
buying a new game. I don't want those things to happen. How can we solve this problem?"
Notice where your thoughts are now. Anything like "Ah, who talks like that in the real world? We could never sound like
that." If you have thoughts like those, it's probably your Inner
trying to protect you from trying something new and risky.
Reality:
Anyone
can learn to think and talk like this example if they (you) want to!
Recap
The universal
social dynamic called
relationship triangles hurts self and mutual
respect, and stresses cooperation and harmony. Triangling occurs
when three people - or three personality subselves - unconsciously adopt the
situational or chronic social roles of Persecutor, Victim, and Rescuer.
Typical divorcing families and
complex stepfamilies are at special risk for having many concurrent
PVR relationship
triangles in and between their related homes. Triangles are based on unseen
dominance,
and adults' and kids'
unawareness of
inner families + triangle dynamics + effective communication skills. All of
these can be improved!
This two-page article describes triangles and why they're divisive and
toxic; summarizes their common characteristics, explains how triangles work
among normal personality subselves, and comments on aspects of triangles in
typical stepfamilies. The article closes with specific suggestions on
avoiding or dissolving triangles, and gives a brief example.
As you
your
several biofamilies, your co-parents can learn, tailor,
and use the ideas in this and the linked
articles to help you all avoid or
dissolve stressful inner and outer triangles - and their companion
and
conflicts.
Helping each other form effective strategies to identify an manage all three
stressors is a major task in building a stable, high-nurturance family.
Note that effective strategies depend on co-parents (a) being usually guided
by their true Selves
and (b) helping each other to intentionally learn and use the seven
effective communication
in Project 2.
Pause and reflect - why did you read this article? If you got what you
needed, what do you need to do next? Note your option of showing this
article to other family members and discussing it with them. If you
didn't get what you needed here, what
you need now?
+ + +
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Updated
August 04, 2008
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