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This is one of a series of articles on Lesson 4 - choose and evolve
nourishing relationships. These articles build on Lessons 1 - 3, and prepare
you for Lesson 5 (evolve and enjoy a nourishing fam-ily) and Lesson 6 (learn
to practice effective parenting).
This article...
-
describes
a widespread relationship stressor - "PVR triangles,"
-
introduces the idea of
internal (personality subself)
triangles
-
summarizes why triangles cause significant personal and social problems,
-
suggests how to avoid and resolve them
effectively in the context of families, and...
-
adds brief perspective on
stepfamily triangles.
These ideas apply to any human
group, not just families.
The article assumes
you're familiar with:
-
the premises
underlying this nonprofit Web site;
-
normal personality subselves (like yours) -
slides or
text
-
practical ways to
analyze and resolve typical
relationship problems
-
options for improving relations with most
people,
-
three common relationship and family
stressors, and...
-
an example of these stressors troubling
a real stepfamily.
Background
In 1968, Dr. Steven Karpman proposed an idea he called the "Persecutor -
Victim - Rescuer (PVR)
Drama Triangle." Clinician-authors
Murray Bowen,
Eric Berne, and
Claude Steiner
adapted and populari-zed that idea by alerting students and clients to a stressful relationship dynamic called
triangling. This
unconscious social dynamic usually results in
everyone involved feeling anxious, conflicted, and frustra-ted. Most people
are unaware of it and what to do about it.
Once
of
social triangles and their effects,
people (like you) can learn to use other communication
to avoid, spot, and dissolve them. Triangles often occur concurrently
with values conflicts and loyalty (priority) conflicts.
Family adults need to
learn about all three, and evolve an effective
strategy to deal with them - and then
model and teach it to their kids and
supporters.
What Is "Triangling"?
This common
dynamic involves three people and three
roles, like parts in a
play. One person un-consciously chooses the role of the
Persecutor
("P"). S/He blames, disrespects, attacks, ignores, and/or criticizes the
Victim
("V") for something, causing the
Rescuer ("R") to
defend the Victim. That may quickly shift so that the Persecutor becomes a
Victim, and the former Victim may become a Res-cuer.
Each role may be played by an adult or a child. Each person can switch back and forth between these roles with different
situations and different people. Few people are aware they're doing this.
If
they are, they don't know how to not do it
Stay aware that these three labels refer
to roles (behaviors and attitudes), not the person
in the role.
Triangling Looks and Sounds Like
This...
The Persecutor
P (say a parent) scowls and says sarcastically to
Victim
(e.g. a child) "Boy, you have the brains of a doorknob. How many times do I have
to tell you to pick up your toys, so people don't fall over them or step on and wreck them? You're completely
hopeless!"
V may whimper and cower, glare, or
talk back defiantly. Either way, s/he feels guilty, ashamed, and anxious - and maybe mad.
S/He may
whine and glance
pitifully at...
The
Rescuer (often another caregiver), who observes this interaction and feels empathic and
protective of the "helpless" Victim. So Res-cuer may glower at
P and say something to
V like "Honey, I'll help you pick up your toys now. Let me get you a snack."
The
Persecutor-role person may resent that R
seems to side with V, rather than supporting him/her ["You know, Hon, (P)'s right -
you should be more careful and considerate."] This is specially true if
it happens often, and Rescuer denies or defends it, or seems indifferent.
Triangles can form in a flash over almost any behavior or interaction. They
may occur once, occa-sionally, randomly or predictably, and repeat cyclically
for months or years until someone leaves or re-fuses their role. Several
triangles can exist simultaneously, and can affect each other - e.g. a Persecutor
in one triangle can be the Victim in another triangle with other
people.
Triangles
and Subselves
A core premise in this Web site is that normal people develop an "inner family" of
talented subse-lves which comprise their
If you're skeptical or
curious about this, read this letter to you,
and then try this safe, interesting exercise.
People's
dominant
may predispose them to "accept" one role more than the others.
For example, a wounded person governed by angry, critical, aggressive
subselves may unconsciously choose the Persecutor role in their
family and other groups. A
adult or child may instinct-ively adopt the Victim role by not knowing
and asserting their rights as a worthy person.
PVR triangles occur among
all the time. For example, if an
and
harshly judge the host person, a hypersensitive
and/or
can acti-vate ("Victims"), causing several Guardian subselves
(like the
or
to activate and comfort (Rescue)
the unhappy young subselves.
Remembering past
"triangle" experiences may reproduce their emotional impacts at full strength.
If a
subself remembers the
(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!
|
The good new - if you accept
the reality of personality subselves, you can use
to keep your Self
in most situations, and train your other subselves to avoid
triangling. That will significantly help reduce your getting
hooked in triangles with other people.
See family
|
Pause and reflect. Does what you read make sense to you? Can you think of any recent or cur-rent triangles among your family members? Who chose what
role, and what was the outcome - i.e. who got their
met well enough and who didn't?
What's Wrong with Triangles?
A LOT! Every
moment, every child and adult (like you) needs to feel comfortable enough.
Three universal comfort factors are feeling respected,
safe, and satisfied enough.
We communicate internally
("thinking") and socially to get and keep these three treasures,
as we and the world evolve.
Typical triangles
are uncomfortable.
They may cause various mixes of anxiety, hurt, resent-ment, distrust,
disrespect, competition, frustration, guilt, shame, blame, avoidances, and
arguing in the three role-takers.
These destroy local comfort, hinder effective communication, and can grow
expecta-tions of
between the three (or more) people. .
Premise - Any perceived verbal and nonverbal behavior that causes
some change in another person is "communication." One thing we all
unconsciously decode from each other all the time can be called an
We constantly evaluate whether those around us
seem to respect our feelings, needs, ideas, and dignity
enough.
Do you agree?
When others' behavior sends us an R-message that we decode as a
"put-down" (criticism, indiffer-ence, scorn, boredom, or rejection), kids and adults alike feel hurt, guilt, angry, defensive,
anxious, and maybe
ashamed. These hardly build healthy relationships, specially if they happen over and
over!
Triangles
always involve one or more of the three players appearing
to feel "1-up" - like "My ideas, values,
and needs are more important to me than yours, right now." In the
example above, the Victim re-ceives a hurtful "You're 1-down" R-message from the
"1-up" Persecutor. This upsets the Rescuer, who automatically soothes
the poor Victim - specially if the Victim can't
("stand up for")
themselves effectively.
This
soothing may seem to Persecutor as a "You're 1-down" R-message. S/He
may feel uncon-sciously "You're actions say that
with
Victim's needs and feelings right now than with mine. That hurts!"
Like lightning, the Persecutor has now taken on the Victim role. If someone else is in the
room (or across town), they may Rescue the new "Victim," starting a new wave of
triangling in-teractions.
The one in the Persecutor role may now attack the Rescuer
["How come you always protect your sister instead of supporting me.
What am I - chopped liver?"]. The person in the P role may also with-draw
emotionally and/or physically, to sulk - maybe feeling guilty,
confused, and frustrated.
Depending on many things, Rescuer may now feel criticized, misunderstood,
disrespected
(1-down) and hurt; and/or ignored,
(by
Persecutor), and
abandoned.
Either
way, s/he now feels like the Vic-tim! Meanwhile, the original Victim may feel some
mix of relief, power and guilt ("I made them fight"),
and
anxiety ("Oh no - everybody's mad now.")
All
this takes about 10 seconds to happen. The feelings from this and similar
triangling incidents may last for hours or days. This is specially true for
wounded
of
childhoods who aren't yet in meaningful personal
My
29-year clinical
experience, with over 1,000 average Mid-western clients and students
suggests that most American adults are such "Grown
Wounded Children (GWCs).
|
Bottom
line: many family members are
and unaware of
(a) the processes
and
them. They're also unaware of (b) effective-communication
basics and
and (c) how to avoid, spot, and dissolve PVR triangles. Does this describe
you and other family adults and suppor-ters? |
If relationship triangling continues for
months and years, what do you suppose will happen to each person's self
esteem, respect and trust for the others, and to their family's
What Can We
Do About Our Triangles?
You can do a LOT. Encourage your family adults to...
Help each other get comfortable with the idea
of having a dynamic
of
sub-selves.
Develop your own terms and language, if that helps. Doing this empowers you all to start becom-ing aware of, and reducing, your
inner triangles.
They cause the outer triangles!
your
in
- specially in times of change and conflict. Triangles and related stressors
flourish when false selves have taken over. See
for options; and to...
Understand and
accept triangles as normal dynamics in any
social group, and...
Study and discuss the
example above with
your family members, so everyone is clear on (a) how triangles work, and
that (b) none of the three role-takers are "bad" or "wrong;" and....
Evolve and agree on your
family's own role-labels and "triangle vocabulary." For example, you might prefer calling the Persecutor "the Blamer,"
"Critic," or
"Aggressor." Learn to acknowledge (name) current or
recent triangles, as in "Hey gang, we had (or have) a triangle going."
Also agree on a term for dissolving, unhooking, or mastering your
triangles; and...
Get clear together on what you want instead of triangles - e.g.
-
genuine, stable
self-respect and
attitudes, and...
-
everyone being clear on
their respective personal rights; and...
-
cooperatively
each person's current
and...
-
doing win-win
as teammates, vs. these
More de-triangling options...
Help each
other agree to who is choosing what role, and talk non-critically about
that as team-mates. e.g. "Noriko, are you feeling like I'm the Persecutor
and your in the Victim role here?" Noticing
Make
a high priority
in your family's homes.
That will provide your adults with the
to replace 1-up and
1-down
with
"=/=" (mutual respect) messages.
When
everyone consistently receives credible mutual-respect R-messages,
triangles disappear!
Note that
people
often have major trouble holding attitudes of genuine (vs.
dutiful, or stra-tegic) mutual respect - specially in
and/or
conflicts.
See this for perspective.
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.
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 adults in the example
above 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 problem-solved instead, or (b) avoided it in the first place.
Triangle spotted: The biomom (original
"Rescuer") experiences her mate's impulsive 1-down sar-castic message to her
child. Intentionally avoiding her own inner triangle (blocking her Mama-Lion
per-sonality 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 critici-zing 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 mo-ment 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 sub-selves who are upset;
and I also need...
-
to let Toby know with a respectful, clear
(assertion) how her actions affect me, and what I need; and...
-
to keep working patiently at building her
awareness and cooperation. I also...
-
want to model effective
and
for her again.
And ...
-
I need Nell's (former Rescuer, above)
true Self to stay in charge, and give me empathy, coop-eration in doing
win-win problems-solving, rather than taking sides in a loyalty conflict
and triangle."
Lots of scenarios 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!
Continued...
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