Sade Tagbo's Blog

The Drama Triangle

I was introduced to the concept of the Drama Triangle otherwise called the Rescue Triangle by a co-worker to whom I was griping about how we girlfriends sometimes bail out of touch with each other. He commented that the situation fitted perfectly into the Drama Triangle. See  Lynne Forrest's excellent overview of this phenomenon.

Basically, the triangle models the path of interaction between people in a dysfunctional relationship. The degree of dysfunction may vary, but the path always remains the same. The three roles at each point of the triangle are: Victim, Rescuer and Persecutor. Each of these roles stems out of a victim mentality in which we respond to stimuli which we perceive to be out of our control. The starting point of the triangle could be anyone of the roles:

The Persecutor victimizes the victim or The Victim says they can't help themselves and need rescuing or The Rescuer goes in to rescue a victim or defeat a Persecutor. The Drama then moves to the next level when say, the Rescuer's mode of help is not pleasing to the victim. The victim may then persecute the Rescuer and the rescuer becomes the victim. Or, the victim and persecutor gang up on the victim. These role reversals enhance the drama and can take anything from a few seconds to lifetimes to take place. Role reversals may happen several times in a conversation between two or three people.

It is possible to not act out any of these roles, but when you refuse a role passed to you, you will definitely be seen as a Persecutor by one or more people on the triangle. For instance, a Victim becomes the Persecutor when he runs away from the original Persecutor or a Rescuer becomes a Persecutor when she refuses to submit to the demands of a Victim.

After reading up on the Triangle, I could see my own fault in participating in it in several of my relationships my need to build the discipline of walking with people outside of the Triangle even if they want to stay on it.

Next: The Abraham-Sarah-Hagar Drama Triangle.