Caitlin Bacher:
Episode 79: How to Avoid Being Stuck in The Drama Triangle
Have you ever heard of the “drama triangle”?
Maybe not, but I guarantee you’ve been in the Drama Triangle many times in your life and so have I.
Today, I’ll be sharing why the drama triangle is such a dangerous place to be for ambitious entrepreneurs like yourself.
How to quickly recognize when you are getting sucked into it and exactly what you need to do to swiftly and safely escape it.
This is definitely an episode you are going to want to listen to all the way to the end because there’s actually three different ways you can be stuck in the drama triangle and I’ll be talking about all of them.
So let’s get started.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, founder and CEO of Scale With Success®, and I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. We are sharing, revealing conversations about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join us here to discover the tough decisions we’ve had to make, the biggest failures we’ve had to bounce back from and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. We are so grateful that we have the chance to share it all with you right here on Scale With Success®: The Podcast Built for Course Creators™. Let’s get started.
I was first introduced to the concept of the drama triangle years ago when I was really struggling with my own mental health.
At the time, I was being very hard on myself and found it incredibly difficult to bounce back from what other people would consider to be minor setbacks.
I didn’t feel depressed. I felt frustrated.
My brain would latch onto these thought loops that would either blame others or blame myself.
And the story I kept telling myself was that success was possible for others, but it wasn’t possible for me.
My mind was really playing tricks on me because from the outside looking in, I was successful, but at the time I wasn’t seeing things clearly and my brain felt like a tangled web of lies that I kept telling myself.
Then I discovered the drama triangle and suddenly everything clicked.
Now, what I’m about to share with you is not magic and it is not a replacement for medical care if you need that, but it really helped me and maybe it can help you.
So let’s first start by answering the question, what exactly is the drama triangle?
The drama triangle is a framework created by Dr. Stephen Karpman back in the 1960s to illustrate how people deal with conflict.
Karpman believed that when conflict occurred, it caused people to take on one of three different roles:
- victim,
- persecutor,
- and rescuer.
And that choosing to play that role often prevented us from taking the actions we needed to take in order to move forward.
The key word here is role.
This is not about labeling people, it’s about labeling behavior.
Because truth be told, I know that personally I can cycle through all of these roles within the first 10 minutes of encountering conflict if I’m not careful, and let’s face it, being a business owner is filled with opportunities to encounter conflict every single day.
Conflict with clients, team members, colleagues, vendors, and even conflict within yourself.
Successful business owners don’t avoid conflict, they learn how to navigate it.
And playing the role of victim, persecutor, or rescuer each and every time something doesn’t go your way is not conducive to success.
But how do you stop playing these roles?
Well, that’s what we’re here for today.
Let’s start by investigating the role of “victim”.
So when you encounter conflict and choose to play the role of victim, you’re likely telling yourself things like, “This isn’t working now, which means it will never work, so I won’t even try” or “I’m upset and there’s no way to fix this, so I’ll just give up“.
People around you may even be actively trying to help you and proposing solutions, but all you see is the problem.
Have you ever felt that way?
I know I have, and it feels terrible.
You are so focused on the problem that it becomes all consuming and can feel like there’s no escape.
But the good news is that there is an escape if you start asking yourself the right question.
That question is: What is the outcome I’m looking to create?
Doing that immediately shifts your perspective from being problem-focused to being outcome-focused.
In that moment, you are no longer a victim, you are a creator.
A creator is someone who clearly identifies the outcome they want to create and then works actively to create a plan of action, seeking help from others to make it happen.
See the difference? It’s huge.
So let’s move on to playing the role of “persecutor”.
When you encounter conflict and choose to play the role of persecutor, you are aggressively blaming others and saying increasingly hurtful things to get your point across.
People might be trying to help, but all you can focus on is trying to convince everyone around you that someone else did you wrong.
And you will spend all your energy trying to explain how this is all their fault.
We play the role of persecutor when we blame everyone else for our current circumstances and take out all our internal frustration on other people.
You may be telling the person you blame things like, “This is your fault. I didn’t get the outcome I wanted because of you.” or “You probably don’t even care. In fact, you never cared about me, did you?”
So when you catch yourself doing this, the question that you want to ask yourself is:
How have I contributed to this outcome?
Doing this shifts you away from the role of persecutor and into the role of challenger.
Now, I want to give you a hard truth.
If you believe that your success is dependent on what other people do or don’t do, you are in big trouble because the reality is that you cannot control other people.
When you choose to play the role of a challenger, you are choosing to believe that you will succeed no matter what.
You see every setback, obstacle, or challenge as an opportunity to get stronger, not to blame others.
So let’s move on to playing the role of “rescuer”.
When you encounter conflict and choose to play the role of rescuer, you are stepping over others and doing the work for them.
You think you’re helping them, but you’re actually robbing them of the opportunity to learn.
People might be telling you, “It’s okay. I’ve got this. I don’t need your help.”
But you are choosing to ignore them because deep down you believe they aren’t capable of doing it.
Then when you finish, you feel like a hero, but that soon turns into resentment because you feel like “I have to do everything around here,” and then you can switch real quick into the role of persecutor or even victim.
So if you find yourself doing this, I want you to ask yourself this question:
What can I do to support them in their own learning?
This question immediately shifts you away from playing the role of rescuer and into the role of coach.
Being a coach helps you become a better leader and helps the other person become more equipped to handle the same problem if it comes up again.
It also shows them that you trust they can handle the task at hand, and you see them as a capable person.
Rescuers believe it’s faster to “just do it myself”, but in the long run, this approach just slows everything down.
In fact, it teaches those around you that you don’t believe in them or trust them to solve problems.
So what do you think about playing the roles of victim, persecutor, or rescuer?
It’s easy to recognize the behavior in others, but it takes a lot of courage to recognize it in yourself.
Here’s a quick recap of the three important questions to ask yourself so that you can escape the drama triangle.
Number #1: “What outcome am I looking to create?” will shift you from victim to creator.
Number 2: “How have I contributed to this outcome?” will shift you from persecutor to challenger.
And number 3: “What can I do to support them in their own learning?” will shift you from rescuer to coach.
I appreciate you listening today, and tune in next week for another episode of Scale With Success®: The Podcast.
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