Below you will find short summaries and links to the following videos:
The Drama Triangle: Why it is Used By Integral Deep Listening
The Role of Victim
The Role of Persecutor
The Role of Rescuer
Dealing with Fallout from Leaving the Drama Triangle
Why the Drama Triangle is Important in Your Life
Escaping the Drama Triangle: Identifying and Avoiding Toxic Words
The Drama Triangle: Why it is Used By Integral Deep Listening
The Drama Triangle, consisting of the three roles of Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer, is a powerful concept for understanding how and why we are individually, culturally, and socially stuck as individuals and as collectives. This immersion in dysfunctional drama disrupts development, peace of mind, and transpersonal access not only in our waking relationships, but in our thoughts and night time dreams. Therefore, a clear understanding of this important concept as well as learning ways to avoid the Drama Triangle is fundamental to learning to listen in a deep and integral way not only to each other, but to ourselves.
The Role of Victim
Integral Deep Listening is designed to help you escape the Drama Triangle in the Three Realms: Relationships, your thoughts, and your night time dreams. In this video I explain how the role of Victim is different from victimization, how being in the role of Victim creates both Persecutors and the need for Rescuers. Strategies for escaping the Drama Triangle are discussed.
The Role of Persecutor
Integral Deep Listening looks at the self-righteous abusiveness of the role of Persecutor from the perspectives of relationships, self-abusive thinking, and self-abusive night time dreams, and recognizes that it must be addressed in all three of these life realms if it is to be transcended. This is discussed in more detail in “Escaping the Drama Triangle in the Three Realms: Relationships, Thinking, Dreaming, by Joseph Dillard.
Rescuers in the Drama Triangle are often sincere helpers. The problem is that their desire to use helping as validation of their self-worth causes them to impose what they think others need on them without asking for permission, checking to see if the help is actually beneficial, and not stopping – keeping on keeping on until burn out. We rescue ourselves with our addictions, pastimes, and rationalizations and in our dreams by avoiding conflict, ignoring and repressing them. IDL uses the Drama Triangle to help people wake up out of dreamlike delusion, whether awake or dreaming.
Strategies for Dealing with Fallout when You Attempt to Exit the Drama Triangle
When we decide we have had enough of the superficiality, duplicity, and abuse that is baked into the Drama Triangle and we decide it is time to leave it behind us, we are disrupting a long-standing way of living to which we and those around us have become well accustomed. Because our roles in the Drama Triangle interface with and co-originate with those of others, when we change how we talk, how we act, and how we deal with our feelings, others have to adjust. This video explores some of the challenges that can arise and how to deal with them.
Why the Drama Triangle is Important for Your Life
There is no aspect of life that is not contaminated by the Drama Triangle. When we learn to recognize it in our personal, work, religious, political, and spiritual realms, as well as our thoughts and dreams, we gain an ability to make healthier choices that we did not possess when we were unaware of it and its pervasive influence in our lives. We can also learn to differentiate between those who offer solutions that simply switch us from one role to another as opposed to solutions that authentically move us out of the Drama Triangle.
Escaping the Drama Triangle 7: Identifying and Avoiding Toxic Words
“Toxic Words” are words that throw you into one of the three roles in the Drama Triangle. “Can’t” is the major word to avoid if you want to escape the Victim role in the Drama Triangle. “Always,” “never,” “should,” “ought,” “must,” “blame,” and “fault” are words to avoid if you want to escape the role of Persecutor. “Need” can throw you into the role of Rescuer. The reasons these words are so toxic are explained and suggestions made as to how to break our addiction to using them.
