Why we fight - Part Two: Drama, victimhood and endless invitations
This is a two-part series exploring why we experience conflict, and how to find a more healthy relationship with it. Read Part One or sign up for the course.
We can only find our way through our daily life by already knowing how we’re going to make many of the decisions that we will be faced with.
If we didn’t already have a predetermined set of ideas and assumptions about what we should or shouldn’t do, each day we would wake up and try to find our way in the world as if we were an alien that had landed on earth for the first time, or a newborn baby with no concept of language or context.
The research proves this. Studies in neuroscience have shown us that in any given moment we are only using 20% of information gathered through our sensory organs (sight, smell, sound, touch etc) while the other 80% of data used to make any decision is contained within the confines of our skull.
Our previous experiences and memories lay down these neural pathways that allow us to manage the day-to-day jobs of navigating our environment and relating to others, with ease.
This is a amazing, critical function that we have developed but it can also be incredibly constraining.
While we don’t have to learn to read every time we look at a menu, it also means we’re much more likely to choose the same things, over and over again.
And this is just the same when it comes to how we relate to other people.
The scripts we hold
According to the work of Stephen Karpman, a student of Eric Berne (the creator of Transactional Analysis) our very early experiences create a script in our heads for how we will think, feel and behave towards ourselves and others.
In our pre-verbal phase development, we learn all about what it takes to be loved, approved of rewarded and what behaviours lead to rejection, disapproval and punishment.
The script this creates is like a go-to reference manual for the brain as we find ourselves in various situations throughout our lives that involve other people.
Every time we find ourselves in relationship, in conversation, our brain is asking itself: What role should I play right now? What role is this person playing, for me? And what does this mean for how should think, feel and behave.
The roles we play
According to Berne’s work, when one of our scripts is triggered, we will place ourselves in one of three roles: the victim, the persecutor or the rescuer.
Each of these roles is distinct but shares one commonality: giving away responsibility for self.
In the victim role we believe ourselves to be powerless to the external circumstances or people who we hold responsible for our suffering, and are unable to alleviate for ourselves.
As the persecutor we are exasperated by their weakness and lack of responsibility taken by the victim, feeling compelled to judge, blame and punish them.
As the rescuer we are compelled to step in and try to alleviate the pain and suffering that we see happening to the victim, feeling unable to simply stand and watch.
Known as ‘The Drama Triangle’, as we slip into these default roles and modes we don’t realise that we have responsibility for, or power over our experience and instead give it away to the other.
So, locked in a kind of trance, these three people play out a pre-prescribed drama that each of them has scripted into their being thanks to old experiences of being in relationship.
Although each person’s early experience and scripts are unique to them, for the drama to play out there must something that is common enough between to trigger everyone to unknowingly sign up.
One of the many interesting things about this model is the idea that in any given moment, everyone can switch roles.
For example, one of my default roles is the rescuer — constantly stepping in to offer solutions or support to people when I perceive them to be in difficulty. And, when I feel I’ve tried to help but don’t see them doing anything for themselves, I can easily slip into the persecutor, feeling irritated towards them for not taking responsibility.
The invitations we send and recieve
Any drama starts with an invitation.
An invitation is offered by one person to another, and this is the moment in which the other is either triggered into taking up the role that is available to them or chooses to opt out.
These invitations typically look like:
Somebody repeatedly repeated sharing at great length how awful their situation is and how helpless they feel, subtly or subconciously hoping the other steps in to rescue them.
Somebody stepping over a line to offer help, solutions or their personal resources to people who they see to be in trouble, regardless of whether their help is being requested.
Or somebody itching for a fight, trying to goad the other into confrontation and conflict.
Each of these people is playing out — at some level — an experience that they had in their formative years now triggered by a person or situation that resembles it enough, and treading the well-worn neural pathways in order to return to a sense of safety.
And as mentioned, in every situation each of these people is giving away responsibility for their own needs, disempowering themselves and attempting to disempower the others in the game.
It becomes a power-locked system, where everyone colludes to ensure none are able to actually change anything for themselves.
The escape from the endless drama
There are only two ways out of this Drama Triangle:
- not throwing out the invitations
- not responding to the invitations that are thrown out.
As with the judgement cycle that I explored in Part One, triggered by external stimulus, we are convinced that freedom from the feelings we are experiencing comes from changing how the other is thinking, feeling or behaving.
Yet we never have any control over others. At best a passing influence.
And true freedom can never come from something outside of ourselves when how we feel about something is the product of our past, showing up to distort our present and as a result, create our future.
True freedom is awareness — the ability to notice the feelings and urges that are triggered and sit with them, instead or acting them out and perpetuating our habitual patterns for the rest of our lives.
The practice of sitting with discomfort, of getting just the tiniest bit of distance from what our mind is telling us is real, and watching it play out with a critical eye and a kind heart, is the simplest and hardest practice there is.
And yet, if we continue to believe everything we think, we will forever be trapped in a prison of our own minds, and never escape from the conflicts we so dislike — with others, with ourselves and with the nature of reality.
I’m currently running a six-week online course in ‘How to fight well: Exploring healthy conflict” — find out more and book a place here
