Pause and Leave Your Drama Behind

Drama is everywhere whether you know it or not - it can even play out in your own head if not with others. Once you realize it's happening, here's some ways you can leave the drama behind.

What's The Drama Triangle?

The Drama Triangle has been around long before 1968 when Stephen Karpman, M.D. coined the concept as a way to graphically display a type of destructive interaction that can occur between people in conflict.

Karpman was a student of Dr. Eric Berne, who wrote one of the most insightful books I've ever read, Games People Play. Eric was the founder of Transactional Analysis, who developed a model of people and relationships. The Drama Triangle is in a similar vein, and explains the dynamics of victimhood that causes us to make mistakes in how was can be responsible communicators and as a result, improves our own self-care.

In the Drama Triangle, each of us operates from one of three positions:

• The Victim

• The Rescuer

• The Persecutor

We rotate through them possibly several times a day, maybe even taking on all the roles at once or rotating among them in one situation. Participants in a Drama Triangle create misery for themselves and others.

Here's one of my favorite graphical depictions of the Drama Triangle, and associated behaviors for each of the three roles:

Source: http://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/02/28/the-drama-triangle/

Drama Blocks our Self-Care

Without self-care, we spin our wheels in ways that don't serve us. We continue until we are exhausted, or we feel unappreciated because someone didn't see what we were trying to explain or point out. When we are aware we are in drama, we can recognize when we are in it. We can get out of drama by expressing our true feelings, ideally responsibly.

Pausing, or shifting your time or behavior intentionally, can help increase your awareness, and do something about it, such as responsibly expressing how you are feeling in the moment.

Read more in the complete article here...