Exiting the Drama

Discovering the object of the game is the object of the game.The Game.

 

This is the final section of this three part series which explores how to get out of the dynamics outlined perviously, namely the drama triangle and the Parent-Adult-Child model. First off, however, it is important to double check you are actually on the highway. Everybody has times they feel sorry for themselves, it doesn’t mean you’re a victim. Some bullies are just bullies. And not everyone who offers a helping hand wants to control. You can criticise without being a Parent, and throw your toys about without being a Child.

So are you playing a game or not? Of course you’re not aware you are playing a game. All this feels real, the pain is real, the upset, the fear, the sense of being over-whelmed and feelings are rejection are real.  But is there something more, is there a willingness to participate that you refuse to see or even deny you saw? If you think back clearly, was there something in your future partner that you knew wasn’t right, but you ignored? Red flags that didn’t repel but actually made you move in closer?

All points on the drama triangle are at their heart conflicted and linked to damaged self-esteem: the victim despises themselves for being a victim, the rescuer often has a chaotic own life they can’t fix and the persecutor wants love but is petrified of being overwhelmed. And the vast majority of players will have some sort of significant childhood issues, either a neglectful or unstable mother or excessive volatility. But like attachment issues nothing is linear with humans, not everyone who has grown up with an absence or highly conditional love acts out this way, but a is a common marker.

 

Fight the Power

What unites all these positions is a sense of powerlessness. This is obvious in victim, but even in rescuer and persecutor your outcomes are placed in the hands of the other. The rescuer is desperate for the other to need their help to be fixed. The persecutor is desperate they are both going to be pulled into rescuer or overwhelmed by the victim. The textbook solution is the so-called empowerment triangle, in which we replace victim with creator, persecutor with challenger and rescuer with coach. Progress involves three steps:

1. Identifying and isolating times you feel you have true power,
2. Analyse what is different about these times
3. Systematically try to engineer / replicate this dynamic in more situations.

All behaviour is habit forming, the more we step out of the negative and into the positive the more we feel able to step out of the negative and into the positive. However, while switching to the empowerment triangle sounds simple in theory, in practice it’s less so. This isn’t like changing a shirt it’s more like changing you skin. You are trying to evolve from a way of speaking that has probably been with you most if not all of your adult life. It can be done, but like learning any foreign language, it takes time and persistence.

 

Change the Script

Some psychologists believe all relationships ultimately are relationships of power. TA argues that how we communicate determines how we exercise and manipulate such power. Berne believed if we study how we interact with the world we can shape our place in it. We can’t control what we feel, we can’t control what we think, but, he argued, we can control what we say. This was in direct contrast with Freud, which he felt was based on unobservable and subjective phenomena (Berne had a somewhat love-hate relationship with psychoanalysis). Or indeed CBT, which believes we can control what we think by identifying cognitive distortions.

TA stands for transactional analysis and transaction in this context is simply a conversation. Indeed, conversation analysis is probably a good way to view this style of therapy. So focus is how you talk to others and how others talk to you. Study our exchanges during conflict. Observe the language we use when we don’t get what we want.  Does our vocabulary shift into child or critical parent? Or the terminology of the victim or persecutor? Do we engage in catastrophising terminology, over-generalisation, should-statements or black and white speaking?

Here are some examples of the right and wrong way to communicate without fear.

Adult: I just want to know what time you will be back.
Non-Adult: You never tell me what’s going on!

Adult: I am tired of doing this extra work.
Non-Adult: I’m always having to look after you!

Adult: We have some serious problems we need to sit down and discuss.
Non-Adult: It’s over! I’m finished with this!

Adult: Can you give me the space to finish this and then we can talk?
Non-Adult: You’re constantly on my back!

And then over-time, identify these changes in language, and where-ever possible try to pull it back to adult-to-adult. Find the balance to genuinely, authentically express how you feel, without denying emotions or engaging in therapy-speak but equally avoiding using weaponising or emotionally charged language that simply escalate the conflict.

 

See The Payoff, See The Pattern

From Freud to CBT, for both Gottman and Games, while many therapy models are great in telling you what you are doing wrong, they tend to be less great in telling you what to do next. Most books or articles written on both TA and the drama triangle are simplistic and buy into this notion that humans are basically rational beings and if only we could get in touch with our inner, logical self all our problems would be solved.

Indeed the clear subtext of Berne’s Games People Play  (the TA bible so to speak) is that the players are hopeless, manipulative and pathetic. Even the empowerment dynamic makes out we can shift from from victim to creator or rescuer to coach if only we want it enough. Yet in reality this is the equivalent of telling someone who is having a panic attack not to panic.

Yes we have reason, mathematics and science but that is developed in adulthood. All of this other stuff is built on our early years in which we are a child both literally and conceptually. It is a world that revolves around love, abandonment, fear, joy, tears and tantrums. Emotion is not an optional extra. Just because we pretend it isn’t there, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Jung talked about the shadow self and in many ways the drama triangle is the shadow relationship - it is the negative forces we deny yet pull the levers from the hidden corners of the room. The way forward is thus not to deny this emotion but to explore it. These dynamics give something. By viewing these exchanges in the context of patterns, as we have done so throughout this book, we can work out what that something is. 

Do we equate drama with love, or an absence of drama with an absence of passion?  Maybe we view conflict not as a destabilising factor but conversely as a proof of our bond? Or perhaps we are addicted to the adrenaline of conflict and then the release or the make-up sex? Maybe there is an emotional comfort in playing the victim as it allows you to escape making a decision which might be associated with criticism, failure and judgement. Or we inhabit critical parent or persecutor roles because focusing on their problems allow us to ignore our own. Maybe the drama is used to shield you from having to make a decision to either fix or finish. Or to distract you from the painful truth it is not working.

You’ve got to know your enemy: saying I’m not going to be a victim or I’m going to say in adult is not a strategy. These forces and instincts don’t just stop because you feel they no longer serve a purpose. Yet as has been said previously through awareness, adaptation and acceptance we can find some balance between the fear and the freedom, find a path through to somewhere less a more happier and healthier. As the advert goes, because you’re worth it.