Karpman Drama Triangle — Victim to Creator — and the Adoptee Experience

We learned about how to flip the role of victim to creator in Wayfinder training, and I have watched the video of Martha Beck teaching us this concept at least ten times because I’m trying to imprint it on my brain. My brain loves to play the victim, so the lesson keeps sliding off. But I watched the video again today. Hello, Brain, wouldn’t you like to create instead of complain?

My right brain says YES. My left brain says HELL NO.

I thought maybe writing it all down would help hammer the ideas home.

In 1968, Stephen Karpman first came up with this description of a triangular-shape relationship involving the Victim, the Perpetrator, and the Rescuer. There’s the Victim—the person with the problem, the Perpetrator—person who is supposedly causing said problem, and the Rescuer—the person who says “poor you” or supports in some way the Victim. The Karpman Drama Triangle is used to illustrate that in this relationship dynamic, the roles always shift. The Rescuer starts to get annoyed with the Victim, for example, and then becomes the Victim or the Perpetrator, depending on whether THEY, the Rescuer, starts to say to the Victim “poor me” or “fuck you” putting the once-Victim now into the role of Rescuer or Perpetrator.

Ultimately, every role in the triangle ends of feeling like a victim at some point. Being the victim is a depressing bummer.

A couple of decades later, a man named David Emerald re-imagined the Karpman Drama Triangle and called it the Empowerment Dynamic. This re-imagined triangle re-imagines each role of the Drama Triangle. The Rescuer becomes the Coach. Instead of “poor you” the coach says something along the lines of, “What an interesting situation. What are you going to do? I know you have this. I’m right here with you.”

The Persecutor is reframed as the Challenger. The world needs Challengers in order for change and growth to happen. It’s easier to work with and feel grateful for someone who shows up in your life as a Challenger rather than viewing them as a Persecutor, unless you are into being a doormat. Personally, I’d rather think of challenging people or events as things that are pressing me to become stronger instead of trying to destroy me. Know what I mean?

Sometimes it feels like such a relief to be the Victim. Sometimes it can feel weirdly awesome to curl up into a fetal position and want to give up, but after while, if you don’t find some sort of reframe and reason to gather your resources and live, you end up shaped like a Frito and have a boring life all quit on the couch.

(As one who as been there.) (More than once.)

The funnest flip is when the Victim becomes the Creator. Instead of thinking “poor me”, the thought process sounds more like “what can I create out of now?” This is called making lemonade out of a shitshow. This is called Permission to Exist. The one time I got to ask Martha Beck a question face to face on Zoom, I got all flustered. Finally, I squeaked out, “I think I just need a permission slip to be myself.” Because I was all up in my head, I don’t remember what she said, but because she is so cheerful and smart and loving, I imagine she said something supportive and coach-like.

When you are born and your mother walks away, it’s so so so easy to feel like a victim, and, as I know, this feeling can last a lifetime. I also know it’s a lousy feeling. It’s like walking around in the form of a human bruise your entire life.

It’s so easy for me to feel like a victim, a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident. or other event or action because I was both harmed and injured by the physical and physiological effects of mother-loss and not-trauma-informed adoption practices. It’s easy for me to feel like a victim because I was one. It’s important for my ability to fully accept who I am and how I feel to allow this to be true, otherwise I end up gaslighting myself. For me, it has ended up being a both/and situation. I am a victim and I am a creator. The more creative I allow myself to be, the more opportunity I find in Victim City. The more room and permission I give myself to feel and be, the freer and, duh, less of a victim I feel and more of a person.

I love to live in my eyes. I love to look, to see, and in those ways of being, to belong.

My body and mind can relax when I don’t try to be tougher than I am, when I push away trauma and feelings of victimhood and try to be a different person than who I am. I have so much energy left over to be myself when I don’t spend it on trying to be other.

I would prefer to make something out of this weird predicament of being part of a culture that thinks a life can be erased and molded anew. I would prefer to be a smartass. I would prefer to be hilarious. I would prefer to cry in front of you and tell you how I feel and have that make me feel strong because I showed up as myself and was brave enough to share.

And on and on.