Are You Caught Up In A Drama Triangle?

By Sofia: Have you ever wanted your ex back despite the countless arguments and sense of dissatisfaction which left a bitter taste? Are you always concerned about how your partner feels about you instead of asking yourself how you feel about the relationship? Are you more aware of your partner’s actions than your responses to these actions? Do you assume that your value or self-worth is tied to how your partner treats you in the relationship? 

When we are always focused or leaning forward to a person, especially with an ex, we restrict ourselves from growing and becoming responsible for ourselves. We become so aware of what they do to us—their mistakes, behaviors, shortcomings, etc. that it creates feelings of anxiety and misery. Whether we realize it or not, this kind of thinking only contributes to powerlessness, and losing our power in a relationship dynamic means that we become a victim.

Self-awareness is crucial in our relationships. We all need to be increasingly aware of our mindset and take responsibility for how we react or interact with our situations. When relationships go wrong, we play a role in a power game called The Drama Triangle. It is a psychological model that explains the role we partake while we conflict with our partners. In this model, the three roles are the Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor. 

Out of the three, without guessing, the most common role we often play is the victim. A victim does not take responsibility for their responses to life. Though it is not our fault that we are wired in a certain way because of a childhood experience or a past trauma, it is our responsibility to become aware of our mindset and choose our responses.

Common Signs of Victim Mentality

1. Always blaming the other person or themselves

2. Always complaining of not having needs met

3. Relying one’s happiness on other people

4. Inability to forgive or stuck in the past

5. Feeling that something would always go wrong

It is important to understand that staying in a victim mentality won’t bring us successful relationships. This is because we don’t set our limits or know our boundaries. What do you accept and what not, is the foundation of every healthy relationship and especially the relationship with yourself. Whether you see it from a coaching/psychological perspective, or spiritual/vibrational, the truth is that a powerless victim has very little power to attract and manifest.

We often need to have an honest conversation with ourselves. If your partner is treating you poorly or an ex never sets things right in the relationship, why do we still want them? Is this to cover a need for belongingness because your parents abandoned you as a child or to confirm the belief that you would be abandoned? We tend to look for relationships that are familiar to us, like ones we’ve experienced from our family of origin. It is time to know ourselves deeply, our past, our patterns, our mindset, our mistakes and take responsibility for how we understand and respond to a difficult situation in our lives. 

Instead of worrying about our partner’s behavior and how they treat us, or how to change them, let’s instead take a look at how we feel in this relationship and be really honest.

• Is this what we really want to experience? 
• Do we want to constantly feel anxious and unsure about how our partner feels for us? 
• Is he being fair in his contribution to having a meaningful, healthy relationship? 
• Does he suck the happiness out of me or enhance my life? 

The moment we decide that we deserve love, this is the instant moment we don’t negotiate our worth, happiness and what we want out of life. When we shift our focus back to ourselves, we may realize that we have been self-sabotaging and allowing ourselves to be in a victim state. No matter how hard it seems, there is a way out of this. We don’t have to suffer and stay in an unhealthy relationship. The only relationship that matters is the one with ourselves.

Am I loving to myself? 

We need to love ourselves…

…first and learn how to be a lover. 

…choose partners who empower us. 

…enough that we don’t constantly stress about how the other person feels for us. 

…having the courage to walk away from a toxic relationship. 

…knowing our worth to be with someone who can appreciate us and value us.

…knowing that we deserve true love, and if someone can’t give that to us, someone else will.

We are love and when we know how to love ourselves, love is all around us. 

Love and Light, 

Sofia