Karpman’s Drama Triangle: The 3 Roles That Destroy You Relationships

You’re trying to help your partner, but suddenly you’re the enemy. Or you’re explaining your feelings, and now you’re the one being blamed. You’re not going crazy. You’re cycling through Karpman’s Drama Triangle. And until you realize it, you will keep fighting the same battles, over and over again. You’re trapped in the Triangle.

What goes into a fight between lovers? Or,  actually, I should ask, who goes into a fight between lovers?

Look closely at almost any conflict in relationships and you’ll usually see certain roles being played out. When we’re at odds with others it’s usually because we’re identifying with one of three stubbornly recurring characters: Rescuer, Victim, or Persecutor–all potentially found in the compulsive personality. While we might be able to acknowledge taking one of these roles, we often end up taking on each of them at some point in the drama, whether we admit it or not.

This pattern was outlined by Dr. Stephen Karpman, and is now known as Karpman’s Drama Triangle. It’s an ingenious model that can help us to understand how we get ourselves into these messes and how to get out of them. He discovered these characters by studying how fairy tales map onto relationships, and the character roles that cause relationships to go awry.

Carl Jung described these characters as archetypal, universal roles that we can all get dragged along by when we aren’t aware of their power.

So, in the interest of consciousness and better relationships, in this episode I’ll describe the three roles in Karpman’s Triangle and give an example from literature showing how one person can sequentially live out all three roles. Then I’ll talk about how these roles show up in relationships and give an example. Then we’ll talk about four key steps to help you step out of these roles, out of the triangle, and into a more fulfilling relationship.

The Three Roles

In Karpman’s Triangle, three archetypal roles trap us in difficult relationships:

• Rescuer: The would-be hero or heroine that tries to take responsibility for others by helping them, and may try to avoid their own issues in the process.

• Victim: See themselves as helpless and powerless. They focus on the bad things happen, taking them personally and identifying with the role. They often take a passive stance, hoping to be rescued. (This is not to be confused with anyone who’s actually being abused).

• Persecutor: Convinced of being right, they blame, criticize, punish and bully, often with anger.

 

The possibility that you might get caught in any of these roles can be difficult to acknowledge. And it might bring up lots of uncomfortable feelings. But, to save you some suffering, I’d suggest that you try to feel into them–without judgment–to see if you fall into them in some small way that causes heartache in your relationship.

We can all fall into these ruts unintentionally. We typically start in one role and slip into another without realizing it. We might feel like the Victim, or imagine that we’re the Rescuer, but come across as a Persecutor to others.

These roles affect how we behave and how we feel, and how we see others. We may project these archetypal images onto our partner, seeing them as  Rescuer, Victim or Persecutor, which will only make things worse.

Yet, as bad as they can be, each of these roles has a positive origin which has been lost. And we can reclaim those more positive roles. We’ll get to that soon.

A Caveat About “Victims”

I want to be clear that I am not saying that all people who are victims seek to be victimized, fall into victim roles, or provoke persecution. They may be abused without doing anything to encourage the abuser.

What I’m describing here is when people identify with the victim role.

There can of course be overlap. One might actually have been mistreated and then make that their identity. Or they may bring that identity into the relationship and mistreatment starts afterward.

In these situations we need to sort out the difference between being a victim, and getting caught up in a role as a Victim, identifying as a victim. If both are happening, as they sometimes do, getting out of the role may help to improve the difficult relationship and to heal from the mistreatment they encountered.

How the Rescuer, Victim, & Persecutor Manifest in the Compulsive Personality

These roles often get played out in a sequence with people who have a driven, obsessive or compulsive personality: they’re determined to fix things (Rescuer), they get passively resentful that no-one does it right or cooperates (Victim), and then become actively angry at people who get in their way (Persecutor).

People on the unhealthy end of the end of the compulsive spectrum (those with full blown Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, OCPD) tend to see themselves as Victims of other people not playing by the rules, but they are experienced by others as Persecutors that tyrannize them with rules and control. Ironically, they had originally hoped to be Rescuers by doing things the “right” way.

Healthy and Unhealthy Versions of Rescuer, Victim, and Persecutor

These roles are often seen as pathological, but, as with any archetype, at their roots there are energies and motivations that are indispensable and potentially positive:

• The Rescuer gives needed care. Helping others compassionately is a natural and fulfilling part of being human.

 

• The Victim elicits needed care. When we’re hurt we do need to nurse our wounds and reach out for help.

 

• The Persecutor is an unhealthy version of other parts of us such as the Guardian, the Teacher, and the Warrior. These other parts can appropriately set boundaries and limits, instruct others, fight for ourselves, fight for what’s right, and fight for what’s good.

But we can also act out any of these three roles in unhealthy ways:

• Rescuers are not helpful to Victims when they shield them from responsibility. They also may avoid their own issues by focusing on others and deriving too much of their self-esteem by identifying with the limited role of rescuer.

 

• Victims may look to others to take care of them and abandon personal responsibility.

 

• Persecutors, as debased forms of the Guardian, Teacher or Warrior, may become so oblivious to their own suffering from self-criticism that they become oblivious to the suffering of others.

None of these characters should be in charge. If we identify with a role, we feel the need to live it out and then it’s in charge.

The key is to see what role they do need to play in our lives, yet not allow them to take over–like the plumber, electrician and carpenter that come to work on your house but stay and commandeer it like it was theirs all along.

We need to have a more Adult part in charge which can see the benefits and dangers of each of the roles. We’ll get to that later.

Example: Achilles, Rescuer, Victim, and Persecutor

As an example of how we can take on each of these roles sequentially, let’s look at one of the most famous heroes in western literature, the Greek hero Achilles. I’ve chosen him so that you can see that the best of us can fall into these roles.

Achilles is one of the central characters in Homer’s epic tale, The Iliad. He was not only an extraordinarily talented warrior, he was also a cultured musician who could express his feelings. Think Tom Brady and Taylor Swift mixed up into one package. He was no mere MMA brawler, but he was flawed.

He goes off to war as the Hero that will rescue the Greeks from getting whupped by the Trojans. So he starts in rescue mode.

After years of battle, King Agamemnon takes away from Achilles a young woman that had been given to him as a war prize for his courageous efforts. This leaves Achilles madder than a wet hen.

In reaction he adopts a Victim stance, passive-aggressively withdrawing from the war to pout. He had been loved by all his comrades, but once he takes on the victim role, his childish reactions destroy his relationships with them.

Then, when his best pal Patroclus is killed, he becomes the Persecutor. He abandons all integrity and takes vengeance on the Trojans in a revolting way. He kills the Trojan hero Hector, which is to be expected, (I mean, people do do these things in war). But then he drags Hector’s body behind his chariot as if he were a serial rapist, and he eventually tosses it unceremoniously in a garbage heap.

Similarly, when things don’t go the way we feel they should, our good intentions can go awry, destroying our efforts to rescue, our sense of well-being and our relationships. We feel like a Victim and become a Persecutor.

Relationships

Now we’ll look at how these roles are played out between people in relationships, and what happens beneath the surface that leads perfectionists to become persecutors.

When people behave badly it’s usually because that’s the best way they know how to handle their anxiety. With people who are compulsive this takes a particular direction.

People with compulsive personalities are born with meticulous dispositions. It’s actually a valuable temperament that can be helpful to all of us. But anyone whose early or current environment has left them feeling insecure may become mechanically and righteously meticulous to try to calm their anxiety.

The Internal Persecutor

They become perfectionistic to try to silence fears of rejection or criticism. But this perfectionism eventually becomes an internal Persecutor, a critical inner voice that turns on them whenever they feel anxiety.  This voice feels that it’s their job to insure their security or the security of others through perfection. In the back of their mind they believe that if they’re perfect, they’re less likely to get in trouble or be abandoned.

But that’s a deal with the devil.

Eventually they don’t just get angry at themselves for not being perfect, they get angry at others for getting in their way of achieving perfection. They become Persecutors.

Example: Sam’s Internal Persecutor Takes Over

So, for instance, when Sam gets angry it’s because he’s getting more pressure at his engineering job and he worries about failing. He gets critical not just of himself, but of everyone around him, including his wife, kids, and support staff.

Perfection has always been his solution to problems.  And if anyone gets in the way of his tasks, he gets furious because they’re blocking him from feeling secure.

To him, trying to get everything just right is not only the reasonable thing to do, it’s also the moral thing to do. He usually isn’t aware of the anxiety beneath it.

If an assistant makes a mistake that slows down a project, Sam will scold him because he fears it will make him look bad. And so it might, but the persecution and punishment he aims at his assistant do not fit the crime.

He gets angry at his wife if she interrupts him with a question when he’s trying to work: “Can’t you see I’ve got to get this done?” Inside he’s very anxious about failing, but anger feels safer to communicate than vulnerability.

If the partner of the perfectionist isn’t reaching for perfection along with them, it may feel like a personal abandonment to the perfectionist.

If Sam’s wife forgets to pick something up from the grocery, that feels personal to him. It feels like she doesn’t care about him. “You know how hard it is for me when I don’t have a good breakfast in the morning! I won’t be able to work.” He gets angry at her, criticizes her and becomes a victim.

Projective Identification

There is a deeper level to this dynamic which makes it even more powerful.

If you’re the perfectionist, and you find yourself behaving in ways that you regret, it may be because you’re trying, unconsciously, to get rid of the lovely feeling of being persecuted by an internal perfectionist by dumping it into the other person.

This may sound a little strange to you, but as therapists we see it all the time. We refer to it as projective identification. We project something into someone else so that they identify with it.

This cumbersome phrase is less important than understanding that at times we all try to defend against feelings that seem intolerable by getting other people to feel them for us.

The Persecutor is unconsciously trying to let the people around them know what it’s like to have an internal Persecutor making their life constantly miserable.

They aren’t able to tell others about it, so they show them the feeling.

Through their words and actions they get others to experience what they’re experiencing all the time, an intense internal pressure to be perfect.

This is not consciously intentional. Even though they can’t articulate it, they feel like a victim to their own internal Persecutor who torments them with criticism and doomsday scenarios. We all want to be understood, and getting someone else to feel our pain is one way to do it.

But not a very good one.

“How can you possibly let me down by not keeping the house clean? Don’t you know what I’m going through? I can’t think when things are out of order. You’re a terrible wife.” This doesn’t just communicate information, it makes the other person feel the inner experience that the perfectionist is going through, however destructive it becomes.

Relationship Example: Sharon and Rob

Let’s look at an example of how these roles play out in Difficult Relationships:

Act One: Sharon and Rob Meet Their Match

Sharon could see that Rob needed help. He was a diamond in the rough and attractive to her on many levels. He was smart and handsome and had a quick, snarky sense of humor.

But he was unhappy in his job, with good reason it seemed. She figured she could help him with that. She was Type-A and had definitely mastered the work thing. She was good at fixing problems.

She was aware of simply wanting to help someone she cared about. But in the back of her mind, she felt that if he needed her, he wouldn’t leave her. Despite being successful in her career, she liked the security that came with having someone dependent on her.

Rob had seen that Sharon needed help, too. She was wound way too tight and he believed he could help her relax. But in the back of his mind, he also liked that someone was going to try to help him.

Act Two: Sharon launches into Rescuer mode and Rob goes into Victim mode.

Sharon typed out Rob’s resume, but he wouldn’t send it. As the victim, Rob couldn’t believe anyone would take his resume seriously.

Sharon wrote out what he needed to say to his boss to make that situation better, but he didn’t follow through.

She even did some of his work assignments. When she tried to give him easy solutions he felt that she just didn’t get how complicated his situation was. He experienced her efforts as critical, and more proof that she just didn’t understand him.

He had appeared easy-going to her at first, but easy-going morphs into passive-aggressive when the going gets tough.

She had appeared helpful to him at first, but “helpful” morphs into over-controlling when the going gets tough.

Though he wouldn’t have admitted it, Rob actually liked being rescued—or at least having people try to rescue him. It made him feel cared about. And he sensed on some level that she liked taking care of him because it made her feel more secure. So, in the back of his mind, he felt that if he did start taking care of himself, and if he no longer needed her, she would feel less attracted to him.

Instead of feeling like the heroic Rescuer, she felt like a Victim to his passivity. It’s painful to watch someone you care about self-sabotage, so she then experienced him as a Persecutor. There’s a reason we call it passive-aggressive.

There was also good reason that he experienced her as a Persecutor: his passivity infuriated her and she took on that role. Masochism in the passive Victim tends to bring out the Persecutor in the originally well-intentioned Rescuer.

While there may be other explanations for this, the Rescuer often feels their efforts are not working, so they become frustrated and resort to punishing. They feel that it’s justified and that it’s for their partner’s own good. The Rescuer then crosses over to the role of the Persecutor.

So both parties end up in the roles of Victim and Persecutor, even though they had hoped to be Rescuers.

Act Three: Sharon and Rob Abandon Their Roles

While neither one would say they liked the situation, both needed to identify what they got out of it.

Rob eventually admitted that he got into being “poor me;” there was something really gratifying about it. Still, it was his responsibility, not hers, to make his job situation better. He tried to imagine what it was like for her to be on the other end of this, remembering that despite her delivery, she really did care about him.

He learned to tell her when he felt she was pushing him too much.

Sharon acknowledged that she liked being the one in charge; it made her feel stronger and more secure. She learned, instead, to say to Rob, “Here is what I would do if I wanted what you want,” and then let him decide what he wanted to do.

She got out of her own Victim role by focusing on what she wanted to do and pursuing that, rather than blame him for her unhappiness.

She had to learn to set limits, and to realize that even if she believed she was doing the right thing, she often came across in a controlling and critical way that wasn’t helping. Being the Persecutor actually gave Rob an excuse not to improve his life.

Their relationship improved, but it didn’t happen overnight.

Leaving The Triangle

So let’s talk about how to get out of the Triangle and into a better pattern between the two of you. I’m going to describe 5 key steps to leaving these roles. Used together, these steps form a powerful approach to escaping Karpman’s triangle.

1.     Bring in the Ego

This step may seem boring and obvious at first, but it’s really important. I’ve noticed that when people actually try to do it, they say, “Oh, this is new. And not so easy.” Don’t skip it.

To succeed in these transitions, somebody needs to take over, be the adult in the room, and help them escape from the Triangle. There the three characters just kvetch and chase each other around like cats and dogs. The most likely candidate to get them out is a character known to psychologists as the healthy ego, the one with executive functioning skills– not the conceited one.

We can also call it the Adult, as opposed to the Child or the Parent. This part of you needs to be able to stand outside of the melee and say to the Rescuer, Victim and Persecutor,  “Whoa, this isn’t working! You’re all both right and wrong!”  Then find a healthy way to allow each part to express itself.

Take a moment to see if you can feel this Adult part of you, the part that can observe how each of these characters mold our behavior. The Adult part itself usually feels relatively calm and rational, but still respective of feelings. It can decide how to delegate to the other parts.

2.     Get to Know the Characters

Once we have an observing adult ego in place, we need to courageously acknowledge when we inhabit each of these roles. Take a moment to see if you can feel each of these parts within you. Try to think of times when you were possessed by them. For instance:

1.  When you thought you were helping your partner by telling them a better way to dress?

 

2. When you felt that your partner was not treating you fairly?

 

3. When you thought you were helping your partner by telling them a better way to dress?

 

You might have noticed that examples one and three were the same. Yes, that’s intentional. I’m demonstrating that what may feel to you like rescue, may feel to them like persecution.

 

3.     Acknowledge The Payoff

Next, we need to acknowledge the payoff, what we get out of identifying with these roles. Each one can feel gratifying in its own way. But a common motivation, especially seductive for anyone with a compulsive personality, is to feel that we are right, good, and virtuous. Even the Persecutor is motivated by a feeling that they’re doing the right thing, justifying treating other people badly with that rationalization.

Beneath this motivation we usually feel the need to compensate for some insecurity, a sense of shame, of not being morally good, or a fear of being judged.

Here are some payoff possibilities to consider:

• If you find yourself trying to Rescue someone else, is the payoff:
  • • Feeling loved for taking care of others?
    • Security by knowing you are needed?
    • A sense that you are good or heroic?
    • A way to avoid your own issues?
  • Instead:
    • Stop doing things for others.
    • Support their self-care
    • Make sure you rescue yourself

 

• If you can see that you’re in the Victim role, is the payoff:
  • • The sense that you’re loved?
    • Help?
    • A pass from taking care of yourself or taking chances?

• • Instead

• • • Focus on what you really want.
    • Take an active role in achieving it.
    • Don’t focus on how you’ve been wronged.
    • Don’t expect others to make it right for you.

 

• If you see how you might be experienced as a Persecutor, is the payoff:
  • • Power?
    • A sense of righteousness?
    • Revenge?
    • Transferring the oppressive perfectionism you feel inside yourself onto others?

• • Instead:

• • • Question how you persecute yourself.
    • Honestly consider the impact you have on others: does your scolding or punishing actually help?
    • Find the healthy essence of the aggressive energy, which is usually about setting appropriate limits.
    • Help others to take responsibility without using an aggressive edge.

 

 

4.      Extract and Use the Healthy Part

We shouldn’t try to completely get rid of these parts. We need to extract the healthy aspects of each of them and use them wisely:

• We can help others when it’s beneficial for ourselves and the other person–without identifying as a Rescuer.
• We can take care of ourselves and reach out for help–without identifying as a Victim,
• We can stand up and fight for what is right without persecuting others in the process.

Ask what each of the other three parts needs to have, and what’s the most effective route to make that happen.

Each role needs to be lived consciously, not out of habit, fear, compensation or vengeance.

Becoming aware of these parts of ourselves, engaging them as parts that can have a positive role in our life, are steps we can take to feel better and have better relationships.

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It’s rarely easy to take these steps. But with persistence, the help of a therapist, meditation, support group, or diligent reading and journaling, you can build new neural pathways that help you to override the old ones.

If you are obsessive or compulsive, you have qualities such as determination that can help you escape the dominion of these roles and the Triangle they create. But give it time. Don’t let urgency become your persecutor.

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