As I get back into the swing of things at work, I “get” to travel a bit more. In years past that might have been long flights to Germany or even longer flights to China. These days its long drives through Ohio from Covington to a suburb of Detroit. I’m not mad about it, mainly because it gives me time to listen to podcasts again. Between all the mowing and traveling I used to do, I was a rapid consumer of podcasts. Finding time again to listen has been a blessing. I still maintain that podcasts are the last bastion of the “real” internet. They so far have seemed to resist the enshittification that plagues so much of the rest of it.
A friend shared this podcast with me and I listened on a (far too) early morning drive this past Monday: Understanding the Drama Triangle. There are lots of good tools offered in this episode, but a few really stuck with me so wanted to capture a few reflections here.
This isn’t in the order they are laid out in the ep, but the first I want to talk about is the concept of being “above or below the line”. This is a simple way to describe your emotional state without putting a lot of judgement on it. It’s just a place on the map. Below the line is when you are acting (more likely reacting) from a place of fear. Above the line is when you are acting from a place of openness and growth. I, like most people, prefer to see myself as acting above the line most of the time. The truth is of course somewhat different. What was interesting to me about this idea though was how I like to show up here, on this blog. I can think of so many examples where I started posts and either left them in draft or deleted them because I realized they were coming from “below the line”.
Some of that self-editing is probably a good thing. When I write from too far below the line, things come out that might hurt other people if I published them. But being afraid of writing below the line at all is not staying true to the most recent purpose of this blog: to be my whole, real self. That whole, real self is afraid sometimes so I would like to figure out ways to share that as well. Maybe some experiments with writing “just” below the line, focusing on my experience and staying away anyone else’s?
The next concept I’d like to talk about is the subject of the episode itself, the drama triangle. The basic idea here is there are three places (hence the triangle) that someone can stand when there is drama that will perpetuate the drama: the victim, the blamer and the hero. The victim says “this is what I deserve and there is nothing I can do about it”. The blamer says “if that bad person didn’t do that bad thing, I wouldn’t be in this situation”. The hero is the tricky one. They look like they are helping by saying “let me sooth you…let me fix it”. The thing is they don’t actually fix the issue that’s causing the drama. They smooth things over so they can move past the drama, but the root issue is still there and so the drama will just pop up again later.
This struck me as I heard it. I have been involved in a fair number of dramas in my life and I nearly always immediately run to the take on the role of the hero (not to say that I am never in one of the other two roles). And I did actually think I was helping. The next drama I find myself in, I’m going to watch very carefully where I go and try my best to push past the hero leg of the triangle and get out of it entirely. I am not sure what that looks like, but I know what not to do.
The last concept that I really liked was the first one they get into: facts vs stories. This is one of those that as I heard it, it seemed so obvious and at the same time revolutionary. The basic idea is that as we recall past events, we mix together the facts of what happened with the stories we tell ourselves about what happened. The facts and the stories become indistinguishable to us and when we tell others, we mix the two without any boundaries. Being able to slow down and separate out facts from stories will help me see things more clearly and thus improve how I interact with others, specifically since they point out that most disagreements are about differing stories, not differing facts.
I thought a lot about the last year – what are the facts and what are the stories? What are the facts that only I know? What are the stories I tell myself about those facts? What are the facts that others know? What stories are they telling themselves about those facts?
It helped me realize that the “reasons” I had been using to explain other people’s reactions to my decisions weren’t necessarily facts—they were just stories I was telling myself. And the same is true for them: they’ve created their own stories to explain my choices. These “reasons” are narratives, not truths. In reality, none of us truly knows the why. We barely even understand the what. Learning to separate facts from stories has been an important first step in letting go of the need to know everything. It’s opened up space for grace—and eventually, a deeper understanding that goes beyond needing a reason.
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