Emotional Intelligence and the Drama Triangle
The drama triangle shows what drama is all about from an emotional intelligence perspective.
To get perspective, we have to look down on the drama triangle from above and see how we bounce from role to role in our addiction to drama; victim, rescuer and aggressor.
The drama triangle is a meta-model for fear-based behaviours. When we look at shadows then that shadow infuses a particular flavour of the fear model.
When I talk about the shadow of vanity then it is a particular flavour of the fear that has us complying with the rules of the tribe to which we belong as we fear being told to leave the tribe. The shadow of unease is a flavour of fear that we won’t survive.
How we react to the shadows is drama and the drama-triangle is the model for the addiction to drama.
To transform, we have to gain a new perspective that gives us the motivation to engage with our shadows and kill our addiction to drama.
We can get this perspective by understanding the traps that provide the energy that bounces us from point to point.
The Aggressor’s Trap: Outrage Consciousness
The trap of outrage consciousness is the fear of being rejected, and we use the outrage to justify being intrusive to others, both physically and emotionally. Which usually results in much more rejection, and then this creates more outrage in a never-ending loop.
We actively go looking for outrage and we see SO many examples of this in politics and media. When we then clear the emotions of fear, grief and paralysed-will, then we release ourselves from the loop of self-rejection. This is self-leadership.
Self-leadership is realised when we learn to truly know, accept and love ourselves, and then we're no longer afraid of rejection.
This then frees us to embrace our creativity and start getting shit done where outrage is still available to us, but it is now a conscious choice to respond this way, and not part of our unconscious addiction to drama.
E.g. We can respond to aggression with “I resent that remark” with elevated volume and tonality rather than shout “You’re a dickhead” 😀.
The gift of leadership is what we get when we integrate this learning into our subconscious.
This integration into our subconscious is embodied memory - just like when we learn to drive or play tennis, we no longer think about changing gears or swapping from forehand to backhand - we just do it unconsciously in response to the environment around us.
The Rescuer’s Trap: Saviour Consciousness
The trap of saviour consciousness is the fear of being wrong, and when we are living in saviour-consciousness we “always get to be right”.
The guilt, shame and moral-self-judgement that we carry around is what drives our fear of being wrong. It completely stops us from being compassionate to ourselves in so many ways, and is at the core of self-hatred.
Self-benevolence starts with releasing our shame, guilt and moral-self-judgement. When we clear these emotions of shame, guilt and dogma, then we can fully embrace self-benevolence.
When we truly know in our hearts that we deserve self-benevolence then this frees us from the fear of being wrong.
Self-benevolence is the key that unlocks our power; our ability to say ‘no’.
The Victim’s Trap: Blame Consciousness
The trap of victim consciousness is the fear of being excluded.
The trap here is that we blame others rather than taking responsibility for our own feelings and emotions. This leads us to self-exclude and we get addicted to the state of self-exclusion because it gives us the illusion that we are in-control.
But this state of being “in-control” also frustrates us because we don’t get to say and do what we truly want to do in life because we are afraid of being excluded.
We become angry, with a hair trigger, and we go looking for more evidence so we can feed our addiction to self-exclusion.
Once we have stepped into self-leadership and self-benevolence then we have the space to own our feelings and acknowledge that we are never “in-control”.
As soon as we shatter our illusion of 'being in control' and own and accept our anger, without blaming others, then we can step into self-sovereignty with a deep acceptance of “I deserve to get what I want.”
Self-sovereignty means that we get to choose the problems that we want to solve in life, rather than having them chosen for us. By letting go of the need to be “in-control” we get to creatively express ourselves in the solutions we create to the problems we choose to have.
Understanding the traps and integrating these lessons by engaging with life opens our heart and allows us to step into our power