Hello Courageous Pals,

Have you ever found yourself in an interaction with someone thinking, "Oh no, here we go again..."?  Often this happens just before plunging into a conflict that is so predictable it's almost like you're reading it from a script. This, friends, is the Drama Triangle.

It’s one of my favourite Transactional Analysis concepts because it’s usually very relatable: people can instantly think of a time when they were occupying one of the points of the triangle, either recently or a memory which has stuck with them for a long time. Let me paint you a picture…

I’m one of nature’s Rescuers, so I’m constantly starting there and flitting off to Victim or Persecutor if I don’t get myself unstuck. It’s useful to write down how you’re going to get yourself from the Drama Triangle to the Winner’s Triangle - how you can convert your Victim to Voicing, or your Persecuter to emPowerment, or your Rescuer to Responsibility - but what’s even more useful is to physically practice making these moves with your body, experiencing how each stance feels different. The fancy name for this is ‘perceptual positioning.’ As we talked about back in January’s Courage Pie, the important thing is that motion and physical position help us to cement different types of knowledge in our bodies. By physically moving from and inhabiting the qualities of the positions of the Winner’s Triangle, we can help make it easier for our brains to know how to get back to that mental space when we want to.

Science behind the slice
The Drama Triangle was originated by Stephen Karpman in the 1970s. Here’s a handout of his recounting some of the many uses and variations which have developed over the years. The one we worked with yesterday is a version of Acey Choy’s Winner’s Triangle (requires an academic journal subscription), where each of the points is reframed as a positive stance with full access to all one’s potential and inner resources, instead of as a limiting position from which we’re either avoiding, over-acting, or acting out against ourselves and others. And I can once again offer you, my intrepid courageous pals, an inside peek into the secret Caitlin Blog Archive with insights on the Drama Triangle and how to escape its clutches! (melodramatic pause…)

Next month…
September’s Courage Pie 💪🥧 will be all about stories we tell ourselves - the ones that help us, and the ones we want to rewrite.

I’m planning to deliver an online session for the Yorkshire Festival of Story in November and I’ll share the booking link when it becomes available. In the meantime, you’re welcome to work with me one-on-one for uncovering those unhelpful narratives and recasting them into better stories. You can find out a bit more about how I like to work on my coaching page. If you’ve enjoyed our Courage Pie sessions and think your company, community group, union or other organisation would benefit from a slice of courage, please do get in touch!

Until next month,

Caitlin