Tag Archives: Zen Peacemakers

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bearing witness

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Karpman’s Drama Triangle tends to pivot around the Victim role with the Persecutor and Rescuer emerging to meet the Victim’s needs.  It’s important to repeat the caveat that there are times when the Persecutor creates a Victim and nothing in this process suggests anyone who feels victimized is being blamed for it.   In fact, it’s trite to suggest that the way to stop the dynamic is for the Victim to stop being a victim, the Persecutor to stop persecuting, or the Rescuer to stop rescuing.  The relationship between Victim and Rescuer/Persecutor is one of pathogenic hope – a hope that one can be lifted or pushed out of one’s Suffering but which requires the Rescuer/Persecutor to play out a fixed role.  As I suggested yesterday, it’s not so much about roles as it is about honouring the true intentions of each person in the relationship and engaging in the practice of Bearing Witness, Compassionate Action, and Not Knowing to transform our relationships.  I’ve chosen to use a deeply personal example in the hopes that it explores through the Dharma Triangle how Bearing Witness to one’s suffering might transform a toxic relational dynamic.

Not long enough ago, I sat across from a friend of many years, emptying my heart of all the pain it had carried for as many years.  I described to him the feeling of being on a swaying bridge, trying to get across, and needing someone to call out encouragements and even sometimes guidance.  Knowing his tendency to become a Rescuer, I was also trying to get across the idea that I didn’t need anyone leaping onto the bridge to carry me off, an impulsive act that could well have both of us tumbling into the abyss.  There was a pause in our conversation and he said (typically), “So, who’s there for you at the end of that bridge?”  The question was not the problem.  The long unwavering eye-lock that practically had the answer scrolling across their vast blueness was.  I was taken aback; this was a huge and dangerous shift in our relationship.  Yet there was a deep longing to throw caution to the winds and read the scrolling script.  I took a deep breath, gathered all my loneliness and pain, and said, “No one.  It can’t be anyone but me.”

He pushed back from the table and glared angrily out the window, “Maybe you need to talk to your girlfriends.  This is so like you.  As long as I’ve known you, you’ve always been like this.”

For the next 6 months, as he danced between Rescuer and Persecutor, I fixed into the Victim role.  Any attempt to speak to the truth of what was unfolding was met with anger and blaming which I took on as my own unskillfulness.  Eventually, I knew the relationship had to end but also wanted to salvage it.  The pain of the potential loss of a long-term friendship was intense and suffering grew out of wanting and not wanting.  I sat sesshins feeling that profound sorrow and in dokusans searched for concrete answers.  It was a struggle to let go of the role and look into the process.  Is there a victimization process going on?  Sometimes there is and that has to be directly addressed.

After repeatedly observing the dynamic, I realized I had to bear witness to the process of suffering without stepping into the Victim role, being swept away by it or by assumptions about any character flaws.  I needed to be present to what was happening without manipulating or diverting the experience.  I came to see that my intention in sharing my pain with him was to have that pain acknowledged.  I could see that his intention was to shake me out of my helplessness, a strategy that had been the trademark of our relationship.  And the process of losing sight of those intentions was the cause of the pain we felt.  I could only sit and watch that pain rise and fall, recede and overwhelm me.

The process of bearing witness didn’t stop with the end of the relationship.  In fact, I think it only truly began when he was no longer a part of the triangle.  The deeper process of bearing witness to my pain continued for about a year as I sat with the grief and loss.  I vacillated between seeing both of us caught in the victimization process and feeling a Victim.  Doubt expressed itself in pitiful questions: If only I had… What if I had… Why didn’t I… Who would ever…  No one ever…  Bearing witness meant honouring what was happening in the moment.  It meant not running away from this edge by giving in to the self-blame, the urges to call, ask for reconciliation, or some other distraction from the pain.  It meant feeling the aliveness of the pain in me, noticing how its power could create something profound as well as something dark.  Only by willing to be present to the pain could I discern between forcefully holding to labels about me and advocating for a more compassionate view of myself; between rescuing as distraction from my pain and guiding myself through the pain.

More important, because the loss was relational, I had to look at my own dynamic in relationships.  Not only did the healing require me to engage in advocating for my own well-being and guiding myself gently out of the swamps of self-blame, it also required that I find companions who were strong in advocating for and guiding me when I lost the means of honouring my intentions or wandered away from the path.

All three tenets of the Zen Peacemaker are applicable when the victimization process is active.  Compassionate Action and Not Knowing are important components.  In being present to suffering, Bearing Witness takes the foreground and honours the intention of having that suffering seen and heard.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

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drama triangulation

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What does it mean to live on the edge in a way that is fundamentally creative, generative, and prosocial?

What does it mean to live on the edge in a way that is fundamentally destructive, degenerative, and antisocial?

Life in the dead zone is being in a place of meaninglessness… we go looking for this edge – but not in healthy ways.

When things get intense in the world, we have to meet it not in survival mode but as a functional person.  (For that) fearlessness is needed.

from notes on Dharma at the Edge, Fleet Maull


Maull related our unskillful attempts to live on the edge to the ego roles we adopt and for that he used Stephen Karpman’s Drama Triangle.  I’ve used this concept in therapy for years; roles we play and roles we evoke from others that support the roles we play.  If you want to read more, here is a detailed but accessible explanation of the triangle and all its possibilities.  The premise is simple: the interactions between the ego identities we take on can be dysfunction when the roles are those of Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer.  (These are the original Karpman terms which are useful in some circumstances and can be modified to suit other specific interactions.)  The roles can switch when the goal is obstructed and, in fact, if we look closely all three roles are positions of powerlessness.

(Please note that saying roles switch or the three roles co-create each other does not imply that a victim of physical or emotional crime is at fault.  We can be victims of assault and abuse without having played a role in creating the situation or the Perpetrator.  Under such circumstances, this model is only useful in working through the internal process of self-blame, shame, and an understandable avoidance of our internal distress.)


Here’s an incident that shows how the model works in a relational setting: I was walking back from a meeting with someone I trusted as a colleague (we weren’t close enough to be called friends).  He was agitated about a decision he had made and was expressing anxiety and indecision about what he had committed to in the meeting (Powerless/Victim/Eliciting Rescuing).  Ever the sucker for men in tragic poses (that’s another week-long explore, folks!), I offered reassurances and soothing statements (Rescuer/Looking for short-term relief).  Then in an attempt to disengage because we were getting to our destination where he would go one way and I the other, I made a joke about my own vulnerabilities (moving towards Victim/eliciting rescuing).  At this, he grabbed my sleeve and spun me around to face him (we can’t both occupy the same role space so he SWITCHES from Victim to Aggressor).  Towering over and poking his finger at me, he ranted about how that was my issue which needed to be dealt with immediately (Aggressor/Authoritarian stance).  Instantly, I felt my chest collapse and under the intensity of his words, I reacted with my age-old victim statements (complete SWITCH from Rescuer to Victim).

The dynamic is powerful and, ironically, serves to build a base of powerlessness in all participants.  I had an encouraging chat with Fleet sharing how we tend to see the triangle as statement of each participant’s pathology and how that misses the relational creative process.  In fact, it’s a pathogenic process, i.e., creating ill-being in a relationship through our ignorance, grasping, and fearful rejection.  In other words, less of a triangle, more of a triangulation or attempt to develop connection with the other.  I also proposed that Bearing Witness, Compassionate Action, and Not Knowing, the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemaker, were more skilful means of connecting when we see ourselves caught in these roles.

Maull indicated that first we have to take radical responsibility for our role.  Then, flipping the triangle around so the base is long and solid, we can transform our roles to be more creative, generative, and prosocial. The diagram below uses the terminology of The Empowerment Dynamic.  I’m not totally comfortable with the language but also do not want to get caught in concepts (words).  However, suffice to say my discomfort is that the Victim position has evolved into a process yet the other two remain as objectified roles.

For all three positions to emphasize the relational nature of the system, I thought a Dharma Triangle had more potential to make the transformational leap and meshed well with the Three Tenets:

In Dharmic terms, the interactions are intended to relieve suffering and the first step to alleviating suffering is to step out of our roles and the concepts those roles confer on us.  By seeing the impermanence in each of these roles, letting go of all fixed selves (victim, aggressor, rescuer), and concepts about the other, the potential of a new dynamic that is truly co-creative can emerge.

To shift from a role-based system (Victim, Aggressor, Rescuer), we first look at the lack of skillful means embodied by each of these roles.  The Victim role embodies helplessness, negativity, and elicits support for that mode of interaction.  The Aggressor role embodies righteousness, authoritarian views, and controlling behaviours.  The Rescuer role embodies co-dependence through a need to be needed.  The Aggressor and Rescuer also have poor distress tolerance so their attempts to foster change are based more in relieving their own discomfort and less in the victim’s need to be assisted.

The skillful means arises from honouring the true intention of each person in the relationship.  The Victims’ intention is to have their suffering acknowledged.  The Aggressors’ intention is to protect using their vast energy to push away what is harmful.  The Rescuers’ intention is to lift the Victims out of their suffering.  The question now becomes: How can we honour our true intentions and cultivate skillful interactions using dharma wisdom?  Over this week, I’ll try to explore the potential for transformation from our role-based interactions to a dynamic that can arise through practising with the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers: Bearing Witness, Compassionate Action, and Not Knowing.

Thank you for practising,

Genju