Courtney Smith: Where Are You in the Drama Triangle
Courtney Smith, a coach, facilitator, and dear friend who is schooled and trained in many different modalities: Conscious Leadership Group, Byron Katie’s work, the Alexander Technique, and the Enneagram. She is one of my favorite thought partners because of the range of her intelligence and the structure of her mind: She was a math econ major who happens to have a J.D. from Yale and a masters in public health from NYU. Before taking a turn toward the mystical, she was a McKinsey consultant. So in short, she’s a multi-hyphenate Renaissance woman whose bookshelf looks much like mine. You might remember Courtney from our conversation on Pulling the Thread about the Enneagram—if you missed it, there’s a link in the show notes—but today, we’re going to talk about Stephen Karpman’s Drama Triangle: What it is, how to know when you’re in it, and how to move past it…while recognizing that you’ll be in another one soon enough. We also do a little bit of live coaching and role-playing, so you all will really get a sense of how this powerful tool works.
Meanwhile, if you want to work with me and Courtney, together, we’re hosting a workshop from May 17-19 at the Art of Living Retreat Center in Boone, North Carolina. It’s called “Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness” and will be a combination of On Our Best Behavior and Courtney’s techniques. Honestly, I can’t wait—I hope you’ll all join us. The link to sign up is also in the episode page, or the link in bio on my Instagram account, @ eliseloehnen.
MORE FROM COURTNEY SMITH:
My Workshop with Courtney at AOLRC: “Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness”
First Pulling the Thread episode: “The Practical Magic of the Enneagram”
Courtney’s Website
ALSO MENTIONED:
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leaders
Elise’s Substack Newsletters:
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE LOEHNEN: Courtney, I'm excited for this, as you know, because I love talking to you and I love being in a women's group with you and watching you work. And we have the same taste in teachers and principals and ideas and concepts. So today, what I'm hoping to do is have you take us through some core components of the people might recognize from the conscious leadership group. We're gonna do facts versus stories Above and below the line and then we're gonna do some drama triangling. Real time.
COURTNEY SMITH: Great. Well, I'm excited to do all of this and I love having you in one of my women's groups because I know that you have strong preferences and a high taste and bar. So I love having you in the room to give me feedback. I think that you're probably not alone that a lot of people have questions about, like, what's it like to do women's work or group work with women? And am I going to feel comfortable sharing? How do you build a container of trust? All of those kinds of questions. And so I just have been like delighted like how much you've gone for it in the group and I feel like I'm getting a lot out of it and I hope you are too and I feel like the group is also
ELISE: Group work is fascinating for anyone who's listening who hasn't done it or has considered it. I hadn't Really, I love, love group experiences with teachers. I particularly love it when everyone's facing in the same direction towards a board. And I like listening to people share, typically, I think it's really interesting and to catch my own preconceptions and judgments and often be entirely surprised by what people say. But yeah, group work was hard, as you know, it wasn't an easy yes for me, in part because it's so intimate and it's been really interesting to be present with myself with this group of women who are wonderful. But to watch like how I react, what gets triggered, what buttons get pushed, how I respond is in of itself fascinating, despite the content and like probably the biggest lesson for people, right, that you work with?
COURTNEY: well, I think it's really interesting because when we talk about above and below the line, which is about talking about the presence of fear or threat, For me, one of the things that's really interesting about group work is we can talk intellectually about what it means to be scared and what happens to our body and what happens to our thinking when we're scared and what are we going to do about that? But the group work itself is triggering that for most people. And so it's an opportunity, just by showing up to actually not have an intellectual experience of one of the concepts that we're working with, but to actually practice transcending the issue of fear or threat like live. And so for me, that's one of the biggest upsides of group work is so much of what we're going to talk about today is about this idea of fear or threat of losing approval or others judging us. And typically what happens in group work is you find that people love you all the more for your flaws and vulnerability. And I can tell you that and I can coach you through that as one on one, but there's something really special about having a lived experience of that in a group.
ELISE: Yeah, it's so interesting to hear you say that because I find I hold the most judgment, not specifically talking about our group, but in general with someone you're watching them and you're like, I see you and you don't see yourself and then when you watch someone flip and come to that own awareness of their behavior and what's actually driving them, it's very lovable, very lovable and not just because it's like a performed act of vulnerability either, but because it's just so human to watch someone take responsibility for themselves. And that's really drama triangle stuff, which we're going to get to, but you mentioned above the below the line. Do you want to start there or with facts and stories?
COURTNEY: I think let's start with fact versus story because to some extent that really informs above and below the line, and the concept of fact versus story, I want to start by saying these tools, fact versus story, above, below the line, and drama triangle, I really consider them, like, life changing practices, that once you internalize them, you actually see the world differently, you can't unsee the world, and so I find Through this lens, it's kind of forever with you and so I think these are really special, extremely powerful tools and the first one that I would start with this idea of fact versus story is fact versus story is pointing to the fact that there are the events of our life and then there's the way we hold and make meaning of those events, how we interpret those events, and I would call what's actually happening content, The facts and the way we hold and make meaning of it is our context and typically what happens is when we're talking with friends or talking at work or any situation, most of the time we're not distinguishing between content and context. In other words, we're not distinguishing between the facts of what is real and then the stories that we're making up about those facts. They get kind of all twisted and conflated. And when we do that there's a lot of fall out. And one piece of fallout is most arguments are about a conflict in story. My story versus your story. And It's hard to actually resolve a conflict. It very rarely happens that someone flips to like, Oh, you were right. Like, I see it now. I changed my story. That doesn't happen very often. And so that's typically why we see conflicts that happen over and over again. And we see no resolution because it's story versus story.
The second thing is, I would say that our ability to make, create story from facts is a superpower of ours as human beings. And the reason it's a superpower is it allows us to manipulate and make sense of reality. And that's super, super powerful. But if we don't see the stories we're actually using to make sense and then work with reality, We forget that that lens is now filtering and actively changing how we move through the world. So let me just give you an example, because that was like very abstract: one of my kids has ADHD and there are so many stories I can make up about the fact that he has ADHD. I could make up the story it's my fault. I can make up the story that it's some genetic issue with my husband. I could make up the story that my son's gonna struggle in school. I can make up the story that he's gonna require more support from me compared to like whatever an average kid would be. Already so many stories in that. I could make up the story that he's gonna like force teachers to be really good at their job, that he's gonna demand super teaching and that he is my greatest teacher and is bringing out the better parent in me because he's so different than I am. And you can sort of see that if I double down on any one of those stories, My experience of reality is really, really different, and so if I don't bother to slow down and ask myself what is my story, and am I willing to, rather than it holding me and dictate my experience of reality, can I hold it so that then I can allow my stories to be complicated and more nuanced, and I give myself greater range to move through reality rather than being limited by the story.
ELISE: Yeah, I mean, it's such a powerful tool just to even think of the way that, and I'm not going to jump forward to being above and below the line, but the way that you can either choose to take a central fact and spin it into this positive, life affirming, fascinating journey that you two are going to embark on, versus my child will never succeed, my child will never, will have a hard time, my child, you know, and so on and so forth. And we're all familiar, I mean you could call it like positive versus negative mindset or whatever, but the reality is that for any of us can go anywhere on facts versus stories and we do that all day, as you mentioned, it's the source of so much conflict, for example, between me and my husband, right? He'll come in, I'm distracted or laser focused on something. He says something, I miss it. And suddenly, like, why are you in a shitty mood, and what did I do, and, you know, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, I had my headphone, I'm listening to an audiobook, or whatever it may be, the rapidity, right, through which we make meaning, and assign pattern, and fail to be with what's present, is stunning.
COURTNEY: Yeah, we're story making machines. I mean, that's what the book sapiens is all about. It's our, it's actually our superpower. Families are stories. Money is a story. Countries are stories. We've accomplished so much because we can use stories to collaborate, unify, do all kinds of things with them. And our mind is lightning fast at them. That capacity is never going to go away So the question then becomes, can I start recognizing when I'm in story and can I use some tools to kind of neutralize the inevitable story making that I'm going to do in any situation?
ELISE: And it starts with like identifying the facts, which I think is so powerful. I mean, it sounds so basic, but even using that, you know, silly example that I just gave, instead of flying, which either my husband and I are inclined to do to sort of like all the various ways in which we feel abandoned by each other or lonely or unheard or whatever it may be, a fact is something that would be recorded on videotape, right? When I walk in the door, you don't look up or say hi. Would that be a fact or is that still a story?
COURTNEY: Well, you could say, like, what we would know is maybe in this moment, that's not what happened. But to generalize that when I walk through the door, this is what happens. And that's probably not a fact.
ELISE: That's probably too charged. There's some story in there.
COURTNEY: Yeah.
ELISE: I love your brain. But yes, exactly. So, when I walked in tonight, I asked you how your day was and, you said... no, but people listening, I mean, you get the point. It's also like, as I've started to use it more in those moments where I can feel alone or panicked or I had sort of like a cash flow issue with my business at the beginning of the year. And normally that's the sort of thing that would just flood my husband immediately where he just goes into like, I don't want to hear this. He can't be present with me when I start to get anxious about money. But I was able to say, okay, here are some facts and these are the stories that I'm telling myself and can you just be present with me and we can cycle through some of the stories that I'm telling myself and you can help me calm myself down. And he was like, this is kind of interesting. What are we doing here? I was like, we're doing facts versus stories. But can you explain that process?
COURTNEY: Yeah. So the idea is, this concept of fact versus story, okay, great, now, how do I make this meaningful and actionable in my real life? Because that's the group work and what CLG is all about is, actually like applying this in real time. And so the idea is that probably 99 percent of what we talk about is story, and can I be willing to start differentiating in my language between fact and story? And so it feels kind of awkward at first, but the goal is to say like, here's the facts, and usually it's no more than one or two. You'll try to make up a bunch as a way to sort of convince yourself that you're right, but usually there's very, very few facts. And then the superpower move is to say, the story I'm making up about those facts is dot, dot, dot.
ELISE: Yeah.
COURTNEY: And it becomes a way of being able to share your experience, in a way that is what we would call unarguably true. Because stories can be argued with, but the fact that this is my story is true.
ELISE: Yeah.
COURTNEY: And you can sort of picture, like my husband's driving the car, he's really, really quiet. We haven't talked to each other, we're on the way to dinner, he's not saying anything. I say, are you mad at me? Or I say, hey, you're quiet. The story I'm making up about that is you're mad at me. Any truth to that? It's such a different way of saying the same thing, but it's going to be perceived really, really differently.
ELISE: we did an exercise and without sort of breaking any confidence in terms of what we shared you split us into pairs, This is a group of women some women who know each other and Most of us who don't really intimately know each other and we did this right and you had us pick one fact And then from that fact, the stories that we tell ourselves about that fact, right? So I think my fact was I'm half Jewish. And the story I tell myself is that I belong to no faith and nowhere. The story I tell myself is that, you know, on and on and on, but it was what was stunning about that explication, I think you gave us a minute, two minutes. It's like the depth that we got with each other and with speed and so much intimacy and so many tears and it's fascinating. I recommend everyone do this. You know, for some people it might be like my father left when I was nine or my parents got divorced or I'm divorced or, you know, whatever it may be the, the speed with which you can start to see your own thinking spread out before you. And the person who listens, you could probably do it to a wall or to a pet, but the person who listens that just thanks you for sharing doesn't respond. But like, it was wild to watch and to see other people's meaning making and how far they could take something and they were big things typically, but how far you can take a single fact and extend it throughout your life to tell a lot of stories.
COURTNEY: Yeah, and really create a reality that is actually predicated upon the story you made up about very, very, very limited information.
ELISE: Yeah.
COURTNEY: And part of the reason we do that exercise is, From my perspective, one of the reasons we tell stories is it helps give us a sense of who we are, we use stories to affirm our identity. And that's part of the reason why we don't actually like to call them stories, because if we call them stories, and we begin to see that the self is actually rooted in construction, made up interpreted reality, it can be very threatening to us and to our sense of who would I be without this story. And so that's one of the things that I really love about this is you can begin to see that my sense of self has to change, if I'm willing to look at my stories, what is going to happen is my sense of who I am is going to change.
ELISE: It's really intense.
COURTNEY: The fear of that, like the terror of that, but also the opportunity of that , so like I'll share that my parents are divorced and the very, very first time I did this exercise, I said my parents are divorced. The story I make up about that is, I come from a family of brokenness, like I'm screwed up because my parents are divorced. And the moment I said that out loud, I was like, Oh my, whoa. That's a doozy of a story to invest in. And to then actually transform it into actually that's made me appreciate the power of relationships. It's been a big piece of my own work and growth and evolution. It's made me value marriage. There's so many other ways I could take it. And just that one sort of like, holy shit, this is what I've been up to, there's a big light bulb moment that can go off for people.
ELISE: Yeah. Well, I think that's the perfect way to segue to being above and below the line, right? Because Your interpretation of these facts and the story making can be an above the line version and a below the line version, and I think it's worth noting, I'm sure you'll note it, but that the instinct that everyone who's listening is going to have is to be like, I'm always above the line. Right? I don't want to ever be below the line. I'm above the line. I'm over this. And the reality is that most of us, what, spend 99 percent of our lives and our time below the line? Maybe it's not that dire, but this is okay. This is the journey. This is our life. This is of fear how we function, right?
COURTNEY: Yeah. So the concept of above, below the line is if you go back to content versus context, above and below the line is a shorthand way of talking about the context you're bringing to a situation. And the shorthand is: are you approaching the situation from a place of fear or threat or are you alternatively approaching it from a place of openness, possibility, presence, and growth and the first thing I want to say about that is, from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to over index on seeing fear and threat, seeing threat in any situation. And so this is part of the reason why we want to normalize and get real about how often we are experiencing life from below the line. It's because we can see threat and then get out ahead of it that we survived as a species but one of the things that's really challenging about seeing fear or threat in situations, is fear is designed to be an overwhelming physical experience. It's designed to force change. For you to do something to get yourself to feel safe again, because it's overwhelming and so when we are looking at situations from a place of fear or threat, what ends up happening is then we start gearing our stories, our feelings, and our thoughts to how can I make myself feel safe again. And that's a fundamental human need. So I want to normalize that of course, when you're feeling scared, you want to feel safe again but that becomes the primary need that we're satisfying now. And when that happens, we get kind of hijacked and lose the ability to solve for other needs or opportunities or desires that actually our more or wiser self might be trying to optimize for, so for example, you know, if I'm trying to like connection, purpose, play, growth, learning, all of those things become second order functions once fear is in the system. And so above and below the line matters and identifying when we have threat in the system matters because once we do that and see what we're up to, we can then sort of hold the fear differently and again, in the same way that like stories can either have us or we can hold them so that we have some separation and can work with them. It's the same thing with fear. Fear can have us and drive the system, drive the bus or we can presence it and then hold it. So that then we have the wherewithal to approach situations from a broader range of functions, values and optimization.
ELISE: And I think this is Hale Dwoskin, right? But the fear that he outlines, and this feels like pretty comprehensive to me, I haven't seen a better model, is fear of loss of approval, fear of loss of safety or security, and fear of loss of control.
COURTNEY: Yeah.
ELISE: sort of the, the primary buckets, right? Like, as you're thinking about this. It's easy to identify the general terrain that you're in when something happens.
COURTNEY: Yeah. And I'm glad that you mentioned that because what we want to do in these situations and maybe at some point we can just do a little exercise about it is we really just want to be with ourselves in our fear. And we can get overly cute about getting specific about the language and, well, this is like making me scared for this reason, and it's because this happened to me 15 years ago, and now I'm off to the races telling you the story about what happened. And once we do that, we've lost the capacity to just be with, in a very simple way, the part of us who's scared. And so this shorthand of, am I scared of loss of security, Approval or control, really helps me just stay with my experience. All fears can be kind of reduced to one of those, which is it here? And can I just see that that's what's driving me?
ELISE: Yeah.
COURTNEY: I think the other thing that you're mentioning there is really important, because most of us sort of think about fear as like, you know, like what happens to us when the airplane is shaking or Someone pulls out in front of us, like in a car, these really extreme situations when we can really feel that fear is online, but when you start expanding fear to not just be about security, which we could define, you know, not just physical harm, but also emotional harm and fear of loss of approval and fear of loss of control, we can then begin to see that The experience of fear is often much more subtle than we realize. And from my perspective, the hallmark of fear is really any experience of contraction and contraction in the body, which would feel like rigidity, tension, tightening, in addition to the tummy fluttering and heart fluttering that most of us typically associate with fear. The contraction around the heart, Which really we experience as, I would call like, othering. Creating a wall or separation between me and the person in the situation. Or contraction in the mind. Which is really all about kind of, again, this fact versus story, becoming attached to, my story is the truth, my story is the right way. And so once we begin to define and recognize that fear can just manifest as subtly as I know the answer and I don't, I'm not going to listen to your perspective, I now see that threat is here way more often than I thought.
ELISE: Right. Yes. Very present and then the presence of fear is what drives us to be below the line most of the time, right, where we see the world acting to us, where we are sort of the victims of the world and its events, or rather than being above the line where we see ourselves as the author of our own experience. Did I say that right?
COURTNEY: Yeah, yeah, look at you. been going to class.
ELISE: Sign me up.
COURTNEY: You know what, as you were talking, one thing that occurred to me that I did want to say is for those people who've listened to our conversation about the Enneagram that happened several months ago, this is really the place where the Enneagram and some of these foundational concepts intersect, because you can think about each of the nine Enneagram types, as a habitual pattern of story making in the world about the world and a particular flavor of what causes me to go below the line, what triggers me into fear and is the fear more about approval, control or security? And once I feel scared. What are my habitual default patterns for making myself feel safe again?
ELISE: And if you're a six, like me, and Courtney, then just fear and anxiety is your daily broth.
COURTNEY: Well, this is from my perspective, one of the superpowers of the six is that we can talk about what happens in the drama triangle and there's lots of work to do there, but just the willingness to presence, Hey, I feel really scared. , look at me. There's a part of me that is flipping out here. And then I can just take a deep breath around that part of me who, you know, is scared to do a podcast or still gets scared every time she does a women's group or, you know, the dozens of other times that I get scared throughout the day, I can just say, Hey, look at this part of me. There she is. And then kind of take a deep breath and keep her alongside me, but keep going.
ELISE: Yeah. And I think the shorthand of being above or below the line for me, at least, is so helpful, even as a way to back end to understand what is the fear and the threat. And I know that I am below the line when I get exercise, when I get defensive, when I get agitated. That's sort of a tell, I think, probably a universal tell for all of us. Before we started recording, Courtney and I were catching up and thinking of good drama triangle examples to use or to coach and I was saying about how, when this comes out, This series on my sub sack will be done, but how I'm doing this four part series was originally just supposed to be one newsletter about the presence of mantles and this idea that most of the prominent podcasts are hosted by men and these men don't interview women, right? The stats are pretty stunning for people like Huberman and Peter Attia and Sam Harris and tim Ferriss and I did this audit last summer and was going to sort of place the piece and I just was sort of talked out of it and talked to myself out of it and get very below the line, to be honest, about people like Peter Attia and Andrew Huberman in a way that is so interesting to me because, like, I don't care about Peter and Andrew Huberman, and yet I clearly do, right?
And as Courtney and I were talking before, I was like, oh, I get so below the line, and the pieces have been incredibly validating because they've had their own sort of morality in some ways. And yet I still feel the threat of not wanting to offend these men or not wanting to deny myself opportunities and then the grief and sadness that I don't think that they care.
COURTNEY: Hmm.
ELISE: right, and I'm definitely below the line about this particular topic in a way that I, of course, you can hear me higher minding and being like, I don't care about Peter Attia. Well, I've now written three newsletters about Peter Attia.
COURTNEY: Well, and like I was listening to you and I was sort of like thinking like, well, so let's just stop. And you know, what is the fear that's most active in you? Is it a fear of loss of control, loss of approval or loss of security in this circumstance?
ELISE: loss of approval.
COURTNEY: Hmm.
ELISE: and loss of security because the loss of approval comes from, I don't want to let these guys get to me in some ways. And yet at the same time, I'm desperate for these guys to engage with women and specifically for those guys to engage with female doctors and experts on parity with the men that they engage with. And then for safety and security, it's like, these guys dominate. And my next newsletter was about scarcity and how there's no corollary of women helping women in these spaces in the same way that there are men helping men.
COURTNEY: Hmm.
ELISE: And so it's like a deprivation of opportunity for myself and other women who could then Raise up other women, if that makes sense, like it's these pervasive cycles. And I think it this the threat to me is also a little bit deeper, in the sense that when I write about feminism, or I think about patriarchy, so much of my focus, in part, because there are so many other thinkers who are focused on feminism the structures of patriarchy and the external factors. So much of my work is focused on internalized patriarchy. And this idea that the calls coming from inside the house, and the more that each of us can address our the old our own ways of upholding these patriarchal systems and ideas, including the fact that listening to these podcasts and not hearing any women is completely normal to us, or the way in which we we feel so much scarcity around helping other women, et cetera. That's what I care about. And there's something like when I wrote the piece, I was like, well, maybe these guys don't know. Maybe they're along for this ride with us and they will also be part of looking at their own internalized patriarchy. And like, of course they know. And of course they don't care. That's what's come back to me. I know they know. I don't know that they've necessarily read my piece, but the feedback that I've gotten is that This is not my original thinking here and that they've been told.
COURTNEY: Mm hmm.
ELISE: And so I think that there's sadness in that too. I don't know.
COURTNEY: Well, what I'm really struck by is, and this is like such a real time, like beautiful example is, you know, this idea of like being above or below the line, you know, it's not static. It's not like, oh, once I identify this is where I am and now I can take a deep breath and I'm gonna like, you know, kind of shift my experience and now I'm done, you know, it's like we're constantly going back and forth. And so like I heard, you know, language from you, which I appreciated around like I can tell him below the line. I can tell that I'm activated. I can tell that I have a point of view and I'm not willing to listen. And I feel really contracted around it and I can feel how scared I am around approval and security. And then I hear a shift in you of, you know, I also wanna sort of take responsibility within my own home, metaphorically for the way the system is set up and all the ways that I've internalized that and I am participating in that system and what would be small acts of responsibility that I could take? Even as I wanna point out that there are structural and systemic issues here at play. And then, you know, the flip to like back below of, you know. Like these guys, like, maybe they don't even care. And then the rise above to like, actually, I just feel a lot of grief and sadness about the fact that like the story I make up that they don't care, which is ultimately a story cause we don't really know what's going on over there. And so I just want to point out that the work of above, below the line is the context for any sort of situation, it's dynamic and very human to be going above, below, above, below, above, below.
ELISE: Right. And a testament to the fact that as much as we all profess and claim to be above the line about all things all the time, we're frequently not. And as a reminder, like, thank you for pointing that out, because when I'm below the line, I feel like the world is happening to me. I'm a victim of the world. There's someone to blame outside of me. When I move above the line, it's like, well, what sort of future or different patterns could we create? The world is happening through me, by me. I'm responsible for my own experience. Which is Again, it's interesting because culturally I think a lot of us would prefer to live below the line and now we I guess we can move into the drama triangle, but it's a lot more creative and fun I think to be above the line. And before we get into that, I think we should clarify that we're going to talk about victims and victimhood. And there's a difference. So clearly people are victims of circumstances, events. There are victims in our midst. We're not suggesting that there's not. Then there's victim consciousness. And that's what we're going to talk about in this context. So I just want to clarify that so that we don't sound crazy or heartless as we move forward.
COURTNEY: Okay, great. So one of the things that we kind of go back to like above below the line and this idea that when fear is present in the system, if we're not consciously working with it, that it ends up driving our choices, one of the outcomes of that is that we will therefore see situations repeat themselves because I am now showing up in a way only to make myself feel safe again, as opposed to looking at the situation, the issue that needs to be solved, the issue that needs to be learned or resolved. And that's not available to me anymore. Because I'm so focused on fear. So one of the things I like to do when people are saying, like I, I've done a lot of work. Like I'm above the line most of the time, one of the things I like to do is sort of, let's go through your life and talk about recurring situations, patterns, because those are going to be pointing to most likely places that you're below the line. And when we're below the line, because we're orienting from a place of fear, or as you described, I'm at the effect of the world, the world is happening to me. The context, or the consciousness, or the way I'm holding and making sense of what's happening is, I see it through the lens of victim, because I'm at the effect of external circumstances. And so just to clarify that in content land, things do happen to people. I don't want to diminish or pretend that's not real. But what we're talking about is the decision to hold it from a context of I'm at the effect of it.
There's this concept called the drama triangle, which Stephen Cartman originated in the 1960s. And when we're looking and experiencing a situation from the lens of victimhood, there are three different flavors of what we do when we feel like the effect of something. The first is sort of the classic victim stance, Which is to be vocal about how you don't have any choice or power here. And so this would be language around like poor me. I don't have any other choice. I guess I'll just sort of suck it up I'm so overwhelmed. I'm the only one who's having to take this on. It's leaning into the fact that life is happening to me and owning, taking that perspective. The second stop on the drama triangle, or flavor of victimhood, is villain. And this is the posture of blaming either yourself or someone else for the bad thing that you're at the effect of. So the villain says things like, you know, this is hurting me and I know why it's your fault. You did this. I know how to fix this. You should do this. If you would only change in this way, this never would have happened or blaming oneself: I'm the one that screwed it up, I gotta get my shit together and then maybe I can fix this. So it has a anger and a judging and a blaming quality. It's identifying the source of the quote unquote problem and becoming attached and fixed on that way of orienting to the world. And then the third flavor of victimhood is what we would call the hero perspective. And the hero looks like they are coming in to solve the problem, but really what's happening is the hero, because they're focused on the discomfort of fear, what they're trying to do is they fix the feeling of fear either in themselves or another person. And that becomes the responsibility they take on rather than the responsibility of what actually should change here. So heroes are bringing what we would call a temporary relief to the system, helping everyone feel safe again so that we can kind of move forward, but not structurally changing it. And so this might look like, You know, maybe distracting people from their discomfort or soothing them, giving some like assurances that it's okay. This happens to everyone. We'll figure it out. I kind of platitudes. Or it can also look like someone who sort of comes in and tries to make your discomfort go away. Like someone maybe who comes in and says like, you know what, like in your situation, I'll put you on my podcast. And that'll fix everything. When actually maybe structurally, the situation is still the same. And so heroes often get validated, but really what they're doing is taking responsibility for, not the wrong thing, but their focus is on the fear. And that's what they're solving for rather than bigger, structural, deeper concerns.
ELISE: Right. And we're gonna workshop this and you're gonna point out how the way that you coach the drama triangle in any conflict or issue, you're typically taking all three roles as you move around it. You can also, and maybe this is a different application, but I'm sure people are listening who are involved in workplace triangulation or drama, We all are also habituated, right, to the role, I play the hero, I'm always the villain, I always get blamed. So does it work on that level too, or is that a different application?
COURTNEY: Well, I mean, again, I think this is like a foundational tool. So I think there's a lot of applications. And one of the reasons why I like it is because you can have fun with it. And you can start seeing what's really going on and having a chuckle with yourself and other people about just, like, how ritualized in our patterns, how stuck we all get ourselves. For me, when I'm working with corporate clients, or nonprofit clients, businesses often have lore that is through the lens of the drama triangle, that is used to build workplace culture. And so you might have middle managers blaming like the C level suite. And so they're in the role of victim and then they're blaming sort of the C level suite and then they're simultaneously maybe the hero and going out for drinks every Friday night to make themselves feel better, only to come back on Monday and start complaining again. So with corporate clients, I love... what are your common drama triangle stories?
ELISE: This is like the foundation thinking about it of modern marketing, right? Like, there's a villain, we're the heroes, and you as the consumers have been the victims of these villains. And, but our product is gonna solve and fix all of these issues for you without obviously addressing any systemic concerns. This is capitalism. But, as you think about it, you'll start identifying And you'll start watching your friends, which is really fun because we should all therapize each other at all times. But you start watching your friends and you can identify, you can watch them move the triangle in the stories that they're telling where they're identifying the villain and so on and so forth. It's fun!
COURTNEY: It is fun. And I like these, like one of the things that's great about it is you can get your body into it and actually stand on the triangle. And, you know, one of the things that happens is because we're in the triangle, but we kind of realize it's like a little unprofessional or childlike to like, no, no, no, it's all your fault or, oh, poor me. Like, this is terrible. Oh, I'll come in and take care of this for like five minutes and I want you to like see my greatness and see how awesome I am. You know, we're kind of a little sneakier about what we're up to. And part of what happens when we're sneaky about it is the energy lasts a very, very, very long time, and we can be stuck in the triangle then for years in particular relationships. And so when we start playing with it, and actually give someone space, like, Let's just be honest that you're playing the victim, right? Like you're in victim mode right now. And like, let me hear it. Let's really talk about how awful this is and how you have no choice and how there's just nothing you could do. Like you are so right about that. I want to hear all about that as big as you can. And so you kind of give it the fullest expression of itself because it's kind of longing. You're longing to do that. And give people space to own, this is my reality for a moment, this is how I'm seeing the world. And once you give someone space to live that reality in its fullest expression, then because it's had its due, you can begin to play with it.
ELISE: Are you gonna demonstrate? No, but I've watched, I've now watched a bunch of women do this and stand on the triangle with like a victim villain and hero card and they talk through what's typically like a very pedestrian, very accessible example with their children or their workplace or their partner and watch them identify as they're talking and they're moving around as they're sort of placing blame and moving to it's his fault and moving to the villain spot and then moving to the hero.
COURTNEY: Yeah, let's do
ELISE: Yeah, let's do it. You start, you start. I nominate you.
COURTNEY: Okay. You know what I'm below the line about? I'm a little below the line and I'm going to pretend I'm very below the line just for purposes of this exercise about the fact that summer is 13 weeks long.
ELISE: Good one. And almost here.
COURTNEY: All right, first of all, if you want to know who I'm mad at, I'm mad at the schools. I'm mad that like we actually give a quarter of the year off to students. And by the way, have you seen the statistics that like a third of what you learned the previous year, students just completely forget because summer is super, super, super long. Like, is it the teacher's unions? Is it just tradition? Like, why do we keep living in this stupid system when we have the evidence that we shouldn't be giving kids 13 weeks off, yet we still seem to be doing it over and over and over again. And now I'm going to shift into victim mode, which is like, this is just the way it is.
This is the structure of our country. Like school's been run this way for a hundred years. There's absolutely nothing I can do about this. I have to figure out 13 weeks of summer plans Every year for my three children and if I don't do that Then they're gonna sit around and I'm gonna be trying to work all day and they're gonna be knocking at my door and bugging me and I'm not gonna get my work done and then I'm gonna be forced to make them like Get on a device and then they're gonna become addicted to their devices. And then I'm gonna have to deal with the fact that like, now they're addicted to Fortnite or Roblox, whatever game, and not only is this like affecting me and my ability to actually do my job, like, this is affecting my children. And so now my children are the victims also of this stupid national system we have because there's nothing that they can do.
They have no choice but to just lull about and be on their device. And so now I'm going to like, hero, and I'm going to scurry and work really hard to over schedule them. And, it's like, at camp for every single week. I may or may not ask my husband to do it with me, because this has been sort of the role that I've played for a long time. And then I could get into another drama triangle about the gendered roles of who's doing what in households, but I'm going to be the one that's up till midnight researching camps and trying to figure out what camp should be the perfect one because I can't bear the thought of our children hanging out and doing nothing because that would be terrible for them and terrible for me.
ELISE: Oh, such a relatable example, and it's true. It's such a strange system. I'm trying to think of what I am also below the line about because that's such a good one. I mean, I'll just, I'll just pick on Rob because, for everyone who's listening, I love Rob, but we'll do, we have two spring breaks at our school, which is kind of nice. And one of them is we decided to go skiing. So that's the context. And again, I'm not legitimately below the line, but this is a good example. So, villain first. And maybe this is a mix of villain and hero, you're going to tell me, and victim I'm just going to rant, and then you can tell me what I was doing.
All right. So, the kids have this week off, and clearly I'm the only one who's going to take the initiative to plan something. If I don't plan something, then nothing will happen. The time will come on too quickly. We'll have no place to stay. We'll have no flight. I can't rely on Rob to research anything or book anything, although he would interrupt me here and say that he did book the rental car, and actually fought with the rental car company because they tried to downgrade us and we, because we had overpaid, Courtney, for that. When I saw what he did, I was like, that is too much for that rental car, et cetera, but at the same time, he took the initiative to book it. So who am I to criticize? So yes, I organized everything. I did all the meal planning. I booked all of our flights. I organized our parking at the airport. I organized the ski rentals, the ski school, all the...
COURTNEY: hero. Hero. Hero.
ELISE: I made sure that my kids had extra ski socks. I packed them completely. And then, you know, my husband, of course, was like, where are we going, and what's the plan, and then I had to get really mad because it's in the calendar that we share, and why do I have to go through my email, I've already sent him all of this, why am I the only one who reads the directions for how to get into the condo, And yeah, but it'll never change. If I just like let him take care of anything, then nothing will ever happen and we'll never go anywhere. And my kids will also just be on Fortnite all day and or Roblox. And not only will they do that, but they will spend more money than we would going on a trip buying them Robux and Vbux and mm hmm because all they do is they treat me like an ATM... so uh, that was mine.
COURTNEY: How did that feel?
ELISE: I mean it feels good and it's funny. But it's also this is a pattern, right? Like of course I take care of everything because this is what I do and I'm so much better at it, Courtney. And if I don't do it, it won't get done right so will ever change.
COURTNEY: Yeah. So, with both of us, we could look at and the question is like, what are we really scared of? Because that's the thing that is taking us below the line, it's the presence of fear and threat. And then we start using the triangle in these roles to oversimplify reality because it's all about safety. So what's the real fear?
ELISE: I think the fear for me is my kids will grow up and have spent their entire childhoods in a city away from nature on their devices or doing other things that are not particularly enriching. And I will have failed as a mother and they will have no recreational skills, they won't have had any interesting experiences, and yeah, I'll have done a terrible job. And it all hinges on skiing in Montana one week a summer.
COURTNEY: Yeah. So I can really resonate with that fear also in my situation. And then the other thing that I wanna point out is one of the downsides of the drama triangle, 'cause there's plenty of upsides, you know, we get to be in drama. It feels really fun. We can commiserate with people. It may not be comfortable, but it feels pretty familiar. We don't actually have to take responsibility and ask the harder question of like what would be a sustainable long term solution here and we don't have to risk conflict with our partner, so there's a lot of upside to being in the drama triangle and so that's one of the reasons we like to be there. But one of the big downsides is once we see the world through this lens, everyone else who's in this situation has to be assigned one of these three roles. And so, as you sort of pointed out, there are facts actually that could complicate your story that, you know, somehow don't get into the consciousness.
And so Rob becomes this kind of caricatured, you know, bad guy when it might be more complicated than that. And each of us might empower our children to, like, here are the rules, you figure out how you're going to spend spring break or two weeks of summer, and these are the parameters. But we see them as victims of These circumstances and so we disempower them and kind of limit their own agency. And so that's one of the big consequences of the drama triangle is, it really affects our relationships and actually affects people's own empowerment around us, including our own.
ELISE: Yeah. And I would add that the beauty of actually doing it and working is hearing yourself. Right? And not only getting it out, but then hearing yourself and recognizing, Oh, this is a pattern because, in part, yes, I am more on it and more aggressively organized I would even call myself. But my husband is perfectly capable of booking ski trips with his friends. He is perfectly capable of organizing half of this trip if I asked. And delegated, and facilitated that in some way, which maybe is also helper- y, but there is part of me that clearly gets off on controlling all of it. And I hear that when I get on the drama triangle and start complaining.
COURTNEY: Yeah, yeah. And so what you're pointing to it, I think is awesome, is it really becomes an invitation then to personal responsibility, which is like, how are my stories and how are the behaviors that come from those stories that all originate in fear, how are those behaviors actually creating this situation that initially I thought I was at the effect of, but now as I begin to examine the role I'm playing in it, I realize that I'm actively the creator of this situation that I thought I had no control over and I thought was happening to me. And once I claim that personal responsibility, then that actually becomes the way through to Any one of those actions that we listed on the drama triangle, if we just flip the script and do it the opposite of what we have been doing becomes a potential way out of shifting the experience altogether.
ELISE: And for that, we'll need a whole nother episode. This was so fun. I hope this was helpful for people.
COURTNEY: I had a lot of fun too.
ELISE: Come work with us in Boone, North Carolina.
