Are you on the Drama Triangle with Your Food and Body?

Did you ever feel like you played a particular role in your family growing up? Often in family dynamics, we can be drawn into playing certain roles. There can be The Persecutor, The Victim, and The Rescuer. This is called the Drama Triangle created by Stephen Karpman. If one of our parents played one of these roles, they would have enlisted us to play one of the other roles on the triangle.

The Persecutor: can be critical, demeaning, fault finding, controlling, blaming, rigid and can get a high from feeling superior. They often can act from anger or rage and seek out victims.

The Victim: discounts their own capabilities. They can feel helpless, hopeless, powerless, ashamed, unable to make decisions or solve problems, and take little pleasure in life. They can act from self pity and place responsibility for their success or failures on others. They can seek out persecutors or rescuers.

The Rescuer: Needs to be needed, is an enabler, gets a high from rescuing, and has poor boundaries. Their need to rescue others makes it possible for them to ignore their own anxiety and worries. They can act from guilt and fear and they often seek out victims.

The way we show up in one area of our life can be how we show up in all areas of our life.

If you felt like you were drawn into playing one of these roles in your family, there might be a role you continue to play out in your relationship with food and body.

What does this look like?

If you played the Persecutor role in your family, you might find yourself being highly critical of your body and what you eat. You might have high expectations for yourself and how you take care of your body and feel rigid in what has been deemed the "right" foods to eat or an "acceptable" way to look. Eating anything off of the acceptable foods list or looking a different way feels not alright.

If you played the Victim role in your family, you might feel hopeless around your food and body. You might have a hard time receiving pleasure from living in a body and nourishing your body with food. You might also have a hard time knowing what feels best to you in your system and may turn to food for comfort as you feel so confused as to what your body needs.

If you played the Rescuer role in your family, focusing on food and how you look may support you in not addressing the fears and anxieties you have in your life. Whenever an intense emotion arises, your attention is drawn to what you're eating or how you look to distract you from feeling what is showing up. You might be constantly assessing what you're eating and your body image as a way to ensure you will be accepted in this world.

So how do we get off the Drama Triangle once we know we're on it?

1. Acknowledge you're on the Drama Triangle with your food and body. We cannot change what we're not aware of. So first cultivating awareness of what role you're showing up in within your relationship with your food and body can be the first step to start to take different actions.

2. Identify how you're feeling. Whatever role is showing up is there because it is trying to protect you. If we have been playing these roles in our lives for 10, 15, 20 years there is a comfort level to playing them out. You can thank that role for showing up and then get curious about what it is trying to protect you from feeling. Name it out loud. I feel critical. I feel hopeless. I feel anxiety. Owning how you're feeling invites a deeper connection to you and your body in the moment so you can experience that right here and right now you are safe. The safer we feel, the more we can heal. And the safer we feel, the less likely we are to reach for food or pick on our body to try to self soothe as we're emotionally satiating our body by telling it we're here and we will not abandon it.

3. Give your role a new job. Often these roles don't do a great job at choosing our food for us or appreciating us as we are. If your Persecutor is really good at being discerning, get curious where else you could use their talents in your life. If your Victim is sensitive to your surroundings how could you use your sensitivity as a superpower in your world. If your Rescuer just cares so much about those around you, how could you show your care in ways that feel nourishing and grounding to your body. Remember that there is light and dark to everything we experience so you can explore what these roles have also gifted you with and utilize their skills in new and different ways.

Stepping off the Drama Triangle in your relationship with your food and body can take time. Just listening to this episode you might already be cultivating new awareness which is the first step toward changing any habit or pattern no longer serving us in our life. Take all the bite sized steps you need on this adventure and I'm here for you, as always, every step of the way!