The Drama Triangle: reinforcing the unresolved past

One of the roles of psychotherapy is to offer the client new ways to understand their emotional dilemma, with the aim of resolving the impasse. When someone keeps replicating the same pattern of discontent, a repeating carousel of unhappy relationships which reinforce the same fear of rejection, or sadness, or anger, it is a potential sign that the Drama Triangle is being enacted.

This article explains the origin of the Drama Triangle in childhood; its three positions – Rescuer, Victim, Persecutor; what the Drama Triangle looks like in practice; and how this can be worked through and resolved in the therapy room.

Read more

The childhood blueprint

One of the key insights in psychotherapy is that an event in itself doesn’t have meaning: events gain meaning through the personal filter of the experiencing individual. Four people at the same event, because they have four different filters or expectations, will experience it in four different ways. Using the imaginary example of observers of a fight in a car park, this article explores personal filters and their role in making meaning. We conclude with an explanation of what this means for the process of emotional healing in psychotherapy. 

Read more

Emotions: why they’re all useful, and the cycle of problems when emotions are blocked

The key task of counselling or psychotherapy is to raise a person’s awareness of their own processes, to help them become attentive to their habitual patterns of thoughts and emotions. Of the four basic emotions – happiness, sadness, fear and anger – it is often the case that a person has learned that one emotion is ‘bad’, that they aren’t allowed it, that they should resist feeling it.  

This article outlines the purpose of emotions; why some are blocked or ‘banned’ in some families; how an ‘approved’ emotion is used as a substitute; how the banning of an emotion can lead to a repeated cycle of unresolved feelings; and how psychotherapy can help.

Read more