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Manipulation is all too ordinary in relationships. At the core of manipulation is the Karpman Drama Triangle, a game played all too often & described below. If this game defines a pattern of yours, in relationships with others, then you are all about manipulation.
The opposite of manipulation is about growth, taking responsibility for how you affect others, recognizing choices and being willing to risk mistakes. Mental health fills the identity. Manipulation is filling an empty hole inside of you with power & control of others.
The Purpose of The Victim, Rescuer, Persecutor Game of Manipulation
1. Keeps responsibility out in space. Manipulation means never take ownership, always blame.
2. There is a lack of internal conflict within the individual. Instead it’s all about creating conflict & stirring it up in others.
3. The players lack empathy, are very self absorbed in their own role of the moment.
4. Patterns of the game prevent any real problem solving because the drama rules.
5. Maintaining bad boundaries is part of manipulation.
6. The game provides identity and fills emptiness, because two people can jump around in all three roles to fuel the drama of manipulation.
Good guy/Bad guy split thinking is integral to drama & manipulation. Drama obscures the real issues. People are seduced by the false excitement the drama offers. Manipulators love drama as a source of power.
Manipulation is the core of the game. It creates confusion and upset, not solutions. (Read more about this on the Reasons for Divorce page of this website.)
Playing Victim, Rescuer has become a powerful cultural pastime in manipulation. It is at the core of all the repetitious plots of soap operas. This game could be used to describe Bill, Hillary, Monica, and Ken.
Here’s how it works: Let’s suppose Bill was emotionally dependent (as the victim role requires) on Hillary to feel good about himself. Perhaps Hillary was persecuting him through emotional distance because she lost the national health care bill and was licking her wounds after the Arkansas State Troopers reported Bill’s philandering.
Monica enters the White House, ripe for the role of Rescuer to Victim Bill. The beauty of this game of manipulation is that roles can be switched to enhance the drama.
For example, Bill could rescue Monica by finding her attractive, while Monica feels like a victim because she’s a chubby girl no one would ever love. Enter Ken Starr to play Persecutor in his own over-the-top style.
Another example could be O.J. He was accused of being the Persecutor and Nicole was the Victim. One way to look at what O.J.’s attorneys did is that they were experts in manipulation and flipped him from the Persecutor role to the Victim role. Then the Jury stepped in to play the rescuer.
This game of manipulation is what operates in many relationships. It is all style and no substance. It has become a lifestyle for too many people. The game provides people with their identity as Victim, Rescuer or Persecutor. People generally favor one or two roles in the game of manipulation.
Rescuers in the Game of Manipulation Who Allow Themselves to be Manipulated & Enable Others
Most of us in the helping professions (nurses, teachers, counselors) all begin with favoring the Rescuer role. (So be sure to choose a therapist who’s been a client and seriously worked on issues in their own backyard. This means they’ll more clearly see who you really are instead of projecting their own issues onto you.) Rescuers get caught up in enabling. They see themselves as good and have to learn to back up. Doing too much for someone else is rationalized because “I care so much.”
Rescuers are often unaware that pity and disrespect are the fuel for this role. “I know what’s best for you.” is illustrated in the mother’s role in the movie “The Deep End .” The reality is that backing up from the rescuer role means learning that indifference can be a useful tool. Wait and see if the person you’re trying to rescue steps forward for themselves or how they do it differently.
Victims in the Game of Manipulation
Victims can be easily manipulated. Victims can be very manipulative, particularly if they are operating on a “love me no matter what” basis. Being loved no matter what is not something two honest adults should expect from each other. After the age of 18, love me no matter what should be hard to come by.
Victims are always trying to remain blameless.
Remember an unhappy relationship is always created by two people. Blame may be distributed 60/40 or 70/30, however it always takes two. The more blaming and finger pointing someone does, the more fragile the point of view. Noise simply creates smoke and mirrors, and it is less likely that an honest reality is being addressed, because it’s really all about the manipulation.
Elegant truth is generally never “I am good/You are bad,” it is usually a more complicated frame of reference. “I did this part and you did this part” etc. Finding the bravery to look at your own part in creating problems can change and transform your life.
If you’ve been loving the victim role over many years it is time to face the truth – it is a boring way of life. One key to interupting this pattern would be to relocate your imagination, to find other ways of conducting your life.
20 Questions to Determine Whether or Not You Set Yourself Up to be a Victim in the Game of Manipulation
Persecutors in the Game of Manipulation
Persecutors love the power of moving people around on the chess board of life. Brad Pitt in Fight Club is an extreme example of this. Everything is win or lose, with very little ability to be a part of a team. There is a desperate need to be right at all costs and you can end up doubting yourself even about the facts of what happens.
Playing in this triangle of manipulation ultimately leads to a very boring life. Over and over again the game is repeated, and there are never any solutions. Nobody grows as all the players are very stuck in the cycle of repeating their tired roles, all for empty drama.
10 Types of Emotional Manipulators*
* Used by permission from a workshop given by Dr. Jim Fogarty on 10/28/11
Ten Ways to Recognize Emotional Manipulators
Also with permission from Dr. Jim Fogarty
Specific Guidelines for Playing VRP Roles | VS. | How to be a Grown Up |
Creating drama and chaos | vs. | Solving problems |
Dodging, deflecting, and blaming others | vs. | Taking on responsibilities |
Denial/pretending | vs. | Honestly facing painful situations |
Making excuses and instigating bad boundaries | vs. | Maintaining boundaries to have true respect for others |
Ignoring damage that has been done and pretending it has nothing to do with you | vs. | Making amends and recognizing consequences |
Maintaining your illusions at all costs | vs. | Having the courage to become more self aware |
Giving yourself too much respect (narcissists) or too little respect (martyrs) | vs. | Balancing both respect for others and yourself |
Letting drama rule | vs. | Letting integrity/character rule |
“I know what’s best for both of us” | vs. | No one has a market on truth-it always lies in between people |
Creating doubt in the other person | vs. | Seeing what hard truths the other person may have to teach you |
Assuming others are there to be an audience | vs. | Realizing what happens between people is unknown, not orchestrated |
Thinking in simple terms of Right/Wrong, Good/Bad | vs. | Recognizing complexity |
Manipulating others, which is a shell game that ends up hollow | vs. | Using your heart and head together to be more emotionally honest with others |
Trying to have it both ways | vs. | Facing sacrifice |
Taking the easy way | vs. | Knowing the right thing to do is the hard thing to do |
Monologue | vs. | Dialogue |
Short-term thinking | vs. | Long-term thinking |
Manipulating/Controlling | vs. | Negotiating |
Choices, choices, choices.
Please follow this link to read more detailed blog posts on manipulation.
How to Change Manipulation in Relationships:
Honesty: Say what you mean, mean what you say. There is greater soul in honestly facing painful situations. Look fearlessly within. The people you love the most are the ones to risk more honesty with.
Respect for Self & Others: Balance both. Take Responsibility. Learn boundaries. Have empathy and self-protection. Do not be either too self effacing or too narcissistic.
Make Agreements That Work: Negotiation/middle ground leads to possibilities. More able to handle complexity. There has to be room for both people’s wants and agendas. Solve problems together.
This triangle might seem like a simple alternative, it is not. This triangle requires risk taking, vulnerability and authenticity. This triangle is about developing greater self awareness about your own dark side instead of hiding out in blaming others. This triangle is about being open to dialogue instead of self protective monologues. This triangle is about the courage to work hard at relationships instead of being dramatic to get your way.
It has been estimated that 80% of addicts have a lack of resolution around issues of grief or trauma. The addiction becomes a poor attempt to heal themselves. It is the lack of resolution that becomes the unconscious driving force. It is not the fact that trauma or a difficult childhood has occurred, it is how you make sense of childhood or trauma, how you make unbearable pain bearable, that matters.
People with addictions play the Karpman Drama Triangle game of Victim, Rescuer, Persecutor and wear out the people they love. The best way to move into the mentally healthy triangle is to work the steps of the program. Find a sponsor that fits who you are and make sure it’s someone who takes the steps seriously.
Partners and parents of addicts often don’t set enough clear boundaries and play the Drama Triangle very well themselves. Partners and parents are often codependent as well as emotionally masochistic. (Read more on codependence on this web site under anxiety.) Thriving on the virtuous secret pain of the martyr role is also unhealthy. A relationship with an addict cannot simply be summed up with the thought, “They’re bad and I’m good.”
No one should ever use your recovery against you.
The dance is more complex than that and you have a part in the troubles.
Movies that Illustrate VRP
Notes on a Scandal (2006)
Judi Dench plays a lonely woman who lives in a Star Trek parallel universe of her own creation. She favors the Persecutor, Rescuer roles. Cate Blanchette favors the Victim, Persecutor roles. Despite the consequences of playing VRP twice, the end of the movie suggests that Judi Dench will continue on unchanged.
Shattered Glass (2003)
Hayden Christensen portrays the true story of Stephen Glass who was an expert in all three roles.
House of Sand and Fog (2003)
The two main characters play VRP until the very dismal end and of course nobody wins.
Mystic River (2003)
Powerful movie about the futility of taking the persecutor role to the threshold of murder.
Monster (2003)
It was clear that Charlize Theron brought some personal reality to her role when she describes her childhood (while riding in a car). This role brought her an Oscar.
Weight of Water (2000)
Starring Sean Penn is a movie that demonstrates the drama triangle in both the stories that are woven together. Watch Sean Penn flip through all three roles (victim, rescuer, persecutor) right through his final scene.
Books:
Books that can help with understanding extreme emotional manipulation:
Power with People: How to Handle Just About Anyone to Accomplish Just About Anything by Greg Lester
Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You by Susan Forward
In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People by George Simon, Jr., Ph. D.
The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life by Dr. Robin Stern
Who’s Pulling Your Strings?: How to Break the Cycle of Manipulation and Regain Control of Your Life by Harriet B. Braiker, Ph. D.
Why Is It Always About You? : The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism by Sandy Hotchkiss, LCSW
Almost a Psychopath by James Silver
Fiction:
Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn (fiction)
Gone Girl is a remarkable story of two people in a marriage who are expert manipulators. Their underlying darkness is creepy. It is a brilliant book.
Learn about the Game of Manipulation in the Work Setting:
Toxic Workplace!:Managing Toxic Personalities and Their Systems of Power
by Mitchell Kusy & Elizabeth Holloway (an excellent resource!!)
Power with People: How to Handle Just About Anyone to Accomplish Just About Anything
by Greg Lester Ph.D.
The game is defined in the 70’s classic:
What do you say after you say hello?: The psychology of human destiny
by Eric Berne