Will you take a little trip with me today?
On the Karpman triangle and into our nervous system, in the savanna and within our heart.
So my caring friend,
The thing I love most about the realignment process is that once you tell Life “I’m listening and ready”, Life believes you. Life doesn’t shy away from teaching you what it’s time for you to learn.
Since I went to the School for the Work, everything that was good before feels more vibrant, deep and magical! AND anything that was sort of not working in my daily experience is… collapsing.
That friend that never felt like a good fit, deep down where only my heart can be heard—not my attachment wounds. That work situation that never felt supportive or healthy. That creative project that never felt like creativity—and somehow always weighed on my shoulders more than any chore. That story I kept telling myself for my denial to stay in charge—but that was getting harder and harder to hold on to, because it just didn’t make sense anymore. AND all those precious patterns that allowed me to survive as a child and are now preventing me to thrive as an adult.
And so today, I thought I would tell you more about that journey of integrity I’ve embarked on. And I want to start…
ON A TRIANGLE.
**** ABOUT THE KARPMAN TRIANGLE
That is actually a lesson that Life has never been shy about, regardless of my readiness and willingness to listen. Indeed, this is one of the first things that my life coaching school instructor taught me in 2020. It is a pivotal part of one of my favorite books, Martha Beck’s The Way Of Integrity that I read in 2021. This was ALSO one of the first images that my dearest trauma coach used to bring me back into my deep knowing and authenticity, when I started working with her in 2022.
And it makes sense: I was meant to learn about this triangle because it was ruling my life. And if you’re not aware of it, it’s probably ruling yours too.
SO HOW DOES IT WORK?
One triangle, three angles, three potential homes: the dark cave of the victim, the pedestal of the rescuer and the throne of the persecutor. And we all tend to have our favorite place to live in.
I used to live on the pedestal for instance—a choice that was made for me at birth.
My mother would only accept to sit on a throne or to roll on the floor in her little cave. She needed places where she could scream all the hurt and terror that she had never found any other way to purge her body from...
And my father found pedestals exhausting to climb on, so he stood in front of the throne or in front of the cave without much preference: he adapted to whatever my mother was choosing for herself that day (or was it the other way around? It is impossible to decipher other people’s chicken and egg conflicts.)
In any case, most of the time, the only spot left for me was the pedestal, which is why I grew up knowing how to stand alone on a mountain, anxiously looking over a world that I was constantly accused of not doing a good enough job at keeping in order.
So we all have one angle that is our default in any given tricky situation.
It can change however depending on who we’re with and where we are. At work, at home, within a romantic container or with our most trusted friends.
It’s also important to know that those are masks we wear and functions we default to, when our auto-pilot mode has been triggered by some danger cue. Those roles are dictated by our nervous system’s state of activation. They are protective mechanisms, not conscious choices.
And so before I continue, let me share some of the main principles of polyvagal theory, a powerful way to understand our nervous system and how we relate with the outside world.
**** ABOUT POLYVAGAL THEORY
To put it simply we have three main states in which our nervous system can be either anchored or trapped, at any given time. And all of this is dictated by the state of our Vagus nerve, one of the longest nerves in the human body and the foundation of our autonomic system.
The autonomic system is a part of our nervous system that allows us to constantly scan—consciously or not—our environment, for cues of safety and danger.
** CONNECTION ON: VENTRAL VAGAL
When all is well, we’re anchored in a state called Ventral Vagal. That’s when the ventral part (which means frontal part anatomically) of our vagus nerve is in charge.
In those moments we feel safe from the inside out and connected to ourselves, to others, to all that is, to the world.
In those moments we embody what Dick Schwartz, the creator of INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEM (IFS) calls the 8 C of Self—Self being for once our essence, our soul energy (and not the ego). Self being the being part of being a “human part”: our humanity.
Those 8C are Calm, Courage, Curiosity, Creativity, Compassion, Connectedness, Confidence and Clarity. Some VERY useful qualities that are accessible to us when we’re anchored in a sense of peace.
Now, when we register more cues of danger than cues of safety, we lose our anchoring in connection and step into protection mode.
This is where we start acting through some predetermined auto-pilot programming; this is when we act from our ego—that fictional sense of self we all call “me” or that story we tell ourselves about who we are, based on our past, on what we do, on our goals and bodies.
** PROTECTION ON: DORSAL VAGAL & SYMPATHETIC ACTIVATION
When we fall into protection mode, a part of us takes over, and one of our particular worldviews starts filtering everything we say, see and hear. Then, one of two things can happen:
We either get flooded with energy, and step into flight or flight patterns. That’s when our sympathetic nervous system takes over.
Or we feel drained, and fall into some variation of fawn, faint or freeze. At that moment the dorsal part of our vagus nerve has taken over.
And DOES IT SERVE US?
Of course, it does! But only to a certain extent.
Only temporarily…
and the problem is that we tend to stay stuck in survival mode long after the danger is gone.
** SAVANNA FILTER
Let’s take a little tour into the savanna to try and make sense of it all.
Let’s say you and I are zebras. Taking a break in the wild, enjoying the view, chewing grass. And, suddenly, right in front of us… there’s a hungry lion. It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t feel right. It feels scary! We’re about to be eaten.
So we have a few choices in front of us:
We can be bold and fight the lion. Why not? We won’t live to face the humiliation if we lose.
We can run away. That’s the “flight” solution. Probably the safest bet at that point.
We can zoom out of the world because we’re just too tired to run, very aware of our fighting odds, and so… what’s the point. Let’s try to minimize the pain by numbing the entire body and dreaming of a better world: Freeze mode on.
We can decide that there is an enemy-to-lover story begging to happen right here, and try to become the most caring, helpful, seductive and sweetest zebra on Earth. That lion is going to love us so much that it will CHOOSE not to eat us. LOVE is the solution! (yes, in that moment, we call that “love”): Fawn activation.
We can faint. This one is pretty self explanatory.
In the first two, we use more energy than usual. In the last three we use less.
In the first two, we’re in sympathetic hyperactivation. In the last three, we’re in dorsal shutdown.
** HUMAN VERSION
How does that look for humans in an urban environment?
Fight mode can mean physical attacks, but most of the time it is when we fall into judgy thoughts, blamey stories and confrontational conversations.
Flight means overthinking about the problem or the solution. We just can’t stop worrying and looking for every possible scenario of how it could get even worse or for any solution that could help. We can’t take a break, relax, pee or sleep. There’s. A. Lion.
In freeze, we numb. By any means necessary. Overdrinking, overthinking, over-netflixing, overworking! Gossiping, drugs, whatever works: any escape will do as long as we don’t have to remember or feel THAT problem in any way.
In fawn, we people-please. We appease, we micromanage, we forget about our own needs and make it our life mission to live somebody’s else’s life and fix all of their problems. We say what they want to hear. We become what we believe they want to see. We must find a way for them to be okay, charmed, regulated. You get it… We people-please.
In faint, we crash and/or oversleep.
So now let’s tie both subjects together: the triangle AND our nervous system.
**** ABOUT BOTH!
How does our nervous system look like when we’re stuck on our little triangle?
The persecutor is anchored in an hyperactivated sympathetic system, fueled by fight or flight energy. (And when they’re exhausted, they might freeze but they will never fawn.)
The victim is in dorsal shutdown, stuck in a parasympathetic underactivation and patterns such as freeze and fawning. (They can also be in flight of course but then they overthink about their problems, not the solutions.)
The rescuer, finally, is a chameleon constantly shifting from dorsal shutdown to sympathetic hyperactivation, with a fascinating blend of flight and fawn. They fawn to appease the persecutors, while they flight to save the victims. (They feel used and mistreated and when they’ve had enough, they jump from their pedestal to take a nap in the cave or take a rest on that throne that they should have been offered for all their services anyway.)
It’s a bit of a simplified drawing, I’ll confess, but I believe it still paints a pretty accurate picture of what’s going on inside of us.
In persecutor and victim mode, we tend to be self-focused, and in rescuer mode, we focus on others. In any case, it’s unbalanced, unhealthy, transactional and proof that we’re disconnected from our essence.
The translation of that essence, that soul energy, our humanity or what they call Self in IFS is found in our ventral parasympathetic nervous system. This is when our heart and our mind meet in the middle to make all our decisions in the way that serves our inner system and the world.
That’s when we’re anchored in what is and when we have access to all our curiosity and creative energy. That’s where we can be brave, vulnerable, authentic and both grounded and inspired by love.
So where am I going after that long “introduction”?
**** ABOUT MY MISCALCULATIONS
I have been trying to step out of flight since 2020, leaving Medicine first, and then slowly learning how to ground more and more—and how to stop running from one fire to the next just for the sake of saviorism.
I stepped back into my body, my awareness, my ability to dream, to see the whole picture and the sacred Beauty… embodied by Nature and New York City.
So I concluded that I had to be anchored in ventral vagal! Without ever checking the 8C.
I felt Compassion for others—so why acknowledge that I had none for me?
I embodied Courage according to others—so I never checked if it felt true for me… or if Confidence or Calm could ever be accessed deeply.
I had Clarity on what needed to be done— so I forgot that clarity on a to do list is not an embodied awareness of what is.
I knew that all was Connected to all that was—so why did it matter if I was the exception and lived on the side of that magical unity?
Yes, I told myself, I was oscillating between some beneficial flight energy and my anchor in integrity. I was cured. I had made it!
In parallel, I got very clear on how to spot a persecutor in the making—and how it drove me to double down on my rescuing act, or to fall into victim mode. So I really thought I was off the triangle. Yeah me!
But…
But of course I had just reorganized by rescuing tendencies,—away from the angry birds and towards the loveliest wounded chicks I could meet…
No more fighting to save the persecutor! No. Because I was way too busy caretaking for the victim.
I was fawning.
****ABOUT FAWNING
The thing with fawning is that it feels very good at first…
Fawning is highly rewarded socially. Everyone likes you. You’re the kind one, the selfless one, the teddy bear, the safe hugger and compassionate smile. You’re a nest where someone can come and rest and repair their woundedness. So who cares if they never really ask how you’re doing or where you come from? Who cares if they’re always the one in trouble and you’re always the one helping? They need help, you can help. Win-Win.
Right?
No.
Because that dynamic actually helps no one. It drains the rescuer and disempowers the victim. And pretty soon all there is to find on both ends is resentment.
Pretty soon the victim sees their constant rescuer as an inconvenient judge who’s always spotting what’s wrong with us and telling us what we should do differently—when they don’t have the audacity to do it for us. (By that point we’ve of course forgotten we asked them to!)
Yes, the ego loves a rescuer at first, because it serves! but soon it becomes annoying to always have someone commenting on what we could do better… so the ego then calls the fallen-from-grace rescuer a boundary destroyer.
The ego is always trying to protect us, so the rescuer is celebrated until the rescuer is being seen as inconvenient. That makes sense.
ALSO:
Pretty soon the rescuer sees their endearing victim as a machiavellian persecutor too! They were using us. They took advantage of our kindness. They never cared, they only wanted to take, take, take. They are lazy , complacent, uninteresting, selfish and manipulative.
Here the ego went from using the other person as a reason to feel worthy, to using that person as the reason why we feel that our worth is not acknowledged.
The ego is trying to protect us, so the other problem is either a solution or a problem. Indeed, when you see the world as a rescuer, you too either need to be rescued or attacked, for your worldview to make sense.
And so my current lesson is to stop people-pleasing. THAT’S how I’ll be free of the triangle forever.
**** ABOUT JUMPING OFF THAT TRIANGLE
No persecutor AND no victim. No rescuing ever. Not even myself! Not anymore.
Because I am not the persecutor my mother needed me to be, every time she needed to take a nap in her victim cave. And I refuse to remain the rescuer my father needs, to convince himself that he is not physically able to say “no” to his wife when she’s being abusive or irrational.
I step out of the triangle I was born on. My parents CAN manage. They’re grown up. They’re human beings! They’re resourceful.
I step out of the triangle I created for my adult relationships too. Bullies out. Victims out. Rescuers forced in retirement.
Bullies have a soul, that’s where they’ll find their salvation—not through the grace of my compassion! I see now that it can’t work that way and that it’s not meant to. We’re not here to turn villains into angels. All we can do is to love them from a safe distance, until they decide to remember the truth about us all: we are good inside, and we can choose to change our ways at any point. It’s never too late. And we ALL have what it takes… a beating heart & a choice.
Victims have a spine, that's how they’ll find their way home—not by hoping on my weary back. I see now that it doesn’t help, it only enables them to tolerate their blind spots. We’re not here to carry others through their storms; we’re here to make sure that our own storms are dealt with, so that we do not add to the chaos of the world. Then, we can share the light and warmth of our own unmasked sun.
Rescuers are not needed, and they’re not the solutions. They must learn to put the focus back on their own needs and dreams and they must learn to show up to meet them.
I, leo, rescuer-in-chief, am here for that shift. I am in the middle of that shift...
I’m disappointing the victims who were relying on me—and who suddenly see me as a persecutor, at worst, or as irrelevant, at best. “You’ve changed” I keep hearing from those I shared a triangle with. “You’re back” I hear, in a startling contrast, from everybody else (and first and foremost from my own heart).
And on a very exciting plus side, I see the persecuting energy of those who impersonated the bad guy (or woman) in the story of me, deflate before it even reaches me . We just know that it makes no sense to have that conversation, and we’re both already done with it before it really starts.
That’s the beauty of choosing love... Even those who are stuck in fear are not really interested in stirring the mud in your presence.
That’s the magic of stepping off the triangle… You land firmly anchored in your own heart.
Care.check: So what is your preferred position on the triangle? And when do you shift and why?
How can you bring more awareness to those patterns in the coming days and witness how blatantly it drives human interactions on a daily basis?
Enjoy this exercise—It's life-changing in ways that can only be experienced and not described.
Just remember that each role comes from a good part of us.
The persecutor really wants to protect us, the victim is only trying to make us feel acknowledged, and the rescuer deeply wants us to be helpful & loved.
The good news is that by stepping off the triangle we learn how to do all of that.
The good news is that when we take care of our nervous system, it can relax and teach us how to dance freely, when it used to compel us to stop and brace!
The good news is that it only gets more and more magical the more anchored in truth and love we are…
So let’s ENJOY our journey back!
With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo