The three most common hallucinations

Once, in my 20s, I was in a fictitious relationship, layered on top of a real relationship. The person I was dating was real, but the way I saw her barely connected to the underlying facts of her life. In turn, she saw us both in somewhat imaginary terms. We were locked in a pantomime, playing outlandish roles that fed into each other.

She saw herself as someone ambushed by life. Her hopes and dreams were being withheld from her—nothing she could do would bring them closer. And any nearby substitute prizes were deemed unworthy. At times, she regarded me as the only person who could help, and her ongoing unhappiness was also evidence of my inadequacy. This was hallucinatory because she had a lot of real power, which she was disregarding.

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Meanwhile, I did see myself as a helper, who could make her happy. When my interventions failed to produce the desired result, I became resentful. She just wouldn’t accept my assistance, that’s why she was miserable. This was hallucinatory because I had very little ability to fix what was wrong. I couldn’t control her. Meanwhile, I was overlooking my own conspicuous issues.

This wasn’t the entirety of the relationship, but it was a lot of it. Later, after I exited the relationship and regained consciousness, I realized: oh, I am a therapeutic cliche. This is the drama triangle, right? We were in the drama triangle. Later, we reconciled, and we both talked about this dynamic as if we’d been drunk the whole time—neither of us recognized the realities which were so convincing previously.

Here is the way I now understand the Karpman drama triangle, which is a therapeutic cliche that captures an important element of social reality.

Let’s say life is giving you information you can learn from. Events tell you that you should update a behavioral pattern, or admit your complicity in your ongoing pain, or let other people be the way they are, or something humiliating like that. But you don’t want to learn! That would be embarrassing and hard! Instead, you want to slip into a cartoon universe where there are three roles. Each role contains a psychological defense—it shields you from pain, and provides motivation (to act immaturely) where you might otherwise feel helpless.

Here are the basic scripts:

The victim: Everything is being done to me. I have no agency or responsibility in the present—maybe I did once, but I squandered it. Someone needs to rescue me. (The goal of the victim is to avoid the scariness of responsibility, and embarrassment around being a contributor to the situation.)

The rescuer: This person is hopeless. It’s up to me to help them. If they refuse my help, or implement my advice imperfectly, that just goes to show how much help they need. (The goal of the rescuer is to avoid their own feelings of helplessness, and any other inconvenient circumstances they’re dealing with, in favor of manufacturing a feeling of goodness or usefulness.)

The persecutor: This person is wrong. It is my righteous duty to inflict retribution, or at the very least to tell them exactly why they were wrong, so they can feel shame, and order will be restored to the universe. (The goal of the persecutor is to salvage the feeling of righteousness from the unbearable pain and ambiguity of life.)

My astute friend Milan Cvitkovic notes this maps onto three of the four reactions to overwhelm: fight, freeze, and fawn. The fourth, flight, is represented by the tactic “leave the situation immediately,” which does cause drama, just in your absence.

Drama triangle 101 is to simply know that these are three common hallucinations for human beings to slip into, and, moreover, that when you’re in one of these hallucinations, you will be seized by a feeling of conviction. You’ll have the delicious sense that you’re finally gripping the situation, you know how to advance to the next stage of the game. This false certainty helps you avoid whatever the hallucination is designed to conceal. Typically, this pseudo-certainty bears a frenetic quality, which is palpably different from the stillness of true insight. Watch for defensiveness: a flashing irritability that might come up when you’re questioned about the conclusions you’ve come to.

Each of us has a favorite role we tend to slip into. Given the above sketch, it should be obvious that rescuer is my favorite. Which sounds nice, until you consider the fucked up part: that it means I’m liable to subconsciously locate ways in which other people are incapable, so I can feel better about myself. Ironically, to get good at helping people, I had to get over this compulsive rescuer dynamic.

You might respond—is it always bad to be a rescuer? Can’t you actually kind of rescue people sometimes? Yes, absolutely. There are also real victims, and it is good sometimes to prosecute. One interesting thing about these three roles is that they are each cousin to skillful action:

If you’re a victim of harm, it’s good to notice this, grieve if required, and sometimes recruit others to help. Just not at the cost of discarding your responsibility in shaping situations, or your own power to work with all the cards you’re dealt.

It’s good to assist others. Reality is a team sport. But you can’t control anybody else, or make them well by force, and maybe they don’t agree with your definition of wellness. Skilled assistance is empathetic, humble, and situation-specific.

Sometimes there really are wrongs to be addressed. But what would actually be just or helpful is rarely depicted accurately by your immediate desire for moral or personal satisfaction.

So, if you find yourself believing one of these roles, it might not be 100% fiction. It’s more likely that it’s just an exaggeration. Getting to a nuanced perspective probably requires admitting emotions and thoughts that might be unflattering to the current perspective. This is desirable, because a dramatic reaction tends to create more drama rather than resolving the underlying pain.

Here is a suitably embarrassing example of this. Early on in my marriage, it was my birthday, and my wife was bad at celebrating it, because I hadn’t specified what I wanted adequately. We were sitting in the car, and I was feeling disappointed at how the day was going. I saw a chain of thoughts forming in front of me—about how she clearly misunderstood me, and, moreover, I’d gotten into another relationship with someone who didn’t care about my preferences. Clearly, my role in life, I realized, was to be the giver, not the receiver. Could I put up with pain like that? Did I have the strength?

And then I noticed this long line of thoughts stretching out from my forehead and thought, oh. This is the victim role being offered to me, to cover up my discomfort. My brain has given me this mask, all ready to put on. But it’s not real. My birthday is sucking right now because I’m uncomfortable with spelling out exactly what I want. I took a deep breath, and said exactly what I wanted, and my wife gave that to me. The whole cartoon universe melted.

That’s drama triangle 101: notice the hallucination, hopefully before you put it into practice. See if you can embrace the discomfort underneath, and stop pulling other people into choreographed conflicts.

As for when other people bring you drama, I don’t have the perfect recipe. Sometimes, a civilized response can end drama instantly—like listening patiently to someone who brings you a grievance, rather than responding defensively. Sometimes, if faced with a dramatist of higher intensity, you’ll need to grey rock or withdraw, simply removing your oxygen from the fire. And with very intense drama, removing your personal oxygen might not end the situation, because other people can get drawn in.

That being the 101, what is the 201?

Earthquake people

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