Victim, Perpetrator, Rescuer or Empowered? That is the question.
What is going on? Everyone I know is having some kind of emotional challenge.
I think that we are in the middle of a large vibrational shift in our culture. To be the best we can be, situations are happening where we can look at our lesser behaviors, and make different choices about how to cope.
For us to be the full, expressive, powerful successful vibrant self, we need to stand in our knowingness, our strength and our authenticity. Many of us have built in blocks to standing in our positive strength.
One cycle of behavior that most all of us were taught in some way revolves around feeling our personal power. Somehow we were taught different stances of personal strength. This damaged personal power structure is the victim-rescuer-perpetrator triangle.
Anyone who wonders about their value or asks if they are “good enough,” feels small and powerless. That is a symptom of feeling a victim of circumstance, a person, or a group or government. We don’t feel a sense of power.
You have seen folks who feel emphatic that they need to protect themselves by using words, emphasis or their bodies to make their point. Often harm happens as a result. Some type of perpetration happens when we blame others, criticize, or push and shove our way to the front of the line. We seem to live in a society these days that needs to find blame somewhere somehow. The people who stand in the perpetrator part of the triangle feel like they are regaining some of their personal power back by hurting others.
The third leg of the triangle is the rescuer behavior pattern, where people try to feel better by helping someone else. “You’re not doing very OK. If I help you someway, then I prove my worth and can feel good about myself.” Rescuers feel their personal power by giving others advice, helping them, but usually in a way that says to the person being helped, “you’re not OK. You need me to help you.”
What’s really sneaky about this whole dynamic, is that no one feels empowered while standing anywhere on the victim perpetrator rescuer triangle. When we are not empowered, we ache and hurt inside so much that we will do anything for some relief. So we move to another place on the triangle. A person who is laid off and feeling victimized by the economy feels powerless (victim). To feel more powerful, they look for someone to blame loudly or shout at the children or kick the dog (perpetrator). They may decide to help out at the food bank because when they are volunteering, they don’t feel so much a victim (rescuer).
Anyone who has practiced any of these coping behaviors on the victim, rescuer, perpetrator triangle, knows very well how to act from any part. Victims know how to be perpetrators. Rescuers know how to be perpetrators. Perpetrators probably started out as victims or rescuers. We each move to a place on the triangle in response to what is happening in our lives.
These times urgently call for us to step off this triangle where we use our power in a damaged way.
These times call for us to step into our strength.
Perhaps this call is far beyond our comfort range. Perhaps this call does not seem to honor our timing.
The times itself are giving us the opportunity to either entrench into the old patterns, or to find a powerful way to transcend the old outmoded ways of being. Some people may in fact feel victimized by these times.
So what are you going to do? It is a huge and very important choice.
I don’t know about you, but I do not want to be a victim. I am tired of that. I choose to find my personal strength, even when everything else may not seem to support it. I know that the Universe DOES SUPPORT US. It is calling us to reach in very deep.
It calls to us to reach deeply for the highest and best in ourselves.
What do you choose?