Trauma Triangle: Moving from Chaos to Clarity
Trauma Therapy Orlando: Helps You Move from Chaos to Clarity in Your Relationships
Written by: Lauran Hahn, LMHC
You’re tired of all the relationship drama. You’re exhausted from the internal chaos and external angst. You’re ready to put the anxiety, overwhelm, doubt, and confusion behind you. Whether it is romantic, work, or friendship, you’re ready to have clarity and feel calm in your relationships.
As a therapist offering Trauma Therapy in Orlando, I help folks move from chaos to calm in their relationships (romantic or otherwise).
In this blog series on relationships, I will help you get out of the tumultuous waters of overwhelming and confusing relationship patterns so that you can see what the heck is happening. I will also provide you with tools that will help you navigate the waters for smooth sailing.
In my first blog post, I defined the traits of unhealthy people. In the second one, I define the traits of healthy people. Next, we look at the qualities of a healthy relationship. In my last post, we looked at unhealthy communication patterns and internal perspectives that keep you stuck. In this post, we provide the mindfulness tools that will allow you to exit unhealthy patterns so that you can experience peace in your relationships. In my next post, I will wrap the series up with a tidy little “cheat sheet” for you when you need to refer back to the tools and tips I have provided.
If you have problems with relationships, you have a pattern of relating through the trauma triangle. Plain and simple.
In my last post, I talked about how the trauma triangle gets started so I won’t go into that here, but I will say that every human has the experience of being on the trauma triangle at some point, especially as a kid.
There was once a time that you were, in fact, powerless and at the mercy of others, as a child or if you were the victim of a trauma. There was likely a time when it was safer (physically or emotionally) to focus on other’s feelings more than your own. And there could have been a time when you needed to protect yourself (or your sense of self) from being criticized, bullied, or physically harmed.
If you’re continuing to have the experience of being on the triangle as an adult, you’re using old programming.
What happens when you run your computer with old programming? It gets glitchy, the connection gets lost, and things start to break down. Sound familiar?
And what do you do when your computer slows down and gets glitchy? You look for the latest software updates, install them, and reboot your computer.
That is what this blog post is about, the steps to take so that you can stop using Windows 95 (trauma triangle) in the year 2020.
Mindfulness as a System Update
When you are stuck on the triangle, you are using a young perspective, meaning that you are perceiving a situation from the perspective of your younger self. That’s why things can feel overwhelming, confusing, or enraging. Twelve year olds don’t have the capacity for true conflict resolution.
The tools outlined below are what I liken to bridges. These bridges are mindfulness tools and practices that will take you off of the trauma triangle to your most adult and wise perspective. From this place, you will feel clear, calm, and in control.
Depending on what role you typically adopt on the triangle will determine which practice will be most helpful in getting off the triangle. As already mentioned in my last post, once you’re on the triangle, it’s probable that you will slip and slide to all three positions multiple times in one conversation, but you will likely experience one or two of the roles more definitively.
In brief, you have seven bridges to exit the trauma triangle. I quickly cover them here:
When you feel stuck and at the mercy of a situation, define your choices.
If you’ve taken on too much responsibility for others, return responsibility to its rightful owner.
When overwhelmed, dig deep until you know your truths. Spend time uncovering your feelings and know what you need.
Once you know your truths, you will know which needs should be negotiated.
If you’ve discovered a nonnegotiable need, set a boundary.
State the facts: Get honest with yourself about what you truly need. Get honest with yourself about what others are truly capable of.
Bring all of this into focus by choosing the lens of compassion to see yourself and others, realizing that underneath all the discord, we are all simply trying to get our needs met.
Define Your Choices
We’ll start with choices because if you’re on the triangle, you’ll feel stuck. As you start to look for options, a little bit of space opens up. Things feel less constricted. Also, when you start to define your choices, you’ll see other places where you are stuck on the triangle.
If your tendency is to be the victim in conflict, to feel powerless and at the mercy of others, seeing your options will help you get off the triangle. The victim often experiences a situation of being in a double bind. The double bind is usually between what your wants/needs/desires (your truths) are and what you think you should do. It feels like an impossible, no-win situation.
Once you start defining possible options, you will likely notice that you’re pinned on the triangle between victim and rescuer. The double bind will begin to reveal itself as a conflict between competing needs and desires. We will talk more about this in a bit.
A Tip From A Trauma Therapist:
When you’re calm, make a list of all the possible options in a situation or conflict. Don’t limit yourself to “the right thing.” Put all of your options on the list.
Return Responsibility
Return responsibility to its rightful owner. We are all adults here.
If you’re walking on eggshells because you’re afraid you’re going to upset someone, then you’ve assumed responsibility for their feelings. Give it back. If you’re working tirelessly to make sure someone else has everything they need, want, and desire (and they are not your children), then you’ve assumed responsibility for them. Give it back. If you take on tasks for other people without them even asking, then you’ve assumed their responsibility. Give it back. If you manage the way two other people communicate because you know what’s happening or what’s right, then you’ve assumed responsibility. Give it back.
Returning responsibility can be one of the most liberating things you ever do. Period. It’s astonishing how rescuing can be so involuntary for a rescuer, as they unconsciously and automatically assume responsibility for other grown adults.
It’s also exhausting. And anxiety provoking. And an internal boundary issue.
Rescuers typically overstepped their boundary. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Just because you think you can see what is right, doesn’t mean it’s yours to do, manage, or advise about.
Rescuers work too hard and get burned out. By assuming responsibility for the other person, you’ve deemed them incapable of taking care of themself, therefore keeping someone else “small” and on the triangle as a victim. You actually take someone else’s power away when you assume responsibility for them. Give that back, too.
When you take on the responsibility of the adults around you, not only do you perpetuate the triangle, you lose yourself. You. Lose. You.
You cannot hold the responsibility of both your feelings, needs, and desires and someone else’s at the same time. It’s impossible. So, you do you (and let them do them). Again, we are all adults here.
Rescuers get stuck on the triangle because they fear being the persecutor if they don’t rescue. The kindest thing a rescuer can do is to give responsibility back to its rightful owner. Because again, we are all adults here.
A Tip From A Trauma Therapist:
In a moment of conflict, ask yourself, have I taken responsibility for a full-grown adult in this situation? Did this person even ask for my help? Can I take this on without feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or resentful? In other words, it’s only yours to give if you can give it for fun and for free (free of internal angst).
Know Your Truths
This one is especially important if you hover from rescuer to persecutor. Remember, rescuers don’t know how they feel because they have been more focused on the feelings, needs, and desires of others. To shift the focus from others and then explore within can feel very uncomfortable because it is uncharted territory.
Persecutors are also uncomfortable going inside because it feels too vulnerable. Rather than feel their tender emotions or vulnerable needs, persecutors feel angry or even enraged instead. Where the rescuer will bury their feelings, needs, and desires and focus on the other person, the persecutor will get mad and blame the other person. This blame resembles the sentiment, “You should have known better.” or “I shouldn’t have to ask,”
Another important word about anger is that it can mean that you’ve taken something deeply personal, which we will talk about below in State the Facts.
Persecutors can look powerful on the outside because they can have big “manly” energy in the form of anger. But the truth is, they’ve given all their power away and hinged it on someone else, expecting that someone to jump through invisible hoops.
In a difficult situation, ask yourself the following questions:
How am I feeling?
What do I need?
What do I want?
What am I secretly hoping for?
Are you starting to notice a pattern here? Feelings, needs, wants, and hopes belong to self. You’re responsible for yours and they are responsible for theirs.
Once you uncover your truths and put them on the table, so to speak, with clarity you can see what can or cannot happen from here. Putting your truths on the table removes ambiguity and allows you to see what’s possible.
For the persecutor, this can be a very difficult step, because it feels more safe to be angry than to feel vulnerable. But staying mad means staying stuck.
After you put your truths on the table and uncover what you need, you’ll discover the appropriate next step: negotiate your needs or set a boundary.
A Tip From A Trauma Therapist:
With truths on the table, ask yourself, are these things I can satisfy myself? Do I need support? Do I need to reach out for help? Do I need to speak my truth? Do I need to negotiate my needs? Or Do I need to establish a boundary?
Negoitate Needs
Being able to negotiate your needs is absolutely necessary in any (healthy) relationship, whether it’s work, friendship, or romantic. In the step of above, Know your Truths, you uncover your feelings, needs, desires, and hopes and put them on the table for yourself to see. In this step, you put them on the table for the other person to see, too.
Ultimately, your feelings, needs, and desires are your responsibility, and since you don’t live in a silo, getting those needs met requires negotiation, in the form of communication. Did your stomach just drop?
Yep, in being responsible for your own feelings, needs, and desires, in some cases, you must ask for what you need.
Now here’s where it gets tricky. The other person can say “yes,” “no,” or “yes, but later.” I can hear you now, “I can’t bare to hear someone say ‘no.’ That will feel like rejection.”
“No” is not a bad thing. It’s actually good information. Why? Because it’s more clear and less chaotic to know up front if someone is unwilling or unable to meet your request.
In 4 Qualities of a Healthy Relationship, I explore in a little more depth the importance of negotiating needs.
A Tip From A Trauma Therapist:
Practice negotiating your needs from a calm and clear place. If you’re demanding, you’re likely coming from the persecutor's perspective. If you’re pleading, you’re likely coming from the victim's perspective. If you’re trying to negotiate a nonnegotiable, you need to set a boundary instead.
Establish Boundaries
Once you’ve put your truths on the table, you might discover the need to set a boundary.
‘Just set a boundary,’ simple, but not easy. Truckloads of books have been written on this topic. In fact, I’ve written an entire blog series on boundaries. I invite you to check it out.
You cannot both take care of yourself and someone else’s feelings at the same time. There will come times when you need to do something for yourself that conflicts with what someone else wants. If you avoid these situations, you will lose yourself. If you lose yourself, you will be riddled with anxiety and confusion.
It’s not worth it. It never is.
When establishing boundaries, sometimes the boundary is internal (meaning you to you), like returning responsibility mentioned above. That’s an inside job. You make the decision and then you hold the line internally.
Sometimes boundaries are external (meaning you to other), like saying, “No, I’m not going to dinner tonight. I am tired and I need to rest.”
A Tip From A Trauma Therapist:
If you struggle with boundaries, get support. Period. In the end, it’s way easier to learn to say ‘no’ so that you can honor yourself than it is to lose yourself.
State the Facts
When you deal in facts, it better prepares you to make a list of viable choices, the first tool on the list above. It also takes the personal sting out of things.
This tool is particularly helpful for someone that finds themself in the persecutor position. After you have your truths on the table, determine if your needs are nonnegotiable or not, and communicate those needs to the other person, you have some information. You have some facts.
In your fact-finding mission, you might determine that the other person or situation is unwilling or unable to meet your needs. Or, when you attempt to set a boundary, the other person chooses not to honor that boundary.
Sometimes others can’t or won’t meet you where you are because of their own limitations. The reasons behind their limitations are limitless, for example, they could have limited resources, limited insight, or limited internal capacity. Or they could be on the triangle themselves.
When you step off the triangle, you see other people more clearly and you can take them off the triangle too. You can see that what they are doing (or not doing) is about them and their limitations.
As humans, we all have limitations. We all have blindspots. We all have ego driven behaviors. We all make mistakes.
If you find yourself taking someone else’s actions or inactions personally, you have placed them on the triangle as the persecutor and yourself as the victim. You have given your power away, because you have drawn a conclusion about yourself based on someone else’s limitation. You made meaning out of something that was meaningless.
When you draw conclusions about yourself based off of someone else’s actions, you are using a child’s perspective to interpret your adult life. Children, by their very nature are egocentric, believing the events that happen in their life are about them or because of them. As we get older, we develop a more expanded perspective and come to see that events actually happen independent of us.
When you deal in facts, you can see people (yourself included) for who they truly are, flawed and limited. You can be honest with yourself about the situation. You can stop expecting perfection from others while drawing conclusions about yourself. You are free to see yourself, others, and the situation for what they truly are.
A Tip From A Trauma Therapist:
If you’re angry, ask yourself, what meaning have I made out this situation? Have I placed someone else in the persecutor role and myself in the victim role? How can take all parties off of the triangle and it see the situation more clearly, limitations and all?
Have Compassion
When you deal in facts as mentioned above, you start to see everyone as they truly are, human, beautiful and imperfect. When you take the other person off the triangle as the persecutor and see that what they are doing is usually about self-preservation and not a direct attack against you, you make room for compassion.
Compassion moves you beyond criticism and paves the way for curiosity toward other’s limitations.
Compassion creates space, space between what others do and what that means about you.
Being on the triangle is painful, limiting, and confusing. As you begin to integrate these tools for getting yourself off of the trauma triangle, you will start to see others on the triangle quite a bit, too. When you notice this happening in others, have compassion. People are always doing the best they can with the tools they have.
A Tip From A Trauma Therapist:
Next time you find yourself angry or intolerant toward someone, take a deep breath and with curiosity try pondering what need this person is trying to get met. Try shifting your perspective and consider their behavior as a misguided attempt at trying to get a need met. If you can see their behavior in this context, it helps bring the spirit of compassion to the situation.
Bringing It Full Circle
Using these tools is a way of life, not a quick fix. It is about seeing yourself and others differently and giving everyone involved grace. As you start to implement these tools, it’s easier to bring them in as a way to reflect on a difficult situation that has already happened. The more you reflect and see how you could have done something differently, the easier it will be to proactively change course in the future.
If you find that you are getting stuck on the trauma triangle and struggling to implement these tools, reach out to a trauma therapist who can help support you. A trauma therapist can help you work through past events that are preventing you from moving forward.
Interested in Trauma Therapy Orlando?
When you're ready to start trauma therapy, the Trauma Therapists at Mindful Living Counseling are here for you. To get started with one of the incredible trauma counselors:
Fill out our New Client Consultation Form
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Not Quite Ready for Trauma Therapy Orlando?
While you're thinking about starting, we suggest taking a look at our wonderful team of therapists who specialize in helping individuals overcome anxiety and trauma. You're also welcome to peruse our selection of articles on trauma therapy below. We understand how challenging these experiences can be, and we're here to support you every step of the way.
Trauma Therapy Orlando Resources
Trauma Triangle: Making Sense of the Chaos
Don't feel emotionally connected?: 31 signs your partner is emotionally immature
10 Traits of Emotionally Healthy People
4 Qualities of a Healthy Relationship
Trauma Triangle: Making Sense of the Chaos
Ready to Learn More on the Trauma Triangle?
Collin Ross Trauma Model Therapy
Other Therapy Services Offered at Mindful Living Counseling Orlando
At Mindful Living Counseling, we understand that trauma can be a challenging hurdle to overcome. However, we also know that there may be other difficulties that you are grappling with. That is precisely why we offer a variety of therapy services, including Anxiety therapy, EMDR therapy, Eating Disorder Therapy, and Teen Therapy, as well as Guided Meditations. It's time to take control of your life and let us help you overcome these challenges.
About Trauma Therapist Lauran Hahn
Meet Lauran Hahn, LMHC a wonderful trauma therapist in Orlando who specializes in helping people overcome toxic relationships and anxiety. Lauran is also a Certified EMDR therapist and an EMDRIA-approved EMDR Consultant. When she's not helping clients, she enjoys spending time with her loved ones or practicing self care.