Are you Victim, Villain, or Hero?

Courtney Smith takes us through the Drama Triangle.

Friends! If you’ve read On Our Best Behavior and enjoyed it, please consider leaving me a review on Amazon or Goodreads, even if you didn’t originally buy it from there. It’s very helpful. THANK YOU! (And I’m still signing and personalizing copies through Diesel if you’d like a copy.)

Also: The book club guide with discussion questions is now live, linked directly here and on the bottom of this page of my site. Dre Bendewald will be hosting a series of circles for the book if you are looking for a group to join—more to come on the podcast about this. If you’re new to circling, Dre hosts introductory virtual circles that are pretty amazing.

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I heard Courtney Smith might be one of my soulmates for years before we finally met—not only because we have the same taste in people (we have many dear mutual friends), but also because she’s an Enneagram genius, and the sort of person who is happy to talk about G.I. Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way at a cocktail party. Courtney has a robust coaching practice—individuals, executive teams, women’s groups—where she integrates the Enneagram (she studies with Russ Hudson), trainings from the Conscious Leadership Group, the Alexander Technique, and the Work of Byron Katie, with her own perception and raging intelligence. Courtney is brilliant, particularly at assessing systems on both the micro and macro level, and she’s also exceptionally warm, excavating all of our human foibles and patterns for the treasures of promised growth. My favorite part of Courtney though is that she plays against type: I love finding the mystical and metaphysical in a woman who has a degree in mathematical economics from Wake Forest, a masters in Public Health from New York University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. (Courtney also worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Co.)

Courtney workshops the Enneagram in an entirely unique way—and will be joining me on the podcast soon for an exploration of how she understands this system (and how we can each mine it for expansion), but in the interim, I asked her to take us through the Drama Triangle, and what she means when she talks about living below-the-line versus above-the-line. I mentioned the Drama Triangle dynamic a few weeks ago, from my very limited perspective and many of you asked for more. Below, Courtney explains why it’s such a useful and essential tool. What’s particularly beautiful about her explanation is that she doesn’t demean or diminish the Drama Triangle—this is not about escaping ourselves to be an “above-the-line” version all the time—it’s simply about coming to understand what’s driving how we relate to each other and the world.

(As for the Enneagram, I covered many of the basics with Susan Olesek on Pulling the Thread, the founder of Enneagram Prison Project—if you’re curious about the system, that’s a good place to start. FWIW, I’m particularly passionate about the Enneagram, not only for its ability to psychologically profile, but also because it has mystical roots—one of the early fathers of the Enneagram is Evagrius Ponticus, the same desert monk who first wrote down the “Eight Demonic Thoughts,” which became the Seven Deadly Sins. Each sin is associated with an Enneagram type, plus Deceit and Fear to make nine. If you don’t know your Enneagram Type, I’d recommend the RHETI test, developed by Russ Hudson—it’s $12 and takes about 40 minutes.)

A Q&A with Courtney Smith

ELISE:

First, can you define above-the-line and below-the-line?

COURTNEY:

Above and below the line is a concept that I learned from Diana Chapman and her fellow colleagues at Conscious Leadership Group. It’s a really simple way of orienting yourself to how you’re experiencing the present moment. Most of the time, we spend a lot of time thinking about the content of what’s happening. Oh, my daughter’s graduating. Oh, you have this book that’s out. But the idea of above or below-the-line in the present moment is not just the content we’re talking about. It is also how you’re relating to that content. And above and below-the-line makes a very simple distinction, which is this: If you are below-the-line, in some aspect of your body there is the presence of fear or threat. It can be tiny or it can be really big.

ELISE:

And is fear or threat just part of our biology? Is that just how we’re wired?

COURTNEY:

Yes. When you think about it, this is a smart survival strategy for our species. Orienting to scan for fear and threat is a smart way to ensure you stay alive. But it does mean that we experience threats even in the most simple situations. And in fact, if we get really, really honest with ourselves about how we’re relating to reality, most of the time there is a little bit of threat there, a little bit of fear.

ELISE:

I don’t want to sidetrack us, but I always have this reaction, and this might be because I’m an Enneagram Type 1—and I won’t drag us into the Enneagram, we’ll save it for the podcast—but whenever someone unexpected calls me or texts me, my immediate reaction is that I’m in trouble. Is that Type 1, or is that just human?

COURTNEY:

[Laugh.] Yeah, I think that’s not universal. I think it’s common, but I don’t think it’s universal. [Laugh.] For purposes of simplifying, because then that helps us have a working model we can actually use and apply in our regular life, in this above or below-the-line construct, we really talk about only three very basic fears that are present and operating in our bodily system.

The most basic one is fear or threat to your security. And this is your physical and emotional well-being, or the physical and emotional well-being of those you care about. Then, there’s fear or threat to approval. What are people thinking about me? And as a social creature, at some level we register that it matters to our survival what people are thinking about us. And then the third one is a fear or threat of loss of control. And control is a way of making sure nothing bad happens. At the end of the day, they’re all related to a threat to loss of security. Typically, we find the following:

1.     I’m afraid something bad is going to happen.

2.     I’m afraid you’re going to have an opinion of me that I am not comfortable with.

3.     Or, my plan for what I think should happen is under threat.

ELISE:

Can you define the Drama Triangle, and then its relationship to being below-the-line?

COURTNEY:

If, as a species, we’re predisposed to be below-the-line, 95%, 96%, 97% of the time, the question is: Why do we care? Why are we even talking about this? And the reason we care is because, when there is a signal of threat running through our body, it's really, really uncomfortable for us. And so almost immediately, unconsciously, we begin to filter reality, and we begin to respond to reality in a way that is trying to make that fear and threat feeling go away.

And so, the reason we care about identifying whether we're below or above-the-line, is at some level our system is getting hijacked around an agenda of creating a feeling of safety in the body. And that's a normal human need. But if that's how we're experiencing reality, and that's the thing we're trying to solve for as we go through reality, we are going to show up in a particular way that actually doesn't allow us to change, allow us to grow, allow us to find a novel solution, allow us to take into account broader needs, or broader wants and desires. Because everything now is oriented around threat.

And so, one of the tip-offs that we are seeing life from below-the-line versus above-the-line, is this: Are we in a recurring pattern? Because a recurring pattern is a sign that the way we've been acting has been trying to reduce feelings of fear, rather than to actually look at the situation with fresh eyes and make a move from there. And so the pattern keeps repeating, because the way we show up is just to make ourselves feel safe. We don't actually change the underlying conditions that have caused the situation to present itself in the first place.

And so the Drama Triangle, which is a concept that was created by Steven Karpman in the 1960s, and again, something I learned through Conscious Leadership Group, is that when we are seeing the world through a lens of threat and in these recurring patterns, there are three roles that we assign ourselves and others. These roles are all about experiencing life and reacting to the feeling of threat that reality seems to be foisting upon us.

Another shorthand for saying I'm experiencing life from a place of threat, is I'm at the effect of reality. Something's happening and I'm scared, and I need to respond and react to what's happening, because I'm at the effect of the fear it's creating in my body. The Drama Triangle then is all about the roles I adopt when I feel at the effect of life.

The first role in the Drama Triangle is Victim. There are real victims in the world, where things have happened to them. But what we're talking about here is a broader mindset of being at the effect of the world and relating to it as a Victim.

And so, the Victim feels a lack of agency and a powerlessness and lack of ability to assert and change reality. The other two roles within the Drama Triangle are flavors of experiencing life as a Victim. The second one is the Villain. And when the Villain feels threat in their system, they develop a very strong belief about who is to blame. And a very strong belief about what needs to change, what needs to happen, in order for this feeling of threat to go away.

ELISE:

Is the Victim identifying the Villain, or you can just show up and be a Villain looking to project blame?

COURTNEY:

Typically, each of us has a preference for where we enter the Drama Triangle, and that's your own psychological patterning. But we don't necessarily stay in one place. We can bounce around and inhabit both Villain and Victim, for example, at the same time.

So I might be in the Drama Triangle because I feel I am at the effect of what’s happening politically in our country. I feel powerless to change it, and so I'm inhabiting the role of Victim. And at the same time, I’m quite certain about what needs to change and who's at fault, and so I’m assigning the role of Villain to “those people” who don’t see the world through my eyes.

So there's Victim, and there’s Villain, who's going to blame and be very certain about what's right or wrong. And then the third role is the Hero. And the Hero basically is going to try to relieve the feeling of fear in the situation, for themselves and for others. And the Hero does this in two ways: they either come up with a distraction strategy for themselves or others, something to help soothe and ignore how uncomfortable this situation is. They might use drugs or alcohol, or they might distract themselves with overworking, or say things like: “This isn't that big of a deal, I can handle this, it's going to work out okay.” It’s an effort to minimize the situation. Or the Hero is going to swoop in with a solution that looks like it's going to fix the situation, but in reality is just fixing the feeling of discomfort, and so it's actually only a temporary fix.

ELISE:

Got it. Well, I know where I tend to come in on that Drama Triangle.

COURTNEY:

What's your preferred spot?

ELISE:

Hero. And so, if I come in as the Hero, am I always then inherently looking for the Victim and the Villain in the situation? Or you're saying I would shift myself into those spots?