Maneuvering And Rules In The Triangle of co-dependency.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the positions in the triangle of co-dependency there are a number of key points to consider remembering:

1. The Triangle is based on lies. Tell a lie to yourself or someone else, whether it is a lie about data or a lie about your emotions or your experience, and you move immediately into the Triangle and the addictive process.
2. All shoulds are a lie. Therefore, shoulds will throw you into the Triangle. (An important piece of your healing process is learning how to go about getting your needs and wants met after you learn to distinguish them from your shoulds or the things that other people have told you are your needs.)
3. All positions in the Triangle cause pain so no matter what position you are in at any given moment in the Triangle, you will be in pain.
4. There is no power in the Triangle. When you are in the Triangle, you are operating from powerlessness and irresponsibility no matter what position you are playing.
5. Everyone has a favorite starting position which is usually either the rescuer or the victim. Few people choose persecutor as starting position.
6. Once you are hooked into the Triangle, you will end up playing all the positions, whether you like it or not, because of the nature of the Triangle. You may have perceived yourself as a rescuer who wound up as someone’s victim while at the same time that person perceives you as the persecutor.
7. Guilt is the experience that books you into the Triangle and therefore you need to learn a few points about guilt:
   1. Guilt is a signal that someone is attempting to pull you into the Triangle.
   2. To stay out of the Triangle you need to learn to give yourself permission to feel guilty without acting on that guilt. In other words, do not let the guilt push you into the rescuer position.
   3. Learn to sit with the guilt and be uncomfortable. This experience called guilt is a learned response; it is not the same thing as being out of integrity with yourself.
8. The “escape hatch” out of the Triangle is located at the persecutor position. Telling the truth and feeling your emotions opens the escape hatch out of the Triangle. In other words, in order to leave the Triangle or stay out of the Triangle, you have to be willing for others (the victims or the other rescuers) to perceive you as the bad guy. This does not mean that you are the bad guy; it does mean that others choose to see you that way. If you are not willing to be seen as a persecutor, you will get hooked into rescuing and place yourself back or keep yourself in the Triangle. If you are already in the Triangle and wish to leave, you have to be willing for those in the Triangle with you to see you as the persecutor.
   When you are in the process of leaving the Triangle, you are in the process of telling yourself the truth about your feelings, your motives and the situation in general. You are willing to experience whatever feelings you are having and you are willing to let others experience their feelings without your having to rescue them. If the other people in the Triangle are willing to tell the truth and experience their feelings, the Triangle disappears. If they are not, as is more often the case, then you leave looking like their persecutor.
9. You can play the Triangle alone, with yourself. (Once you have been raised in a dysfunctional family, you do not need anyone else to push your into the Triangle.)
   1. The way you play the Triangle by yourself is by listening to the negative voice inside your head that beats you up, puts you down, and constantly shoulds you.
   2. Remember, shoulds are a lie. They have nothing to do with who you are or how the universe works. They are someone else’s interpretation of what to do and what is good.
   3. When you play the Triangle with yourself, your should-er will persecute you so that you will feel like a victim. At the same time you will be feeling guilty. This will trigger the belief that you are the persecutor. The guilt will drive you to rescue someone
      (or some situation) even when no one except you is attempting to manipulate you into the rescuer position.
10. When you actively participate in a relationship with someone who lives in the Triangle, you must be very careful of the hooks. It is difficult to be around people who constantly operate in the Triangle and not get hooked into the Triangle yourself, especially if your personal boundaries are not clear, and you have not learned to recognize the Triangle.
11. Your internalized Should-er is also the voice that pushes you into the Triangle when others around you are in the Triangle and attempting to hook you. The should-er is your false-self, the part inside you that is actually someone else but that you believe is you. It is controlling, negative, rigid, perfectionistic and righteous. Without that part of you operating, you would not participate in the Triangle.
12. Being in the Triangle is not being alive; it is a living death. It is a life of pain, inauthenticity and lack of love and acceptance.
13. Suicide is the ultimate victim act, the ultimate act of self-pity. When the victim perceives that he cannot get anyone to come to the rescue anymore and he does not have the courage to seek new alternatives, he may turn to suicide.
14. Telling the truth and experiencing your emotions is the only way out of the Triangle. To do that you have to learn to know and define your boundaries and take responsibility for recognizing, experiencing, expressing and completing your emotions.

Let’s look at an example of the Triangle positions and how they relate to co-dependence and the Alcoholic family syndrome.

I once worked with a young woman who entered therapy as an acknowledged Adult child of an Alcoholic. When I asked her what her purpose was for being in therapy, she said that she had come in to work on herself and herco-dependence. After relating that healthy-sounding purpose, she then proceeded to spend a large part of the session telling me about her husband. He was not living up to her expectations. He would stay at home, depressed, and not go out job-hunting. In her estimation her unhappiness was based on his behavior, and he needed fixing. She said that she kept trying to push him to get a job. When I probed further, I found out he had abandoned the career he had liked because she was embarrassed by it.

When I pointed out to her the co-dependence involved in what she was telling me, she was able to recognize her need to control matters in order not to feel uncomfortable, but she did not want to change. Although she had come into the session stating that she wanted to work on her co-dependence, what she was really hoping to do was to get me to help her find a way to change her husband.

When we explore this scenario relative to the positions in the Triangle (which the three of us did later on), we find that her husband in an effort to rescue her, to take care of her embarrassment and to avoid guilt, left his job in a career that he enjoyed. He ended up experiencing himself as the victim-martyr and her as the persecutor. She, on the other hand, saw herself as the victim of her husband’s unacceptable career and had hoped to get me to rescue her.
When she came into my office, she did not realize that she was trying to bring me into the Triangle. She was not even aware that she lived in the Triangle. She didn’t see that she was trying to fix him in order to avoid dealing with herself. Toward the end of the first session, I told her that in order for me to work with her, she would have to be willing to let go of trying to control his life, starting with letting go of controlling his career. She told me she couldn’t do that. I told her that this would be her last session. I would not work with her as long as her primary goal was to fix him. She sat there