In coming across the above quote recently I was reminded of the pain caused by being caught up in this cycle. Back in my mid twenties I was a walking wound, and to compensate I tried to take care of others and become the tool to their healing. Thankfully I have come a long way over the years even though there are times when I can get drawn into this dynamic. I have found this description a useful way to understand how we are caught up in being dependent on each other’s happiness. Partners will move between these three positions creating relationships based on powerlessness and fusion.

When I began my training I was first acquainted with this system in relationships as having three positions, persecutor, victim and rescuer. It is useful to conceptualize each position as a separate person for description, but more accurately they are aspects within our psyche that are activated in relationships. We express them in reaction to what we perceive and experience in others.  However, you may recognize that you gravitate towards one characteristic in particular.  Here is a description of each of these positions.

Victim (Wound).
The victim carries beliefs about themselves as being a target for others hostility and rejection. They believe others are against them and responsible for their pain. They see their life in hopeless and helpless ways with obstacles at every corner preventing them from having what they really want. The victim expresses their helplessness to elicit caretaking. They do this by; guilt tripping, acting helpless, blaming, sabotaging success, afraid to take action, self deprecating statements, emotionality, and looking to others for direction. They are self-absorbed and want others to feel the way they do. For example, if their partner feels happy and satisfied this can be experienced as a slight to their feelings, after all ‘can’t you see I am hurting over here?’ (says the wound).

They find it difficult to tolerate rejection or criticism. The victim feels afraid to take responsibility for themselves, and often mistakes responsibility for blame or rejection. Taking care of oneself means that they will not be cared for as the only way is by manipulating it through being helpless and hurt.  Being self-sufficient means being alone and disconnected, and so resent others for not responding immediately when they need them. Taking care of themselves is seen as a burden.  The victim has developed this view from either being a target as a child or learning through wounded adults to manipulate others. They view relationships as providing them with the safe haven that they crave. The consequence is to put pressure on others to do the impossible and make up for everyone who has let them down.

Rescuer (Tool).
The rescuer connects their self worth to being needed and taking care of others. They over function taking on things they perceive as helpful to their partner or that they think their partner ‘needs’ to be happy.  They have come to believe that their own desires are injurious to others and quickly deny them. They want to avoid conflict at all costs and are governed by guilt whenever there is any possibility that they could be responsible for hurting anyone. Some rescuers charge into situations where they perceive they are needed, taking on people as projects. They are also motivated by the fear that others will think badly of them. They carry shame about their own suffering or needs, striving to maintain a picture of themselves as in control and capable.  The rescuer is very focused on others and becomes very adept at anticipating disaster. They can rescue by managing and organizing others, catering to other’s emotional needs and attempting to provide whatever is requested, denying their own experience to protect others, saying what they think other’s want to hear, explaining their partners behaviour to others and apologizing for them, taking responsibility for others, and attempting to take away someone’s suffering by finding solutions for them. Through these actions the rescuer communicates a sense of them-self as capable and the other as incapable.

The rescuer tends to be self-sacrificing in the hopes of a return of love from their partner they have tirelessly taken care of. At their core they do not believe they are lovable and attempt to elicit love by doing for others. In this way they are driven by perfectionism believing that the only way to receive love is by being perfect. The rescuer will periodically fall into a pit of despair when everything falls apart and all their efforts have been to no avail.  They end up feeling helpless and try to compensate by controlling more which often takes them into the persecutor position. From here they will become superior and contemptuous towards the victim when their efforts are not appreciated. They can also move into the victim position feeling used and abused.

Persecutor (Knife)
The persecutor is a position that develops out of the victim and rescuer. For someone who maintains this position in relation to others has likely been the victim of extreme control or chaos and has learnt to protect themselves by attempting to control others.  So feelings of worthlessness and vulnerability are buried deeply beneath a fear of loosing control. Their self worth is tied to being right and being superior.  They attack to protect themselves from being attacked. They maintain their sense of self worth by perceiving others in an inferior position. The persecutor uses various methods to maintain control including, contempt, dismissing, attacking (verbally and physically), humiliating, blaming, raging, self-righteousness, bullying, sarcasm, stonewalling and withholding. In extreme situations violence and rage are used to control others. They deal with their own pain by inflicting it on others, feeling justified because of being victimized by others. Persecutors keep their vulnerability well hidden and see things in terms of weakness and strength, having contempt for what they perceive as weak in others. They will often move into the victim position in response to being challenged and held responsible for their behaviour.

The victim and the rescuer will move into the persecutor position as an escalation of their attempts to control. The victim will persecute with blame and guilt by torturing others with responsibility for their pain and not being good enough to make them feel better. The rescuer will persecute others with their self-sacrifice and resentment that they are not appreciated for what they have done for them. The rescuer will often express their hostility in a passive aggressive way, because their need to be thought well of predominates. The rescuer and victim will react to each other in a never-ending spiral that escalates into increasing resentment and hatred. This cycle becomes increasingly abusive with both moving back and forth into the persecutor position. 

When you are caught in this cycle it is not possible to develop deep intimacy and both partners feel powerless. Both the rescuer and persecutor project ‘weakness’ outward and the victim projects their aggression and responsibility outward. In this way they maintain an incomplete sense of self through disowning these parts of themselves. There is a focus on others as responsible for your happiness and a belief that you can have control over others feelings and actions.  You may at your core carry the belief that you are responsible for others feelings and therefore can control them. The victim does this by being helpless, the rescuer by being accommodating, and the persecutor by intimidating.   As you operate from these positions in relationships you maintain a lack of connection to an authentic self by living your life through others.  In this dynamic partners are viewed as unequal.

How to live outside this cycle.
Learning to take responsibility for ones own life and keep working towards the goal of wholeness is of course the way out. Whatever it takes for you to focus on yourself and develop awareness will increase your sense of self. Identification is the first step in changing. Here are some pointers;

Counselling. When we get stuck in dynamics we have a certain way of seeing things that has developed from our life experiences and can be very difficult to change. We tend to continue to see things from this perspective partly because we are so good at fooling ourselves and not looking at things we don’t want to deal with.  Each of these positions has an investment in staying caught up in it.  We change in part because we are frustrated and because we are challenged usually by others to see things differently. A good therapist will focus you on the things that you are not as willing to look at by yourself and support you to face your fears.

Self reflection. There are many ways to do this, meditation, reading, spending time by yourself doing the things you like to do.  Doing more separate activities from your partner will help to develop more of a sense of self.

Identifying your Fears. These interactions are driven by fear. Identify when you feel fear or guilt. Create some space before acting on it to calm yourself and reflect on what you really feel or desire in the situation.  By slowing yourself down you can often identify what is triggering the guilt or fear and what decision you are making in response. Do something different to break the habit.

Deal with Conflict. As you learn to identify your reactions that cause you to avoid conflict you will become more aware of the truth of your experience in relationshps. Being honest risks others not being happy with you (you can't make them happy anyway), and having to deal with your differences. The more honesty that comes into relationships the more you will develop a foundation based on responsibility for your own happiness.

So what does this mean you may ask?

It is fascinating to me how important the first years of life are in creating these styles and patterns within us – that is where it all starts truly:) We may very much want to leave it all behind and believe that we can do just that.  Perhaps it gives us a sense of power to feel we can rise above our parents influence – however, understanding attachment can be useful – if not interesting.

The relationship as an infant with our [mothers] is instrumental in creating what is referred to as secure or insecure attachment.  This comes down to developing an ability to both approach other people and separate from other people. The ease to which we can do this is determined by how in tune our mothers were with us in those first few years of life. Of course we don’t remember those years but we can often get a sense of it from how our relationships with those  people (mother)  or from information regarding events such as hospital admissions.  So what are our[mothers] doing that so affects us?

Being in tune with an infant is the ability to focus on the infants needs and respond to help the baby regulate their distress.  A baby cries and the mother responds with soothing and the baby’s nervous system learns to ‘calm down’. If the mother is not soothing the baby does not learn to calm down. If this happens over and over again, the babies nervous system starts to take on ways of dealing with this and develops what is referred to as insecure attachment styles. The mother can ‘misattune’ in a number of ways; by just not paying attention and being self absorbed, only responds in a cold and practical manner, gets frustrated or feels a lot of anxiety herself, avoiding mutual gaze, resisting physical contact, wanting attention from the infant when the child does not. These things happen on occasions with all mothers, but your parents have their own attachment styles that gets reflected in their ability to respond to you as a baby on an ongoing basis.

Of course if you throw into the mix more extreme forms of abuse and neglect then the baby may develop a much more extreme insecure attachment. Adults who have had these experiences find relationships very challenging and people around them often don’t know if they are coming or going.

So often in relationships as adults we can find ourselves in relationships with partners that challenge our attachment styles – just like my husband and I do. His style developed in response to an unattuned mother who would resist being emotionally connected. So he learned to avoid emotional connection. He is on the end of what is called insecure avoidant. As adults these people tend to avoid emotional intimacy, keep their internal world to themselves, appear as if they don’t need anyone, and find dependency frightening.  In other words they tend to get anxious the closer they become to others.

And people like me who have what is called an insecure ambivalent style tend to feel more anxious when separated from people close to them. This comes from a mother’s inconsistant and unpredictable response. So these mothers will tend to encourage connection and then withdraw from it depending on their own emotional moods. So a baby may sometimes feel soothed by the mother and than abandoned.  As adults we know that being close can feel good but what we don’t feel secure about is being separated from others. So we can perhaps see how my anxiety would get activated by my husbands avoidance of emotional connection and his anxiety gets triggered if I come in too close. The good news is that we can change these patterns to create more secure attachments.