Learning about the Dreaded Drama Triangle (DDT) roles of Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer is often a huge epiphany for people. Once shared, the DDT roles are easy to recognize because they line-up with the flight, flight, freeze, or appease reactive mechanism that is built into the human psyche. Becoming more aware of personal drama is […]
As young school children we are taught to ask the teacher for help and receive feedback to help us learn. As adults, giving feedback to one another can evoke a strong defensive reaction. We know this defensive response all-too-well. Since we co-facilitate the Power of TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic) workshops together, after each workshop we […]
We human beings are attached to being attached. We are attached to our thinking and the way we believe people and circumstances ought to be. We are also attached to the norms and beliefs of the groups and organizations to which we belong. David often speaks to the difference between attachment, detachment, and non-attachment, a […]
In the United States, we are entering the final stage to the 2018 elections. Many years ago, Donna spent six years in the Oregon State Legislature and was her party’s nominee for Secretary of State, so the political campaign season brings back memories of her time in partisan politics. She recalls as a young woman […]
This week we are sharing a story Donna received from one of her coaching clients. This client is an executive in a global consulting company, highly motivated and driven to succeed. She recently received feedback from her supervisor that the client labeled as “negative feedback.” She came to a coaching session with Donna upset and […]
Sometimes the smallest stimulus can irritate us and send us into a dizzying cycle of reactive, drama-filled behavior. We call a stimulus that impacts behavior a “trigger.” Triggers can be both positive and negative. An example of a positive trigger is smiling back at a smiling baby. However, it is the negative triggers that we […]
There are some things that are a fact of life. Gravity for example. You don’t resist the law of gravity. You accept that gravity stops you from flying. You can’t jump that high, so you don’t even try. When you accept a fact of life, such as the law of gravity, it liberates you from […]
Since first publishing The Power of TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic) we have heard instances of how some people are using the framework in less than desirable ways. Here are a few examples; “After attending your workshop, I told my team they act like Victims and should stop their complaining and get their work done on […]
A friend recently said to us, “I am learning to have fewer reactive conversations and more healthy conversations.” What simple advice! The question arises, when you go reactive; how do you shift to a more creative and healthy conversation? We recommend hitting the pause button to lengthen the choice-point between when you might get triggered […]
In our last two essays, we wrote about how to shift from two of the Dreaded Drama Triangle (DDT) roles to the TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic)® roles: Victim to Creator and Rescuer to Coach. This week we tackle the third role shift: Persecutor to Challenger. Many people tell us they resist embracing the Challenger role […]