Category Archives: Relationship Dynamics

From Rescue to Clarity: What the Drama Triangle Taught Me About Boundaries

Photo by Mike McGrath on Unsplash

by Lara Just, Dec 2025.

In this blog, I explore how well-meaning acts of kindness can sometimes spiral into overwhelming emotional dynamics, blurring boundaries and creating hidden pressures. Using a recent personal experience of house-sitting gone awry, I unpack the subtle shifts that can trap us in the Victim-Rescuer-Perpetrator triangle — a common pattern in transactional analysis. I share insights on recognizing these patterns, maintaining clarity, and honoring your body’s truth amid confusion and shifting roles.

When a Simple Favour Quickly Becomes a Maze of Expectations

Earlier in the year, I found myself in a situation that tested the edges of my emotional clarity and personal boundaries. It began with a seemingly simple house-sitting favour — caring for a pet and plants in a countryside home — but within 48 to 72 hours, it quietly morphed into an obligation marathon. Despite a resulting agreement to step back, I felt roped back in the very next day amid urgent back-and-forth messages, all while juggling full, back-to-back workdays.

A clear, time-bound agreement shifted as unspoken expectations accumulated and responsibilities expanded. Subtle comments and emotional undercurrents cast doubt on my perceptions and boundaries, turning goodwill into confusion, resentment, and pressure. This tangle of shifting roles and hidden demands left me drained and questioning my own instincts. It wasn’t until I stepped back and viewed the experience through the lens of the Drama Triangle that everything clicked into place.

What Is the Drama Triangle? 

The Drama Triangle is a psychological and relational model developed by Stephen Karpman, a student of Eric Berne, the founder of Transactional Analysis. It identifies three habitual roles that people unconsciously adopt in emotionally charged dynamics: the Victim, the Rescuer, and the Persecutor.

These roles aren’t fixed, and individuals often shift between them in the course of a single interaction or relationship.

  • Victim: Feels oppressed, helpless, hopeless. Seeks saviors or blames others for their circumstances.
  • Rescuer: Feels needed, compelled to help or save the Victim, often without being asked or in ways that aren’t sustainable.
  • Persecutor: Blames, criticizes, or controls. Can appear rigid or aggressive, often as a reaction to the other roles.

This triangle perpetuates drama, confusion, and codependency—and can be incredibly hard to spot when you’re in it.

Mapping the Dynamic 

In my situation, the initial invitation came with the tone of a Victim seeking help: overwhelmed, unsupported, needing a break, others have let them down last minute. I was suggested and asked by someone I know, and I responded with empathy and care, naturally stepping into the role (Rescuer). I rearranged my busy work life to be helpful, overextending without clear boundaries.

But when I started to express my limits—saying no to last-minute changes or not responding immediately—I was subtly shifted into the Persecutor role. Suddenly, my healthy boundaries were interpreted as not understanding, making a big deal out of it, even misinterpreting, possibly coldness. I felt confused, guilty, suddenly obligated and emotionally off-center.

What made it even more complex was how fast the roles shifted. One moment I was appreciated, the next I was perceived as letting someone down. The emotional ping-pong of this dynamic left me exhausted.

The Turning Point 

The breakthrough came when I tuned into my body. My stomach, and particularly solar plexus area, felt tight. My focus was disrupted. My sleep was restless. I would carefully craft and revise my responses — not only to be understood as I intended, but also to set boundaries as clearly as possible, hoping to prevent any further misunderstandings, assumptions, or expansions of responsibility that weren’t agreed upon. These were all signals that I was trapped in a role that wasn’t mine to hold.

I paused. I reassessed. I realised I had been hooked into a familiar loop: trying to earn peace by over-accommodating. The clarity came not from logic alone but from reclaiming a deeper sense of knowing—my somatic truth.

How to Step Out of the Triangle 

Escaping the Drama Triangle doesn’t mean blaming others. It means choosing to relate from a different place.

  • Awareness: Notice when you’ve stepped into a role.
  • Pause and Reflect: What’s driving your reaction? Obligation? Guilt? Fear?
  • Reclaim Boundaries: Speak from an adult-to-adult stance. Use clear, kind, non-defensive language.
  • Let Go of the Outcome: Others may still try to reassign you a role. Stay grounded in your truth.

In my case, I gently yet firmly stepped away from the arrangement. I didn’t over-explain. I didn’t rescue. I didn’t retaliate. I simply honoured what I knew to be right (for me).

Lessons for Life and Therapy 

For those of us in caregiving roles—therapists, coaches, friends, empaths—it’s easy to fall into the Rescuer trap. We’re trained to hold space, to support, to soothe. But when that care morphs into self-sacrifice or confusion, it’s time to check the triangle.

For clients, understanding these roles can bring enormous relief. It gives language to those gut feelings of imbalance, guilt, or pressure. It helps them reclaim agency.

Closing Reflection
What happened with this home-sit situation wasn’t just about logistics—it was a mirror. A reminder. An invitation to grow. And most importantly, a chance to model, for myself and for others, what it looks like to step out of emotional entanglement and into grounded clarity.

We don’t have to play roles to be loved. We don’t have to rescue, collapse, or defend to stay safe. There is another way—and it begins with honoring what feels true and aligned in our own bodies.

This isn’t about the truth in a universal or confrontational sense. It’s about your truth—the kind that comes from deep listening to your nervous system, your values, and your lived experience. The kind that doesn’t need to be justified or debated. Just felt. Trusted. And followed.

Flow vs. Force – The Test I Passed

Tidal Rock (Gwithian Beach, St Ives Bay) – Photograph by Lara Just

by Lara Just, May 2025.

Learning to Trust the Body’s Truth and Hold a Boundary with Grace.

In this post I look at my personal reflections focusing on boundary-setting, inner truth, emotional clarity, and the contrast between manipulation and flow. Recently, I found myself in a difficult situation that looked simple on the surface — a favour, a small commitment — but gradually became more complex and revealed deeper layers. What unfolded showed me, in real time, the difference between flow and force — and the freedom that comes when we trust the body’s quiet wisdom over external pressure.

The Test: A Subtle Kind of Manipulation

It started with a simple offer to help — a housesit for someone that was in a pinch. Clear terms, a start and end date. But once I stepped into the space, the edges of the arrangement began to blur. New expectations were slipped in. My role quietly shifted. Emotional pressure replaced mutuality.

When I attempted to clarify or gently push back, I wasn’t met with direct aggression — but with something slipperier. Deflection. Guilt. Shifting expectations, vague messages, and emotional pressure disguised as understanding, gratitude or confusion. Messages that evoked things like:

  • “I thought you’d already said yes.”
  • “I wouldn’t ask if I had other options.”
  • “You’re the only one I can really rely on.”

It wasn’t a conversation; it was a slow erosion of choice. A pattern emerged — not true collaboration, but control cloaked in vulnerability, need.

And yet… my body knew.

Where I Once Collapsed, I Now Stood

In the past, I might have absorbed that discomfort and made excuses — for them, for the situation, even for my own reactions. I would have twisted myself into something more accommodating, overriding the quiet internal signals telling me that something wasn’t right.

But this time, I paused. I breathed. I got still. And I listened — not to the noise of obligation or the pressure to be liked, but to the unmistakable feedback of my own body.

Tight chest. Solar Plexus tension. Elevated heart rate. Loss of focus. Disrupted sleep. Racing thoughts. A sense of being subtly trapped, emotionally obligated, out of alignment. I felt this with every new interaction. That is information. That is truth. 

This wasn’t just anxiety or overthinking. This was clarity — not loud, but steady.

Force is the Old Story — Flow is the New Path

Here’s what I’ve learned through this experience:

Force says: keep giving, even when it costs you peace.
Force says: don’t upset anyone, don’t walk away, don’t draw the line.

Force comes from fear, of rejection and conflict often applied through pressure, urgency
Force can be masked itself as “helping,” but it often erases your choice.
It feels like bracing, flinching, contracting.

Flow, by contrast, is honest. It doesn’t rush or smooth over.
Flow respects mutuality. It doesn’t abandon clarity.
Flow is rooted in calm and listens to the body before listening to guilt.
It feels like relief, expansion, openness, groundedness.

Flow is where boundaries live — not as hard walls, but as clear waters. And in this situation, I chose flow. I didn’t explode or blame. I didn’t need to explain myself into exhaustion. I simply honoured it and ended the arrangement. I didn’t need to prove I was right. I just needed to choose peace.

The Body’s Truth Is Quiet — But Unshakable

The more I listened inward, the louder the truth became. Every time I entertained bending my boundary, my nervous system pushed back: anxiety, tension, resentment. Every time I honoured my own line, I felt more whole, expanded, rooted, more alive.

That’s when I understood — the body is always telling the truth. Not in abstract concepts, but in very real, physical signals. When something is off, the body whispers, then it tightens, then it yells.

This time, I didn’t wait until I was in burnout. I caught it early. I trusted the whisper.

I trusted the whisper and the knowing: this isn’t aligned anymore.

That’s the kind of power no one can take from you. It’s not reactive. It’s rooted. It doesn’t need to justify or explain itself endlessly.

Lessons from the Threshold

This wasn’t just about a misaligned favour. It was a threshold moment. A crossing from old programming — people-pleasing, shape-shifting, self-erasure — into something far steadier: self-trust.

I learned:

  • I don’t need a dramatic reason to step away.
  • I can honour discomfort as truth, not a problem to fix.
  • I can disappoint someone and still be deeply kind.
  • I am not responsible for managing another adult’s reactions.
  • My body will never lie to me, even when my mind is tangled.

These aren’t small lessons. They’re hard-won. They require courage, especially when the manipulation is subtle and comes from someone who sees themselves as vulnerable or well-meaning.

But emotional pressure — even when soft — is still pressure. And clarity is still kindness, even when it’s not received that way.

If You’re Reading This and Nodding…

Maybe you’ve felt this too. The flinch. The squeeze in your chest when a boundary is crossed in slow motion. The guilt that rises when you try to hold your line. The confusion that sets in when your generosity is met with expectation instead of appreciation.

Let this be your reminder: you’re not imagining it. Your discomfort is not a flaw. It’s a signal. And you’re allowed to listen.

You can end the interaction. You can stop explaining. You can choose peace, even if someone else calls it selfish. Especially then.

Because when you begin to honour the wisdom of your own body, everything changes. You move from force to flow. From flinching to expansion – rootedness. From hypervigilance to ease.

And the test? You pass it not by winning the argument, but by walking away with your integrity intact. Which can regain your peace.

Journal Prompt (optional):

  • Where in my life am I still choosing force over flow?
  • What might shift if I trusted my body as deeply as I trust my logic?