People stay stuck when they believe they have no choice. They feel overwhelmed, powerless, at the mercy of other people or circumstances. And from that position, nothing changes.
In coaching, I work with a framework called The Empowerment Dynamic that offers a way out of this pattern. Developed by David Emerald, it’s one of the most powerful tools I know — simple enough to remember under pressure, profound enough to shift how you move through the world. And the moment people grasp it, something genuinely changes.
The Drama Triangle: Where We Get Stuck
The framework begins with recognising a pattern most of us fall into under stress. It’s called the Drama Triangle (originally the Dreaded Drama Triangle, from transactional psychology and specifically psychiatrist Stephen Karpman). It has three positions.
Victim. You see yourself as powerless — at the mercy of other people, circumstances, or situations beyond your control. Things are happening to you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. What matters is recognising the experience: helplessness, frustration, a sense that you’re trapped.
Persecutor. When overwhelm becomes unbearable, many people shift into anger or blame. Someone or something becomes the problem — the difficult colleague, the unreasonable manager, the system, the situation. This position feels more powerful than helplessness, but it’s still reactive. You’re lashing out rather than choosing your response.
Rescuer. This is the person who steps in uninvited to fix, advise, or solve problems that aren’t theirs to solve. It looks helpful, but it crosses boundaries. Rescuers need someone to save in order to feel valuable. When their help is rejected or doesn’t work, frustration builds — and rescuers often become persecutors themselves.
Most people recognise all three positions. And most of us move between them without noticing.
The triangle is self-reinforcing. For someone to feel stuck or overwhelmed, there must be something or someone they experience as the problem — the persecutor. And for someone to persecute, there must be a victim. The roles depend on each other. Which is why the pattern keeps repeating.
The persecutor is not always another person. Sometimes it’s our own thinking, our habits, our circumstances, institutions, or situations genuinely beyond our control. But the position remains the same: reactive, stuck, repeating.
The Empowerment Dynamic: A Different Response
The Empowerment Dynamic offers a way out. It doesn’t deny that difficult things happen. It doesn’t ask you to pretend everything is fine. It simply offers a different way of responding.
Instead of reacting automatically from one of the three Drama Triangle positions, you pause and ask one simple question:
What do I want?
That’s it. That question — asked honestly — is often enough to shift the entire situation.
When I ask this in coaching, the first answers are often broad. “I want less stress.” “I want things to be easier.” “I want this situation to stop.” That’s enough. For someone who has been feeling overwhelmed or reactive, starting there makes sense.
From there, we work to make it more concrete. What would less stress actually look like? What would need to change? What specifically do you want instead of what you’re currently experiencing?
As the answers become clearer, something shifts. The focus moves from what’s wrong to what’s wanted. From helpless to intentional. From stuck to navigating.
Three New Positions
The Empowerment Dynamic replaces the three Drama Triangle positions with three more intentional ones.
Instead of feeling stuck or overwhelmed, you become the creator. You’re no longer helpless. You’re someone with agency, making choices about where you want to go. You don’t control everything, but you can choose your direction and your next step. The question that helps you step into this position is: what do I want? (Some people prefer different language here — navigator, captain, agent, actor — use whatever feels most accurate to you.)
Instead of persecuting, you become a challenger. The difficult colleague is no longer the problem to blame — they become a challenge you’re navigating. The unreasonable manager becomes a challenge. The broken system becomes a challenge. This shift in language matters. A persecutor keeps you trapped in reaction and blame. A challenger invites a response. You’re no longer attacking or making someone else the problem. You’re solving. You’re responding with intention rather than lashing out.
Instead of rescuing, you become a coach. A rescuer sees people as incapable and steps in to fix them. A coach sees people as whole and capable, and supports them to find their own way forward. You’re no longer crossing boundaries or taking responsibility for other people’s problems. You’re holding space, asking questions, trusting their capacity.
These aren’t just nice-sounding words. They represent a genuine shift in how you relate to difficulty.
Finding Language That Works
Not everyone is comfortable with the original language of Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer. The word “victim” in particular can feel loaded or uncomfortable — some people hear it as blame or weakness rather than description of a psychological position.
If the language doesn’t work for you, change it. What matters is recognising the pattern, not the labels.
Instead of Victim, you might use: overwhelmed, stuck, helpless, trapped, powerless.
Instead of Creator (or Navigator), try: captain, agent, actor, driver.
Instead of Persecutor, consider: blamer, attacker, or simply the person who makes others the problem.
Instead of Challenger, use whatever language helps you see difficulty as something to navigate rather than something that’s happening to you.
The framework is a tool. If different words make it more useful, use them. Play with the language until it feels accurate and usable rather than theoretical.
Why This Matters
This isn’t just an interesting psychological model. It’s fundamental to any kind of change.
When you’re in the Drama Triangle — feeling stuck, blaming, or rescuing — you’re unlikely to take meaningful action. You’re reacting. You’re defending. You’re managing other people’s feelings or trying to fix what isn’t yours to fix. From that position, nothing changes. No coaching. No self-development. No meaningful progress. Nothing.
Without recognising that you’re in victim mode and actively choosing to move to the navigator position, you remain stuck. The situation keeps repeating because the pattern itself hasn’t shifted.
But the moment you ask “what do I want?” and step into the navigator position, action becomes possible. You’re no longer trapped. You’re choosing. You can begin to move.
One of the things I value most about this framework is that it has ethics built into it. If you genuinely want to solve a situation from the navigator position, you can’t do it by being nasty to someone — even if you’re angry with them. The moment you lash out, blame, or attack, you’ve stepped back into the Drama Triangle. You’re a persecutor now, which means someone else becomes stuck or overwhelmed, and the cycle continues.
To stay in the Empowerment Dynamic, you have to find a way forward that doesn’t require making someone else the problem. That doesn’t mean avoiding difficult conversations or pretending everything is fine. It means responding rather than reacting. It means clarity without cruelty.
A Turning Point
One of the clearest examples I’ve seen came from a client who spent nearly an entire session in tears after serious conflicts with family and a close friend. Much of that session was simply helping her settle and make sense of what had happened.
She was already familiar with this framework, and when she returned the following week, something had shifted. After reflecting on the situation, she realised she had been approaching not just this conflict, but much of her life, from a position of helplessness and overwhelm. She could see a pattern stretching back through years of difficult relationships.
That recognition was a turning point. Since then she has left a toxic workplace where she was being bullied by colleagues, confronted a landlord who had been avoiding necessary repairs to her flat, and become noticeably more direct and assertive in her relationships. She describes feeling steadier, clearer, more capable of navigating difficulty without becoming overwhelmed by it.
None of it happened overnight. But the shift from reactive to intentional made it all possible.
The Next Step: Baby Steps
Once people become clear about what they actually want, the next step is usually smaller than they expect. Often it’s just one conversation. One boundary. One email. One decision to stop rescuing. One small change in behaviour.
These are what David Emerald calls baby steps, and they’re central to how this work unfolds.
Taking action can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re already in a state of overwhelm. The gap between where you are and where you want to be creates what’s called dynamic tension — the uncomfortable stretch between your current reality and your vision. That tension is natural and necessary. It’s what motivates change. But when it feels too large, people either collapse back into helplessness or lash out in frustration.
Baby steps manage that tension. They make movement possible without requiring you to solve everything at once.
A baby step might be: sending one email you’ve been avoiding. Having one difficult conversation. Setting one small boundary. Making one phone call. Taking one action that moves you even slightly closer to what you want.
These steps matter more than they appear. They reduce overwhelm. They create momentum. They prove to yourself that you’re not helpless — that you can act, even in small ways. And over time, they compound into meaningful change.
The question isn’t whether you can solve the whole situation right now. The question is: what’s one small step I can take today?
The Drama Triangle doesn’t disappear. Under stress, most of us return to it. But once you recognise the pattern, you have a choice. You can notice it, pause, and ask: what do I actually want here? And from there, you can navigate rather than react.
That question — what do I want? — asked honestly and repeatedly, is often all it takes to shift from stuck to moving.
Leave a Reply