[00:00] Welcome back to the Focus B show. This is Katie Sudddart here aka the focus b. And on this show, I interview high performers and leaders around the world to discover their secrets on peak performance, productivity, mindfulness, and leadership. So if you want to take your performance and your leadership to the next level, then you're in the right place. Listen up and connect with the magic.

[00:40] You do you ever feel like a victim in a certain given situation? Or, on the contrary, as a saviour or rescuer? These are two very common roles that we take on, and they have been extremely well explained by Kopman and in his model Kopman Triangle. What Kopman picked up on is that often in different circumstances, we take on the roles of victim, persecutor, or savior. What happens is it often begins with someone feeling a bit hopeless, like they can't do anything to change the situation. This is a feeling and a sensation of victimhood. And more often than not, the victim is getting something out of this. Maybe it's helping them to feel connected to someone else because they want help. Or maybe it's enabling them to stay stuck where they are, and that's maybe part of a comfort zone, even though they don't realize it. So often, when we take on this role of victim, there's a reason, and then someone will feel the impulse to be the savior, the rescuer to come at your help. Now, you might identify here more with the victim or the savior. It doesn't matter. You've probably taken on both roles in your life more than once. The savior, on the other hand, generally chooses to always be helping others, always be rescuing others, because this is a strategy to avoid his or her's own problems, right? So if you're always focusing on other people and helping them, then you can avoid your own problems, and it's disguised as worry or concern for another person. What's the persecutor's role in all of this? Because Cartman Triangle is victim, persecutor, and savior, this doesn't mean that there's three people. What can happen is, in a common relationship, for instance, even in a couple, one person will take on that role of victim. I can't manage, it's too difficult. Then the other person will come and say, oh, I can help you with this. And then one of these two people might shift and turn into the persecutor. This would look like the victim might get annoyed at always being helped. And then suddenly they'll start criticizing or shouting or being angry towards the rescuer. So they take on the role of persecutor. And when this happens, the savior then might take on the role of victim. Oh, I was only trying to help. Why are you being so mean with me?

[03:27] Et cetera.

[03:28] This pattern is so common. So common. I highly invite you to look into your relationships, couples, work situations and see when it comes up. It is so incredibly common, in fact, that probably a lot of interactions throughout the day are on this pattern and we often don't realize it. This is something we have to be extremely mindful of if we work as a coach or mentor, that we don't step into this role of savior, that we don't feel compelled to save every person that comes our way. Because if we do this, we're disempowering the person and we're encouraging them to stay in that role of victim. It can also lead to codependency, where the client then becomes codependent on the coach or mentor or tutor. And the coach also becomes codependent on the client because they get a kick out of it or a power boost, or they feel more empowered because they're saving. So it's really not a very healthy situation for anybody. And this can also be codependency within couples, within friendships. So just look in your life. Are there any situations where you're either encouraging this constant role of helplessness, disempowered, always seeking help, always feeling you can't do it on your own or on the contrary, if you're taking on this role of I can help you're, bouncing in, you're intervening to help any person anytime. Because this, as I said, is a direct strategy to avoid your own problems. And this doesn't mean that you can't help from time to time, but just be very mindful that you don't have that savior impulse. It feels very different, energetically when you're just helping someone because you care about them and you just want to support them. You don't have this sort of guttural feeling of saving. It's a very strong, energetic feeling. And it's very, very different to simply supporting or helping someone. Exactly the same for the victim situation. It can happen in life that you're a bit stuck and you need help. That happens to everyone and it's a good thing to ask for help. It's very different to ask for help in a proactive way, calmly looking at the situation, saying I've tried ABC, it hasn't worked. Can you help me maybe figure out a new solution? What do you suggest? Great. It's very different if you take on that role of victim and you feel disempowered and you feel you can't do anything and you've tried so hard, again energetically, you sort of scrunched up in a ball. Whereas if you're asking for help when you're stuck, you can be perfectly open and natural and still empowered. Still, I've tried these options I could do with extra advice and support. That's the same for you if you identify more with the victim role to make sure that then if you seek a therapist, a coach, a mentor, know that they won't save you. They will give you some ideas, they will give you some support, they will help you, but no one is going to save you because you're not a victim of your life. Right? Okay.

[06:57] So those are the sort of three.

[06:58] Key roles with the victim, the savior, persecutor. Notice. Notice if you snap into that persecutor mode when before you were feeling helpless or before you were helping someone. Notice when this shows up in your patterns every day. And you'll probably see that it is, as I said, a lot more common than you realize. And it has such a powerful impact on relationships and dynamic. I often talk about this with both my clients and some friends and different people because once you understand this, once you're able to see, oh, cartman triangle, oh, I'm going towards victimhood, or I'm going towards savior or I'm going towards persecutor, and you're getting annoyed. Once you start to pick up on this, it makes it so much easier to reframe and to figure out and say things from a different perspective to, as I said, actively ask for help, but in a more proactive, empowered way, or to support someone, but without saving them. To be very mindful, to also taking care of yourself and your issues and so that you're not dependent on this savior role for your own self esteem, which can also be the case. And the more you adapt to this and the more you pick up on this, the easier it will be to step out of the shoes of victim or savior. It's almost 100% certain that you are more in one than in the other. And depending on the situation. So I could almost guarantee that any person and listening to this is either more in a victim place or in a savior mode, either at work or in their personal life. Either you've already done some personal work on this and you've stepped out of these positions, or it's something you've just heard about for the first time. And then you might think, oh yes, I do that and that's okay. The idea isn't to make you feel bad or guilty. I've done it. We've all done it. The idea is more to raise your awareness when you're doing it and to actively at that moment, choose a different response in your mind, change your perspective. You're not a victim and you're not a savior. Definitely not a persecutor either. And then formulate things in a more empowered, calm, grounded way. And when you do this, the whole dynamic of relationships change. Because if you're no longer placing yourself in a victim position, the other person can't take on the role of savior because you're no longer in the victim place. Same if you're trying to save someone but the other person is perfectly empowered, you're not saving anyone. So all it takes is for you to change your perspective, to change your behavior, to change the language you use, and you will change the whole dynamic of a couple in a relationship, of a group, in friendship, wise of work, colleagues, in situations. All it takes is one person to shift and the whole dynamic will shift around. And you might want to also notice when other people take on those roles and try in those moment to shift the situation. For instance, as a coach, if someone comes to me and I notice that they have that victim energy and they want me to save them, I make 200% sure that I don't give them any advice and say, but what could you do? What have you tried? What has worked for you in the past to help them come up with their own solutions? So that if someone is in a victim type mode and if someone is in a savior type mode, you might just want to point it out or say, thank you for your help. I'm also working on this. It's just nice to hear your ideas but not be dependent on them saving you, because otherwise you're encouraging this. I hope this episode was useful for you. I find this concept tremendously important. I highly encourage, if you haven't heard of this until today, to look it up a bit further, dig into it a bit deeper. This was really just the surface, the brief, brief overview as it's quite a deep topic and there's a lot to it. Hope this helps. Hope it serves you in your everyday life. Thank you so much for tuning in today.

[11:28] Thank you so much for tuning in today to the Focus Bee show. I would absolutely love to hear your feedback, so let me know in an Apple review or YouTube comment what was most valuable for you, and feel free to share this episode with a friend or a family member. Wishing you a wonderful, magical and focused day ahead.