Unlocking Psychological Flexibility: Exploring the Drama Triangle and Agile Communication with Dr. Carrie Johansson Episode 2

Can you imagine transforming the stifling patterns of your daily interactions into liberating dialogues? Join us as we unravel the complexities of interpersonal dynamics with psychologist, speaker, and author Dr. Carrie Johansson. Dr. Carrie enlightens us about the drama triangle, characterized by the roles of bully, rescuer, and victim, and how this stifling pattern plays out in our everyday conversations. She then introduces the liberating counterpart - the winners triangle, which offers a path to acceptance and commitment therapy.

We also touch on the critical aspect of psychological flexibility as we explore the integration of social skills in agile frameworks. Transitioning from traditional communication models to collaborative ones can be a hurdle, but with Dr. Carrie's insightful perspectives, we delve into the behavioral side of agility. We also discuss the edge cases of the drama triangle, where trust plays a vital role in transitioning from one triangle to the other.

In the final segment of our enlightening discussion, we delve into the process of shifting fixed characteristics into practicable tendencies. Using hand-eye coordination as an analogy, we tackle the concept of improvement through practice. Dr. Carrie sheds light on overcoming psychological rigidity, loss aversion, and resistance to change encountered when transitioning from traditional frameworks to agile ones. The power of the 'rule of five' is also discussed as a tool to expand options and flexibility. We wrap up with a sneak peek into Dr. Carrie’s book, ‘Self-Help on the Go’, a practical guide to navigate life's tricky moments. Join us on this journey to unlock your psychological flexibility and harness the power of choice.

https://www.selfhelponthego.com/home-6070
https://www.linkedin.com/in/selfhelponthego/
https://www.amazon.com/Self-Help-Go-Because-Broken-Sometimes/dp/1952233860/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31XLCI8267I44&keywords=carrie+johansson&qid=1690057263&sprefix=carrie+johnson%2Caps%2C136&sr=8-1

Don't miss Scrum Day, scheduled for Sep 14, 2023, in Madison, WI, at the Alliant Energy Center. Morning keynote using Liberating Structures by Keith McCandless followed by break-out rooms including speakers from Stanford University and the authors of "Fixing your Scrum".  Afternoon keynote by Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org. Scrum is a team sport, so bring your team and get your tickets at www.ScrumDay.org. Hosted by Rebel Scrum.  Find the training you've been looking for at www.RebelScrum.site.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

Welcome to the podcast that challenges you from the inside. Welcome, be more and discover the agile within. And now here's your host, greg Miller.

Speaker 2: 0:34

We are thrilled to announce that the Agile Within podcast is a good gold sponsor of Scrum Day. Join us on September 14th 2023 at Align Energy in Madison, wisconsin, for this one-day conference. Prepare to be inspired by remarkable speakers, including the author of A Pocket Guide for Scrum, as well as the authors of Fixing your Scrum. Get insights from afternoon keynote Dave West, the CEO of Scrumorg. Learn invaluable strategies from industry leaders on implementing Scrum in human resources, technology teams and beyond. Don't forget to visit us at our booth at Scrum Day. Mark and I will be there and get your tickets at wwwscrumdayorg for this incredible event. Look forward to seeing you. Stop by the booth, Mark, and I will say hi and we'll see you then.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Okay, back with part two. If you joined us in part one, we'll continue our conversation with Dr Carrie Johansson. She is a psychologist, but she used to be a psychologist. Now she's more towards a speaker and an author. She has a book. We'll talk about her book later on, but right now we want to continue on with our conversation. Now we want to dive into more of getting out of victim mode and Dr Carrie has some ideas and we have this triangle concept we want to go through. So let's start diving into that, dr Carrie.

Speaker 3: 1:59

That sounds great. So getting out of victim mode I call it breaking the cycle, and it's an interesting thing these days because we're actually getting systematically encouraged to be in fear and in victim mode, and resisting that invitation is paramount, I think, for all of us, and so I wanted to talk a little bit about the drama triangle. This is based on research from this groovy dude from 1968. There's some awesome pictures of him in like 72, I think, an award in white Elvis bejeweled outfit.

Speaker 2: 2:42

It's pretty fabulous.

Speaker 3: 2:43

Nice, but his name was Dr Cartman and he was taking a look at roles and then how we switch in between different roles, and he actually started out looking at fairy tales, which was kind of fascinating, and his research has then. You know I've taken on his research as well as the research of Sean Choi, who in the 90s, made the opposite of the drama triangle and he called it the winner's triangle, and how my spin on this concept is through an acceptance and commitment therapy lens, which is the foundational theory I use in my practice. And acceptance and commitment therapy is all about what we talked about in part one psychological flexibility, working with reality and responding instead of reacting to thoughts and emotions and situations. So, without further ado, the drama triangle is characterized, if you imagine, an upside down triangle, so it is balancing on its point.

Speaker 2: 3:49

Okay.

Speaker 3: 3:50

And on the left is bully, on the right is rescuer and down at the bottom tip is victim. And if you then put a triangle on top of that facing upwards opposite of victim is creator, opposite of bully is challenger and opposite of rescuer is champion Okay, and we have. We know when we are in the drama triangle, when the central question that we're asking is why me and the central dynamic of the drama triangle is feeling stuck and hopeless. And it's interesting because we have an idea that there is a better place to be in the drama triangle. So if we're in rescuer hero mode, we feel very important. However, if you are still in the drama triangle, that's not where we want to be. So rescuer mode sounds like I'll save you. You don't have this, but I can do it for you. I can help you, right. Victim mode is kind of whiny and hopeless. It feels like life is happening to you. And bully mode is you're doing it all wrong, Right, like if you would just do it my way.

Speaker 2: 5:23

it would go back, yeah.

Speaker 3: 5:27

So when we're in the drama triangle we are often we will often switch roles. It's very interesting. I was in a conversation a while back with a group and there was a woman in the group who was trying to be helpful, but she was trying to be helpful in a way where she really wasn't listening. And so she's trying to be helpful, her help gets rejected because she wasn't listening to what the actual problem was. And as soon as that happened, she all of a sudden then switched to bully. Well, but I mean, you have to do it this way.

Speaker 2: 6:04

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 6:05

It's like bully mode is easy to tell because everybody's so emphatic and it's kind of aggressive.

Speaker 2: 6:09

Right.

Speaker 3: 6:10

And it's also very insistent. So, even if it's delivered in a nice tone of voice, the insistence is that I know better than you what the right answer is. It's not collaborative, it's very pushy. And then when that was also rejected in the same conversation, all of a sudden then she's in victim mode and she feels bad because no one ever listens to her Right. And it was wild as the psychologist on this call and this was, you know, this was personal, so this wasn't. It was certainly not my job to pop in as the psychologist and be like, hey, you're in the drama triangle, but it was. It was kind of wild to watch because I was like, oh my gosh, here's the drama triangle in action. All three roles were switched between in probably, you know, four minutes.

Speaker 2: 7:07

Right yeah.

Speaker 3: 7:09

So, greg, you had an example of a team that maybe was kind of circling in the drama triangle Do you want to talk? About that example a little bit.

Speaker 2: 7:19

Yeah, they were circling down the drain actually. Yes, so this is, yeah, so a team. I was telling you before we recorded. There's a team that I am working with, not my team. I was brought in to help this team get back on track. So this team they couldn't, they're arguing and so it's a development team. Scrum team Developers could not agree come to an agreement on design solution for this piece of work we were asked to do. They were arguing and bickering over the design. They couldn't come to an agreement. And as you were going through the drama triangle, I was thinking, I had certain people in my head that were In certain roles right.

Speaker 2: 8:10

Exactly. Yeah, there's someone who's very vocal. I don't know if I'd say a bully, but he's the tech lead, put it that way. So he may. He kind of puts the stance on where you know, he's supposed to know more, right? Because he's tech lead, so he can kind of get. He's typically kind of like a quieter person, but he can get very vocal when, I guess, maybe his reputation is on the line or he feels he has to like when. So he was arguing, they had QAs that were discussing and disagreeing and the team was just in a lot of drama. And to make matters worse because of all this this was not just this was one instance, but they'd been disagreeing for a while and they were not performing team. They were they're working sprints and they were missing their sprint goal. They had a lot of carryover into the last sprint because they couldn't agree. So it was kind of like chaos and, yeah, they were in the drama triangle for sure.

Speaker 3: 9:21

Well, and I think it's important to note that the choice triangle, which is the opposite of the drama triangle, is what you want to move people into right.

Speaker 2: 9:31

Okay.

Speaker 3: 9:31

And so that the central question when you're in the choice triangle is what's my next best move? So this builds on what we were talking about in the first hour of psychological flexibility and that notion of doing an assessment of what's working and not working, instead of being in a ton of judgment about who's good and who's bad and whose code is right and whose code is right All very accusatory. That's all in the drama triangle. An assessment is in that choice triangle and the central dynamic of the choice triangle is assessing your options.

Speaker 3: 10:07

Okay so when you're in creator mode, which is the opposite of victim, you have a tone of curiosity and interest, collaboration, you're moving towards the type of life that you want. You're creating the team or the outcome that you're interested in right. So creation mode is very forward moving, it has some lovely energy to it and it's a forward vector Instead of in the drama triangle it's kind of like a scramble right.

Speaker 2: 10:41

Right, yes.

Speaker 3: 10:43

So when you're in the opposite of rescuer, hero mode, you're in champion mode. This is a supportive and encouraging tone and there is trust that you've got this. So, instead of being an argument with each other, you're assessing who has the best skill for this portion of the project and then you're championing instead of trying to rescue. So you're not stepping on people's toes or stealing someone else's work or credit. You're working in your zone of genius and letting somebody else work in theirs. And the opposite of bully mode and maybe this is where the lead developer would come in bully mode is where you don't have any trust and you're telling people what to do, and there's no respect for someone else's input.

Speaker 3: 11:34

In challenger mode, you notice and respect other people's input, but you also have a firm tone and you're going to hold to the standards of the project, right? You're going to clearly set the standards of the project, You're going to hold to them and when they're missed, right. So it sounds like you're in a sprint, and let's say the sprint is what? Two weeks long something like that.

Speaker 3: 11:58

And if, all of a sudden, you have all of this carryover into the next sprint, something went wrong with the process of that initial sprint, and is it an interpersonal issue? Is it a performance issue? Is it actually that there was more put into the sprint than was reasonable to accomplish? And that's where, in challenger mode, you can do that assessment and you can point out this went well, this didn't go well. Here's how I'd like to move forward, and it might even be we were picking on Jim and Mary in our last hour, so we'll continue picking on them. Mary, I'm going to need you if you're committing to X scope of work. I'm going to need you to actually be able to do that. If you can't do that challenger mode, you need to let me know.

Speaker 2: 12:47

Correct.

Speaker 3: 12:49

Bullying mode is. Mary, you committed to this scope of work. I can't believe you didn't get it finished. What the heck is going on?

Speaker 2: 12:56

Yes.

Speaker 3: 12:57

Right, you should have been able to do this better. So, challenger and bully mode, you can still have a very firm tone and challenger mode and you can even be doing an assessment that something has gone poorly, but it just has a bit of a different tone and certainly a different outcome.

Speaker 2: 13:16

Correct.

Speaker 3: 13:18

Well, you're making me feel good about how I've been handling this team, because I'm still I would guess that you've walked in in the choice triangle and you're looking at the scramble around in the drama triangle?

Speaker 2: 13:37

Yeah, the stances I've been taking are more of champion and challenger, because really I've just been asking questions because it's not my team With success. There's a lot of talk about the role of an Agilist and how much should we help the team and how much should we let them fail or pull back and where's the right. It's all based on a lot of factors. I've not been trying to be their hero and risk. I just come in and said you brought up a great the challenger, the example of Mary. That actually really happened. They were bringing in too much, they'd signed up too much for too much and planning. All I said was, hey, can we get this much done? I asked questions Look at our board, look how much you're bringing in, look how much it says we can do. You just told me we had all these people out. Do you think we can get that done? If yes, can you say it with at least 80% confidence?

Speaker 3: 14:48

They paused and they thought no, I'm not saying 40% confidence. That means we need to rework the sprint.

Speaker 2: 14:57

That's right, believe it or not. The lead developer spoke up and after a few seconds of pause he was like okay, guys, and they had this whole another 30-minute conversation just out of me asking two questions. They re-talked about it and said okay, da, da, da, da, da, da, da da. It got the conversation going. After attending a couple of their plantings, a couple of their daily scrums and their sprint reviews, they started putting in some of the Outside of that. I did make some suggestions for making some tweaks, little tweaks, and the way I typically sell air quotes. Trying something is we just say, hey, let's just try it for two weeks and then we retro it. That usually works 99.9% out of the time with teams I'm on is that, yeah, I can do it for two weeks. I said after the end if it doesn't work, then we talk about something else, and they're usually good with that. That's been working. I guess I'm working in the winter circle by being just challenging things Again, yeah, being a champion for them. I know that, breaking it down into small chunks, telling them, just asking questions, not saying you're doing it wrong.

Speaker 2: 16:21

I never came in and said you guys are a mess, you guys are not performing. I never did any of that. My personality is not to do that anyway. But I just came in and just said, hey, ask a couple of questions. The other Agilist was he and I were meeting and he was like I said did you see what I said? I just asked questions. I didn't really. I think he's struggling with that. He's not sure where he's supposed to be. I said you need to be somewhere. Sometimes you need to teach because they're a new team. Sometimes you need to coach, ask questions. You were talking about earlier floating between the couple roles. Yeah, you have to float. He's struggling with being able to float there.

Speaker 3: 17:08

You want to be willing to switch between, or float between, creator, champion and challenger. When you're floating between those, there is a baseline and a foundational platform of trust that you're standing on. You're walking in and saying we have a reasonably solid team and we have a process that we can trust and from there then applying that background to what's going on in the team. And I wonder if the other Agilist is walking in and he isn't from that platform of trust, but he's trying not to be in the drama triangle.

Speaker 3: 17:54

Right but so that means that he's sort of stuck in between the two triangles and getting to trust and sometimes you just have to trust the process, right, Like sometimes you're walking in and you don't trust the team. They are a mess. That is a factually accurate assessment is to walk in and be like I don't know if we're going to get this team on.

Speaker 3: 18:18

But if you trust the process of here's how I coach and you trust the process of I believe in this methodology for this team. Then, all of a sudden, then you're still in the choice triangle, even if you're looking at a very dysfunctional team.

Speaker 2: 18:39

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 18:41

So Dr Cary, talking about the choice triangle, it's just got me thinking. Is there any dysfunction between when you have individuals that are creators and champions, Not generally there can be.

Speaker 3: 19:01

One of the things that can be tricky is when you have the bulk of a team or the bulk of a group who want to be in the choice triangle, interacting with someone who literally has blinders on, cannot see a way out of victim mode for themselves or for others, or cannot see their way out of any of the roles in the drama triangle. I've done some work, for example, with high conflict divorce and oftentimes there will be a person who's in victim mode and they might be able to get out of it. But if there's a person who's in bully mode, it's very interesting. In a high conflict divorce scenario it only takes one person to make a divorce. High conflict. Similarly only takes one really rotten apple on a team to spoil a whole team.

Speaker 3: 19:54

So if you're in a team dynamic where there's one person who steadfastly refuses to get out of drama mode, that can actually sometimes mean that you need to do a personnel change. You can obviously do a performance improvement plan with them, all of those sorts of things. Bring in someone like myself to help them identify the role that they're in and give them some options to get out of it. That's where some next level coaching can come in sometimes, or literally a personnel change can come in, but often what happens when there's a toxic member of a team is everybody gets frightened of the toxic member on the team, so they're in a threat response and they shrink and then they end up not being able to stand up to the bully or not being able to get out of victim mode.

Speaker 4: 20:54

I'm sure everybody's like this, but had experiences with people that are happy to be the champion as long as they're the creator. If they're not creator, then they're going to be the challenger. They may think that this is an effective means to work within a team and work with others, but in fact they can't see that the triangle has flipped.

Speaker 3: 21:21

Right and they don't understand that their rigidity is actually creating problems for the whole team.

Speaker 3: 21:29

This is where going back to that notion of we value flexibility and agile in and of itself is a flexible modality that you guys are working with. It's inherent to the modality. My understanding of it is obviously extraordinarily basic, since I'm a psychologist and have virtually nothing to do with software programming. But if you're taking a look at a waterfall technology, it's autonomous, it is divided, it is low flexibility, it's high regulatory, all that kind of stuff, and there's a place for that and that can actually be a really great modality. But so many people are switching to agile and they've forgotten to talk about the interpersonal demands of switching to a collaborative model.

Speaker 3: 22:24

There's actually some social skills that are required in an agile framework that aren't necessarily required at all in waterfall.

Speaker 2: 22:34

No, and that's exactly that's the impetus for this whole podcast. Is that? I don't know about you, mark, but any I can say pretty much almost 100%. When I go through trainings, very rarely do they talk about the behavior side of agile. It's all process.

Speaker 4: 22:59

Right, so I largely agree with you.

Speaker 2: 23:02

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 23:03

I largely agree with you, but the one edge case is so, dr Kerry, there's lots of, there's several certification entities with agile Okay, and so one of the at least for Scrum, which is one of the frameworks to be agile, we have what's called professional Scrum trainers. So they've been through this very rigorous process to be certified to be able to train Scrum. And this one individual that I took a PSM2 Greg class we put it very succinctly and some of these questions came up about the soft skills and working with others and not just working individually. And she just summarized and just said Scrum asks more of developers than just being good programmers. Absolutely, that's just a foundational truth that we have to all accept.

Speaker 3: 24:06

And you know, one of the things and I think this is again where we get lost in judgment, which isn't terribly helpful is we've decided that we are quote good or bad at something, and oftentimes what we are quote good or bad at I'm using hair quotes right now is actually just a skill that maybe we are more or less developed at. So if you imagine a piece of paper and you're folding it horizontally and you have a line across the middle and the line is average, above the line is above average and below the line is below average, right, almost everything you can put on a little scatter plot, and you know, for me I'm a high verbal person, so I would put that as above average and then I've developed it. So hopefully, that skill has then moved up. My hand-eye coordination, on the other hand, leaves an amazing amount to be desired, and so I have been below average on that for most of my life.

Speaker 3: 25:13

But it was interesting and like really quite below average, like I was the kid on the soccer team who jumped over the ball More than once. By the way, my brother was the person who you know. He was on the select soccer team and he's outrageously hand-eye coordinated, so that hand-eye coordination is below the line. But it was interesting because several years ago I was working with a trainer and I, you know, I was essentially saying how I had no hand-eye coordination and I'm totally uncoordinated and I've never been coordinated. You know, I'm really sort of dogging on myself. And my trainer was like, well, we can improve that, you just need to practice. And I was like, no, that can't be improved, thinking to myself that he's a fixed characteristic of myself right.

Speaker 3: 26:06

So he had gone to like a sports training camp and I'm a happy guinea pig Again, the nerdy psychologist as me is. You know I'll experiment with just about anything, including it sounds, you know, including evidently my own hand-eye coordination problem. And you know we discovered that I can actually throw a football across whole gymnasium with pretty high accuracy Nice.

Speaker 3: 26:32

Now catching is a little harder, right, but I could work on that and improve that. And I don't know what it is about basketball, but I still just suck at basketball. So but it's an example of and hopefully sort of a lighthearted example of something that I felt like was a fixed characteristic and actually it's a skill. Now, am I ever going to be Michael Jordan level? Not anywhere, even close, but I can go from horrible to not very good and that's actually a pretty big improvement. I could even go from not very good to average.

Speaker 3: 27:12

So for these folks who are like you know, I don't socialize or I'm an introvert.

Speaker 3: 27:16

You know, anytime you hear somebody deciding that something is a fixed characteristic, you want to try and help them shift it into a tendency, because a tendency is something that you could work.

Speaker 3: 27:29

With a fixed characteristic, you know you've got no hope, but that tendency then means that you have again more flexibility, more malleability, and so if your tendency is to be fairly anti social or shy or introverted or whatever kind of wording you want to use, you can actually learn basic concepts about social skills and communication. That don't mean that you have to become necessarily the opposite of that, right, like we're not asking introverts to become extroverts. We're not asking someone who's shy to become you know the bell of the ball. But what we are saying is like okay, so you're shy and your tendency is to be shy, and that means that you might not make eye contact or you might not communicate or you might avoid communication. And those are all skills that you can work on and improve, and it doesn't mean you have to change necessarily being shy, but you can certainly work on the skills, make improvements and reap those rewards.

Speaker 2: 28:42

Right. So isn't that when I hear you talk, when someone says, oh, I'm not coordinated, I'm never going to be able to dribble a soccer ball, isn't that that's just like, almost like giving up right, and that's just the way I am, and maybe they just maybe they've tried, or they just, yeah, that fixed. Thinking of I can't change, right, it's pointless, right.

Speaker 3: 29:05

Yeah, and you know what you're doing is you're giving your brain a command. So I always imagine the inside of our brain, sort of like a very complicated tech room, and imagine a room that's filled with switches that are on or off. And so when we give our brain a command like I'm not coordinated, I'll never be coordinated, your brain is like sweet, okay, uncoordinated, turn off that switch, we have other things to focus on. But if you say I'm not particularly coordinated and I'm going to try to get more coordinated, or I'm going to try to work on it, or, you know, coordination might not be my top strength, but that's okay All of a sudden you've left the metaphorical switch running in your head, which means that your brain is then going to be able to give it some attention. So we want to be careful and this is where we want to really be thoughtful about the stories that we're telling ourselves, particularly judgmental stories. They are inherently rigid responses and we know that psychological rigidity does not lead us in very good directions.

Speaker 2: 30:28

No, yeah, that's all. This is all great. This helps explain some resistance to change that we come up against. Right, they're doing waterfall. They come across agile and they're like oh, this is Nope, yeah, nope, yeah, nope. I'm never going to be good at this immediately. Nope, I've been doing this for 20 years and I've been doing this same. A lot of people we run across they've been with the company for 20 years doing this pretty much the same thing and they become the SME, the expert, the go-to person, the hero we call.

Speaker 4: 31:05

Yep.

Speaker 2: 31:06

They want to be the superhero. They come in, and then here comes Mark and I saying, forget about all that. You know what. You've been doing that for 20 years. But I want you to teach this guy how to do that. But I'm the one that everybody comes to. Well, yeah, we don't care about that. We want you to cross. Everyone has to be able to do everything is what we say, Mm-hmm, Okay. And then we say, okay, well, now you got to be agile. We don't have waterfall, we have fixed dates. We don't have fixed dates anymore. You got to collaborate. It's a lot.

Speaker 2: 31:40

Oh, yeah, and you got to act a certain way. It's a lot, and I think for some people it's just too much. That's why I try to do little bits at a time.

Speaker 3: 31:50

But and breaking things down into identifiable skills or tasks that they can develop, I think is important and I do think it's worth understanding. For example, if I go back to my silly basketball example, I am never going to be a basketball player. That isn't going to be an option for me for a career. It's going to be a terrible fit. I wouldn't even be a particularly good basketball coach. Now I could be an assistant coach who's looking at the mental health of the team or the interpersonal performance of the team, but my strength is never going to be here's how to make the free throw, and so sometimes I wonder if, when you guys are coming onto a team, particularly one that's making a huge switch, like entirely switching is to figure out where are people's strengths and weaknesses, and then how can you maximize their strength and have them be less responsible for things that are running right into? One of their weaknesses Is that a reasonable ask.

Speaker 4: 32:57

Yeah, I would definitely say so, and so I would say yes, and the motivation side of it as well yes, we have some people that want to do certain things and you have people that absolutely do not want to do things that could they yes, they could, but the motivation level just is not there.

Speaker 3: 33:24

Yep, and this, I think, is where sometimes doing some education maybe not even necessarily about the switch from waterfall to agile, but doing some more of that education about what are the company values, what do we stand for, how do you fit into that, so that then we're taking a look at a larger framework than just the programming framework and seeing if you can't find a common value. So maybe the person who has been the hero with waterfall and is moving to agile and is like, oh snap, I got nothing to offer.

Speaker 2: 34:05

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 34:05

Right, exactly Just to take a look at yeah, but you really value this company, you really value these things going well, here are the strengths and weaknesses of agile. What can you get on board with? So it becomes a larger framework and is encompassing some of the more foundational values. So it isn't just the threat of we're moving from this program to that program and you're terrible at it. It's more like hey, we're moving from this program to that program and here's why it's in line with values that have been important to you for the last 20 years. Oh, okay, yeah, really. So that's a way to help increase buy-in, particularly with change. That feels very threatening.

Speaker 4: 34:50

Yeah, and values don't align. That's a much more difficult situation to work through and, like you said, if values don't align, I imagine that sometimes it's just parting ways is the best thing.

Speaker 3: 35:08

Yes, yeah, absolutely, and this is a piece of what I also think is important for everybody to understand. And this goes along with that principle of psychological flexibility that we're talking about. There's a beginning and a middle and an end to absolutely everything. There is a strength and a weakness and a neutral about just about absolutely everything. And so this notion of waiting for a guarantee is generally kind of silly, right, like we have very few guarantees, we have the lovely guarantee that none of us makes it out of here alive, but it doesn't. And so it's but barring that we don't have very many guarantees.

Speaker 3: 35:56

And when folks are in that demand for a guarantee, a demand for a certain outcome, then that means that they are in psychological rigidity, which often means that they're in the drama triangle. So, knowing that that's characteristic of the process of the drama triangle is rigidity, then you can essentially take a look at that issue and see if you can't help get someone into more flexibility. And the answer is that some people you know that it's a no, but I think a lot of people get excited about the notion of having more choice. You know I'm a central tenant of my work is self empowerment in this notion of, like you have more freedom and flexibility and choices and options than you're giving yourself credit for, even if you're in a crummy situation.

Speaker 4: 36:54

Yeah. So in that, in that light, reagan, one of our past guests, michelle Paul, that we talked with, we talked about loss aversion. You inflate the value of something that you're holding onto so much that it's it's not rational, exactly, yeah, yeah, how do you help, what do you do to help with your clients with that that we could take with us to help with that loss aversion?

Speaker 3: 37:28

Well, I think a lot of what Greg was talking about earlier about asking questions and, if you can imagine, I'm a very visual person, so I almost imagine like standing in that top triangle and extending your hand down to the person in the bottom triangle asking, you know, asking about what, if? What are the other options? So giving them the opportunity to see what other options they have. So when someone's in psychological rigidity which is loss, aversion is a, is a form of that they have decided that either this will happen and it's good, or that will happen and it's bad. Right, right, if I let go of this, I'm going to die is kind of is sort of the underlying idea here. And at the end of the day, most of the time that level of rigid, rigid and dramatic thinking isn't really true, but it goes with a feeling that tells them it's true. And so helping them get a little bit of distance from the emotion and getting them into into thinking through the variety of options, I think is pretty helpful.

Speaker 3: 38:48

One of my favorite old school techniques is what I call the rule of five, and I hold up my hand and I put the first terrible option as my thumb Right If I lose this, I'm going to die, or, if I keep this, I'm going to live. And then I insist that they come up with three other options, and preferably one of them being absurd, right, either absurd fun, I'm going to win the lottery and get out of here. It could be avoidant, you know, like that absurd funny, like aliens are going to come and fix this problem. But almost all the time you can come up with one sort of funny or absurd thing and that tends to break the ice and then, and then they often can come up with two more options. Because of that right foundational rule that almost everything has positive, negative and neutral input, almost everything is not a binary clause. That's true and it's funny, you know.

Speaker 3: 39:57

I mean, we're making tons of things that aren't binary, binary these days, and then we're making things that are binary, non binary these days, it's all very interesting how we're pushing on this and, at the end of the day, most of the time you have more options than just the good or bad bucket that you've divided things into.

Speaker 2: 40:19

One thing I keep. This has stuck with me from my dad my entire life, and this is coming up right now. He said he told me you always have options, and that's really all he said. I don't remember what the context was in the conversation, but I can hear him saying that and it's always stuck with you you always have options.

Speaker 3: 40:45

And it's funny because people will say that they only have options if they like them. Right, oh, I only have options if I approve of them or if they're easy. And oftentimes we have multiple options, but they aren't necessarily easy or they aren't necessarily what we want. So then we're in wishing for a different reality than we have. Apparently means that we're in psychological rigidity.

Speaker 2: 41:12

Yeah, yeah, no, he never said my parents. They drilled into me like hard work ethic.

Speaker 2: 41:19

They're German, swiss, raised on farms and stuff, so they yeah they're still they're still around, they're in the 80s, but they always tell me oh, you know, sometimes you have to do things you don't like. I was like I never wanted to hate that. Sometimes you have to do things you don't like. I was like stop saying that. And now I know. So, yeah, when I think of that, when him saying that you always have, I don't think of it as good or bad, Right, I think of it as just that I have. Yes, if I'm not doing something I like, I always have an option. It may not be easy, I may not like it, but I have an option to do it Right.

Speaker 3: 41:54

Yeah, and you know it's interesting if you're doing something hard that you don't really prefer. But you can move the languaging inside your own head from I have to to I'm choosing to. That is like moving those switches around in your head that we were talking about a few minutes ago and if you are on choice mode, even if it's a choice that feels distasteful.

Speaker 3: 42:22

All of a sudden you have more space in your brain. You have better space to make choices and respond, instead of just react If you feel, if you're using languaging, well, I have to, I must, I should. Those are all going to kind of invite in a threat response instead of a choice response.

Speaker 2: 42:43

Exactly yeah.

Speaker 3: 42:45

Same behavior. Right, like you could be doing the exact same task, but if you've decided that you're choosing to do it. All of a sudden you have it's a whole different mindset approach.

Speaker 2: 42:57

And then your behavior changes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 43:00

And your feelings change.

Speaker 2: 43:01

And your feelings change. That's exactly right, yeah, so?

Speaker 3: 43:04

we're often waiting around for our feelings to change. Right, one of my favorites is like you know, take an easy one. I'll go to the gym after I've lost 10 pounds.

Speaker 2: 43:18

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:23

Yeah, yeah. And the answer is like I'm sorry you need to go to the gym first, but but it's that notion of not waiting until you feel motivated to do something, because one of the most fascinating things about motivation is motivation and confidence come after mastery, not before. So if we're waiting around to feel excited to do some hard task, it is not going to happen. No, but once we start doing the hard task, all of a sudden we will get more motivation to continue it.

Speaker 2: 43:58

That's exactly right. Yes, I've experienced that in my life too. Absolutely Well, mark. Any, this has been wonderful. I could go on forever or almost at time. Any parting thoughts, mark? So this is so I'll.

Speaker 4: 44:16

So I'll just say, you know, I've read about the drama triangle and have basically been through it before, but what was helpful to me is to flip that, because I hadn't heard of the choice triangle before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And flipping the narrative and yeah, we could probably do a part three, because I'm just thinking about situations. You got yeah In my own life where I've got caught in the in the drama triangle and how I could have flipped that to be in the choice triangle instead. So it was yeah, absolutely Real applicable to me.

Speaker 2: 44:52

Yeah, I just real quick. I actually, as Dr Kerry was talking through, I actually drew it as she was talking through, I got, I got a chance to. I would recommend everybody do that. It's very you. Just like you said, you can lay it on top of one another the upside down triangle and put it around there and it's. It's very helpful. It's the visual. It helps me too. Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 3: 45:14

Yes, absolutely, and if you're, you know, if your folks want to shoot me an email, I can email them back a handout.

Speaker 2: 45:24

Nice, yeah, we'll put your email in the good segue. We'll put your email in the show notes. Dr Kerry, and you also have a book. You want to maybe a couple seconds about the book there that you have out?

Speaker 3: 45:38

Absolutely so. The book is written on this foundational idea of of working with the reality, that you have right and of increasing your choices in your world. It's called self-help on the go, because you are not broken, but life gets tricky sometimes and this, this is the book that my clients asked me to write. They would come in and they would dump a 300 page self-help work on one particular topic on my desk and they say you can pass this along to somebody else. I don't feel like reading about the etiology of anger management. I want to know what's good?

Speaker 3: 46:12

Anytime. Him is a jerk.

Speaker 2: 46:14

Yeah, nice.

Speaker 3: 46:16

So it is 99 of my favorite tips and tricks and you do not read the whole book. All you know from cupboard cover.

Speaker 2: 46:26

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 46:26

It is literally turned to the chapter that you need. You need a communication. That is going to be chapter six. If you want to deal with relationships, that's chapter eight. Anxious chapter one. And there's 10 tips actionable often in the moment. Some of them are longer term, but the vast majority of the tips 95% are in this moment. Here is an option that you can try.

Speaker 2: 46:55

I like books like that. You can just go right to something and just yeah, those are awesome. And where can people get that?

Speaker 3: 47:01

It's on Amazon Self-help on the go.

Speaker 2: 47:04

We'll put the link in the show notes as well. We'll put Dr Kerry's information in there that you can get to. Mark, I keep calling on anything else before we wrap this one up.

Speaker 4: 47:17

I think we're at a good point. We're at a good point. I really like having a talking about tendencies over a fixed mindset. That's an action I'll take with me today. That's fantastic.

Speaker 2: 47:34

Yeah Well, this is the end of part two. Thank you for joining us so much, dr Kerry we you heard from Dr Kerry on lots of things that this was about the drama triangle, the choice triangle, getting out of the victim mode. Hope you enjoyed it. This is the end of our conversation with Dr Kerry. End of part two. If you want to get in touch with us, mark and Greg, you can go ahead and get in touch with us on LinkedIn. We also have our.

Speaker 2: 48:06

The AgriWithin is on LinkedIn. Contact us on Twitter and email is gregmiller at the agriwithincom. Email me there with any suggestions for shows, comments on the shows. You can also leave comments on all the podcast apps we're on. If you want to support us, there's a support the show link on the AgriWithin. You can go there for as little as $3 a month. You can support the show. We greatly appreciate that. Shout out to all of our current supporters. We really appreciate it. With that, that has been the end of another show. This has been Mark and Greg and Dr Kerry at the AgriWithin. We'll see you later.