The Secret Forces Behind the Karpman Drama Triangle and Their Impact: An Analysis of Emotional Safety Strategies
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between three emotional safety strategies from the Emotional Intelligence 3.0 model and their manifestation in the Karpman Drama Triangle. We analyze how Control by Withdrawing, Control by Better Than, and Control by Helping operate at varying intensities and their effects on interpersonal dynamics. At high intensity, these strategies present as Victim, Prosecutor, and Rescuer roles. At lower intensities, they function as subtle control mechanisms that, while socially tolerated, still impede authentic connection and collaboration. This paper explores the underpinnings of these strategies, their neurological impacts, and the interpersonal harms they create. Understanding these patterns offers valuable insights for clinicians, organizational leaders, and individuals seeking to improve emotional well-being and relational health.
Keywords
Drama Triangle, Emotional Safety Strategies, Control, Relationships, Emotional Intelligence
Table of Contents Show
Introduction
The fundamental architecture of human social interaction appears to be structured around a core principle: the simultaneous minimization of perceived threats and optimization of potential rewards. This regulatory mechanism is the underlying driver of our social behaviors, influencing everything from casual interactions to complex relationship dynamics. Operating mainly beneath conscious awareness, this homeostatic system continuously calibrates our social engagement strategies, subtly guiding our motivational frameworks and behavioral responses within interpersonal contexts. (Gordon, 2000)
Additionally, without secure social environments, the human physiological system rapidly defaults to a defensive orientation. This threat-detection mechanism operates with remarkable speed, automatically categorizing others as either allies or potential dangers. This initial assessment bypasses conscious deliberation, directly influencing neural processing pathways and significantly altering brain function. The instantaneous friend-or-foe determination fundamentally shapes cognitive processing, emotional responses, and behavioral readiness, effectively reconfiguring neurological operations to prioritize protective responses over higher-order thinking (Carter & Pelphrey, 2008; Rock, 2008).
The Karpman Drama Triangle, first conceptualized by Stephen Karpman, identifies three interconnected roles that people adopt in conflictual situations: Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer (Karpman,1968; Karpman, 2014). This model has been widely applied in therapeutic, coaching, and consulting settings to help individuals recognize unhealthy relational patterns. However, less attention has been given to the underlying emotional safety strategies that drive these roles, particularly at varying intensities.
The Emotional Intelligence 3.0 model provides a framework for understanding the hidden dynamics at play underneath these three drama roles through three distinct control strategies: Control by Withdrawing, Control by Better Than, and Control by Helping (Bryan, 2025). These strategies develop as protective mechanisms in response to the unmet emotional needs of love and belonging in childhood and beliefs about one's worth and power. When these strategies operate at high intensity, they manifest as the dramatic roles identified by Karpman. At lower intensities, they function as subtle forms of interpersonal control that, while less obvious, still undermine connection and collaboration.
This article examines how these emotional safety strategies impact relationships, team dynamics, and individual well-being, mainly focusing on each pattern's neurological, psychological, and social consequences. By understanding these "secret forces" behind the Drama Triangle, we can develop more effective interventions for addressing these patterns at clinical and everyday levels.
Theoretical Foundations
This article is based on the work of Dr. Stephen Karpman in interpersonal relationship dynamics and my research and model-building in the emotional well-being discipline. An introduction to each is offered below.
The Karpman Drama Triangle
The Karpman Drama Triangle describes three roles that create and perpetuate interpersonal conflict:
• Victim: Characterized by helplessness, feeling overwhelmed, and a sense of being persecuted
• Persecutor: Characterized by criticism, blame, and dominance
• Rescuer: Characterized by excessive helping, enabling, and taking responsibility for others
These roles are interconnected and fluid, with individuals often shifting between them in response to changing dynamics. The Drama Triangle persists because, during conflict with others, each role provides a temporary emotional benefit while creating longer-term relational costs.
EI3.0 Emotional Safety Strategies
As part of early model development, I separated the Drama Triangle roles and Lifeviews as different protective patterns of human consciousness (Bryan, 2025a). As I continued to explore the research and interpret the story the data was telling, I realized that the same hidden dynamics were playing out underneath each of these. They were actually one and the same at different intensity levels and aimed at various elements in the system. Thus, I combined them, renaming them emotional safety strategies.
When active, emotional safety strategies operate at low intensity when there is no direct threat to emotional safety and at high intensity when there is. If the strategy is transcended, the driving energy behind the behavior has been processed and integrated. There is an important caveat. Most of the others in a person’s relationship circle tolerate a person’s active emotional safety strategies at low intensity (and high intensity but they disrupt connection and collaboration, causing distance in the relationship many of us don’t understand how to repair). However, if a person experienced severe emotional harm in childhood, their emotional safety strategies at low intensity can be highly disruptive to emotional health and relationships to warrant mental health intervention.
We also universally apply these strategies against the system elements of others, life circumstances, and ourselves. Each strategy harms others in different ways.
The latest iteration of the Emotional Intelligence 3.0 model reframes these roles as adaptive emotional safety strategies developed in response to emotional harm experienced in childhood:
• Control by Withdrawing: A protective strategy based on the belief that "If I make myself small and powerless, I won't be attacked or disappointed." This strategy internalizes early experiences as a belief in one's powerlessness or unworthiness.
• Control by Better Than: A protective strategy based on the belief that "If I make myself bigger and more powerful than everyone, I can't be hurt again." This strategy internalizes early emotional harm as a deep fear of having one's powerlessness or worthlessness exposed.
• Control by Helping: A protective strategy based on the belief that "If I can control things through helping, I'm valuable but don't have to claim direct worth." This strategy internalizes the belief that one's worth is tied to usefulness rather than inherent value.
Research shows that 99% of the population has an active emotional safety strategy (Bryan, 2025a).
Control by Withdrawing
High-Intensity Manifestation: The Victim Role
At high intensity, Control by Withdrawing manifests as the Victim role in the Drama Triangle. Individuals exhibit pronounced helplessness, resignation, and blame. They may actively communicate their suffering and powerlessness, seeking rescue or validation while avoiding responsibility for decision-making and change.
Low-Intensity Manifestation: Subtle Withdrawal
At lower intensities, this strategy appears as hesitation, procrastination, indecision, and avoidance of commitment. The individual maintains a deflated sense of worth and authority while exercising control through inaction. This pattern is often socially tolerated but creates significant frustration for others.
Interpersonal Impact
The primary harm of Control by Withdrawing is that without a choice being made, nothing gets advanced. This strategy creates delays and bottlenecks in decision-making processes, generates frustration in collaborative environments, establishes emotional distance in relationships by disrupting connection, shifts responsibility to others who must compensate for the individual's inaction, and prevents direct conflict but creates indirect tension.
Control by Better Than
High-Intensity Manifestation: The Persecutor Role
At high intensity, Control by Better Than manifests as the Persecutor role, characterized by overt criticism, aggression, and domination. The individual actively asserts superiority through blame and judgment and attempts to control others through intimidation or devaluation.
Low-Intensity Manifestation: Subtle Superiority
At lower intensities, this strategy appears as competition, subtle criticism, one-upmanship, and persistent correction of others. The individual maintains an over-inflated sense of worth and authority while exercising control through establishing hierarchical dynamics.
Interpersonal Impact
The Control by Better Than strategy appears to create the most immediate harm to others because the blaming behavior is neurologically interpreted by others as a physical assault, and it triggers threat responses that shut down executive functioning in others, creates emotional safety issues in teams and relationships, diminishes creativity and open communication, establishes win-lose dynamics that undermine collaboration, and generates resistance and defensiveness rather than engagement (Goleman, 1998; Buckholtz, et al., 2023)
Control by Helping
High-Intensity Manifestation: The Rescuer Role
At high intensity, Control by Helping manifests as the Rescuer role, characterized by excessive responsibility-taking, fixing others' problems without invitation, and deriving identity from being needed. The individual actively intervenes in situations to maintain a sense of control and worth.
Low-Intensity Manifestation: Subtle Overhelping
At lower intensities, this strategy appears as overhelping, unsolicited advice-giving, and taking on more than one's share of responsibility. The individual maintains a deflated sense of inherent worth while exercising over-inflated authority through helping behaviors.
Interpersonal Impact
The primary harm of Control by Helping is that it usurps others' choices in the need to fix. This strategy completes tasks but at the cost of connection and collaboration, “Steps on people's toes" by violating boundaries and autonomy, creates dependency rather than empowerment, prevents others from developing their own competence, and establishes an imbalance of perceived capability in relationships.
Neurological and Emotional Dimensions
Each control strategy affects neurological functioning in both the individual and those around them. Control by Withdrawing activates the freeze response in the autonomic nervous system, limiting access to creativity and problem-solving capacities. Control by Better Than triggers fight-or-flight responses in others, activating the amygdala and reducing access to the prefrontal cortex, where complex thinking occurs. Lastly, Control by Helping creates a dopamine-driven helping addiction in the individual while potentially activating learned helplessness responses in recipients.
These strategies typically develop in response to early emotional experiences. Control by Withdrawing often emerges from experiences of overwhelming criticism, unpredictable responses to self-expression, or punishment for assertiveness. Control by Better Than frequently develops from experiences of vulnerability being exploited, humiliation, or witnessing power dynamics where dominance provided safety. Finally, Control by Helping commonly arises from conditional love experiences where value was tied to usefulness, caregiving, or solving others' problems.
Measurement
Identifying and evaluating emotional safety strategies can be approached through specialized EI3.0 assessment instruments, with different tools available depending on the professional context.
Mental Health Context
The Bryan Emotional Wellness Inventory (BEWI) is the recommended assessment tool within therapeutic settings. This instrument is designed specifically for mental health professionals to measure the presence and intensity of active emotional safety strategies.
Coaching Context
For coaching professionals, the Emotional Intelligence 3.0 framework offers several specialized assessment instruments:
• The Relationship Inventory: Evaluates emotional safety strategies as they manifest in interpersonal and intimate relationships
• The Executive Presence Inventory: Measures how these strategies impact leadership style, decision-making, and professional presence
• The Power Style Inventory: Assesses how individuals exercise influence and authority and its impact on collaboration
These instruments assess whether emotional safety strategies are active or transcended, allowing for focused intervention and development planning.
Implications for Practice
For therapists and counselors, recognizing these underlying emotional safety strategies provides important intervention points:
• Identifying the core beliefs driving the control strategy.
• Working with the autonomic nervous system to expand the capacity for regulation.
• Developing alternative strategies for establishing safety and worth.
• Processing the original harm that led to the adaptive strategy.
Professional counseling is likely warranted when these patterns are highly disruptive, even at low intensity, to address the deeper underlying beliefs and develop healthier coping mechanisms.
In workplace settings, understanding these patterns can improve team dynamics by:
• Creating awareness of how control strategies impact collaboration.
• Developing leadership approaches that mitigate these patterns.
• Establishing emotional safety that reduces the need for defensive strategies.
• Implementing feedback mechanisms that address behaviors without triggering deeper control responses.
For individuals, awareness of these patterns offers growth opportunities:
• Recognizing personal control strategies and their impact.
• Developing alternative responses to perceived threats.
• Building capacity for authentic connection and collaboration.
• Establishing worth and safety through healthier means.
Conclusion
The Karpman Drama Triangle's roles of Victim, Prosecutor, and Rescuer represent high-intensity manifestations of the fundamental emotional safety strategies of Control by Withdrawing, Control by Better Than, and Control by Helping. These strategies operate along a continuum of intensity, with both expressions significantly impacting relationships, productivity, and emotional well-being.
Understanding these "secret forces" behind interpersonal dynamics allows for more nuanced and effective interventions. Rather than simply identifying Drama Triangle roles, we can address the underlying emotional harm, beliefs, and protective strategies that drive these patterns. This approach offers promising therapy, organizational development, and personal growth directions.
By recognizing how these strategies developed as adaptations to earlier experiences and how they function at various intensities, we can develop greater empathy for ourselves and others while establishing healthier connection patterns, collaboration, and emotional well-being.
Future research on emotional safety strategies should pursue several promising directions to enhance our understanding of their complex dynamics. Longitudinal studies would provide valuable insights into how these control mechanisms evolve throughout different life stages and therapeutic interventions. Neuroimaging research using fMRI and EEG could illuminate the neural correlates of these patterns, particularly about threat perception and social processing. Cross-cultural validation studies are essential to determine whether these strategies represent universal human adaptations or culturally specific manifestations influenced by social norms and values.
Within organizational contexts, quantitative research measuring these patterns' economic and productivity impacts could provide compelling evidence for intervention programs in workplace settings.
Treatment efficacy studies comparing outcomes of interventions specifically targeted at each control strategy versus general therapeutic approaches would help clinicians develop more personalized treatment protocols.
Developmental research investigating the specific childhood experiences and attachment patterns most strongly associated with each control strategy could inform early intervention approaches. At the same time, studies on intergenerational transmission could reveal how these patterns perpetuate through family systems.
Digital detection methods that identify linguistic and behavioral markers of these patterns in online communications represent an emerging frontier with applications in both clinical assessment and organizational development.
Physiological research measuring biomarkers such as heart rate variability, cortisol responses, and immune function could establish more explicit connections between these psychological patterns and physical health outcomes.
Finally, preventive applications testing early intervention approaches with vulnerable populations could help interrupt the formation of these control strategies before they become entrenched, potentially changing developmental trajectories toward greater emotional well-being and relational health.
These research directions could significantly enhance our theoretical understanding while developing more effective assessment tools and intervention strategies for addressing these emotional safety mechanisms across clinical, educational, and organizational contexts.
References
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Bryan, T. W. (2025b, February 11). A new therapeutic approach for emotional well-being: The EI3.0 system of emotional well-being. Journal of Emotional Well-being. https://www.centerforewb.com/emotional-wellbeing-research/new-therapeutic-approach-emotional-wellbeing.
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