Video Transcript:

Ever wonder why trauma survivors would retell the same story over and over again without any resolution?  Or why it’s so hard for them to get over it or put it behind them?  Why they continue to be haunted by nightmares, repetitive thoughts, and negative feelings?  Or why they’re filled with self blaming and self-defeating attitude toward life?  In this video I’ll explore these questions, of what happens after terror and darkness strike the land.  

Not everyone responds in the same way to the same type of trauma, but there are recurrent, universal features.  One of the main features is a re-organization of the psyche toward survival instead of learning and growing.  It does this through adopting extreme psychological defenses and internalization the trauma roles experienced at the time of trauma.  The result is both paradoxically self-preserving and self-traumatizing.  This pattern of unresolved inner trauma is best demonstrated in The Therapeutic Spiral Model’s Trauma Triangle, created by Kate Hudgins and Francesca Toscani, adapted from the Drama triangle by Stephen Karpman, MD.

The TSM Trauma Triangle consists of 3 intrapsychic roles with distinct meaning and psychological function.  All of them act in collaboration to trap the trauma survivor in an unconscious destructive cycle of replaying out old patterns in their current life. 

The victim is the one who experienced the trauma and hold the trauma story.  They are burdened with carrying the traumatic memories, sensations, and emotions of the event, keeping them stuck in the past.  When the survivor get triggered and identify with this role, they can feel and act like helpless children, displaying intense feelings of horror, rage, anger, shame, guilt and despair.  To free themselves from this role, they would need their trauma story to be heard, compassionately witnessed and understood for it to be processed and integrated.  

The perpetrator role is an internalized version of the actual perpetrator in real life.  Their job is to keep the trauma knowledge out of awareness through extreme tactics to silence the victim’s voice.  Similar to how it can happened in real life.  It is usually experienced as a loud inner shaming, critical voice telling survivors that they’re bad, worthless, crazy, or worst, that they deserve it.  This is victim shaming at its best, creating an inescapable overwhelming sense of guilt and shame that no amount of logic can break.  For survivors of sexual or physical abuse, the perpetrator may also come in the forms of fragmented intrusive images, disturbing body memories, sensations and flashbacks.  After trauma there is a great temptation for the survivors to identify with the perpetrator role because it gives them the illusion of power and control, something that was sorely missing at the time of trauma.  This also helps the survivor feel strong and tough so they can get on with their lives, but the cost is to repeat patterns of violence, shame and blame toward their inner victim and others who remind them of their own feelings of victimization and fear.  This is where we get the phrase, hurt people hurt people.  

The last but most crucial role of this trauma triangle is the Abandoning Authority.  This can apply to an individual, like a parent, or an organization and system like the school, churches or government.  This role is most often overlooked because it was internalized when there was no rescuer available or if there was someone there, they didn’t do anything to stop the abuse, neglect or oppression.  From this modeling, trauma survivors learn to abandon themselves to dissociation, self harm, addictions, eating disorders, poor self care, and at the extreme end, suicide to end the pain.  After all, if no one cares and everyone abandoned them, why should the survivors care or value themselves? The abandoning authority role is an expert at dulling the senses through denial, escapism and making excuses, turning a blind eye and ear to the cries of the wounded victim role.  In doing so, they act as an indirect accomplice to the perpetrator role, allowing the abuse to continue.    

All roles in the trauma triangle cause pain and suffering, to themselves and others around them. The victim suffers in silence, despair and helplessness.  The perpetrator suffers a loss of soul and the abandoning authority suffers a lack of self-worth and agency.  

Most trauma survivors unconsciously identify with and act out one primary role on the Trauma triangle in their daily life while suppressing the other roles or project them out to other people.  Other survivors may switch quickly between roles when under stress.  For example, a man who adopts the perpetrator role can project a strong but bullying persona at work and then switch to a victim role when he gets fired due to his bad behaviors.  Then he can project the perpetrator role onto his boss and go drink himself into a stupor to forget about the humiliating event as an act of self abandonment.  This repetitive pattern of thinking and behaving leaves  no room for growth, learning or change.  To break this destructive cycle, these 3 trauma-based roles need to be transformed and new roles are needed for healthy functioning.  What are they and how do we develop them?  This leads us to the 3rd part of this series - how to heal trauma, find meaning from suffering and use it to fuel our post traumatic growth.