The Perpetrator, The Victim & The Rescuer

My life was summarized into three characters last week. I have been taking time to reflect on this and I wonder how many people can actually relate. It is clear through my posts my parents and I did not always get along well while I was growing up, but this analogy also defined our relationship. In any given situation I was playing one of these roles, and also eliciting someone else to be playing one of these roles.

The Perpetrator
As the perp you typically and instigating some type of negative reaction. Whether it is innocent or perceived as correct, the reaction to your behavior is also aggressive. I would be the perpetrator at times to my parents and say things to my dad about how he treated my brother or sister - or really butt into a conversation I didn't belong until I made him uncomfortable and he became the victim. This would then elicit my mom acting as the rescuer to protect him from me or even from my siblings if at this point they ganged up on him.
 
The Victim
The victim is attacked by the perp and often left feeling helpless. Just recently I went to my parent's house and I became the victim. My mom has MS and my dad basically see me as the cause. My mom will go further and do more with me than she normally would and then when I leave she is really worn down and it takes her a while to recover. Unfortunately, I cannot control my mother's actions and since all my dad sees is it taking a toll on her he treats me poorly or verbally attacks me for doing enough for my mom. I feel defenseless and guilty because I never want to make my mom's MS worse.

The Rescuer
As the rescuer you are protecting the victim for the perp and taking on more responsibility and fault of action than you should. In the above analogy my mom would turn into the rescuer because she would defend me against my dad.

All in all, none of the roles are healthy. 

This role-play has become such a habitual part of my interactions, I find myself eliciting these same characters with my boyfriend. I may ask him to come over after he's had a long day and rather than being understanding I find myself acting as the perp. I start to hound him to the point I start to make him feel guilty. Once he feels guilty and I have turned him into the victim and I apologize and offer to go to his house and become the rescuer. This entire time, all I could have done is offer to go to his house because he always comes to my house. Same end point, two vastly different routes.

It is so crazy because you can easily become engulfed in any of these roles. You can also elicit these roles without thinking about it. I know one of the struggles of a woman is to say what I mean and mean what I say. If I want you to come over, I may tell you to stay home; if you ask me if I want you to come over, I may tell you it doesn't matter. No sense.

Vulnerability is an intense emotion however. It is also very difficult to experience and deal with trauma appropriately. I have made a habit of only presenting myself in three different lights, when in reality this has nothing to do with how I actually feel or what I actually want. Why is it so difficult to say what I actually want? Because I don't want to get hurt. Not by my parents, my boyfriend, my friends or even a damn stranger.

This is going to be a crazy journey and while CL has made it clear she doesn't expect me to change this immediately, she does want me to start paying attention to situations where this could or does arise... It has been 6 days since I last went to see her and after briefly flipping through my past, I cannot come up with one memory in which these roles did not play a prominent part.

So do me a favor and ask yourself, are you acting or eliciting people to ask as a perpetrator, victim or rescuer in your life? Once you start noticing, you begin looking at situations with a whole new perspective.