Category: Family Dynamics & Relationships | Inner Harmony Haven | Reading time: ~8 min
It starts so small. A request that lands the wrong way. A child who is exhausted and can’t tell you why. A parent who is trying their best but feels like every response they give makes things worse.
Before long, you’re caught in a loop, the same arguments, the same roles, the same patterns and you can’t quite see how you got there or how to get out.
This is what psychologist Stephen Karpman described in 1968 as the Drama Triangle: a framework for understanding the roles we unconsciously slip into during conflict. It’s one of the most useful tools I’ve encountered in both my professional practice and my own parenting journey and when you understand it, something shifts.
“You can’t change a pattern you can’t see. The Drama Triangle gives you the map.”
The Three Roles in the Drama Triangle
When tension arises in any relationship but particularly in the high-stakes environment of parenting a neurodivergent child, we tend to fall into one of three roles. We don’t choose them consciously. They choose us, shaped by our history, our fears, and our deepest instincts.
Meet the roles and their healthier counterparts:
Drama Triangle Persecutor Blames, criticises, and controls. May not realise how their power is being used negatively. | Drama Triangle Victim Feels helpless and overwhelmed. Looks to others to solve problems rather than finding agency. | Drama Triangle Rescuer Over-helps and fixes. Inadvertently keeps others dependent and struggles with being relied upon. |
Empowerment Dynamic Challenger Sets expectations, encourages growth, and supports the other person to rise to meet challenges. | Empowerment Dynamic Creator Focuses on solutions and takes initiative. Develops agency and a sense of ownership over outcomes. | Empowerment Dynamic Coach Guides without rescuing. Offers tools and strategies so others can find their own solutions. |
Drama Triangle (top row) vs. Empowerment Dynamic — David Emerald’s positive alternative (bottom row).
The Persecutor
The Persecutor blames, criticises, and controls. In parenting, this might look like an overly harsh response to a meltdown, a moment of ‘why can’t you just…’ that you regret the moment it’s out.
The Persecutor is rarely acting from cruelty. More often, they’re acting from fear, overwhelm, or a desperate need to feel some control in a situation that feels entirely out of hand. But the impact on a child, especially a neurodivergent child whose nervous system is already stretched, can be significant.
The Victim
The Victim feels helpless, powerless, and overlooked. They’re not looking to take action; they’re looking for someone else to fix what’s broken.
Neurodivergent children may genuinely occupy this space sometimes, misunderstood, exhausted, unable to communicate what they need. But parents can fall into the Victim role too, especially when the demands of advocacy, appointments, school battles, and sleepless nights leave nothing left in the tank.
The Rescuer
The Rescuer swoops in. They solve the problem, smooth the path, absorb the conflict. And on the surface, this looks like love, because it often is love.
But over-rescuing has a cost. It tells the child, implicitly, that they cannot cope on their own. And it tells the parent, in time, that they alone are responsible for everyone’s emotional state which is an exhausting and unsustainable position to hold.
“The Rescuer’s motto is ‘I’ll fix it’. The Coach’s motto is ‘What do you need to find your own way through?'”
A Real Moment: The Drama Triangle in Our Home
A few years ago, after a particularly difficult day at school, my daughter Annie came home visibly distressed. What started as a small frustration unravelled into a full meltdown.
In the past, I would have jumped straight into Rescuer mode, offering solutions, trying to fix the feelings, or occasionally (in my own moments of depletion) slipping into Persecutor, expressing a frustration that only amplified hers.
That day, I remembered the Drama Triangle. I recognised that Annie was in the Victim position, not because she was being manipulative, but because she was genuinely overwhelmed and needed to feel heard before she could find her feet again.
Instead of rescuing or reacting, I sat beside her. Calm and open. I said: “I can see you’re really upset. Would you like to tell me what happened?”
At first, she was hesitant. But my steadiness seemed to create a safe enough space for her to begin. I didn’t interrupt with solutions. I didn’t minimise what she was feeling. I just stayed present and said, “That sounds really hard. It makes complete sense that you feel that way.”
Once she felt heard, something shifted. She stopped needing me to fix it. And then I gently asked: “What do you think might help you feel a bit better right now?”
After some thought, she decided she needed quiet time to draw. By the end of the evening, she was calmer, not because I had solved anything, but because she had been empowered to find her own way through.
That moment changed how I parent. Not perfectly, not every time but the awareness itself is the beginning.
Practical Steps for Breaking the Pattern
Understanding the Drama Triangle is only useful if you can begin to apply it. Here are five places to start:
- Educate yourself about your child’s neurodivergence. The more you understand what’s actually happening neurologically, the sensory load, the executive function differences, the emotional regulation challenges the less likely you are to slide into the Persecutor role. Knowledge replaces frustration with empathy.
- Move from Rescuing to Coaching. When your child is struggling, ask before you solve. ‘What would help you right now?’ or ‘What do you think you could try?’ builds agency and self-belief over time, far more than having someone else always fix things.
- When you’re in Victim mode, take responsibility. Notice the thought ‘everyone is against me’ or ‘nothing I do works.’ Challenge it. You have more agency than the Victim role allows. Start with one small thing you can control.
- Replace blame with curiosity. Instead of ‘why do you always do this?’, try ‘I wonder what’s making this so hard right now?’ The shift from accusation to inquiry changes everything about the dynamic.
- Prioritise your own wellbeing seriously. A parent running on empty is a parent far more likely to reach for Persecutor or Victim patterns. Your capacity to hold space for your child is directly proportional to how well you are caring for yourself. This is not indulgent. It is essential.
The Drama Triangle in Unexpected Places: Shrek, Lilo & Stitch
One of the most accessible ways to introduce the Drama Triangle to children and to recognise its patterns ourselves is through the stories we already love. Two films in particular map the triangle beautifully and show that the most meaningful growth happens when characters step beyond their assigned roles.
Shrek
- Shrek (Victim): He begins the story convinced the world is against him, choosing isolation over connection. His gruffness is protection. His isolation is the Victim’s answer to a world that has hurt him.
- Princess Fiona (Persecutor/Victim): Fiona holds herself to impossible standards, the princess who must be rescued, the woman who must hide her truth. She persecutes herself with societal expectations and is simultaneously victimised by a curse she cannot outrun.
- Donkey (Rescuer): Warm-hearted and relentless, Donkey never stops believing in Shrek and Fiona. His rescuing comes from love but Shrek’s growth only truly begins when he stops waiting to be saved and starts showing up for himself and others.
By the film’s end, Shrek has moved from Victim to Creator. Fiona has stepped out of both roles to embrace who she actually is. And Donkey, while still supportive, has found the limits of rescuing and become something closer to a Coach.
Lilo & Stitch
- Lilo (Victim/Persecutor): Isolated, grieving, and often misunderstood, Lilo embodies the Victim, not through weakness, but through genuine loss and difference. When her pain surfaces as difficult behaviour toward Nani, she slips into Persecutor without meaning to.
- Stitch (Persecutor/Victim): Created to be destructive, Stitch begins as Persecutor by design. But his arc is one of the most moving in the Drama Triangle canon, he becomes, gradually, a Victim of his own nature, desperate to belong and struggling to override what he was made to be.
- Nani (Rescuer/Victim): Nani sacrifices constantly, trying to keep her family together against every external pressure. She is the Rescuer who also feels victimised by how relentless the job is. Her growth comes in allowing others to help in recognising that she doesn’t have to carry everything alone.
What makes this film so resonant for neurodivergent families is its central message: ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind. That ethos of staying connected even when it’s hard, of seeing the person behind the behaviour is at the heart of stepping out of the Drama Triangle.
“‘Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind.’ Lilo & Stitch. The most anti-Drama-Triangle sentence in cinema.”
Reconnecting After Conflict
Whatever role you find yourself playing, and we all move between them, the most important step is what happens after the storm.
Conflict is a normal part of family life. For families raising neurodivergent children, it can feel more frequent and more intense. But how you repair after conflict matters as much as how you handle it in the moment.
Reconnect with your child. Name what happened, simply and without blame. Reassure them that your love is unconditional, not contingent on them behaving in ways that are easier for you to manage.
And extend that same compassion to yourself. You are doing something genuinely difficult. The fact that you are thinking about these patterns, that you are here, reading this, is evidence of how much you care.
At Inner Harmony Haven, this is the work we do, not to create perfect parenting, but to create more conscious, connected parenting. The Drama Triangle is a tool, not a judgement. Pick it up, hold it gently, and see what it shows you.
Ready to explore this further?
- Book a discovery call at innerharmonyhaven.com
- Explore our family support programs and resources
- Join the IHH community, you don’t have to navigate this alone
References: Karpman, S. (1968). Fairy tales and script drama analysis. Transactional Analysis Bulletin. | Emerald, D. (2016). The Power of TED. | Ambitious About Autism, ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk