EP 116: Creator Mode: Escaping the Victim Mentality for Good

 Get Your FREE Audiobook of The Mission Driven Life: Discover and Fulfill Your Unique Contribution to the World: https://www.themissiondrivenmom.com/

There's so much drama in the world and it is no fun! We all want to have peace and unity but sometimes we cannot figure out why they elude us. 

In this episode, Audrey walks you through what drama is, why it happens, how we choose in, and how you can get out- permanently! 

With resources for owning your life and moving forward with greater confidence and clarity, this podcast is for anyone who feels stuck, frustrated or unmotivated!

Here's the David Emerald interview to listen to: https://www.themissiondrivenmom.com/podcasts/the-mission-driven-mom-podcast/episodes/2148868481

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Podcast Transcript (AI generated):

 Welcome back to the podcast!
I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, the author of The Mission-Driven Life and the founder of The Mission-Driven Mom. On this podcast, you can expect to hear all things related to mission-driven living.

When I was a stuck mom with several small children, and my finances, health, and marriage were all out of control—along with other issues—we were struggling with addiction and other major problems. I went on a search to find answers. When therapy, online courses, and other sources didn’t work, I wanted to discover how to live more intentionally.

That’s when I found the Seven Laws of Life Mission—laws that have been lived by the greatest men and women throughout history. I studied the lives of dozens and dozens of them. These seven laws are outlined in my book, The Mission-Driven Life. You can grab a free copy of the audiobook at themissiondrivenmom.com. I highly recommend you go get that, and stay tuned for upcoming episodes where we’ll continue to explore all things mission-driven living—how to become a Mission-Driven Mom and how we can engage in that process today.

If you’re new to the podcast, I recommend going back to the beginning. We’ve reordered the episodes for you, so you can binge-listen and follow the whole process. We have in-depth episodes on each of the seven laws and the principles that undergird them. We also share many, many stories of mission-driven individuals. We highlight these regularly so you can see the laws in action in the lives of great men and women.

In The Mission-Driven Life, I talk about the Ten Boom family—my lifelong heroes. I idolized them for years until I realized that they were just like me when they were young. Through these Seven Laws of Life Mission, they became the incredible people who saved over 800 Jews during World War II.

So again, grab the audiobook for free at themissiondrivenmom.com. You can also purchase a hard copy of the book for just $17. While you're there, you can learn more about everything we do at The Mission-Driven Mom—including our online academy for women.

Thank you so much for being here today. If this podcast has blessed your life in any way, we’d love for you to leave a review. This helps others know they can find quality content here, and it encourages them to tune in and learn how to live mission-driven lives alongside us.

Today’s Topic: A Life-Changing Concept

Today, we’re going to talk about a concept that has been one of the most revolutionary in my own life. It's also one of our moms’ favorite things to learn in the academy. This concept has the power to radically transform your paradigms.

We’ve talked recently about paradigm shifts—how they are the shortcut to living a more mission-driven life. We want to actively engage in learning, prayer, thoughtfulness, and discussion so those paradigm shifts happen more often.

Well, today’s concept is definitely a paradigm shift.

It comes from a man named Stephen Karpman. While working on his doctoral degree, he developed what we now call the Drama Triangle (also known as the Drama Cycle). He was encouraged by his professors to write a paper on it, and though I don’t believe he ever wrote a full book, the concept took off—and now it's everywhere.

Hopefully, if you’ve engaged in any kind of relationship training, therapy, or coaching, you’ve heard about the Drama Triangle. There’s also an opposite model—an antidote to the drama—that we teach in depth in the academy. Today, I’ll give you a tool to begin using that antidote once we talk through how the Drama Triangle works.

A Personal Example

A few years ago, I was in an ongoing argument with one of my teenage daughters. She was making certain decisions I didn’t agree with, and I kept pushing her to change. I was nagging a lot, and it began to erode our relationship.

Then one day, she said something really painful—but also incredibly helpful. She was very upset and said:

“I just feel like you just want to fix me.”

That sentence struck a deep chord. It hit me hard because I knew exactly what she meant, thanks to what I had learned about the Drama Triangle. It helped me realize how I had been showing up in our relationship, and it caused me to back off and reevaluate how I was handling the situation.

This is the power of a paradigm shift—it helps you behave differently in the world.

What Is the Drama Triangle?

Stephen Karpman taught that "drama" is a specific kind of relationship pattern. We see it everywhere—in popular movies, books, music. A lot of the conflict in those stories stems from drama. We can feel it. We say things like, “Why are they being so dramatic?” or “This feels out of control.”

Some of the symptoms or “fruits” of the Drama Triangle include:

• Negative emotions
• Doubt, guilt, confusion
• Regret, anger, overwhelm
• Resentment and contention
• Disobedience or disorder
• People walking over each other
• Lack of connection and empathy
• Hard feelings

These are not the fruits we want in our relationships. We want peace, unity, contentment, empathy, and love. But those things cannot flourish when we are caught in drama.

Here’s the most empowering part: You are in the driver’s seat. Just like we discussed in the “One Shift Away” episode, when you’re unaware, you don’t know how to change. But when you learn and take ownership of your thinking and your behaviors, you can change—and that is incredibly empowering.

The Three Roles in the Drama Triangle

There are three “players” in this game of drama. Often, we default to these roles based on childhood experiences. These patterns worked for us as kids—or were vital for survival—but we never outgrew them. We haven’t recognized what we’re doing, so we keep replaying the same dynamics.

Let’s break it down.

1. The Persecutor

The catalyst for drama is often a Persecutor—the "bad guy." But here’s the kicker: the persecutor doesn’t have to be a person. It could be:

• An event
• A bad choice
• Childhood trauma
• Illness (mental or physical)
• An accident or tragedy
• Life circumstances

You can even be your own persecutor. Many of us—especially women—beat ourselves up constantly. A little self-reflection can be helpful, but most of the time, it’s damaging. What we really need is truth (another invaluable tool we dive into in the academy).

The persecutor is something we’re resisting. It’s the thing we think is making us unhappy. When we feel overwhelmed, stuck, or like we can’t function, that’s often our internal signal that we’re caught in drama—and that the persecutor role is active.

The persecutor says things like:

• “It’s all your fault.”
• “See what you made me do?”
• “You’re so stupid/weak/etc.”

This role is all about blame—blaming others or ourselves. Persecutors criticize, guilt-trip, shame, set unrealistic rules, and focus entirely on the problem, not the solution.

And here’s the truth: everyone in the Drama Triangle is focused on the problem. That’s why they’re stuck there.

I’ll go deeper into the other two roles—the Rescuer and the Victim—in the next section of this episode.

Now we have the “good guy” in the drama triangle: the Rescuer.

This is the role I most often fall into. And I’ve seen so many mothers and women who also default to the Rescuer role. We’re going to talk in just a minute about why that is—there’s a good reason. Part of it comes from our female temperament. It also comes from being nurturers. But there’s another, deeper reason as well.

Let’s start with the kinds of things rescuers say. I’ve said them so many times myself:

• “I’m only trying to help.”
• “I don’t know why you’re so upset. I’m just telling you something good.”
• “I’m just giving you this great advice.”
• “I’m solving this problem for you.”
• “Look how hard I’ve tried!”

Sound familiar? The Rescuer often thinks, “I’ve made all these sacrifices, done all this work, and poured out so much for you.”

Here’s the real problem: rescuers feel obligated to rescue—even when they don’t want to. They see a problem in someone else's life (often before the person has even identified it themselves), and jump in with, “Did you know you have a problem? Let me give you the solution!”

It’s ridiculous, honestly. But it’s so easy to fall into that trap.

And when we do, we often end up subverting natural law—the Law of the Harvest. We try to prevent someone from experiencing the natural consequences of their actions. We’re “smoothing the road,” trying to make things easier for them. But what we’re really doing is cutting them off from vital growth experiences. We’re preventing them from seeing truth in action. And when they miss those lessons, they can’t grow. They can’t mature. They don’t learn to make better decisions.

That’s the damage a Rescuer does.

The Consequences of Rescuing

When we identify other people’s problems and jump in to fix them before they even want help—or worse, fix it for them—we are blocking their personal development.

They may be adults, but we’re still parenting them like children. And in doing so, we’re halting their emotional and spiritual growth.

Rescuers also tend to do things for others that those people didn’t ask for—things they should be doing for themselves. This is a huge issue for moms. We start out doing everything for our children, as we should when they’re infants and toddlers. But the key is to practice wisdom at every stage of their growth. We must allow our children to take on the maximum amount of personal responsibility they can handle at each age.

That’s how they mature. That’s how they become independent.

When we over-rescue, we stunt their growth. We have a generation of adult children still living at home year after year, not pursuing independence—because their parents are keeping them young, doing for them what they should be doing for themselves.

Rescuers Feel Guilty When They're Not Helping

This is another huge piece.

Many rescuers feel intense guilt when they’re not helping someone. They feel aimless if they don’t have someone to “fix.” They don’t have a project of their own.

I had a wonderful friend—an amazing mom and a woman striving to be a good wife. But she was so wrapped up in everyone else’s lives that she wasn’t working on herself.

I used to say to her constantly, “Work on what’s yours. Work on what’s yours.”

She would fall into Rescuer mode simply because she didn’t have anything else to focus on. This is a modern-day epidemic. With all the technology and convenience we enjoy in the West, women have more leisure time than ever before in human history. And if we use that extra time to hover over our families—trying to solve their problems—we rob ourselves and them of the opportunity to grow.

This is why the Mission-Driven Mom model is so vital. It gives us what’s ours. It helps us identify our gifts and talents, develop them, and use them to bless our families and communities.

When you know your mission, you have purpose. You have meaningful work. You don’t need to micromanage everyone else’s lives. You can support your family every step of the way without making them miserable—or yourself miserable—through chronic rescuing.

The Rescuer’s Harmful Message

Here’s another consequence of rescuing that often goes unnoticed: You reinforce someone’s identity as a victim.

This is what I was doing with my daughter. That’s why she said, “I feel like you’re trying to fix me.”

In one of the books I read during my deep dive into the drama triangle, the author made something very clear: when you're in Rescuer mode, people around you can feel it. They know you’re trying to avoid pain—both your own and theirs. But in doing so, you're stopping them from learning life’s lessons the proper way.

My daughter was saying, “Your way of being is communicating something to me. It’s telling me that you think I’m broken.”

That’s why I was trying to fix her. That’s why I was trying to make her decisions for her. That’s why I was stepping in over and over. Because at a subconscious level, I believed she needed rescuing.

And here’s the tricky part: if you had asked me, I would have said, “I don’t think you’re broken.” I might’ve told her, “You’re just being dramatic,” or “That’s not what I’m doing,” or “Your thoughts are your problem.”

But my behavior was saying something entirely different.

My actions were communicating: You’re broken. You’re incapable. You need me to fix this for you.

Getting Out of the Rescuer Trap

It’s a hard balance. I get it. This is why having community is so vital—why the MDM Academy is such a powerful tool. We have mentors, peers, and fellow mission-driven moms who help us reflect and get perspective.

We recently did a deep dive into the drama triangle and the Creator alternative. One woman shared how she’s been actively using these tools to pull herself out of drama when it creeps in. Another woman said she had been doing well but had some recent family drama arise, and this refresher was exactly what she needed.

Together, we’re having ongoing conversations in the community, meeting regularly, and supporting one another as we strive to move from Victim to Creator.

It’s incredible, liberating stuff. It will heal your relationships. It will help you love yourself and others in a whole new way.

The Third Role: The Victim

Of course, the third role in the drama triangle is—yep, you guessed it—the Victim.

The Victim is the one who’s hurting. The one who doesn’t like what’s happening to them.

Victims say things like:

• “Poor me.”
• “Ain’t it awful?”

Now, some people act like victims but claim they’re not in self-pity. And maybe, in rare cases, that’s true. But most of the time, when we’re in Victim mode, we are in self-pity.

We feel:

• Oppressed
• Helpless
• Hopeless
• Powerless

We feel like we don’t have answers. Like we don’t know how to fix our situation. And sometimes, that’s actually true—we may not yet know how to make things better. But we can learn. We can grow. We can shift into a Creator orientation.

That’s the key.

Instead of thinking and acting like a victim, we begin thinking and acting like a Creator. And when we do that, everything changes.

Victims often look for a Rescuer to validate their victimhood and reinforce their negative self-beliefs. That’s the toxic dance that keeps the drama triangle spinning.

Now, I'm going to be completely transparent here. Even though I taught this in the Academy, I still fell prey to it. I'm much better at it now, but I still fall into it sometimes.

In fact, internally, inside the business, I still held some false paradigms—some false beliefs about myself—that were causing me to act or think like a victim in certain ways and to look for rescuers.

And when you look for rescuers, they usually show up. But then you interact in ways that are unhealthy, and it's damaging to everyone around you.

Even though we were clear about this concept, you still have to learn it. You have to practice it. You have to get better at it. Luckily, I knew the structure, and I was able to catch it. I was able to understand it, to process it, to see it clearly—and then to step into my creatorhood and show up differently again, both for myself and for the people around me—as a creator instead of a victim.

Here’s the crux of it all. Here's the fundamental issue at the heart of the drama triangle: the victim gets to avoid taking responsibility.

That’s really what the whole game is about.

If you're a victim, you didn’t do anything wrong. You're not to blame. It's not your fault that your husband is x or your children are y, or that your house is a mess, or that your parents failed you, or that you got fired, or whatever current life circumstance is oppressing you or making you feel victimized.

If you can prove to yourself—and to others—that you're truly a victim, then you can get your needs met without having to meet them yourself. You can garner empathy, attention, help (maybe financial or otherwise). People will listen to you, care about you, and do things for you that they wouldn’t otherwise do—because you’re a victim. It pulls at their heartstrings. They want to be there for you.

And being in the victim role also causes people to expect less from you. It enables you to avoid effort. Most importantly, it gets you out of meeting your own needs.

Almost always, when we are trapped in drama—especially over a long period of time—and we’re struggling to get out, it’s fundamentally because we are not aware of our real needs and we’re not meeting them.

I talk about this principle in The Mission-Driven Life book. If you don’t have the audiobook yet, go grab it and listen to it—it’ll help you see this clearly. Of course, in the Academy, we do a deep dive on all things needs-related and help you walk through the process to do that well. But you can begin practicing the principle right now just by getting the book and learning what it means to meet your real needs.

Because when needs aren’t being met, people feel depleted. And when we feel depleted, we start feeling negative and down. Then we look around for a persecutor.

If I don’t feel the way I want to feel, and I can identify a persecutor, then I can justify why I feel so bad. It makes me feel better to say, “Oh, I feel this way because of that person or that situation.”

But here’s the thing: no one and nothing has to control us.

This is the great lesson from Man’s Search for Meaning, which sold millions and millions of copies. Almost any great or influential person you've come across has probably read that book—and they can talk to you about Viktor Frankl. Because he, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and others like them proved—pretty much definitively—that you can live in a concentration camp and still be free.

They showed that you can have every human freedom taken away, but you still have the choice of your attitude.

You always have choice. You can always choose your response. You can take responsibility for how you show up in the world—regardless of how awful your circumstances are.

That’s the great lesson of Man’s Search for Meaning.

It’s also a key element in all of this: recognizing that we’re acting like victims and creating drama, which makes us and the people around us unhappy, because we are avoiding some sort of responsibility.

I’ll never forget the first time I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The first habit is: Be Proactive. And when I really understood that habit—which is a key principle of human development and growth—I remember saying to my husband, “This is huge.”

It really was a massive paradigm shift for me.

Most of us—so much of the time—are just struggling to live that first habit: to really take complete ownership of ourselves and say, “I am where I am because of the choices I made. And I can change my circumstances because I can change me.”

It’s the most powerful phrase in the world:
“I can change my circumstances because I can change me.”

That’s at the very core of shifting from a victim orientation to a creator orientation. It’s like putting on a new pair of glasses and seeing the world through a different lens:
“I am a creator. I created this, so I can create something else.”

No matter what’s going on around me, I control my response.

I want to finish off today by giving you a few tools you can start using right away, and some additional resources you can turn to.

As I said earlier, awareness is everything. Just understanding that drama is a real thing—that we are choosing to participate in it and that we can choose out of it at any time—is powerful.

If we’re fighting with someone, if we’re feeling stuck, if life doesn’t look the way we want it to, and we find ourselves blaming, shaming, being negative most of the time—we can stop and ask:

• “Why am I feeling this way?”
• “Why am I unmotivated?”
• “Why am I negative so much of the time?”

It’s because we don’t like how life is going—and we feel helpless.

That’s the victim mindset.

Because in that moment, we’re not choosing to be a creator and make the situation different.

So the first thing you have to do is be honest with yourself. You are problem-focused. You’re feeling this way because you are not focused on the solution and what you can do.

As soon as you get honest and sit with yourself and say, “Okay, I don’t like how things are going. I don’t like how powerless I feel. But I want to be a creator. I want to own my life. I want to make things different”—that’s when things begin to shift.

Then, you can ask yourself these three clarifying questions, which come from a great book called The 3 Vital Questions by David Emerald. He goes into a lot of detail, but I’ll just touch on them briefly.

What actions am I taking?

When you examine your relationships, ask yourself: How am I relating? Look at your relationship with yourself, with others, and with your experiences. Ask: Is the way I’m relating to myself, others, and my experiences empowering or disempowering?

Asking empowering questions is another vital and helpful tool we walk you through in the Academy. It can guide you through this process of awareness and transformation.

Ask yourself:

• Am I relating in ways that foster collaboration, resilience, and innovation?
• Or am I contributing to conflict and negativity?

For example, if I’m with my child and I’m not focused on the good or the outcomes, then I’m relating in ways that create contention and negativity. I’m not innovating. I’m not collaborating. I’m not being resilient. I’m not overcoming stumbling blocks and brushing myself off to keep going.

That inner state leads to actions—good or bad. My focus shapes how I relate to the world and ultimately what I do.

This third and final question assesses how I'm relating to outcomes:

• Am I taking proactive steps toward achieving predetermined goals?
• Or am I just reacting to problems as they arise?

Am I sitting passively, letting life happen to me? Am I being unintentional?

That’s a key element of being a Mission-Driven Mom: intentionality.

Mission-Driven Moms are deliberate. They think things through. They plant their foot, they know what they want, and they take small steps to get there. You predetermine where you’re going. Instead of reacting, you become proactive, like Stephen Covey describes. You choose your responses.

Like the men and women in concentration camps who had all their freedoms taken away—you still have the ability to choose how you respond. You always have the power to choose how you relate to yourself, to others, and to your experiences.

You can change your inner state by focusing on your intentions and desired outcomes. That change in your inner state changes how you relate, and ultimately, the actions you take.

These are the three vital questions I encourage you to explore. Journal about them. Get honest with yourself. Ask how you can be more Creator-focused.

I also recommend listening to my interview with David Emerald, which I’ll link in the show notes. It’s part of our Mission-Driven Stories series. David is the creator of the Creator Orientation (the opposite of the Drama Triangle). In that model, the three key roles are the Coach, the Challenger, and the Creator.

It’s a beautiful framework—we teach it in the Academy, and it was incredibly eye-opening and helpful for me personally. He gives great suggestions and practical insights.

Let me share a few things from a little booklet that provides even more powerful insights. She writes:

“In order to break free of victim consciousness, you must take charge of meeting your own needs. You must be willing to ask for what you want or need 100% of the time. This doesn’t mean you’ll always have to ask, only that you’re willing to. Individuating means learning to trust your inner knowing and taking full responsibility for creating the experiences of your life.”

You can no longer blame others—or bad luck—for what’s happening to you. Becoming personally responsible for your life is a big part of breaking free from the Drama Triangle.

And again, if you feel drawn to join us in the Academy, we’d love to meet you, get to know you, and walk this mission-driven path with you. We’ll give you the tools to break out of the Drama Triangle, discover your gifts, and lead in your home. You can learn more about that at themissiondrivenmom.com.

As we wrap up, I want to touch briefly on why we show up in certain ways in the Drama Triangle. This author explains it well:

“We each have a favorite place for entering the Drama Triangle, which we learned in our family of origin.”

Now, I don’t think this is always 100% the case—but often it is. And I can see it in myself.

She explains that parentified children—those who acted as caregivers or peacekeepers in the home—typically enter the Drama Triangle through the Rescuer role. They’ve been conditioned to be people-pleasing caretakers.

That was me. I’m number six of my dad’s ten children, but I’m the oldest of the five he had with my mom. So although I had five older half-siblings, I was often the oldest child at home. My dad was gone a lot, and my mom was dealing with her own struggles, so I stepped into a caregiving role early on. I took care of my younger siblings constantly, and I became the helper, the "little general."

The author continues:

“Parentified children function as little generals to avoid conflict, to feel important, and to stay in control. They often become teachers, ministers, doctors, nurses—people in the helping or healing professions.”

But if they haven’t truly stepped out of the Drama Triangle, they may form unhealthy relationships with their clients—because their own wounds remain unhealed.

That’s why I said earlier: if you’re seeking coaching or therapy, it’s critical to have a principled paradigm—one we can teach you in the Academy. Then you can discern who’s truly able to help you.

She warns:

“Counselors and other professional helpers can easily get caught in the Drama Triangle with clients—sometimes in ways that traumatize their clients further.”

This often happens because clients and counselors share similar wounds. The counselor’s unhealed trauma can provoke a mutual drama dynamic without either person being aware.

As many of you know, my husband has a degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. And while there were some wonderful people in his program, there were also those with deep, unresolved trauma.

So just be cautious. Be discerning.

The author also explains that:

“People who were repeatedly rescued in their families—especially by older siblings or grandparents—often enter the Drama Triangle through the Victim role. They use conflict and drama to manipulate others into taking care of them without having to ask directly.”

I see this clearly in my own family—and you probably do too. But we must grow up and grow out of the Drama Triangle.

We must become aware of it, learn about it, and consciously choose a different way of being.

“Those who were abused as children often enter the Drama Triangle through the Persecutor role. It gives them an outlet for their unresolved pain and allows them to pass on their abuse through a cycle of cruelty.”

This can happen in all kinds of abuse—emotional, physical, sexual—or even subtle manipulation. These individuals often find someone “weaker” to act out their desire for revenge.

Ultimately, this all comes back to living a mission-driven life—a life grounded in love.

As M. Scott Peck explains in The Road Less Traveled, love is the willingness to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.

That’s what we’re called to do.

We cannot have true love, deep connection, or unity if we’re stuck in drama. Drama erases love from our relationships.

And love is what we all long for.

Real love is only present when we take full responsibility for ourselves, meet our own needs, and only expect from others what they can truly give.

That’s why this work is so essential.

➡️ Grab the free audiobook at themissiondrivenmom.com.
➡️ Go listen to the David Emerald interview.
➡️ Watch his videos online.
➡️ Learn more on your own—or let us mentor you through it in the Academy.

The love, connection, and peace you’re seeking—it’s possible.

But you have to understand drama… and step out of it.

Step into being a Creator more and more. You can do it.

You can be the Mission-Driven Mom, the Mission-Driven Woman, you long to be. You can show up differently for yourself and others.

And this paradigm shift—along with the Three Vital Questions and other tools—will get you there.

Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s a privilege to share these ideas with you.

If there’s a topic you’d like me to cover on the podcast, or a question about mission-driven living, I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks again—and I’ll see you next time.