Read Transcript
Child: Welcome to my mommy’s podcast!
Katie: This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers, and I love this company. And specifically today I wanna talk about one of the favorite things that they make, which is called Masszymes. So let’s be real. We all kind of start this part of the year saying, we’re going to eat cleaner, train harder, feel lighter.
But it’s not just what we eat and what we do, it’s what we absorb. And if our digestion is sluggish, the body just can’t keep up. And this is why I love Masszymes all year, but especially this time of year because it’s a simple digestive ritual that’s made a huge difference for me. It’s loaded with 18 enzymes, including four times more protease than top competitors, to help us break down dietary protein, carbs, and fats efficiently.
And I’ve shared before, I’ve done a whole episode on enzymes and how this was really, really impactful for me personally. But this means that we get better nutrient absorption, less bloating, and more real energy from the food we’re already eating. I’m also a big fan of nutrient loading and really maximizing that in our food too.
And enzymes help us get the maximal benefit from this. It’s this hardworking, yet smooth enzyme blend, and it’s been a favorite of mine for years, and a customer favorite for over 20 years. It’s a ritual that your stomach will thank you for anecdotally. I feel like I really don’t get sick now that I have made these a regular part of my routine.
A lot of people find they don’t have post-meal food hangovers or bloat after taking these, just clean energy to crush goals all year long. For a limited time, you can save up to 26% off their products and bundles during the New Year New You Sale by using my code wellnessmama15 at checkout.
And select bundles are on sale for up to 45% off, so you can get a massive discount there. Visit bioptimizers.com/wellnessmama and use the code wellnessmama15 at checkout. To get the best deal on Masszymes and all BIOptimizers products. So that’s bioptimizers.com/wellnessmama and the code wellnessmama15.
So start 2026 with a stronger gut, more energy, and better digestion.
This episode is brought to you by Hiya Health. Everyone’s talking about their New Year’s resolutions, and while everyone else is promising to hit the gym in 2026, I am focusing on something much easier that’ll actually stick (gym’s already pretty well a habit for me) which is better nutrition for my younger kids.
And that is exactly why Hiya exists, to give parents a real solution in a market flooded with products that prioritize candy-like appeal over actual nutrition. Some children’s vitamins on the market have up to seven grams of sugar per serving and are stuffed with additives and petroleum based dyes.
Hiya took the opposite approach. Zero sugar, zero gummy junk, just clean nutrition. And the crazy thing is kids actually love them. The taste, the experience, all of it. It’s thoughtfully designed. They looked at what modern kids are eating and not eating, and formulated around those specific nutritional gaps.
Working alongside pediatricians and nutrition scientists, Hiya created a superpowered chewable vitamin that packs 12 organic fruits and vegetables, plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals, including B12, C, zinc, folate, and more. The ingredient list is clean with no GMOs. It’s dairy free, allergy free, gelatin free, nut free.
They’ve thought of everything. Plus, they’ve earned their clean label projects, highest purity award certification, and they put every batch of product through third party testing for heavy metals and contaminants. So it’s the kind of transparency that actually means something. They are designed for kids 2 and up, shipped straight to your door in a reusable bottle with refills that come every month.
We have worked out a special deal with Hiya for their bestselling children’s vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order. To claim this deal go to hiyahealth.com/wellnessmama This deal is not available on their regular website. So again, go to hiyahealth.com/wellnessmama and get your kids the full body nourishment they need.
Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And this episode is gonna be a little bit different because it’s not gonna talk about physical health directly, but about something that has entered my field of awareness quite a lot in the last couple of years and that I’ve had a lot of reflection around realizing places that I have played into these roles that I’m gonna talk about in the last decades and in my role as a parent in relationships, even on Wellness Mama, and how that was presented to the world and my very much imperfect understanding and evolving understanding of this topic in case it could be helpful to anybody else.
And it does relate to health in that this often shaped how I presented information in the past and how I will present things going forward and some changes that I hope to continually make on Wellness Mama. And that topic is the drama triangle, which I’ll define more in a moment.
Before we jump in I wanna remind you, this is all just my opinion. This is something that I said, like I said, has entered my field quite a lot lately. It’s something I’ve done a lot of introspection around and that I thought it would be relevant to share a little bit of my understanding around. And in particular in this episode, I’m going to talk about my own particular decision to step off the drama triangle, what the drama triangle even actually is, and some reflections I’ve had around this, some repair of hopefully past things related to this and also responsibility that I feel now in understanding this a little bit more. In this episode, I’ll go into what the drama triangle is, what the roles are, and the language that often appears around each one. I’ll share some family and relational examples from my own life and how these roles kind of rotate and recruit each other.
From my own life, some sneaky behaviors and why the cycle has kept perpetuating often. I’ll also talk about something that really hit me impactfully within the last year, which is the law of request, what that means, and the shifts that it has led to for me. And then some language specific shifts, like from identity to experience, from should to choice, from fixing to witnessing, et cetera.
And some repair scripts and things that I found hopeful for shifting this in real life. And before I jump into this, I wanna credit a couple of places, especially that this has come up and where I have really gotten some motivation for introspection around this. In particular two podcast, one with Dr. Zach Bush on the Consciousness 500 Podcast, which I will link to in the show notes, as well as an episode that Kelly Brogan did on Reclamation Radio that talks about this as well.
And she also talks about this in her book, the Reclaimed Woman, which I will link to in the show notes as well. But I credit those two people in particular whose work I respect, and especially Dr. Zach Bush, who I have been following a lot lately and listening to some of his recent work with kind of bringing this into my awareness and really challenging me to think about this on a deeper level. So my intent today is not to give any advice, especially in light of the law of request, especially if anybody has not requested it.
I am going to just simply share from my own experience what this journey has looked like for me, the places I can now see these patterns in my own life in hindsight and what I hope to do personally going forward to shift this pattern in my own life. So I’ll be naming the roles I’ve seen in my own life, noticing the language I had around them that kept them sustained.
Sharing examples of how they played out in my life and relationships, and apologizing for my part in the way that I have showed up on Wellness Mama within these roles as well. So as I understand it, there are three roles within the drama triangle, which are victim, perpetrator or persecutor, and the sneaky one of savior or rescuer, and that’s the one that I was most oblivious to probably for a long time, but I’ll come back to that. So the victim role, seemingly pretty self-explanatory, kind of identifies with the idea that power was outside of me, feels helpless, seeks rescuers, outsources agency, thinks the answer is outside.
And I can identify certainly times in my life where I have identified with that role. When I was in the really deep throes of Hashimoto’s, I kept looking for a doctor, a practitioner, a protocol, a program, something from the outside that could fix me. And I’ve shared before parts of my journey of learning the interagency, making huge mindset shifts around that and how that actually impacted my physical health.
But I can see the times I showed up in that role. And I also can see when I have written, especially written, but also podcasted some, but written from that perspective and how much of a victim role and fear I used to embody about gluten and chemicals and toxins in our environment. And while I still think those things are worth being aware of, I feel like my mindset around them has shifted, hopefully away from victim and more into just having awareness and making informed choices.
And not so much from a why grains are killing you slowly, why all of these things you have to avoid a hundred percent, and into a more balanced view. The perpetrator or persecutor role identifies more with the idea of power over others. And so this is a place where you often might see control or criticism or forcing of outcomes, and I can see when I identified in this role as well and like would wanna fight the bad, you know, bad big food or bad, big government or bad outside problem outside enemy and fight that, or when I had had enough as the victim, which I played more often in my life, and shifted into this perpetrator role.
I also saw in myself a pattern of often identifying someone outside of me as the perpetrator, which also removed agency I had in shifting a situation because if they were the perpetrator and they were the problem, then I couldn’t do much about that. And I got to stay in the victim or shift into the savior, which more on that one later because that one was sneaky and my psyche loved hiding in that one a lot. So the way Zack Bush explains this, most people are pretty familiar with the idea of victim/perpetrator and what that cycle would look like. However, without a rescuer or savior, often the victim perpetrator cycle would end in kind of one life cycle because that relationship is playing out and it’s when the savior or rescuer steps in for short term relief that the problem can actually perpetuate.
And he makes a great point that we see this on a global scale with countries stepping in to play savior role with victim perpetrator conflicts happening all over. And the savior coming in and perpetuating that. Also, I can see this, so many examples in my own life and how I loved the feeling of being in the savior role and trying to help people and rescue them.
And this kind of identifies with the energy of power over another power over you, which can be over-functioning, which I certainly did advising uninvited, which I certainly did. And preventing learning by taking away the journey. And I have had quite the inner experience related to this in the past year and kind of getting to viscerally feel many of the places where I had done this given advice without being asked or thought I knew better for someone.
Whether it be about their health, their life, their emotions, whatever it may be. And kind of what I now personally call the law of request and trying not to give advice unless it’s directly asked for. And navigating what that looks like with having a brand like Wellness Mama and still being able to share from my experience, but not from the energy of assuming I would ever know better for someone else or to give them direct advice without them asking.
So a core insight related to this that I’ve noticed is the roles rotate. So I did not stay in any of these roles all the time. I got to like ping pong around between all of them. The savior role often keeps the cycle going by relieving the short term pain while removing agency and then shifting someone back and forth into victim and perpetrator all over again.
So that is a very simplified, high level understanding of when I’m talking about the drama triangle and my understanding of it, I know there’s probably a lot more. That goes into this a lot more nuance. But that is just my understanding of it. And learning about this has been a challenge to me to see the places where I showed up in those different ways throughout the years. In, or like the way, what helped me to identify where I had showed up in those different ways was the language around it.
And there’s pretty good documentation from a lot of people around the language and the energy and the identity that comes into each of these roles. So to help identify what I looked at was for victim language, there is an identity fusion there. So that might be, I am anxious, or I’m a mess, or this is just how I am.
Or in my case, I am sick, back when I had Hashimoto’s, or I have Hashimoto’s, it became part of my identity. Or helpless frames and wording, like, I can’t, or this always happens to me, or if only blank, then, or an external focus of this situation made me feel like this, this person made me feel like this.
I’m at the mercy of these external cues and somatically this is often identified with body language, like collapsed posture, sighing, asking for advice, and then dismissing it. Or just in general kind of helplessness related to one’s ability and station and situation. In life. So those are some things that can be associated with victim language.
And I saw this especially related to my health when I was still in the, I have Hashimoto’s and looking for someone to fix me, and I, I’ll link to some other episodes, but I’ve shared a lot about my inner languaging journey around how I stopped saying I’m sick, or my body is attacking itself and started saying, I’m healing, I’m getting better every day. And how that actually showed up in my body. For the perpetrator role. A lot of language around here that I noticed was related to control and blame. So this would be when I or a person says things like, you never blank or you always blank. In fact, I feel like those are great cues always and never anytime they show up in language tends to be a great place to just cue in and see the underlying emotional pattern there.
Or languaging, like obviously the right way is blank or do it my way. Or Why can’t you just blank? And in fact, in relationships, that is perhaps one of the pieces of language that I found the most frustrating in the past was hearing, why can’t you just blank, quite often. And that was enlightening for me to see when I was putting this other person in the perpetrator role and also when I was embodying the victim role at the same time. There’s also usually a lot of shame or shoulds attached to the perpetrator role. So like you should know better or that’s stupid or grow up or character attacks. I personally feel like the word should is another place that I pay attention.
I try not to use that word very often but I do feel like anytime that word comes out, it can be another kind of like spotlight to shine at a place where we’ve got some kind of pattern or identity belief. Also in perpetrator language we sometimes hear kind of dehumanizing generalizations or us versus them language, like people like you.
So there’s often a lot of that like undertone of shame and blame and control and the somatic things to pay attention to that often go with the perpetrator role would be tight jaw kind of tense, pointed tone of voice urgency and a need to be right or to win. And I can see places where that also showed up for me.
I think I spent less time in perpetrator than I did in victim, but less time in either of those than I did in savior because my childhood experience meant that often I felt the most safe in savior for a lot of reasons. That I will explain the savior language, I feel like is the most tricky. Because it often sounds kind, it seemingly is altruistically motivated.
It seems like it’s helping people out. And this for me was why it was such a deeply viscerally painful experience to realize the times I had violated the law of request by stepping into savior role and assuming that I knew better for someone else than they did about their life. And without being asked, of course there’s benefit in community and learning from others, but I had taken away agency by sharing and assuming without being asked. So save your language, which I, like I said, I think is the most sneaky can show up as unsolicited advice. So this was me a lot like, have you tried blank? Or What you need to do is, or try this, or things around that, or soft superiority. This is what makes it so sneaky.
Coming from the energy of, let me, I’m just trying to help you. Lemme try to fix this for you, but without honoring the agency of the person. And I see this actually for me, that it’s shown up in parenting quite a lot, and I notice this pattern in other parenting relationships as well. There’s also a boundary blur.
I think this is also what makes the savior role so sneaky. So victims often have trouble enforcing boundaries. Perpetrators often have trouble honoring boundaries. In the savior role, it seems like there’s a blur even around understanding boundaries. Like in a savior role, a person might often show up in the, I’ll handle it, I’ll take care of it.
Taking on lots of tasks, inability to say no, I certainly was in that experience a lot in the past, and I’m still recovering from that being my default. But some somatic experiences associated with this are things like anxiousness, helping relief when more needed, resentment, like, so taking on lots of things and then resenting having to do all those things.
And that’s something I’m still un pattering in my life. So again, oversimplified version, but that’s my understanding of how those different roles can show up in language and somatically and in relationships. There’s of course, many, many more examples as well, and I will link to other podcasts if you really wanna understand these better.
Some places in my own life where I have seen these play out either in my own parent-child relationships with my parents, with my kids, with friends, within romantic relationships I’ll share some examples in case they’re resonant for you. In parent child relationships, there’s the victim parent, which might say some things like, no one listens to me in this house, or you never listen to me, or putting themselves in that victim mentality.
In this situation, a child might often step into rescue by over compliance or flip to perpetrator with defiance. So this puts the child in the position of becoming either the savior or the perpetrator, and there’s a lot of good parenting books that explain why neither of those is necessarily the most healthy relationship for a child.
But that one I have both been, I have been on both sides of that one. There’s also the perpetrator parent, which I don’t think I have been in this one as much. I can only think of a few examples, but this is more rigid rules, shaming. And in this then we shift the child into becoming the victim identity.
Or becoming a mini perpetrator with the siblings. And I, like I said, I don’t think I’ve embodied the perpetrator in parenting as much. I can definitely see savior a ton and victim sum, but I don’t think I have embodied perpetrator as much. However, I do think my children have experienced that form of parenting and I see it show up sibling to sibling with them sometimes.
And this one can be a tricky one as well. And I would say the one that seems sneaky again and easiest to fall into, at least for me and maybe for a lot of parents, is the savior parent, which is the constantly fixing emotions or homework or conflicts or kinda steamrolling to make way for our kids, not letting them handle their own problems, which can lead to the child under developing capability and either resenting or depending too much on the parent later.
And I’ve tried not to step into this role too much either, but I certainly can see times that I have and I certainly can understand the desire to want to help remove pain for our children. But this is the one I now am trying to be the most conscious of because I think it’s the one I can easily fall into without meaning to the most. In partner or co-parent relationships I think these also can show up. So personally I can identify, I often try to live in the savior role in relationships, and I can see how this led to resentment and burnout and eventually complete like disgust with the relationship and inability to stay in the relationship.
And I can recognize now that I was perpetrating, I was continuing that pattern by stepping into the savior role, which is kind of absorbing the needs of everybody else, doing everything that’s needed to be helpful. Doing the extra chores, making sure everybody else is taken care of, sometimes at the expense of oneself, which builds as I learned quiet resentment and can erupt later as perpetrator, which then the other partner gets to shift into victim and we get to do the whole dance all over again.
The victim partner can narrate from exhaustion and incapacity. The other partner can then become savior and burnout and then flip to perpetrator with criticism. And I won’t share too many personal details because of course, only one side of that is even mine to share. But I could definitely see examples in my marriage and in past relationships where we had expertly with choreography, navigated the interplay of all those roles and took turns stepping into all of them.
And with having our own preferences, like I said, I tended to prefer the victim and savior. Others often because of that showed up, intended to prefer the perpetrator role and how those over time led to just kind of a, what felt like a growing apart. But actually there was like, I can now see patterns and for. These also can show up in extended family relationships with one sibling being kind of the identified victim. The other is the hero. Sometimes these will show up at holiday gatherings. These are similar, probably less likely in adult relationships because we’re not living with and interacting daily with our extended family in the same way. But often those patterns can start there and then show up in our romantic relationships, in our own parenting relationships.
And then I also have seen the places where, for me, this showed up in work or in community or in friendships. Where I enjoyed being in the leader or savior pattern and micromanaging and this like being in control, micromanaging that actually stalled team growth and didn’t honor the agency of other people I was working with.
And then blaming people for not stepping up at times when I wasn’t letting them anyway. I can now recognize I used to hire people and not let them do anything because I knew I needed help and I also thought I could do it better, and that was a pattern I had to unlearn. One thing I’m especially learning to watch out for, like I said, I think I can most easily try to fall into that rescuer or savior role, which is things like just sending advice or thoughts or resources when someone hasn’t requested it.
So my personal method right now is to analyze before sending anything. Was this requested? Or am I sending this to make myself feel good? Or preemptively solving small problems for others so that they never feel the friction of having, needing to learn something. I’m especially guilty of this. I noticed so many ways this was so pervasive in my life when I would do this with my kids, with my team, with friends.
I am, I would say a recovering preemptive problem solver and still fall into this occasionally, but I’m trying to be aware of it and not just jump in to fix things. And I can recognize where this comes from in my own childhood. A place where I felt safest if everybody around me’s nervous system felt safe and taken care of.
o I just would kind of chameleon and shapeshift and do anything I could to make other people feel safe and comfortable around me. But as an adult now with six kids, that is at the expense of my own nervous system often. So I’m still learning. I also have seen this when I show up with emotional rescuing.
So that’s when one of my kids’ friends just is having an emotional experience and they’re having frustration or tears, jumping in with trying to solve the problem instead of just being with them and listening and being curious about their experience or over identifying as an empath. And trying to like empathetically show up for someone, but in a way that’s boundary crossing or actually control oriented or subtly trying to fix the problem versus just be with them.
I also noticed the places I would do something kind, which inherently isn’t bad unless it’s boundary crossing, but I was doing it as a way to manage my own anxiety about someone’s discomfort. Not just purely to help them. So I’m trying to pay attention to those sneaky instances as well. As places that I would say yes to things when my nervous system actually wanted to say no outta fear of being irrelevant, or, and then I would end up feeling resentful for these things that I had agreed to take on because I was trying to keep everybody else’s nervous system happy and keep anyone else from experiencing the discomfort of me saying no. And again, these are things I’m still very much in progress on learning. I’m showing up extremely in progress and imperfectly on this, but it’s been very much a part of my inner journey this year, so I wanted to mention it. Now this brings me to a place to explain the law of requests, and I hope I’ll be able to explain the experience I had with this.
It was actually incredibly, deeply painful experience, which was that about a year ago I had this kind of deeply meditative spiritual experience where I actually felt like I was feeling the impact of all the times or at least many of the times in my life when I had violated what I now call the law of request, and I had given advice or opinion or told someone they should, that sneaky word, do something, without being asked. And I felt like I was feeling and seeing kind of in real time where that had taken away someone’s journey or where that had made things actually tougher for them or that had taken away their agency.
And that was deeply, deeply painful to realize and how I had done that as a mom, how I had done that, as in a relationship with my parents, how I had done that in friendships, in romantic relationships. Even on Wellness Mama from the place that I had written from. And so I have been very aware of that since then because it was such a deeply visceral and painful experience and trying to shift my language on the podcast in writing and social media, in my interactions with other people in daily life to honor the law of request and to not assume ever that I know better for someone else than they do. And also not to give advice unless it is asked. And I do think there’s an energetic component. So often someone might be energetically asking for advice without directly saying the words, I want you to give me advice about block blank. However that was hard to put into words, but a deeply, deeply painful experience and one I’m now very aware of.
So the key idea here is any kind of help, healing, support, lands best when invited, or at least when the other person is open to that. And that unrequested help can remove dignity and agency from a person and take away from their journey and delay growth. And I saw the many places that I have done that in the past. So my official public apology today is that I’m deeply sorry and apologize personally and deeply to each of you for any times that I have done that in the past on Wellness Mama, where I have given advice without it being requested.
Where I have taken parts of someone’s journey or implied that I knew better than anyone might for their own journey. And like I said, I do think this is a thing to learn to navigate of wanting to still share experience and provide resources that someone can find if they can be helpful and if they’re looking for them, but not in a way that is boundary violating. And I can see the places in the past that I did that in a way that was boundary violating.
So my commitment going forward is to try to offer presence first, to ask or be given consent before giving advice or opinion. And to trust other people’s timing and capability more, and not assume that I know better or that I can be the rescuer. And to share on a practical level. So here are some language shifts I’m working on in my own life to start to shift these patterns.
One is from identity to experience, so trying to find the places in my life where I make I am statements or identity statements when they actually are experience statements. So instead of the victim’s statement of, I am anxious, or I am sick, or I am mad, or I am whatever, to, I feel anxiety right now and I can.
And then something empowering. Or I feel anger right now and I can, or whatever it may be. Like I said, moving away from the word should to a place of empowering choice. So the perpetrator shift away from you should, or I should, or we should or whatever, to if asked, would you be open to, or, this is a tough one for me with the perpetrator victim role is stating boundaries that are actually boundaries.
So here is my boundary or need. And then asking, does that work? Also, realizing boundaries only can be given for ourselves, for ourselves, and our own action. So for instance, you cannot talk to me like that is not a boundary that is technically a request because you’re trying to dictate the other person’s action. Whereas a boundary could be something like, I don’t like to be talked to like that. And if you continue to speak to me like that, I will remove myself from the conversation until we can speak more calmly. That would be an actual boundary. And maybe more on that in a future episode if you guys would like to hear it.
That’s been another, quite the journey. But learning even to state boundaries with kindness has been important for me these last few years. And then a big one is from fixing to witnessing and just showing up for someone with presence, not with that rescuer energy. So the shift from here’s how to fix it or what you need to do is, to even just showing up with curiosity and not saying anything or shifting into, do you want ideas or listening or just asking how can, what form of support, how can I show up for you in a way that’s most supportive right now? Would you like a listening ear? Would you like to go on a walk? Can I bring you some food? What would be most supportive of you right now? And then just showing up with presence and curiosity. I’ve tried to develop some consent micro phrases around this.
So I’ll often say things now like, I have a thought. Do you want it? And if they say, no, I don’t share it. Or, how can I support you, listening, brainstorming, action? What would you like or what outcomes do you want here? And then actually just show up with curiosity and not even try to fix it then. With kids especially, I try to like make sure I’m modeling and building those consent statements in, so that that’s something that they have and show up in their life.
And also try to work in autonomy building questions or statements like instead of trying to fix it for them, asking what have you already tried that’s helped even just 1%. Or what have you tried that’s made it feel a little bit better? And then again, showing up with curiosity unless they ask for advice or asking like, what is the next step you might choose if you trusted yourself and showing up with curiosity.
But instead of stepping into advice role, stepping into curiosity role. I’ve also tried to develop repair language around this after seeing so many places that I showed up, like in those different roles throughout the years. And so since I often am easily slipping into savior rescuer role I’ve learned to say things like, I jumped into fixing that time, I’m sorry. Do you want support or just space to feel this? How can I best love you right now? And catching myself in it, catching myself hopefully before I slip into it over time. But really like just trying to learn to identify first and be aware of the places where I show up in the victim triangle and in those three roles.
And then stepping out of the triangle intentionally. And so I’m gonna share a few things that I have found practically helpful personally in stepping out of each of these roles. And again, I’m by no means perfect at this, but these are things that are sort of actively helping me right now. The first one I would say is shifting from victim to creator or to at least having agency and autonomy and ability to have forward movement.
So something as simple as having a 9o second pause. Instead of accepting and embodying the I am or the victim language, but just pausing and letting, seeing that where I actually feel that and what I actually feel. Because often I have found the victim feeling masks another feeling, and if I give it space, that actual kind of underlying feeling will come up. From a practice perspective, if I’m feeling the victim role, just doing little daily agency reps or things that I can do, like to build agency in my own life or keep promises to myself, shifting that inner language into I am healing or whatever it may be, that helps me step out of victim. Or language, inner questions like given reality, what is my next kind, courageous step?
And I do think inner language is a big one here, so auditing that like I’ve shared before. But instead of asking, like I used to ask, why am I sick? Why does this keep happening to me? Or why are things always so hard or why can’t I get better? Shifting those inner questions into how can I make healings so fun and easy?
How can I get a little bit better every single day? Giving my subconscious non victim questions was huge for me in shifting from perpetrator into a more caring role or even into like a gentle challenger but not perpetrator. Things like if I feel that response rising, going for a walk, giving the body time to calm down and somatically kind of process what’s going on.
A practice here is to catch myself when I’m using shoulds or blame words or I am critiquing, like something even in my kids to make sure I’m not critiquing identity and step back from critiquing blame and judgment whenever possible. But if those things do exist, talking about behavior or actions, not identity and person and then learning to enforce boundaries gently and with kindness.
And then like the big one for me, the shifts I’m making are from rescuer or savior into hopefully more present companion. So the interruption there for me is simply pausing and noticing the need to advise and waiting for consent instead, in practice trying to reflect strengths and ask questions versus give advice, leave space for silence and not assume I know better, and ask questions like, what could make this easier this week?
Or I trust your read, what’s your move or what do you think would help? And only giving advice when it’s directly asked for. So, as a recap, my personal reflections and apology around this is I can see the places I showed up in victim, while I was in recovery especially, and how that lens shaped my tone. I had a lot of personal fear that showed up in my writing with things like how grains are killing you slowly, and a lot of things motivated by fear of versus choosing from a place of wanting something good and how those were not honoring or helpful.
So I apologize for those times and for the times that I modeled and showed up in victim energy. I can see the times I showed up in perpetrator moments fighting the system in my personal life, fighting a partner where I slid into us versus them or dehumanization. And I apologize for those times as well, and especially where I showed up and over embodied the rescuer role.
How I over helped, assumed I knew better, used lots of shoulds and took away parts of the journey from others. I feel like I said, this is the toughest for me to notice. It’s the one I’m still working on, especially right now. And it was like tied into even the original motivation for Wellness Mama.
I wanted to help people and that isn’t a bad thing, but the method can be. And so I apologize for all the times I showed up in that energy and was not actually supportive of the journey for others. So I apologize for all of those times. And my recommitment today is to continually work on this and to try to show up in presence, consent, and honoring language that doesn’t take away the journey from anyone.
And so some quick things. Like I said, I’ve shared some of the language and the practical things I’m doing. The ones that I really just come back to are inner consent check before sharing advice even with my kids or with friends. Having a rule of taking three deep breaths before speaking in conflict.
Also, when someone else is sharing, waiting longer than is comfortable before I start talking, after they finish speaking. So sometimes I’ll even count to 10 because often there’s more to say that only emerges in the silence, and I realize how much I missed by jumping into fixing in the past. And also learning gentle, graceful boundaries, which has also been something I’ve been not good at in the past.
And from a place of actual boundaries, not request of someone else’s behavior. So things like, what I can offer is X, Y, Z. What I cannot offer is Y. Does that work for you? Or I am not available for X, I could be available for Y, et cetera. So hopefully these will be subtle shifts, but you might notice some editorial shifts or languaging shifts on Wellness Mama with more stories and my personal experience, fewer prescriptions, hopefully invitations over instructions, and just sharing my own journey, not giving advice. So if this has resonated at all with you like I said, there’s more resources in the show notes if you want to learn from actual experts around this and the people I’ve been learning from just sharing my opinion today.
And I feel like it’s interesting to analyze, like where do I most often enter the triangle, as victim, perpetrator or savior? And what sneaky payoff am I actually chasing? What body sensations show up when I play these different roles? What is a sentence I could use this week to shift things? And are there places, this was a big one for me, that deserve a simple repair from me?
And if so, how would I get there? So in summary, this is a longer episode than I anticipated, but I feel like stepping off the triangle as a practice, it’s not a personality transplant, it’s not becoming a different person. It’s becoming more aware of when we fall into these roles, especially unconsciously.
I hope today this has come across from a place of just sharing my own experience and appreciation, gratitude, and apology to those who have been affected by my past patterns, my commitment to learning in public and showing up imperfectly. Because I am very much a work in progress on this. And apologies for the times that I’ve showed up in these roles in the past.
I would love to actually hear from you if any of this resonated. If it didn’t, would love to hear that too. But just if you notice any of these similar things in your life and what’s been helpful, I really do love to hear your feedback, especially on these solo episodes. And I read every comment and rating and review.
Speaking of ratings and reviews, if you could take just one minute and leave an honest review wherever you listen to podcasts, that is one of the best ways you can support this podcast. I would be deeply, deeply grateful as it helps other people find and listen. But for today, thank you so much for spending time with me, for sharing your most important and valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention.
I don’t take that lightly and I’m so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama Podcast.
Leave a Reply