Level 2 Triangles: From Conflict to Co-commitment
When we find ourselves in the painful conflict of a Level 1 triangle, whether in our relationships or internally—in our inner life—we may have more choices than we think. In addition to the ways to de-triangle described in the previous chapter, we can also consider some other ways out.
Being caught in the conflict of a triangle appears to offer us two choices. The first is to stop participating in the triangle, as we described in Chapter 6. The second is not to get involved in a triangle in the first place. However, there may be special circumstances in some triangles wherein we can consider more expanded and productive ways to handle such conflicts. In this chapter we will explain some of these other choices for detriangling by using methods and skills that offer us more flexibility. This expanded way of viewing conflicted relationships and triangles is a major focus of this book.
Level 1 triangles tend to be more rigid and cause emotional and sometimes physical pain for each of its members. They tend to be ego driven, fearful, and based on shame, guilt and anger. They often operate out of the two most common core recovery issues of adult children of trauma in early recovery: all-or-none thinking and behaving, and needing to be in control.
By contrast, Level 2 triangles offer us more flexibility. In place of victim, rescuer and persecutor, the roles now become expanded into self-empowered, nurturer, and motivator. This new triangle tends to be True Self driven and in the long run has less resultant suffering. This is because in Level 1 triangles we usually resist pain—which creates our suffering. In Level 2 we know we have pain, but allow for it, which then creates awareness, opportunity and movement of our pain.
Instead of feeling conflicted, stuck, frustrated and powerless, Level 2 thinking, behaving, and being is based on seeing more choices, feeling empathy and realizing acceptance through conflict, all of which are based on co-commitment instead of conflict.
A basic principle when moving from one triangle to a higher level is that while each progressively higher level transcends one or more levels below it, it also includes and subsumes those below. For example, when moving from a Level 1 triangle to a Level 2, we do not have to discard perhaps the most useful relationship skills, which we use in the healthy practice of de-triangling, of choosing not to participate in a triangle at all. Instead, we can relate to each of the triangle’s other two members in a healthy and relatively conflict-free way, while at the same time transcending into a Level 2 triangle.
Our “attitude” toward living describes our relationship with life. Do we embrace life or resist it? Do we consider having a curiosity about how our life works? Or do we have a need to control people, places and things to stay at a distance? Do we allow our life to unfold? Is our life a friend or a foe? As we explore these questions, we may cultivate an attitude that opens our awareness to considering the empowerment that we derive from an expanded Level 2 triangle. To develop such a positive attitude we can begin by letting go of some of our limiting ego-driven traits, including those of judging, blaming and guilting others.
How do we let go of living in all-or-none, right-or-wrong, or either-or thinking? Can we give up feelings of powerlessness, helpless-hopeless and choicelessness? Can we be mindful of releasing the right to judge another person’s perception of reality—believing that there is only one version of reality (that is, ours)?
Can we let go of feeling we are victims? Can we choose to accept our responsibilities, i.e., accept ownership for all of our perceptions of reality and the meaning that we give them?
When we de-triangle, we can see what happens to our prior Level 1 triangle roles of victim, rescuer and persecutor. We shift from feeling like a victim to a position of empowerment. In doing so, we use the skill of reframing the conflict that was formerly “victimizing” us.
Reframing implies looking at something from a different perspective. Our view gets bigger, more inclusive and encompassing. The reframe, the expanded perception(s) contain more information, cognitively and emotionally. Our prior victim stance no longer holds the power it had over us. We learn to see the dark and the light, the yin and the yang, as parts of the process. We see the wholeness and balance in things. We embrace any oppositional energy as a challenge. Or we let it go.
We sometimes see the positives that unfold after seemingly terrible life events. Divorce, job loss, serious accidents and illness usually bring us to a victim stance. When we open to the challenge that comes with these painful conflicts and experiences, our grieving can help us identify with our True Self, expanding our thoughts and vision. Collectively, economic, social and political disasters can bring people together and unite a nation, as we saw during the first year after September 11, 2001. But living in our false self can aggravate such unity, as we saw in the subsequent political conflict aggravated by our all-or-none two-party political system (see side bar, “Raising Politics to Level 2”).
A substantial number of people in recovery have used a Twelve Step fellowship recovery program. It takes humility to begin to work the Twelve Steps of recovery from any life problem. To admit we are powerless over anything, and that our lives have become unmanageable, is difficult. To even consider these possibilities takes an opening within our inner life. Hitting a “bottom” is often a factor. A small degree of humility may allow for that beginning. Then, when we start to work the Twelve Steps, that degree of humility begins to grow—usually slowly. The more humility we have, the more we can work the Steps. And in a reciprocal fashion, the more we work the Steps, the more our humility grows, as shown in Figure 7.1. The more both of these increase, the more we recover and heal. (See Appendix B for further examples from Steps Six and Seven.)
Figure 7.1 Humility, Working the Twelve Steps and Healing A Reciprocal Relationship
When we expand our view of a Level 1 triangle, each role can change to allow and promote inner peace. We now transform our persecutor role into that of a motivator (see Table 7.1). As a motivator we no longer judge or blame the victim. We often can stop projecting our own painful feelings onto the victim. We become a sort of cheerleader. We have an interior attitude that communicates affirmation: “I know you can do it! It may be a tough choice, but I believe in you.”
Table 7.1 Roles in Level 1 and 2 Triangles
Level 1 |
Level 2 |
Victim |
Empowered Self |
Persecutor |
Motivator |
Rescuer |
Nurturer |
These expanded roles offer us still more choices. The person formerly in the rescuer role in the first triangle, having dropped the internal victim, and now believing in the choice-making potential of the former “victim,” transforms this position into a nurturing role. A nurturer emotionally supports the person faced with a difficult situation, problem or choice. And the former “victim” takes responsibility for remaining in a victim stance and reframes their attitude and behavior into a more empowered person (see Table 7.1 and Figure 7.2).
Figure 7.2 Roles in Levels 1 and 2 Triangles
Thus we see the emergence of a higher functioning Level 2 triangle, which we can also call a co-commitment triangle, a term first suggested by Gay and Kathryn Hendricks in their book Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment:
A co-committed relationship is one in which two or more people support each other in being whole, complete individuals. The commitment is to going all the way, to letting the relationship be the catalyst for the individuals to express their full potential and creativity. In a co-committed relationship between two people, each take 100 percent responsibility for his or her life and for the results that each creates. There are no victims in co-committed relationships. In fact, victimhood is impossible when both people are willing to acknowledge that they are the cause of what happens to them. There is little conflict, because neither person plays the accusatory, victim role. With the energy saved through lessened conflict, both people are free to express more creativity.36
Laura was thirty-eight years old and a member of our psychotherapy group for two and a half years. She came from a moderately dysfunctional family and childhood—as did her husband. As she worked on her issues over that time she realized that her twelve-year-old son, Jason, was enmeshed in a triangle with her and her husband. She realized that her feeling of being their victim came from both her son and husband, but was really more about her dysfunctional marriage that she couldn’t change. She saw herself as constantly placating to her husband and as a victim between him and their child. Over time she understood her role in this Level 1 triangle and brought her husband in for several couples therapy sessions with me (CW). He was not interested in therapy. He remained passive or said he wanted to leave. During a couples workshop that she had insisted they take, he told her that he wanted to end the marriage; he was sick of the conflicts and felt she had never been on his side. Laura said she realized at that point that he would never understand how important her personal growth and recovery was. She agreed to divorce. They both agreed for Jason’s sake they would drop their resentments toward each other and continue to co-parent, only now they would be on the same team for the good of their child. They started reframing their conflicts to include what was good for Jason and for their mutual peace. Over time, Jason’s behavior improved and so did his grades in school. Laura is encouraged by this and continues to work on her recovery.
Both Laura and her husband feel more empowered and less likely to blame the other. For now, they have transcended Level 1 triangle functioning and are living a more evolved and successful Level 2. When the pressure was off their child, he was able to return to being a child.
At this level of functioning, it becomes necessary to be able to identify clearly our needs for nourishment and nurturing, expressing them without repression or the need to manipulate others unconsciously in order to get our needs met. Laura’s story is an example of giving up the stance of all-or-none, either/or polarity and agreeing to be on the same side, which gives room for expanded both/and successful resolution.
The first triangle—briefly described as conflict—operates through negative thinking and relating. It is based on competition for a falsely perceived scarcity of nurturing and love. The second triangle—co-commitment—is based on cooperation, positive thoughts and relationship patterns of support, respect and responsibility for one’s choices. As shown in Table 7.2, this Level 2 triangle has transformed scarcity to abundance, from “not enough love” (attention, power, money) to “I have the power to nurture myself and the clarity to ask for love or attention when I need it”—an empowered quality or position.
The Level 2 triangle thus becomes a relationship dynamic marked by co-commitment with others. Here the “commitment” refers to having and maintaining an inner integrity to our own authenticity, awareness and willingness to respect all perceptions, preferences and needs. Our choices come from an empowerment within. It is not located outside of us. We are no longer focusing outside of ourselves.
To move to Level 2 we open our hearts. Therefore, it is in and around the heart chakra where most of our work takes place. The challenge is one of attaining balance. The abundance of Level 2 begins to bring more to our lives: It offers us more possibilities, choices, decisions and experiences. For some, the realization that it is possible to assume responsibility for all our reality can feel overwhelming. Others may just glance at it and retreat into denial and a feeling of numbness. In spite of the difficulties in attaining it, being in Level 2 is noticeably peaceful and more enjoyable.
We learn to live in our hearts (instead of our painful “co-dependent” feelings that come from focusing outside of ourselves). As we move up the triangles, each new step both includes and transcends the previous triangle(s). As we benefit from our new peace in Level 2, we accept more dimensions of our life, identify our wounds, become more aware of our painful patterns, reframe our way of thinking, open our hearts and increase our choices.
Table 7.2 Characteristics of Levels 1 and Level 2 Triangles
Areas of Attention |
Level One Conflict (ego) |
Level Two Co-commitment (True Self) |
Stance or Story |
Victim or martyr |
Telling our story; authentic |
Parenting |
Controlling; shaming |
Supportive; empowering |
Roles/Polarities/Energies |
Victim; rescuer; persecutor |
Self-empowered; nurturer; motivator |
Primary Characteristics |
Fear based: choiceless, powerless; emotionally supports choicelessness; right and wrong thinking |
Acceptance through conflict; can see choices; can be empathetic win-win |
Chakra |
Root—first through third |
Heart—fourth |
Triangle Maintenance |
Competition for nurturing or nourishment; fear of change, failure; avoid fear; staying in control |
Active and aware; expressing and listening |
Triangle Initiation/Embracing the Shadow |
Relieve tension of dyad; simple presence of third person; playing the game |
Tired of suffering; crave/seek a better way; self-knowledge and expression; expose authentic expression; give up the games |
Transformation of Suffering |
Being “pushed by suffering” |
Pain, not suffering |
Embrace the contrary, duality and opposites |
Accept; balance |
|
Energy That Drives It |
Desperation, survival drive (feminine); toxic frustration (masculine) |
Courage; leap of faith; longing for peace, unity and a better way |
Spiritual Practices |
Conventional religion |
Meditation, prayer, yoga, Twelve Step work; psychotherapy (humanistic, existential, transpersonal); Stage Two Recovery (such as traumabased); body/breath work; indigenous practices |
Hindrances |
Awareness, recovery |
Conventional religion, psychology, medicine, politics, business, media; mind control/ ego; fear; doubt; shadow; intellectualization of life |
Humility |
Absent; arrogance (often hiding shame) and denial |
Begins true expression |
In the sidebar below, we offer some guidelines for being in these higher levels.
We will likely find it useful to practice being in and even enjoying Level 2 triangles before rushing into Level 3. While at times we may find prayer useful to move up to Level 3, there may be no rush for us to try to jump there prematurely.