Keeping busy and the Drama Triangle

You may recognise the problem:  too much work, leading to tiredness, stress mistakes and demotivation.  Then your manager offers you help.  What do you do?

A – accept gratefully, hand some of your tasks to someone else, and concentrate on other work

B – accept but try to stay in control, either monitor or check their work, or perhaps get upset when they do it differently or take a decision without asking you first

I have seen both reactions from colleagues and as the sample grows I begin to think that which reaction occurs may be partly explicable by the extent to which they are participating in Karpman’s Drama Triangle.

The drama triangle is an unhelpful situation where we act as either a victim, a persecuter or a rescuer.  Each dramatic role influences others to assume the other roles – so if you act like a victim it creates a persecuter, and probably a rescuer.  Combine this with a Transactional Analysis game: the payoff in this drama triangle role for the overworked person is that they feel like a victim, are acting heroically in a situation where nobody could possible help them successfully, and so their stress or lack of success are justified. We then have a situation where the help is actually a threat to the status quo, which if successful may break the comfortable patterns of behaviour of the overworked person.  Change is often challenging or painful, so they may resist.  Certainly something I have been guilty of in the past.

Back to my sample.  Those most resistant to receiving help appear to be those who already cope worst with stress, display more negative emotion than is normal, and want to stay in control the most.  Those whom it is easier to help (and to work with) tend to be more relaxed and apparently secure in themselves.

This is not to suggest that the person who sees themselves in a dramatic or heroic role is not a high performer – just that they are harder to help if they are overwhelmed with work.

A lot of management literature suggests that everyone needs to feel heroic in their work.  Based on the above thoughts, I would question that.  We need to feel what we do is worthwhile and appreciated, but do we need to get dragged into a potential drama to overcome impossible odds?

My prescription in this situation would be reflective practice.  Stop and think.  Do you stop people from helping you when you have too much to do?