Overcoming Relationship Conflict: Victim-Rescuer-Abuser

People unconsciously play or manipulate others in roles of victim, rescuer and abuser.

Empaths and extra sensitive adults may find this info useful. Parents with sensitive children also can find it helpful. Regular people can also benefit understanding and overcoming relationship conflict: victim-rescuer-abuser.

It is possible to overcome these roles. Can you conceive of evolving beyond drama and suffering?

Victims – Victims depend on a Rescuer/Savior

It is our inner child who plays the victim. The inner child lives within our psyche as the child age approximately age 3 – 6 from our past childhood.

A victim looks for a rescuer; someone to save them. My inner child looked for fellow pit dwellers – other Poor Me’s to live in misery.

As a child & teen I wanted rescue from the daily farm chores morning to night. I had unconscious displaced anger towards my mother for making me work all the time. The anger originated really towards my father for abandoning his role. A father has responsibility for the protection and safety of the family.

Overcoming relationship conflict, victims encounter challenges letting go of suffering. They have little awareness of how they continuing their patterns of suffering. They may feel they have no power to change these patterns.

Rescuers – Rescuers yearn for the helpless to save

Caretakers, Doers, Enablers, Fixers, Saviors – “Let me help you!” Rescuers as parents may tend avoid setting boundaries for their children.

They neglect setting healthy personal boundaries, knowing & taking care of their own needs.

Rescuers tend being codependents. Codependency is an excessive reliance on other people. It is reliance for approval and a sense of identity

Overcoming relationship conflict, I often felt extreme fatigue from overdoing. I felt like a victim/martyr with anger festering underneath.

Persecutors/Abusers – Persecutors need scapegoats

Blamers, Bullies, Controllers, Critics, – “It’s all your fault!” Persecutors criticize and get angry. Persecutors can be over critical parents. They may also be narcissists; they focus only on getting their needs met.

Overcoming relationship conflict, persecutors have challenges being flexible. Challenges also include being vulnerable or assisting in problem solving.

My family patterns: Victim-Rescuer-Abuser

Grew up in a family filled with conflict.
Coped by making an unconscious decision to keep my mouth shut
Repressed my feelings.
Numbed out from life.

My mother raised 5 kids as well as did all the house and farm work. This coincided of feeding cattle and milking cows twice a day. Harvesting the grain in the fields and raising huge gardens.

As the oldest I unconsciously took on the role of father in the family. My father, an alcoholic, spent most of his time in town drinking in the beer pillar. When not in town, he had his bottles of rye whiskey hidden in the barn.

In my early teens, my father, as an abuser would come home drunk and yell and fight with my mother. My mother as a victim would take it for a little while. Then the roles would switch she would blame my father for drinking. He would then be the victim.

Note: Someone takes on persecutor. Roles can switch. My father persecuted my mother as victim. Then often my mother blamed my father for always drinking.

My mother would take on the rescuer role also and want my father to stop drinking.

It was impossible for him. He carried such deep emotional wounds from his childhood. For all his life his addiction ran his life. This out pictured in alternating between abuser and victim. For 20 years my mother never stopped wanting to fix my father.

Peace never existed in the household, only brief respites from verbal conflict. During holiday meals there was no or little conversation. A low-level depression hung over the whole family.

https://www.emotionalhealthtips.com/dysfunctional-family-roles/