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.
What Victim-Rescuer-Abuser Roles I Learned in My Family?
These roles learned are passed on down from our father and mother’s lineages. I carried a tendency of victim-rescuer-abuser in the my DNA.
Father victim of his parental wounding from his mother. He looked after his mother’s needs on trip from Russia to US – Rescuer/Codependent. He suffered as a Victim of his alcohol addiction, having no awareness how to heal.
My father seldom talked to me. He also aside from anger never expressed other emotions.
I believed my father felt a lot of shame as a child. He may have had a lot of repressed anger and also self-hatred which surfaced after a few drinks of alcohol. I recognize now that he experienced deep emotional wounding. My father I sense felt worthless and the “lowest man on the totem pole.”
I say this because as a teen I felt ashamed that everyone knew my father as an alcoholic. As a empath/sensitive I took on his feelings of shame as my own. Compared to the other boys at school, I felt like “lowest man on the totem pole.” I kept this all to myself. I also thought of myself as stupid as the smartest boy in grade 12 had a lot higher IQ that me.
Persecutor: The Bully
As a Persecutor, my father attempted to overcome his powerless and shame. He became belligerent with his drinking buddies in town. Ongoing for 20 years, he bullied and emotionally and verbally abused my mother. He denied his inadequacies by victimizing my mother. So I know he felt like a Victim. He did express that the world owned him a living. Mother, as young girl, became caretaker/rescuer of 5 other children when her mother died young. She lived on a farm with lots of back breaking work from dawn to dusk. In our family, my mother took on the victim/martyr role. As a teen she said to me our loud one time, “Look at all I’ve sacrificed for you kids.”
I learned unconsciously from a young age to take on parental role. Without knowing it, I filled in for my father. I learned to be a victim. As young boy, I made unconscious decisions to feel somewhat safe. I stayed quiet, expressed nothing and repressed my feelings. My anger I repressed at the deepest levels.
For survival I allowed myself to be a victim of my father’s anger. I decided it was unsafe to express anger. As a result, I carried many layers of anger throughout my life. Only extreme provocation evoked a state of rage.
https://www.emotionalhealthtips.com/dysfunctional-family-roles/
Drama Triangle https://youtu.be/E_XSeUYa0-8
See Also more ways of overcoming relationship conflict
See 3 Methods for Dissolving Victim Patterns https://www.emotionalhealthtips.com/victim/
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