Someone dear to me – we’ll call her Jane – is in a relationship that I think is somewhere between very unhealthy and outright dangerous. The latest update on her and her boyfriend John read like an engraved invitation into The Drama Triangle.

In my mind, Jane is the victim. John is the persecutor. It’s a “Help Wanted” ad for a rescuer.

I have an exhaustive résumé as a rescuer, and the temptation to apply is overwhelming.

I’ve been down this road enough times to know it won’t help. The Drama Triangle creates only victims. Jane is a victim. John is a victim. The most powerful choice I can make here is to not volunteer as a victim in the rescuer role.

I went through my own process from last week’s post and asked myself the Rescuer-Escape questions:
How can I help empower this person?
What do I need right now?

I took care of what I needed immediately – sleep, rest, time to process and calm down.

When reflecting on how to empower Jane, I realized what I need is to not see her as a victim. I have no idea how to empower victims – I only know how to ‘save’ them.

I have mad skills when it comes to empowering intelligent, thoughtful, loving, beautiful, hard working women with dreams, however.

To see Jane as the amazingly capable woman I know her to be, I need to transform how I’m thinking about her.

For that, we’re turning to this month’s media pick, Brooke Castillo’s Self Coaching 101. I love this book so much that I’ve written about it previously, and am revisiting it this month with a two-part article. I think you will love it too.

One of the many reasons I admire Brooke and her work so much is her generosity in sharing this material. She has made the entire book available in PDF form downloadable for free. She has allowed anyone to reprint any portion of the book, as long as it is attributed properly.

To ensure I’m doing that properly, please note that anything I’m quoting from the book and the CTFAR image has been reprinted from Self Coaching 101: Use Your Mind – Don’t Let It Use You with permission from the author Brooke Castillo – www.brookecastillo.com.

Self Coaching 101: The Fundamentals

Brooke’s model is based on what she identifies as the following truths:

• “We cannot control the world.
• Nothing outside us has the power to make us feel good or bad.
• It is not the circumstances, but our thoughts about the circumstances that create our experience. We attract what we think about.
• Emotions are vibrations that lead to action.
• We can’t permanently change our results without changing our thoughts.
• We don’t have to get anything to feel better; we can feel better right now.
• Being conscious and choosing our thoughts are the most important components to feeling better.” (Self Coaching 101, Page 27.)

From these truths, Brooke developed what she calls “the Model” – sometimes known as CTFAR as well. This is that Circumstances can trigger thoughts. Thoughts, in turn, cause feelings. Feelings cause us to take actions. Actions generate results. These results then provide additional evidence for the original thought.

Brooke defines the CTFAR components as follows:

“Circumstances: Things that happen in the world that we cannot control.
Thoughts: Things that happen in your mind. This is where you self coach.
Feelings: Vibrations that happen in your body—caused by thoughts, not circumstances.
Actions: Behavior—what we do in the world. Caused by feelings, determined by thought.
Results: What we see in the world (our lives) as an effect of our actions. The result will always be evidence for the original thought.”  (Self Coaching 101, Page 29.)

As you can see, the place where we can have an impact is at the level of thought. I will go through this a little more next week, but for the moment, let’s dive in with an example. I find that is often the easiest way to understand the model. (If you prefer more explanation right away, check out Brooke’s video on the model.)

Let’s take the situation with Jane and John and run one thought through the model.

Circumstance: Jane is in a relationship with a man who drinks often and yells at her when drunk.
Thought: Jane is being damaged emotionally.
Feelings: scared, worried, angry
Actions: (potential options) Meet with Jane to tell her to leave this man. I explain to her that she needs help and give her Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More. Confront John and tell him to leave her alone.
Results: Jane is being damaged emotionally – by me.

Sometimes it’s not easy to see how your actions create results that provide evidence for the original thought. I want to walk through my various potential actions here to see how each one is resulting in evidence for the original thought.

Say I meet with Jane and tell her to leave this man. (I really, really want to do this.) Jane can correctly interpret this as:

• I don’t trust her choices.
• I don’t think she is capable of creating a healthy relationship.
• I think I know better than her, even though I’m not living her life.
• I think she is a victim.

All of these things are potentially emotionally damaging to Jane.

Say instead I explain to her that she needs help and give her Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More. (I would not do this, but I thought about it – with a fair appreciation for the irony.) Jane can correctly interpret this as:

• I think she is emotionally unhealthy and needs to change.
• I don’t think she is capable of creating a healthy relationship.
• I think I know better than her, even though I’m not living her life.
• I think she is a victim.

All of these things are again potentially emotionally damaging to Jane.

Finally, let’s pretend I confront John and tell him to leave her alone. Jane can correctly interpret this as:

• I don’t think she is capable of even making her own decisions.
• I have zero respect for her.
• I think I know better than her, even though I’m not living her life.
• I think she is a victim.

Again, all potentially emotionally damaging to Jane.

Obviously, I need a better thought. Next week we’re going to dive deeper into the variety of ways to use the model – for now I’d like to demonstrate how to use it when you have your circumstance and your desired feeling. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Circumstance: Jane is in a relationship with a man who drinks often and yells at her when drunk.
Thought: ?
Feelings: calm

At this point, I usually start brainstorming thoughts until I can find one that is believable and makes me feel calm. It’s really important that the thought is believable. If I tried “Jane is making a healthy emotional choice” it wouldn’t fly for me. So here goes:

Jane is socially savvy and has managed her life well up to this point.
Jane is on her own heroine’s journey and is capable of writing her own story.
Jane has access to the same loving Divine being that I do.
Jane is street smart and capable.
Jane is bringing up an emotional wound to the surface in order to heal it.
Jane is capable of charting her own destiny.

It’s possible that none of these are true, however, it’s also possible that all my negative thoughts about the situation are untrue. I don’t – and can’t – know. What I can know is how I want to feel and how I want to treat Jane.

Out of all of these, the one that makes me feel calmest is “Jane is bringing up an emotional wound to the surface in order to heal it.” Let’s run it through the model:

Circumstance: Jane is in a relationship with a man who drinks often and yells at her when drunk.
Thought: Jane is bringing up an emotional wound to the surface in order to heal it.
Feelings: calm, curious
Actions: (potential options) Meet with Jane and say something like “It seems like you’re not that happy with John and I think you said you had a family history of alcoholism. It feels to me like you might be bringing up an emotional wound to the surface in order to be healed….tell me where I’m wrong.” And then offer my support.
Results: Jane has a safe space to open up about an old emotional would if she chooses to bring it up for healing.

The critical thing for me is that I now see Jane as a powerful creator instead of a helpless victim. From here, I can be in the empowered version of a rescue role – that of a coach, where I have some hope of actually helping Jane. (If she wants or needs it.)

We’ll be looking at the model in different situations next week. In the meantime, I invite you to leave a comment and let me know what questions you have so I can address them in the next post.