In human relationships, an invisible stage often sets the scene for our struggles. On it plays a recurring drama called the triangle—a cycle of three roles: victim, perpetrator, and
savior. This model, first described by Stephen Karpman, shows how easily we become entangled in patterns of blame, helplessness, and rescue.
Though these roles feel familiar, even inevitable, they bind us in cycles of disempowerment and separation. Yet beyond the triangle lies the possibility of ‘human medicine’, a field of connection
and compassion that dissolves the drama and restores balance.
The Three Roles
The victim sees life as something happening to them. Powerless and dependent, they long for rescue, but each rescue deepens the sense of helplessness. The perpetrator seeks control, blame, or dominance. Their power is often a shield, hiding the fear of vulnerability and loss. The savior rushes in to help, advise, or fix. Noble on the surface, this role hides a need to be indispensable. The savior believes they are healing others, but in truth, they keep the triangle spinning.
It is the savior role that fuels the entire cycle. Every attempt to rescue confirms the victim’s weakness and the perpetrator’s power. Dependency is reinforced, roles flip, and the drama
continues: the savior, exhausted and unappreciated, slips into victimhood; the victim, angry, becomes the perpetrator; the perpetrator, seeking pity, turns into the victim.
This revolving door is the signature of the mind at work. The mind personalizes (“you did this to me”), seeks endlessly (“let me fix this”), and polarizes (“I’m good, you’re bad”). These movements are the engine of polarized consciousness—and the very soil in which the triangle thrives.
Recognizing the Savior
Because the savior keeps the triangle alive, learning to notice this role in ourselves is the key to freedom. The signs are often subtle but familiar. You may feel an urgent rush to fix or advise
before you have even listened. You may sense a hidden superiority, a belief that you know better than the other. You may find yourself drained or resentful after helping, or notice that others
come to depend on you for answers that you secretly fear not providing. At times, your very sense of self-worth may feel tied to being needed or indispensable.
Each of these experiences reveals the mind caught in its cycle of personalizing, seeking, and fixing. Simply noticing them with gentle awareness loosens the grip, creating space for the heart to respond instead.
The Compassionate Heart
The way out is not to fight the triangle but to see it through the lens of the compassionate heart. From this perspective, victim, perpetrator, and saviour are not enemies or flaws, but emanations of the same source, born of the longing to belong, to be safe, to be seen. The heart embraces them all with equanimity. In this embrace, the charge begins to dissolve. The mind’s need to fix softens. Conflict gives way to communion. What once appeared as battle roles are recognized as costumes worn by the same essence.
Harmony is not forced—it returns naturally when nothing is excluded.
Human Medicin
This is the essence of human medicine: a healing that does not come through rescuing, controlling, or blaming, but through presence and connection. In this space, no one is broken, so no one
needs saving. No one is helpless, so no one can truly be a victim. And no one must dominate, so there is no need for perpetrators.
When all roles are seen as expressions of the one life, conflict falls away and compassion remains.
From Triangle to Circle
The triangle is rigid and sharp-edged. Human Medicine turns it into a circle—soft, inclusive, whole. Within this circle, the victim rediscovers empowerment, the perpetrator finds safety in
vulnerability, and the savior experiences freedom in letting others be whole.
All roles are seen as passing expressions, not fixed identities. With nothing to fix or resist, the circle restores balance.
To step out of the triangle is to practice presence. Begin by pausing whenever you feel yourself pulled into a role. Instead of rushing to fix, blame, or collapse, offer your presence openly. By simply noticing and embracing what arises, without the need to change it, you return often to the compassionate heart where conflict can no longer exist. These simple practices shift awareness from the mind’s polarities into the heart’s field of oneness.
The drama triangle thrives on fear, separation, and the mind’s compulsion to fix. At its core, the savior role keeps the wheel turning.
But the compassionate heart sees all three roles as its own creations, embraces them, and allows their tension to dissolve. What remains is harmony, balance, and the recognition of shared
being.
This is the medicine of oneness: to meet ourselves and one another not as victims, perpetrators, or saviors, but as one compassionate heart, beating through us all.
Juno Burger
www.junoburger.com