As a counselor, and even more as someone practicing community care, and even more as someone working with an abused people group, it is often my job to work and think as an advocate. I have a different voice, with a different power differential, and I can be heard in different ways than many of the people I work and care for. Advocacy is a very necessary thing, because many people have had their voices taken away, and need someone to speak for them, to work for their rights, their point of view. Abolition is a good example of a people group (Slaves) needing someone else standing for their cause because their rights were taken away from them. Advocacy has a great history and those working for advocacy have changed the world.
But their must be a careful balance to advocacy. I have seen advocacy be an excuse for hostility, and I have seen people put their anger towards a cause when their problem is much more personal. Stephen Karpman, a Transactional Analyst, came up with what he calls the Drama triangle. The three points of the triangle are the Victim, the Abuser and the Rescuer. All three have to be there for the dynamic to happen. The problem is that sometimes the rescuer needs to rescue someone so badly he makes a victim and abuser.
“The relationship between the victim and the rescuer can be one of codependency. The Rescuer keeps the Victim dependent on them by playing into their Victimhood. The Victim gets their needs met by having the rescuer take care of them.”
The Abuser can feel put in a box, labeled all-bad when their motives were more fluid, the Victim can feel helpless and dependant and the Rescuer can feel like they have to take care of others and never get their needs met. What I find most interesting is that when this dynamic happens, someone always ends up feeling bad. Often times someone will try to rescue a victim, only to see them get defensive and label their abuser as “not that bad” or “misunderstood”.
What I am trying to say is I am having a hard time doing my job. There is a lot of injustice happening, and there are a lot of people who have been harmed. This pulls out of me my desire to protect. It also makes me want to see some as good and others as bad, and to put me in the category with the good people. Not stepping into this drama triangle, or any other dynamic that labels some good and others bad, means that I have to see the humanness in the abusers. I think that is much of my fear, that seeing it from the abusers perspective, and not labeling them all bad, will let them get off the hook.
