ERP 173: How to Transform Drama in Your Relationship, with David Emerald
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Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. This is episode 173, “How to transform drama in your relationship, with David Emerald.” Before we get started in today’s interview, I wanna just take a moment with you, as I typically do, to just ask you to join me in centering into the intention; the intention that I’m setting for the Empowered Relationship Podcast is that we are growing ourselves in relationship, knowing relationship is gonna teach us, show us and help us transform some of our wounding, our sensitivities, our old trauma, or even just grow ourselves in areas that perhaps we are under-developed in.
Now, as you tune into this episode, I’m not sure what your intention is… Whether or not it’s just to get through some difficult time in your relationship, or whether or not it’s to be inspired about what’s possible in relationship… I just wanna welcome your intention to have meaning and value as you listen in today’s episode.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, I wanna encourage you to visit DrJessicaHiggins.com click on Podcast, and you can find the most recent episodes there at the top. Again, today’s episode is 173.
Our guest today, David Emerald, is the author of The Power of TED (the Empowerment Dynamic). If you’ve been a consistent listener, you may have remembered in episode 156 and 157 where I’m talking about what it feels like to be a victim in relationship, the drama triangle, and particularly in 157, titled “How to shift out of the victim position”, I really reference a lot of David Emerald’s teachings and his principles that are in this book, The Power of TED. Today he is joining us for conversation, as we talk about how to transform drama in your relationship.
If you would like to access the two episodes that I mentioned, I will make sure to put that on the show notes. In today’s interview I particularly like how humble David Emerald is, and also how dynamic his principles are.
A lot of what David Emerald is doing in the world is related to supporting people in the business sector, around relationship, and in my mind, everything is relationship… So he’s talking with us about how these principles affect intimate relationship. Let’s get started in today’s episode.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: David Emerald Womeldorff is the Creator-in-Chief of the 3 Vital Questions leadership frameworks proven to powerfully boost teamwork and productivity. Thousands of people and organizations have achieved breakthroughs by applying his self-leadership techniques and attending his seminars worldwide. David and his wife and business partner Donna Zajonc MCC have developed the frameworks that form the basis of the engaging workplace fable, 3 Vital Questions: Transforming Workplace Drama.
Thank you so much, David, for joining the show today.
David Emerald: My pleasure, Jessica.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, and as I mentioned to you before we were getting started today, two previous podcast episodes were heavily inspired by your book, the Power of TED (the Empowerment Dynamic), and really what you’re focusing on is the drama triangle, and also helping people feel more well-equipped around what’s all involved in that and how to shift out of that drama triangle into more of an empowered place.
Now, I’m not gonna recap those episodes, but I’m just so privileged to have you on the show and just to get to hear your voice in all of this… So is there anything you would like listeners to know about what either got you into this work, or just anything you wanna say that helps us get to know you a little bit?
David Emerald: Well, why don’t I start, Jessica, with just a brief version of what I call the story behind the story, where the Power of TED especially came from; I will also give you a little bit of my background. Actually, the story goes back 25 years ago – again, I’m not gonna give you a 25-year-long story, but the character David in the Power of TED goes to the beach because he’s reflecting on three things that were occurring in his life. One was his dad, who he was very close to, had a very healthy relationship with and passed away; the second issue was that he and his wife at the time (or my wife at the time) were trying to start a family, and found out that (I’m gonna personalize it) I was medically infertile. As a result of that, my wife at the time was quite introverted, and I hold no animosity toward her about this, but she just totally really withdrew… And as a result, the marriage dissolved.
So the character David in the fable in the Power of TED – that part is autobiographical. That was going on for me, again, about 25 years ago. And I think one of the healthiest things I did at that time was that I sought out the services of a psychologist and coach much like you, that worked with couples, worked with that kind of drama, and I was introduced to the Karpman drama triangle. As I know that you’re well aware, the drama triangle, which we call the DDT (dreaded drama triangle) was originally developed by Dr. Stephen Karpman in the late 1960’s. So when I heard that, and the roles of victim, persecutor and rescuer, it was what I referred to as a blinding flash of the obvious. What I mean by that is that once I heard and saw that, it just helped me make so much sense of my life experience.
I had been working with this therapist for probably about 4-5 months, and one morning I was doing just what I call my morning quiet time; for me that’s a period of meditation, prayer, reading, a lot of times journaling… I used to do a lot of journaling back then… And I was really in a contemplative, kind of a peripheral space, and in that peripheral space I said to the God of my understanding, I said “Okay, God, I’m ready to surrender my victim stance on the world, but I need to know what’s the opposite of victim.” And immediately, in the blink of an eye, the word “creator” came into my mind. And it was a real epiphany for me. I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect that word.
That was really, if you will, the moment of conception, of what eventually emerged as TED. It was something that, Jessica, was really — something that I would think about sometimes, and forget about sometimes for years… And then about 15 years ago I met Donna. As you mentioned, Donna is a master certified coach… And I was engaged in a debrief session around a feedback system that I’m certified in. The gentleman had brought up how he just saw so many people as victims in his interactions at work, and I had recently moved from Ohio where I’m originally from, to the Pacific North-West, and had come across some doodlings around alternate triangles to the DDT, because I started to wonder “Well, if creator is the opposite of victim, is there an opposite to persecutor? Is there an opposite to rescuer?” Because I had that freshly revisited in my mind when he brought up the idea of people being victims. I shared with him the version of that alternate triangle, which eventually became TED or the Empowerment Dynamic, which we’ll talk more about here in just a few minutes…
But again, to give you a brief version of the story, the next day as I was at the airport, getting ready to come back home, I was talking to Donna on the phone, we were not married yet… She asked me about my coaching sessions and I told her a longer story about that particular coaching sessions… And she — I refer to Donna as TED’s mom; she asked me “Is that original work?” and I said “Oh no, the drama triangle has been around for years.” She said “I know that, but the other triangle…” and I said “Well, I guess so. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about off and on for years…” And she’s the one that said “You’ve really gotta write that down.”
So that’s a long answer to your question. My background really is leadership and organization development, but having had plenty of experience as part of a couple, and as you well know, Donna and I are not only married, but we are also work partners, which brings also some additional dynamics into a couples’ relationship.
I think I’ll stop there for now in terms of background, but that’s really what brought me into really writing about TED, the Empowerment Dynamic.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, thank you for sharing that. I just feel from what you’re sharing that it comes from your own transformation that was very divinely inspired, and that it was a culmination of your continual contemplation, and then the support from people that were helping you evolve, and then your partner and your wife and your business partner that has helped you kind of really birth this all… So I love that there’s such an integrative nature that’s very much a part of you. Thank you for sharing that.
David Emerald: Sure.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay, so I’m recognizing that some people that are listening perhaps don’t really know the drama triangle that well, so if you wouldn’t mind recapping… I know it’s hard to do.
David Emerald: No, I’d be happy to. The drama triangle, or again, what we call the DDT, because as I described and as you’ll see, this is a toxic [unintelligible 00:11:15.09] toxic chemical…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And DTT is Dreaded Drama Triangle.
David Emerald: The Dreaded Trauma Triangle…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes.
David Emerald: And it’s made up of three roles. The primary or central role of the drama is the role of victim. We’re in the role of victim any time frankly we’re complaining, any time we feel powerless or we feel hopeless. I think a very important distinction to make very briefly, but it is an important distinction, is that I make a distinction between victimization and victimhood. Victimization is something that we all experience. If you think about victimization on the proverbial scale of 1 to 10, I may feel victimized because I’m in a hurry and I’m in a slow line at the grocery store… Whereas the [unintelligible 00:12:03.02] turn on the news and see all kinds of stories about more severe victimization. That is different than victimhood.
To me, victimhood is an identity, it’s a way of being, and all of this work really stands as what I call a challenger to victimhood, while acknowledging the reality of victimization, and the fact that as human beings we all experience feelings of victimization from time to time.
So again, for the victim it’s any time we are complaining, “I feel powerless, helpless, hopeless etc.”
In order to be a victim, one must have a persecutor. And the persecutor – Dr. Karpman’s drama triangle was really focused purely on interpersonal dynamics, which we will stay primarily with, but I do wanna say that the persecutor role could certainly be a person, but it also could be a health condition; it also could be a circumstance, like a natural disaster. Well, what happens is that once the dynamic between a persecutor and a victim gets engaged, the victim is reacting to the persecutor as a problem, and frankly, when it’s a person, a persecutor is reacting to the victim as a problem as well.
Then once the dynamic between victim and persecutor gets engaged, the third role that makes up the drama triangle is the role of rescuer. And here again, the rescuer does not have to be a person; it could be any kind of behavior. It could be frankly an addiction, or anything that helps the victim numb our from or distance from their sense of victimization.
As a person, the rescuer can come in the triangle in one of three ways. They can either be invited in, our sought out by the victim. Very often a rescuer – and by the way, I will acknowledge that I’m covering the rescuer… The rescuers insert themselves into the drama and consciously or unconsciously come in and try to save the day.
Then there’s also what I call a hoped for rescuer; when the rescuer is not apparent, but the victim is hoping for a rescuer to emerge. In summary, again, the three roles are victim, which is a central role, persecutor, and rescuer.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. Thank you for explaining, David. A recap of that, having a visual and some more story is helpful to illustrate this, so for listeners – I encourage you to get the book The Power of TED, or perhaps even listen to the previous podcasts that I mentioned, and I will make sure that’s on the show notes. Just for easy reference, it’s 156 and 157.
Okay, so can you talk a little bit about maybe a story where a couple may be experiencing the drama triangle?
David Emerald: I’ll go through my memory bank and I’ll just draw from this morning. I’m drawing from this morning because of an interaction that Donna and I had; I wanna preface this story by saying I don’t want you or your listeners to think for a moment that because Donna and I teach this that we don’t find ourselves going reactive and we don’t find ourselves in the drama from time to time.
What happened this morning is we had a web session, a [unintelligible 00:15:37.28] certified trainers, and Donna just yesterday got a new computer; she was hosting the meeting and some things came up during the course of the webinar, and I would advise her during the webinar to unmute somebody or something like that, and it really triggered her. What happens between couples is that we get into patterns where it’s easy for either partner to trigger the other to go reactive.
And after the call I went to Donna’s office to talk to her about how things went; actually, the call went really well, but she had been triggered by my (in a sense) making her look (could be interpreted as making her look) incompetent. She said “Please don’t do that”, and she said it with a tone in her voice; I then got hooked a bit, I got triggered, and got a bit defensive… And what often happens with couples is that what we experienced – and again, not deeply this morning, but it happens – is what’s called in transactional analysis a game, or a pattern that I call “Victim, victim, who’s the victim?”
In that interaction – and I hope you can see with this illustration – Donna was feeling persecuted, felt like she was being victimized by my persecuting her during the web session, and then I felt victimized because I felt like she was persecuting me, because I was just trying to help. That dynamic can happen over and over again.
I would say, Jessica – and I know that you know this – that probably the most challenging practice field for this kind of work is in our most intimate relationships, because of the memories, the patterns, the already listening we have in those most intimate relationships. So that’s an example.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you. I love that you can just reference your own experience, and that it’s such a part of the way in which you operate; you live it, it’s not just something you teach. I really appreciate that.
For people that are familiar even with this drama triangle, and maybe they resonate with one of the roles of the victim, persecutor or rescuer, and maybe notice that tendency – I guess I’m interested in what do you do when you notice it’s happening? Because as you’re describing that brief interaction this morning, if both people are almost jocking for that victim position, and who’s more injured… I can see how the downward spiral of that can create that disconnect, but what do you do as far as encouraging people to just even identify it and then shift out of it?
David Emerald: Great question, and I’m going to take a very important detour to be able to answer that question. The detour is into what we call our mindsets or our orientations, or what we refer to as FISBE. FISBE stands for what we Focus on, engage as an Inner State (IS stands for Inner State), which then drives behavior. I will tell you that that’s also the first of the three vital questions in the newer book.
The first one of the questions – where are we putting our focus? Well, the drama triangle is really rooted in a problem/victim orientation, where our focus is on problems. When a problem occurs and engages an inner state of anxiety or fear, and then we react. A classic form of reacting, as you all know, is either fight, flight, freeze and we’ve added a fourth, which is to appease – to go along and get along.
I’m going there because when we find ourselves in a drama interaction, the first step is frankly the hardest step, which is to notice it, to become aware “Oh, we’re in this way of interacting”, and to remember that it is rooted in this problem, victim orientation.
If you think about it, the victim sees the persecutor as the problem, the persecutor sees the victim as a problem, the rescuer sees both the victim and the persecutor as problems… So they’re all problem-focused.
In order to get off the triangle – and that’s language that we use… In the triangle itself there’s — I’ll need to explain this, but you can’t get out of the triangle from within the triangle.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, I’m remembering when I was doing my own individual work, and I think it actually was some supervision; I was living in Boulder, Colorado at the time, and the psychologist was working with me with the drama triangle, and I was working with the student loans as the persecutor… And she was asking me to embody all three positions, and it was just circular, there was nowhere to go. I was like “I want out of this…! None of this is good.” I remember popping out… So it sounds like that’s kind of what you’re describing – the recognition that it’s just endless.
David Emerald: Yeah, it is. Again, going back to the problem orientation for a moment, if we can shift our mindset and shift our focus to what we refer to as a creator orientation, outcome-focused, creator orientation. To describe the FISBE briefly – the focus in that mindset, which we all have some experience with, is to focus on the outcome that we want. And if we care about that outcome, the inner state that it’s going to engage is an inner state of some form or fashion because we care about it. And that gives us the energy for creative behavior; we refer to it as taking a baby step. As we take a baby step, we get closer or clearer about the outcome.
The thing about the problem orientation is we are mostly putting our attention on what we don’t want and what we don’t like. That’s why we call them problems. And the outcome creator orientation – our attention is on what we do what. All this to come back to the question that you asked a few moments ago… The way that we can escape the drama triangle is by shifting our focus, “What is it that we really want?” It’s to call time out and say “Wait a minute, what do we really want here?” Or it could be “What is it that you really want?”
I’ll go back to the example of the little interaction that Donna and I had this morning, and all credit to her, she’s the one that — because I was feeling defensive… She said “No, wait a minute… What is it that we really want when we’re co-facilitating these web meetings?” We got clear about what we want is a clarity around who’s the primary facilitation, and the clarity around for instance using the chat capacity of the system that we use to perhaps cue one another. So we focused on what we wanted, and got out of the drama triangle and started to engage more from the TED or empowerment dynamic roles.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, because you identified what you wanna create, and then that invited the participation of how you guys can work together to create that. A quote from your book, David, that I really loved, as you said, “A problem is rarely ever solved from within the victim orientation”, and it sounds like the way you’re describing… And this is natural, that we all have the tendency to look at the problem and really try to solve the problem. But when the attention and the focus is so keenly attuned to the problem and it creates that reaction that you’re talking about, and then it can spin us into this very hopeless, not empowered, lack of control place. “He/she doesn’t care about me, she doesn’t listen…”, and we’re reacting to that and feeling powerless to it, is that right?
David Emerald: You bet. And what we know is that reacting begets reacting begets reacting…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes.
David Emerald: …and then that downward spiral. So by changing our mindset and really focusing on what we want… If I can, why don’t I go ahead and describe the empowerment dynamic roles and how they relate to the drama roles…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Perfect.
David Emerald: …because as we shift to an outcome orientation, we can then — and it takes conscious practice, but we can cultivate a totally different set of triangles, relationships roles and dynamics, that if we refer to the drama triangle as the Dreaded Drama Triangle (DTT)because of the toxic nature, we refer to TED as the antidote to the DTT.
So if the central role of the drama triangle is the role of victim, the central role of the empowerment dynamic (TED) is the role of creator. As a creator, we have the capacity to envision outcomes and focus on the outcomes that we wanna create.
Also, a very important part of really growing into our capacity and (we think) our true essence as creators is that we have the ability to choose our response to whatever is going on in our lives, even if it’s the [unintelligible 00:26:13.20] of the victimization scale. As a creator, I can create outcomes and I can choose my response to whatever is going on in my life… Which then takes us to the challenger role, which is the antidote to the role of persecutor.
Challengers, again, could be a person, condition or circumstance. Student loans could be a situation or circumstance. The thing about challengers is that challengers call forth learning and growth. So when something happens in our lives, or an individual triggers us to go reactive, if we can pause… Pausing is a really important practice. If we can pause and say “Wait a minute… What is here for me to learn? How do I choose to respond to this situation?” I can then engage with what I would have reacted to as a persecutor, as a challenger, because it’s about my learning and growth.
And then the third role in TED, which is a helping role and is the antidote or the opposite of the role of rescuer… Because rescuers often come into the drama well-intentioned, but what they don’t know and often are not aware of is that they actually reinforce the powerlessness of the victim, and to see the victim as someone needing to be fixed or taken care of… Whereas in TED, the helping role is the role of coach. This does not have to be a certified coach like yourself or Donna; any of us can step into that coach role.
As a coach, we see the person that we’re supporting as a creator in their own right… Whether they act like one or not, whether they know it or not. We support by asking questions. That’s what Donna did to shift us this morning. “What’s the outcome? How do we really wanna be when we are co-facilitating this kind of webinar?” That’s a coaching question. As a coach, we see the other person as ultimately capable, resourceful and responsible for the choices that they make.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So key… The example that comes up in my mind, David, as you’re talking about the rescuer, is sometimes when parents are challenged with their child having difficulty… The impulse is to wanna protect, to love, to take it away, to make it better. Well-intended, and also sometimes the dynamic that gets created is that victim/rescuer, and the child doesn’t actually get to feel their own strength, their own self-efficacy, and that they did it. I think that’s a classic thing that I see a lot, that parents with the most love and intention just struggle with how to let go and trust that their child is a creator… And yes, they’re responsible for their well-being and their safety, but there is some sense of being able to help assist that growth, rather than just doing it for them.
David Emerald: Yeah. And Jessica, I’ve gotta say, at the risk of sounding promotional here, but there is a story in the new book, The Three Vital Questions, where the focal character is at home, and he’s been sharing these three vital questions and these frameworks that you and I are talking about with his wife, and an issue comes up with their six-year-old first-grader, who’s getting in trouble for talking too much and acting out. I won’t go through the whole story, but the story in the book is about how they choose to work with their child, and seeing him as a creator rather than as a persecutor or as a problem that needs to be solved.
Frankly, that story was inspired by a couple that we have met through this work out of Dallas, Texas. Their daughters are now (I think) 13 and 15 or 16, and beginning about ten year ago they made a decision that they were going to raise their daughters as creators, and have really engaged as a husband and wife and mother and father to really put this into practice in how they parent, as well as how they relate to one another. We’ve had the opportunity to have dinner with them a couple of times, and their girls are just amazing.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: That’s beautiful, and it sounds extremely successful.
David Emerald: You bet.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And as it relates to couples too, I know that there’s a lot of examples… We’re just kind of doing a drop in a bucket here as it relates to the rescuer to the victim; I think a lot of classic dynamic that I see is sometimes women stereotypically are a little more – whether or not it’s nature or nurture – adept in the emotional realm, and so when the couple is experiencing challenges (and again, this is in a heterosexual relationship) the woman may try to help her man along, and that does sometimes run the risk of being the rescuer, or even could feel emasculating at times, that the man doesn’t get to feel his own development and his own creator energy in this emotional realm. It just may be that he hasn’t put a lot of attention or focus in this more vulnerable emotional space, and so… It’s probably endless, all the different places couples could get stuck here.
David Emerald: Yeah. And actually what we refer to sometimes as how we can ping-pong around the roles… But what you’ve just brought up brings up another story, which I’ll make very quick… A story that actually Donna will sometimes tell on some of our workshops, and that really to me is an illustration about how the roles shift in the proverbial blink of an eye.
This was during the Great Recession, and we were having — not terrible, but some financial tightening and some financial challenges… And I had been out traveling, doing some work, and a credit card bill came in. Donna knows that I will really pay attention to those things, so as an act of rescuing, because she didn’t want me to see it right away and to get upset, she buried it in a stack of mail… And I’d been home for just a little while and I picked up the stack of mail and was going through it, and I came across the credit card statement; I said to her “Sweetie, what’s this credit card statement doing here?” She was like, “Well, I didn’t want you to see it right away…”
In her trying to rescue me, I started to see her as a persecutor, like I couldn’t handle seeing the reality of the credit card statement. Again, this was not a huge [unintelligible 00:33:43.00] but I felt that her rescuing actually — she thought she was rescuing me, and I reacted to it as persecuting, like she didn’t hold me big enough to be able to see the reality of what was in the credit card statement.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes… And I hear you that these are not huge examples, but it’s the quality; you can feel the dynamic at play.
David Emerald: You bet.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay. David, I’m just curious – you’re saying one of the hardest things is to be able to identify it… How do you help people begin to incorporate having awareness around this in their lives? Because it’s one thing to listen to a podcast, or read a book, and like “Those are great ideas!” and you’re all jazzed about it, and it lasts for a period of time but it doesn’t always integrate or stick. Can you help with what you recommend around this?
David Emerald: Yeah, I’ll give it my best shot. I would say that I think the huge contribution that Dr. Carmen made in identifying this set of relationship roles and dynamics is that if we — there’s the old saying “If we can name it, we can claim it.” By having the labels, we increase our ability (or at least possibility) of seeing it when it shows up… But the big thing is to be able to pause, to call time out, to see it. And sometimes the healthiest thing to do is in the heat of — especially in an intense drama triangle, it’s to call a time out. “Let’s come back together in ten minutes. I’m gonna go for a ten-minute walk, or I’m gonna go listen to music for half an hour, and then let’s get back together.” Because the reality is that, again, as long as we stay in those three roles, we’re not going to escape.
I felt very honored that Dr. Carmen actually endorsed the “The Power of TED” work, which she doesn’t often do, because he said that he saw it as the best escape he had ever seen from the drama triangle. But it really requires calling time out, seeing it…
I will tell you one thing not to do, to say to your listeners and to the people that you support – the last thing that you wanna do is to say to your spouse or to your significant other, or to anybody that’s important to you, and I’m just gonna personalize to create a point… “Jessica, you’re just being a victim.” Because as soon as you label someone as a victim, it’s gonna trigger reactivity. Now, one can say “I’m noticing that we’re really in a reactive place right now” and maybe call time out.
Another question is to say “Hang on a second, where are we? What’s going on here?” And if somebody is really in a victimization place, one of the other things that we teach is that you cannot argue against another person’s feelings of victimization. What you can do is to say — let’s say that we’re in an interaction, and for a moment we’re a couple, and I could say “Jessica, I really get that you’re frustrated. What’s one baby step that you could take, given the situation?” And you see how that’s a subtle — first of all, you’re gonna feel seen and heard, because I am feeding back to you without adding to it, but just saying “I get the frustration.” The word “and” is the shift toward what you want, which is “and what’s one baby step, what’s one thing that we can do to move in a positive direction here?”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, thank you for saying that. My husband actually loves this work, just the personal growth work in general… And one thing he pushes back on a little bit is when it feels as though it’s by-passing the pain or the reality. I loved your earlier aside around the difference between victimization or being victimized, and victimhood. That it allows for the space of the pain to exist – it does not try to bypass that – but it’s also offering an opportunity of “What’s the perspective we’re gonna have? What’s the focus? What are we gonna put our energy towards?” It doesn’t mean that it’s not painful or upsetting or difficult, it’s “What are we gonna work towards?”
And I love what you’re saying too about taking a break, because sometimes when we’re in that fight, flight or freeze response, or — what was the other one?
David Emerald: The fourth one was appease.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Appease, I love it! Yes, “I’ll just agree with you and it’ll all be okay…”, but that we’re kind of outside of ourselves. We’re not really in a place of that clarity around what is it that I want. We’re just reacting, so that space to get calm and get re-grounded in that – I love it.
David Emerald: Yeah, and you and I talked a little bit before we started recording about neurologies, and I just wanna say briefly that when we get triggered and when we’re in that reactive space and when we’re in the drama, it’s our amygdala, our old part of our brain that is hijacked, if you will, and what’s engaged. Calling time out allows us to move to the higher functions of our neurology, and to be more at choice, and to be more conscious and deliberate. And that pause, that calling of a time out is absolutely critical to be able to move the energy, if you will, from that reactive part of the brain to more of what is often referred to as the executive function of the brain.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. For couples that perhaps don’t know if their relationship is healthy, or secure – I’m kind of throwing a question at you here… What you’re describing, whether or not it’s applied to business or whatever realm, but the self-leadership – it feels like implied is a trust in the process and a trust that there is something that can be created, that if I can focus on that and hold myself capable and accountable to how I’m relating, that there’s a trust that it does have value and it does have benefit. Do you ever find that people struggle with that belief or that faith?
David Emerald: Short answer is “Of course.” I mean, especially if the dysfunctional, painful pattern has been in place for quite some time, that’s when I think the services of a person like yourself, a psychologist, a coach, can be absolutely critical to helping a couple. And to me, what’s important is – and again, I have a great deal of respect for psychotherapy, for therapists – not so much “He said/She said” and the past, but really to help the couple begin to really co-create a vision of how they want to be in relationship, and to tell the truth about current reality without blame or judgment… But to be able to also tell the truth.
One of the things that Donna loves to say is that the challenger is the truth-teller. And again, the truth-teller, without blame or judgment, saying “You know, things have been going downhill for some time. I’m tired of it, my guess is that you’re tired of it as well”, and it could start with “I would really like for us to find a third-party that can help us work through this, because I know that we can have a better relationship.”
That does require some faith and trust that there can be a better relationship, and/or that together we can co-create whatever the outcome ends up being… Rather than just ping-ponging around that victim/persecutor/rescuer triangle.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love it. I know we’re winding down, but I’m curious if there’s a success story you could share, maybe about your own marriage and practicing these principles and the empowerment triangle, what it looks like.
David Emerald: Yeah. One of the things I think would be helpful to share is that Donna and I – I’m gonna be really vulnerable here – went through a really low point at one point, where because we work together, we realized in hindsight… And I’ll take you through how we got to the hindsight in just a minute… But we realized in hindsight that our marriage had, in a sense, atrophied because we were so focused on the work relationship, and not being able to turn it off, if you will. And Donna called a time out, in the sense that she decided to take (I think it was) a four-day personal retreat. She went a couple hours away, found a really nice Airbnb, and just really allowed herself to relax and do some reflecting… And an image came to her that I think would be helpful; it’s been helpful for us. That image — she loves baseball. So if you think about a baseball diamond, you’ve got home plate, you’ve got first base, second base, third base… And what she got was that — so we’ve labeled home base as our marriage relationship. And then first or third base, whoever you wanna assign it to, is there’s Donna, there’s David, and then second base is our work relationship.
And what had happened is that we had so focused on our work relationship, and because we were not stepping up to some of the patterns that had developed in our personal relationships, and because we both really consider ourselves and really are kind of recovering rescuers, that we would stuff things, we would not really talk about what was really going on. We were actually losing touch with first base and third base; we were losing touch with our own center, if you will.
So taking that time out, she came back with this image, and we really sat down and really made a commitment to set some boundaries around our work relationship, and we’ll use the term – five, five-thirty, six o’clock, “Okay, I’m clocking out.” And we really consciously take time to make sure that at least once a week – and frankly, what we’ve done has been more like two or three times a week – that we have some home base time. Sunday we’re going to a baseball game, last week we went to a local choral concert… And just doing things together as a couple. Also, we’re really blessed to have our first grandchild who’s now six months old – spending time with her and her parents.
Looking back, we really practice what we teach; we had to catch ourselves, and shift to what it was that we really wanted, rather than reacting to what was going on as a problem… And to really relate to one another as co-creators. And there are still times where we will challenge one another from a (what we call) learning intent. We’re also much more conscious of using coaching questions – “What is it you really want in this situation? What is it we’re really trying to accomplish??” That’s what comes to mind as a “success story” from our own relationship.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you. What a gift… This has been so rich, and I just feel so engaged in what you’re teaching and practicing and helping people in. For people that would like to get more acquainted with what you have to offer, your workshops, your teaching – where would you direct them?
David Emerald: I’m going to give two references. One is to the PowerOfTed.com workshop. TED is really more personally-focused, more personal development. There are a number of resources… We also do a weekly essay, a short newsletter that people can sign up for at PowerOfTed.com. And then the newest work and the newest website is 3vitalquestions.com. That’s taking the frameworks from the Power of TED and really applying it in more organizationally-focused.
Again, one of the things we found in working with organizations is what people experience in organizations often gets taken home, and what happens at home often gets taken into the workplace… So that work, and especially the book “Three Vital Questions” kind of blends — it’s primarily focused on organizations, but brings in some of the realities of home relationships as well.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, it is all relationship. I will make sure to have those links on the show notes. Is there anything else that you wanna say in closing, or anything else about your work that you wanna help people know that is out there?
David Emerald: Thanks for that questions, and what I would say is this is life-long practice. It’s practice, practice, practice. Donna and I often say that the reality is that we teach what we most need to learn, and so again, we’re practicing along with everyone else, and yet we know from our experience, we know from the stories that we hear that there is an escape from the default drama triangle roles in relationship dynamics, but it does take conscious practice and conscious focus, and it is possible to live in more fulfilling and more empowering and energizing relationship dynamics.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that. Well, thank you again for the huge gift of your sharing your time and your wisdom and your knowledge with us today. Again, I’ll make sure to have the link to the Power of TED and the Three Vital Questions. It sounds like you also are on social media, so I’ll put those links in there, too.
David Emerald: Yes.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay, thank you!
David Emerald: Thank you, Jessica! It was a pleasure talking with you.
I hope you have enjoyed this episode with David Emerald. If you were inspired by what he has to share, his teachings, I encourage you to check out either the book The Power of TED, or his website 3vitalquestions.com, where you can learn more. On his website he has workshops and other resources for you. I’ll put those links on today’s show notes for easy access, and you can visit the show notes page on my website, which is DrJessicaHiggins.com. Click on Podcast, and you can find today’s episode, 173.
Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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