Schrödinger’s Cat and the Drama Triangle
When you just can't tell if someone is your persecutor or savior
Desperation Is Off-putting
First, this woman tried six different times to try to get Holly to promise the job at that moment. This shows desperation and idolatry. I say idolatry because when you think that one particular person is where your money will come from, you clearly aren’t trusting that God can provide money in other ways, through other avenues. And, of course, if there is a lack of faith that money can come from other directions, you’re going to become desperate.
Pleading to know if you got the job also shows a lack of faith in herself to get a job elsewhere. I wrote a month ago about how to get a better job from my law of attraction perspective on my other Substack. You want to feel as if you have the job in order to attract it.
Why does that work? Because if you feel as if you don’t have the job, you give off an air of neediness. If you are displaying that you are desperate for a job to a possible employer, you are showing that person that you don’t believe (or have faith in yourself) that you can get any other job out there. It’s like advertising that you aren’t going to be a good employee through implication.
Pleading for Pity
Next the prospective worker started telling Holly why she should feel sorry for her. She mentioned she just got out of an abusive relationship. Hello red flag! 🚩If someone thinks they’re in an abusive relationship, that is a sign that they live in the drama triangle. For one, the abuser is the “persecutor”, and she sees herself as the abuser’s “victim.” The very fact that she brought it up means she still sees the relationship from this perspective. People from outside of the drama triangle would take personal responsibility for how they got into that relationship in the first place.
The prospective worker then discussed how she was a caretaker for years and then took care of her parents who have both recently died. Claiming to be a caretaker by itself may not be a red flag, but in this context it is. Caretaking can fit into the “savior” role in the drama triangle. Many people who would call themselves “caretakers” would do so because they believe the people whom they’re caring for can’t care for themselves. And that could be true in some cases, which is why I won’t call it the big red flag that the abusive relationship was. But this woman was definitely identifying as a “savior” caring for her parents when they needed it.
Both Roles At Once
Between the abusive relationship and the caretaking stories, this woman was showing Holly that she (the prospective worker) can be both a “victim” and a “savior” at the same time. She was claiming to be a “victim” of her “abuser” and a “savior” to her parents. Now that I know about the drama triangle, I am amazed that it seemed to make sense to her to advertise this to a potential employer.
But I understand that it would work as an advertisement to other people also in the Drama Triangle. Employers looking to “save” people with employment would hire someone off of a sob story.
I wanted to write about this particular story because it gets to one of the fascinating aspects of the drama triangle, that people can play both roles at one time, and drastically change the way they view others in a split-second.
Schrodinger's Cat & Quantum Superposition
From wikipedia, “In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment that illustrates a paradox of quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead, while it is unobserved in a closed box, as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.”
Basically, the cat is considered both alive and dead until you open the box and observe it. And, so, this woman was looking at Holly trying to figure out if Holly would be her savior or another persecutor who wouldn’t hire her.
This prospective worker, confused about whether or not she would be saved with a new job offer or victimized (by not being hired right away), starts acting as if Holly is both savior and persecutor at the same time.
She tried to make Holly feel guilty about having the money to afford to hire an errand helper. She mentions a friend who cries because she has to go to the office once a week because she can’t afford to pay someone to do the things she doesn’t want to do. A normal person would not attempt to make an employer feel bad about employing people. This is clearly abnormal behavior.
I will also note that if she had friends who feel like such victims (crying over having to work in an office one day a week), this is another major red flag. The Drama Triangle folks stick together and repel each other when they mature. She would have lost a friend like that had she matured by now.
When Holly asked for references at the end, the prospective worker wanted to give them to her right then. She was clearly still looking up to Holly as a “savior” wanting to be hired by her, but also acting pissed as if Holly was a mean “persecutor” for wanting to wait to give her an answer.
When dealing with someone in the Drama Triangle they can shift from one role to another quite quickly, but this was super-fast and I thought it made a superb example. I hope you enjoyed the story and article.
Have you met or dealt with people like this before? Feel free to leave a comment below!
