Breaking the Triangle Intensive
Seeing the Pattern Is the Beginning. Changing It Takes Practice.
Understanding a conflict framework during a workshop is one thing.
Recognizing the pattern when your coworker sits across from you, your manager just dismissed your concern, or you are already angry is something else.
Breaking the Triangle Intensive bridges that gap.
Four Sessions.
Four Weeks.
Real Conflicts.
This is not four lectures.
Participants learn the framework, apply it between sessions, bring their own patterns back into the group, develop alternative responses, and refine those responses with feedback.
The Karpman Drama Triangle is a visual framework for understanding recurring interpersonal conflict through three roles: Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor.
Session 1: Learn to See the Pattern
Participants learn the Karpman Drama Triangle and how Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor roles interact.
They learn to diagram a conflict rather than simply deciding who was right or wrong.
Between Sessions 1 and 2
Participants identify and diagram conflicts from their own work or lives.
Session 2: Workshop the Patterns
Participants bring the triangles they identified into the session.
Together, we examine:
What happened first?
Where did each person move?
Where did the pattern accelerate?
What did someone do that unintentionally kept it going?
Where were the possible exit points?
Session 3: Learn the Escapes
Participants learn practical ways to respond differently when they recognize themselves entering the Triangle.
These include:
Identifying options when they feel powerless.
Negotiating a shared understanding instead of trying to fix the other person.
Approaching frustrating behavior with curiosity.
Between Sessions 3 and 4
Participants return to their own triangles and develop possible alternative responses.
Session 4: Workshop the Escape
Now the focus moves from:
“I understand what happened.”
to:
“What could I actually do differently?”
Participants bring back their conflicts and proposed responses.
Together, we examine what might happen, identify possible problems, and refine the response.
Why Four Weeks?
The goal isn’t simply to remember a model.
It is to practice a process:
Experience the conflict.
Map what happened.
Identify the pattern.
Develop another response.
Try again.
That repeated application is what separates the Intensive from a traditional workshop.
Who Is the Intensive For?
Breaking the Triangle Intensive can be especially useful for:
Leadership teams with entrenched interpersonal patterns.
Managers repeatedly caught between employees.
Small teams where conflict has become part of the normal way people interact.
People who understand something needs to change but haven’t been able to change it consistently.
Format: 4 sessions over 4 weeks