[00:00:02] Welcome to the Business Miracles podcast. I'm Heather Dominick, founder of www.businessmiracles.com and author of the book Different The Highly Sensitive Leadership Revolution, found at www.differentthebook.com. Since 2010, I've been training Highly Sensitive Entrepreneurs and Leaders from around the globe to work less while making more impact and income by doing things differently. I'm so glad you joined me. Listen in and get ready. Get ready for a shift in the way you view yourself, your work, your life. A business miracle.
[00:00:39] This is A Course in Business Miracles podcast episode 159 The Path to Empowerment. As highly sensitives, it can often feel like running a business or just living your life is one big, unending drama of overwhelm. There's always something to be managed, right? On this podcast episode, I share how to move out of the dreaded drama triangle and onto the path of empowerment by learning how to shift out of the shadow roles of rescuer, persecutor, and victim and into the empowering roles of coach, challenger, and creator, powered by your highly sensitive strengths of empathy, intuition, and creativity.
[00:01:29] The NFD theory stands for the Need For Drama. The need for drama or crisis for yourself and or others.
Research studies show people who have a higher level of resilience and a lower tolerance for personal drama experience more success in business and life. And I'm going to repeat that so that you can write it down. So research studies show that people who have a higher level of resilience and a lower tolerance for personal drama experience more success in both business and life.
The NFD theory based on a research paper developing and testing a scale to measure the need for drama provides this clinical definition. The need for drama can be defined as a compound personality trait in which individuals impulsively manipulate others and circumstances to create a continuous reexperience of drama. I'll share that again as well. The NFD, the need for drama personality can be defined as a compound personality trait in which individuals impulsively manipulate others and circumstances to create a continuous reexperience of drama. Let's take a breath in and let it out. ‘
The Karpman Drama Triangle shows the relationship between the three primary tendencies for drama. The persecutor, "I blame you." The rescuer, "I am obligated." And the victim, "I can't." Persecutor, rescuer, and victim. According to David Karpman, creator of the Karpman Drama Triangle theory, each of us has a tendency towards a dominant drama, yet we all experience elements of each of the three dramas. Taking a moment, just doing an internal check-in and scan, which one tends to show up most frequently for you? Persecutor, "I blame you." Coming from a place of internal shame. Rescuer, "I am obligated." Coming from a place of internal resentment. Victim, "I can't." Coming from an internal place of stuck and guilt. Each of the three dramas ultimately is triggered by a sense of fear. Please write that down.
There's a Harvard study that had students playing the online video game Tetris for five hours straight. Now, personally, I have never played this game, but maybe you have or you know of someone who has. From what I can tell, the gist of the game Tetris is to take objects or shapes that are falling from the sky, the video sky, and arrange them in order to create a straight line. So again, Harvard study, students playing Tetris for five hours straight. What was discovered as part of this study is that students were massively impacted by this five hours of video game playing, so much so that students were dreaming about Tetris for days following the study. And one student in particular shared a story of walking out of the study, going to a grocery store with a friend and the friend finding her in an aisle rearranging loaves of bread to create a straight line.
So the ultimate of what this study showed is that if you view the world through the same pattern for too long, your brain keeps that pattern even if it's not working for you. I'm going to say that again, and you want to write this down. If you view the world through the same pattern for too long, your brain keeps that pattern even if it's not working for you.
Also, part of the NFD theory is desperately not wanting or believing that you shouldn't experience problems is also a form of drama. Write that down. Desperately not wanting or believing that you shouldn't have problems is also a form of drama.
So what's the connection to being a highly sensitive entrepreneur and leader? Well, first of all, I've been doing this work long enough, specifically with highly sensitive entrepreneurs since 2010, is that I have seen a repeated pattern continuously. And that repeated pattern is a member will start to have things working for them. They utilize the track trainings. They utilize the weekly training roundtables. They start to have a deeper understanding of their highly sensitive nervous system. Things start to flow. Systems get put in place. Clients get signed on. Income increases. Team starts to work more optimally. There's a higher level of confidence. There's an increased ability to shift from coping to creating. And then suddenly the member will have a need to create a problem.
The safest place to begin to act out looking for familiarity. Write that down. Looking for a familiar sense that there must have to be a problem, there must have to be a sense of drama, there must have to be an experience of resistance. If there isn't a problem or drama or resistance, I am not alive. All unconscious, which is why we bring it here to this weekly training roundtable to shine the light on it. Now also, for us as highly sensitives, according to Bowen's family dynamic theory, there is one member in every family who tends to be the absorber, the person who absorbs the family's problems, the person who absorbs the family's drama. Now, as I have taught the Bowen's family dynamic theory for years now, I always preface it by saying there is not official research out there that directly connects the absorber with the highly sensitive in the family.
Yet my practical research of mentoring highly sensitive entrepreneurs and leaders since 2010 shows that there tends to be a high probability that those of us as highly sensitives were the absorbers in our family. So we absorb our family's tendency towards drama, whatever that might have been in your family, persecutor, rescuer, victim, all as an attempt to be accepted within our family dynamic. We learned drama is the way to get attention, to get our needs met. We tend towards drama or tending towards drama is easier than outing our essential self. Why? How is all of this valuable? It's valuable so that we can shift through the IU transformation process. A, as part of IU to be aware, oh my gosh, there's a thing called the need for drama and understanding the you in the IU transformation process. Oh, I'm starting to have a better understanding of where my tendency is. I've been totally unconscious to this.
My tendency is towards the need for drama. And then K, beginning to work our way through understanding to knowing to make a true change, to release the need for drama, to release the need for resistance in order to be able to optimally operate as a high functioning, highly sensitive to create entrepreneurial and leadership success. The way we do that, the way out is shadows to strengths pathway. I'm going to ask the team to bring that handout up. You'll also find this pathway in my book, Different: The Highly Sensitive Leadership Revolution on page 104. What the pathway shows us is how to shift from our shadow tendencies as highly sensitives through drama into empowerment, into our specific highly sensitive strengths.
So go back to your reflection on the triangle. For yourself, do you notice you tend towards rescuer, persecutor or victim? You can see on the pathway, oh, the highly sensitive shadow of over-responsibility tends to be connected to the drama of rescue. Oh, my way through it is to access my inner coach and then to support myself in shifting into my highly sensitive strength of empathy. And same for persecutor, overprotection, victim and overwhelm into challenger, intuition, into creator, creativity. The pathway is there for you.
How do we move ourselves through the pathway?
To consistently be in the process of shifting from resistance to resilience, shifting from shadow to strength, shifting from drama to empowerment, and no longer having the need for drama.
The need for drama can be kind of slippery. It can be so familiar to us, so ingrained that we don't even recognize it. It's like, wait a minute, things could actually be different than that. Where you want to check in, is what is the story that you find that you tend to repeat consistently? It always seems to be happening. There's always someone that needs to be taken care of. Or there's always some way that you are being wronged, that's the persecutor. Or there's some way that things are happening to you, that's the victim. It shows up in all different ways, but if we really strip away the details, you can just see the through line.
Not wanting problems or believing that you shouldn't have problems is also a form of drama. So it's not about like, oh, if I don't have drama, then I don't have problems. No. It's about the way that you respond to the problems. And so believing like, oh yeah, I can have what I want and the world will not fall apart. Yes. That is shifting from drama to empowerment to strength.
[00:13:07] Thank you for being a part of this Business Miracles podcast episode and for beginning to dip your toe into the journey of highly sensitive leadership training. If you are ready to truly use your sensitivities as strengths in all parts of your work and life, I invite you to connect for a one on one chat. You will experience being deeply listened to and together we'll get a sense of whether the Highly Sensitive Leadership Training Programs are the best next step for you and your highly sensitive journey at this time. Just go to www.claritycall.com to schedule a conversation. We so look forward to connecting with you. Talk to you soon!