The Power of TED (*The Empowerment Dynamic)

by David Emerald

“The opposite of Victim is Creator.”

“No . . . BFOs. A BFO is a Blinding Flash of the Obvious. It’s something you already know but which lies just beyond the edge of your conscious awareness. When they come, welcome them. A BFO is a very positive sign. It means that you’re awakening to new ways of thinking and being.”

“Victims may be defensive, submissive, over- accommodating to others, passive-aggressive in conflict, dependent on others for self-worth, overly sensitive, even manipulative. They’re often angry, resentful, and envious, feeling unworthy or ashamed about their circumstances.

At the core of any Victim, you’ll find the psychic death of a dream. All Victims have experienced a loss—a thwarted desire or aspiration—even if they’re not aware of it.

“The Victim feels out of control, believing life can’t change for the better. Taking that position, one feels powerless, helpless, hopeless, and at the mercy of unseen forces. The Victim reacts with depression or shame.

She feared losing him and facing life alone.” Ted continued, “The feelings that Victims have, just as Sophia did, are all fear-based and produce various anxieties. These feelings, which often seesaw between passivity and aggression, drive behaviors. When human beings are afraid, they’re programmed to react. This program—to fight, flee, or freeze—isn’t all bad. It helps the species survive.”

Frozen in fear, you avoid responsibility because you think your experience is beyond your control. This stance keeps you from making decisions, solving problems, or going after what you want in life.

But whether person, condition, or circumstance, the Persecutor gets the blame for causing the Victim’s feelings of grief, despair, and hopelessness.”

“When the Persecutor is an actual person, the one who adopts that role tries to dominate others through blame, criticism, and/or oppression.

“Exactly. Victims often react to situations in ways that make them Persecutors in the eyes of others.

They may seem fearless, but actually Persecutors are almost always former Victims.

“Here, too, a Rescuer isn’t always a person. Addictions to alcohol or drugs, sexual addiction, workaholism—all the ways we numb out—can rescue the Victim from feeling his or her feelings.”

The Victim ends up feeling ashamed and guilty for needing to be rescued and becomes dependent on the Rescuer for a sense of safety.

“Rescuers look like good guys, but their helpful actions often cover up an underlying fear. Rescuers aren’t bad, either. But it is fear that motivates them to fly to the rescue.

“Persecutors fear loss of control. Rescuers fear loss of purpose. Rescuers need Victims—someone to protect or fix—to bolster their self-esteem. Rescuing gives them a false sense of supe...

Rescuers get to feel good about themselves, as long as they don’t admit that Victims could meet t...

“When you inhabit any of these three roles, you’re reacting to fear of Victimhood, loss of control, or loss of purpose. You’re always looking outside yourself, to the people and circumstances of life, for a sense of safety, security, and sanity.

“It’s a toxic mutation of the human relationship, and it pains me to see it played out so often. I call it the Dreaded Drama Triangle—the DDT.

“So, my Focus engages me in an emotional Inner State that drives my Behavior—is

To find the way out, you start by recognizing two important things about the Victim Orientation: The first one is a delusion that lies at the center of this Orientation. The second is a false hope that can never be fulfilled as long as the cycle continues.”

So here’s the delusion of the Victim Orientation: you believe you’re reacting to a problem, when you are really reacting to your own anxiety.”

But often the things you do to try to make the problem (or the Persecutor) go away just end up intensifying your suffering.”

But wanting a relationship to chase away your loneliness is very different from consciously envisioning the qualities and characteristics of the kind of person with whom you want to create a partnership.

“The Behavior that moves you in that direction is taking Baby Steps. Taking a Baby Step means doing the next logical thing in front of you—making a phone call, having a conversation, or gathering information. Each step you take either moves you closer to your vision or helps you clarify the final form of your desired outcome.”

The first is where you place your Attention. As the Victim, your focus is on what you don’t want: you think, speak, and act on the problems in your life. As Creator, you place your attention first and foremost on what you do want: your envisioned outcome.

“The second difference is your Intention. In the Victim Orientation your intention is to get rid of, or away from, your problems. In the Creator Orientation your intention is to bring into being, or manifest, the outcomes you envision.

“The third big difference is the Results you produce. The results of the Victim Orientation are temporary and reactive. With the Creator Orientation, though, you’re much more likely to produce satisfying, sustainable results over time. With each Baby Step you take from the Crea...

Creators, however, learn how to move forward in their lives with courage in the face of fear and anxiety. And there are no guarantees. Often you won’t know whether your heart’s desires are attainable until after you’ve put in a great deal of time, effort, and experimentation to make your envisioned outcome a reality.”

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Anxiety is like a mischievous monkey chattering its way into your thoughts. If you don’t stay aware of its antics, it can quite easily propel you into the Victim Orientation,” Ted said.

“So you could compromise your vision to resolve the tension and get rid of the anxiety you might feel; it’s the easiest, most immediate, and most common reaction. The other way is actually much more subtle; it has to do with how you assess your current reality.

“One of the keys to tapping the power of Dynamic Tension is to tell yourself the truth about your current reality,”

‘What determines your destiny is not the hand you are dealt but how you play the hand. And the way to play the hand is to see reality for what it is and to act accordingly.’ That is the challenge—to see reality for what it is.”

“Paying attention to what is true at every point along the way while you continue to hold your vision lets you make realistic decisions about which Baby Steps you will take to move yourself closer to your goal.

While the Victim is powerless, a Creator claims and taps into his or her personal power in order to choose a response to life circumstances.

“Adopting a Creator stance begins simply by making a choice. You decide and declare that in your heart, mind, and soul, you really are a Creator, not a Victim,”

“Creators share power with others, first and foremost because they see others as Creators in their own right.

The Challenger is a kind of teacher who points toward life’s lessons, toward opportunities for growth embedded in the living of life.

A Coach leaves the power with the Creator and seeks only to help facilitate her personal progress.

A Coach is the embodiment of a Creator’s desire to share power with another.”

Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Coaches help people improve their performances and enhance the quality of their lives. Coaches are trained to listen, to observe, and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach’s job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.

“You’re not a human being seeking a spiritual experience; you’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

Your life is a kind of learning laboratory where you’re constantly experimenting with your own higher knowing, always increasing your capacity to design your life and to choose your response to what happens to you.

‘Everything can be taken from a (person) but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.’

“There are two important criteria for defining a Baby Step. First, it is something that is doable—something I can really take action on. The second is that it is 100 percent mine to do.

“I could remember that a Creator stays focused on a desired outcome, while a Victim is focused on problems. I guess the first thing I’d have to do would be to decide what I really want.”

“First and foremost, a Creator extends compassion to others. You can do this by seeing people as being Creators, whether they know it or not, and whether they are acting like it or not.

“Behind every experience of anger lies something you care about—otherwise you wouldn’t feel the anger,”

You cannot make the shift from Persecutor to Challenger without some measure of forgiveness, of both yourself and others. Someone once said that forgiveness is giving up the hope of ever having a better past.

‘Forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing.’