The Drama Triangle of Mars in Leo
Part 1: How I was personally victimized by El*n M*sk
This is the first piece in a series about the winter’s biggest astrological storyline: Mars retrograde in Leo and Cancer. What is drama and why do we get into it? What can we do when our pride and shame are getting in the way of our joy?
I invite you to read astrology between the lines. At least in this first part, I’m not spelling out for how the dynamics I’m describing reflect the astrology of the Mars retrograde. More of that in Part 2, set to drop Monday.
With Part 2, I will also announce an affordable way to work with me for support throughout this challenging and spiritually important transit.
What I learned about misery working for El*n M*sk
Before I went full-time with astrology, I was a salesperson at an electric car company you may have heard of. It was the EV-maker owned by an uber-rich-guy-who-shall-remain-nameless. (Hint: he’s in the news a lot these days, even more than he was then.)
Wide-eyed and fresh out of college, I wanted to make a difference. High paying consulting gigs didn’t excite me, but this company’s mission did: accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. That mattered. I jumped on board with enthusiasm. I had found purposeful work.
Then, on the evening of February 28, 2019, my mission-driven motivation took a hit. Work was abuzz as big news was expected from the company. Even the public was tuned in because the announcement was supposed to make a huge splash.
Rumor had it that the moment we had all been waiting for was here: the announcement of the $35,000 vehicle that was going to finally bring EVs to the mass market. All of our work had led to this moment. All the end-of-quarter pushes. All the late nights.
As salespeople greeting customers in showrooms, taking test drives and closing deals, we were in the habit of receiving major corporate announcements like this at the same time as the public.
Finally, the announcement came through in an update to the website. It was true! The $35,000 EV was coming! We did it!
But when we kept reading, something was off: “To achieve these prices while remaining financially sustainable, [company name] is shifting sales worldwide to online only.”
The store went silent. We all looked at each other. What does that mean for us, the in-person salespeople? What will happen to us when sales move online? We asked our store leaders. Having just found out too, they had no idea either (though they didn’t seem pleased).
Half the staff was laid off the next week, including yours truly. (But don’t worry — that’s when I signed up to take Chris Brennan’s Hellenistic astrology course! I may not be the astrologer I am today without that layoff.)
It was a huge blow to morale. With the $35,000 EV, the company had achieved something monumental thanks to our hard work, yet at our personal expense.
A few months later, after diving deep into my astrological studies and picking up my old college job to make ends meet, I was hired back to my old role selling cars.
But it didn’t feel purposeful anymore, and I wasn’t alone in that feeling. The company culture, once buoyant and enthusiastic, had been taken over by a stale air of misery. It was as if we’d all realized that no matter how much we fought for the company, none of us mattered. They could call us “family” all they wanted, but that couldn’t change our ultimate expendability.
Corporate greed and moral posturing, for spring? Groundbreaking.
After a while, it wasn’t the mission keeping me there anymore. And it definitely wasn’t the money. So why did I stay for so long?
My co-workers, myself, and even our bosses shared a common persecutor: our corporation, with its callous, uncaring actions that threatened to unleash chaos for us every day. What did it matter if Stockholm Syndrome was the biggest thing uniting us; at least we were united.
They say misery loves company. But do you love being misery’s company? That’s a question I think we’ll be answering this winter.
The Drama Triangle: Persecutor, Victim, Savior
Why do we choose to endure unpleasant, even miserable things? Is it just inertia? Do we stay where we are because the dull pain of the familiar is easier than seeking uncertain joy? I think that’s part of it. When I was selling EVs, seeking other work would have taken a great effort, especially on top of continuing my regular schedule.
But I could have done it… no, something else kept me tethered to my corporate dystopia: Drama.
Unlike pain, suffering, or other hardship, the experience of drama is specifically interpersonal. By definition, we cannot be dramatic by ourselves. We need someone to plug into drama with us.
Drama happens when our pain feels un-witnessed and un-recognized.
Drama is what secretes from us when our pain is not properly held.
It distorts relationships. They grow sticky and sickly sweet.
I stayed at my job because it was a place where I felt seen for my struggle and my sacrifice. Among my co-workers and even my bosses, my interpersonal reality vibrated at the frequency of vampiric commiseration. We were all Victims and Rescuers, personally victimized by El*n M*sk (the Persecutor), and saving the world, or at least saving each other.
The Drama Triangle facilitates a psychological split. The better we get at drama, the more coherently we can split ourselves across the three dramatic archetypes of Persecutor, Victim, and Rescuer.
This model of drama shows how shifty it is. Drama is the flowing, volatile current that carries us between the vertices of the triangle. The angle of drama is to have you collapse the multitudes you contain into a gross, 2-D simplification: incapable (Victim), yet also impenetrably good (Persecutor and Rescuer).
Just like people who do drugs usually do more than one, most of us who live in the Drama Triangle play more than one role. Predictably, we oscillate between Persecutor, Victim, and Rescuer. This motion adds moralistic fuel to the fire, as we relish the smell of pure fumes.
To my mind, there is a reason the Drama Triangle points down. It’s because drama is heavy. It is an unforgiving, gravitational thing. It drains potential. Like a drug, after the high comes a low and then a familiar craving.
As shown above, the downward gravity of the Drama Triangle ultimately distances us from our power as Creators, the Victim’s antithesis. The Creator is “motivated by learning, optimism, and the desire to create rather than destroy.”
I think being a Creator starts with living as if wholeness is possible.
Dramatic Darts
Every drama is the same and every drama is different. Like history, they don’t repeat, but they do rhyme. Listen closely to a dramatic conflict and you will hear dramatic darts whizzing by.
Drama is the interpersonal condensation of unprocessed pain. The following narrative goes to demonstrate how a personal hardship can turn into drama between partners, and how this leads to the hurling of dramatic darts.
Suppose you lose your job and struggle to start looking for a new one. As time goes on, your inaction puts stress on your partner and your relationship. Eventually you do commence your employment search, which is really important because you have always made more money than your partner, but to make up for the lost income your partner started working more on their side hustle in the meantime. Your partner makes comments about how tired they are. You say you’re still looking and that you’re having a hard time. But I’m grateful for how hard you’re working on your side hustle to keep us going.
A couple months go by, and your partner’s side hustle has grown to take up even more of their time. You finally find a job. You’ve held out for a role at the same pay you were making before, but your new schedule has made it even more difficult to spend time with your partner. You see they are actually enjoying their work, which they’re able to do on their phone. But they’ve continued to make comments about how tired they are. One night, when you get home from work and they continue to work on their phone, you bring up the issue. Now that your income is back, you ask your partner to cut back on side hustle hours. They passively acknowledge what you’re saying, then brush it off and get back to their phone. Feeling unrecognized, you throw a dramatic dart:
I feel like we never spend time together anymore, you say. It’s like you won’t pay attention to me. You’re always so tired anyway — can’t you just work less now that I make enough money?
This dart hit all the notes of the Drama Triangle. First, you position yourself as a Victim: I feel like we never spend time together anymore states a problem apart from any power you may have to fix it. Then you get persecutory: It’s like you won’t pay attention to me, blaming the partner for your negative feelings. Finally, the third role is activated: since you’ve recovered your larger income, you want to go back to being depended on financially. In Rescuer mode, we feel connected when we are depended upon.
As expected, your partner reacts poorly to this dramatic dart that was dipped in all three poisons: They say: Well, I may not make as much money as you do, but at least I enjoy my work and don’t come home complaining about it every night. And besides, they go on. This never would have happened if you hadn’t held out getting a job for so long. Partner has gone full Persecutor!
You are speechless, but you’re not tracking the dynamic and won’t stop the impending explosion. So you raise your voice and throw another dramatic dart. You know I was depressed! I was burned out from my last job, and I didn’t want to go for lower pay. Your partner returns fire, I worked double for months while you sat at home playing video games.
A back-and-forth barrage of daggers and disappointments ensues. A full blown eruption is spewing volcanic rage and ash.
It’s all drama. It’s about who is to blame. It’s about who is capable or incapable. It’s about who is saving whom. And in the end, it’s about not being responsible for feelings we’ve been having all along, and not communicating honestly about them.
We could mistakenly get the impression that drama is honesty’s homecoming, but it is actually her continued evasion. Dramatic darts are not honest. They do puncture, but they are not honest. They only continue a pattern of vampiric non-responsibility. The force they’re hurled with takes root in the real pain refusing to be acknowledged, even to itself. Hence the split of the Drama Triangle.
The crazy thing is: sometimes we live for drama because we forgot to live for anything else. It’s consensus. It’s fast food. It’s the Matrix.
I like to think about drama the way Toni Morrison talked about evil: she said evil is “predictable. It needs a tuxedo, it needs a headline, it needs blood, it needs fingernails. It needs all that costume in order to get anybody's attention.”
Morrison goes on: “But the opposite [of evil], which is survival, blossoming, endurance, those things are just more compelling intellectually if not spiritually, and they certainly are spiritually.”
Drama is barely interesting (thought I guess it’s interesting enough for me to write this piece about it!) But, like Morrison’s evil, drama is not spiritually compelling. So, what will we create instead? The path of Mars retrograde in Leo and Cancer is lined with dramatic darts. But we can choose to cut against the grain and blaze a new path.
That’s the topic of Part 2, set to drop Monday. I’ll connect these themes and relational dynamics to the astrology of Mars retrograde while offering several specific strategies to help you remain in integrity with your pain, and your power.
Also I will announce a special opportunity to work with me for support during the Mars retrograde.
For now,
Drew
Not me reading this in a dramatic storytelling in my head like, i’m seated! Heee love this ~ definitely felt this dynamic playing in my life & others for real! Can’t wait for part two ✨ thanks Drew 🤩
Thank you for explaining the drama in such a compelling manner. I struggled with a layoff back in 2019 and it was exactly the way you described yours. I now understand better and all those torments I wasn’t good enough are now gone. ☺️