These roles can and do overlap
They change, and it is good to know that the ones listed here are only the umbrella groupings of the roles we play … there are many more.
The present day origins of our roles lay in the ashes of the residuals of all the past and different roles we played in our families systems just to survive being a kid at our house.
Our job if we want to heal is to look and go back and look at our families and the roles that everyone had and to rework our roles.
A. The Hero Role
If they were the hero/little hero in their family of origin, that is always looking good and doing good to make their family look better, then they will continue to act as a hero in their adult world. Continuing the process of doing good and looking good, making the work place, or the marriage or the neighborhood or the school board or what have you ... look good … better than they really know it is.
But in their very efforts to make things appear to be better; usually leaves them in a place of not feeling so good about themselves because they feel a) that they have been ripped off by system and or b) they have actually been ripped off by someone.
B. The Martyr Role
These people tend to offer and sacrifice themselves for the sake of those around them. They are willing to "die" for the cause and very often get crucified in the process.
Or they become the saviour of the system … the system that was never designed to work properly nor did it want saving … in the first place.
C. The Pleaser Role
These people try to do whatever it is that they think people want them to do.
They try to make everybody happy - even if it means making themselves unhappy in the process, or another favourite is for them to sacrifice their integrity and honesty to do whatever it is that they think YOU want them to do. Self-sacrifice is the process … and … melodrama is the game … it is always about someone else and what he or she wanted never about what I did.
The natural outcome is that these people oftentimes get themselves into trouble by trying to please too many people … doing too many different things and then get caught-up ¬in their own dishonesty. They have difficulty being responsible for their own actions. After all what they did was for the good and the benefit of others.
D. The Parent Role.
Many of us parented our parents, and at times parented our younger or even older siblings. The problem is that for some we continue this parenting act into our adult life, usually our work settings but not always.
People caught in the Parental Role Trap try to instruct everyone on how to do this or that. Everything is an opportunity for a lesson to be learned. They see themselves as self-appointed guides and gurus to the mysteries of life … sometimes affectionately referred to as the jello sheriff. They see themselves as a model for life … for everybody. The truth of the matter is that almost to a person, those that are the supposed recipients of the modeling never wanted the help or the modeling in the first place … they loose respect for the supposed helper or model. In fact those who are the targets of the Parent Role will work very hard at not seeing the self appointed parent as helping or being the missing parent(s). Now the oddity of the situation is that this rejection makes the role player … the parent … feel like real parents!
E. The Good-Guy Or Gal Role
These people always try to be good … to look good and most importantly … have everybody like them. They never take a firm stand on any¬thing … therefore it follows that they can never be viewed as bad or inflexible and always be seen as good and flexible … the convenient aspect of this role is that the Good Guy can always change his or her position relative to a situation to suit their need at any given point in time … therefore never be caught out and shamed for not knowing or doing or being something they deem to be important or necessary at the time. They never really give the world a real person to assert against. Being a Good Guy can set up situations with tremendous anxiety and conflict … it is a controlling persona … it is about appearing to do the right thing … it is about avoiding being real at all costs … This is very similar to the pleaser. Bach and Goldberg in their book Creative Aggression suggest very powerfully that the Good Guy persona is a mode of anger transfer.
F. The Rebel Role
They react, defy and rebel against the system.
They pick at and sabotage life’s structure.
They defy authority.
Few rebels mature quickly, but many have a strong following, often called soldiers or soldier gathering and are very impactive on life or the family system.
The rebel’s true problem is that they suffer from being controlled by what it is that they are rebelling against.
G. The Lost Child Role
They do their job(s), fill their roles in life but they believe that they are never noticed or recognized and they definitely go under com¬pensated for what they have done or are doing… at least in their opinion.
They feel lost within and they look lost without.
They isolate or feel unwanted and not belonging.
Their real life is in a fantasy… often times very elaborate fantasy and not reality.
H. The Extension Of Parent Role
They make their boss or their spouse or new friend, their mentor, their new parent in a vain attempt to replace the lost parent they never had.
They model themselves after their new parent – they use their words, aspire to live in their neighborhood, have a family that looks like the new parents … want to be members the new parents social clubs or wear their style of clothes and the list is very extensive..
They take on the new parent's affect and identity.
The interesting twist to the whole thing is they can’t and don't lose their own identity, because for the simple reason they were always an extension of their original parents and never had their own identity.
I. The Mediator Role
They muck around in other people's business. They try to fix everything for them, often as not before they are asked to do so.
Anytime there is a problem, they are there to solve it.
They are good at solving problems, but those they help with their problems end up resenting them for their meddling . . . time after time.
They then feel used and unappreciated.
J. The Clown, Mascot Or Entertainer Role
They distract everybody from their pain, from the seriousness of their life. They joke around, clown around, sometimes acting the fool, sometimes act¬ing the comic, but usually minimizing their own needs, their own pain, their own feelings and their own processes in their very own relationships both at home and at work or at school.
The office or class clown is not taken seriously and does not take self seriously and that's serious!
K. The Charmer Role
They seduce people. They don't have to contribute because they can make sure that people are well fooled by their insin¬cerity. They charm their way through tests, contracts and the work¬days with their teachers with their parent and eventually with their supervisors. If they are charming enough, they can become the surrogate spouses to the teacher, the parent, supervisor, administrator, boss or owner - maybe even become the boss.
L. The Victim Role
They feel buffeted around by the winds of chance, unable to make choices. It feels as though other people are doing it to them and they frequently blame others or the system. They know the "art of the fine whine." Their anger goes inward and they appear perfectly helpless and act perfectly hapless.
M. The Offender Role
They also feel buffeted around by the winds of chance and think that other people are doing it to them - except they are doing it to themselves with their intrusiveness, bullying, aggression, arousal, irritability and impatience.
We hurt other people and offend them.
We blame others; still assuming they were doing it to us.
N. The Enabling Role
The enabler/co-dependent, usually the spouse or significant other of the dependent … as the classic symptoms of addiction progress … so do the compulsions of the enabler to protect the dependent and the family system by assuming the responsibilities in the family that the dependent has abandoned.
The co-dependent will constantly ignore his or her own needs for the needs of the dependent and the addiction. They will circumvent or facilitate any crisis the dependent may have … oddly enough those things that might motivate the dependent to change, without any awareness that their "help" is in fact supporting the continued dependency and the problem. This is the concept of "negative enabling". That is, the dependent is enabled to continue in his problem behaviours.
The co-dependent can be recognized by the exhibition of symptoms of extreme anger and feelings of powerlessness. He or she develops symptoms of stress related illnesses, such as ulcers, colitis and arthritis that endanger his/her physical health.
They seem to have an altered baseline tolerance level for dishonesty, violence, anger, pollution and chaos that goes on around them. They are able to enable because they wear blinders about the facts of life that are transpiring before them or by being and/or acting naive, or by simply not knowing what to do about the problem nor bothering to find out. They may not participate in what they don’t approve of, but they still have the co-dependent posture of enabling.
O. The Addict Role
Nothing is ever enough. They keep doing things that alter their feelings and their consciousness. They keep doing things for the high, for the excitement and distraction, whether that be work, sex, sexualizing relationships, drug use, three-martini lunches, whining and/or dining.
These people seem to lack boundaries in several areas of their life … have little impulse control … become preoccupied and obsessed with those things that might distract or make them feel better temporarily… and temporarily is the key word here. Fore instance they try to sell their addiction processes to those they work or live with … if a drinker, get others to drink with me after work … it is what we do to bond … if a drug user etc etc … this is especially true for the concept of addiction around work ethic and work addiction … work addiction is often times rewarded as good work ethic … similarly it is true for those who need to feel needed … it is a form of compulsion/addiction … they do so at the expense of themselves … never recognizing that in fact it is a disease and if allowed to continue will at some point consume the beholder.
P. The Scapegoat Role
They are similar to the victim, but they actively get blamed and set up to take the dive for a system gone awry.
They carry the burden and very often do the acting out to insure that the burden will be placed on them.
Scapegoats are particularly susceptible to chemical addiction and suicidal tendencies … they are often Dxed with Personality Disorders and treated for depression.
Q. The Organizer Role
They are constantly organizing - our desk, their desk, the office, the kitchen, the basement, the yard, the company picnics, the volleyball matches, and the teams - they organize until they lose all sense of direction.
They become disorganized to the point of fractured frustration!
R. The Healer Role
They listen and placate - always fixing, giving advice, caring for others, until they burn out.
Usually they are not too great at caring for those immediately and intimately around them.
The closer people are, the less they are able to give because those closest to them can see through the role.
Those close others can see that real intimacy isn't there.
They never allow themselves to be cared for or be vulner¬able with others … always present false fronts … and are difficult to pin down on life issues.
S. The Jeremiah Or Prophet Role
These people foretell of the demise of the system or the end of the world. They know what is and what is about to happen.
Mostly you don’t even have to ask they will just tell you.
They are always foretelling what will happen and are constantly obsessed with the future and negativity and how to avoid it … the golden rule of the Prophet (and this spill over in to many other of the roles but it has it origins here) is:
Avoid Negativity at all cost … Negative = Bad.
T. The Queen Bee Role
They have everybody covering for them, doing their work and running around for them.
They are bossy, demanding, distant and unable to offer support for people around them.
They send the workers and warriors out into the world so they can stay home and lay eggs.
U. The Gadfly Role
They are always buzzing around, noticing and prodding, generally noticing what is wrong with everyone else. They work toward change - sometimes positively, some¬times destructively - but always buzzing and usually never completing anything.
V. The Odd-Duck Role
Whatever is happening, they have to do it differently. They dress, act and do their work in an unusual way. It gets to be a repetition in sameness of how different they are always trying to be.
These roles overlap and change, and there are many more.
They are residuals of all the different roles we played in our families.
We must go back and look at our families to rework our roles.
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