David Emerald

The way you talk about yourself and your life—your story—has a great deal to do with what shows up in your day-to-day experience. Your thoughts create filters through which you view your life. If you think of yourself as a Victim, you filter all that happens to you through the lens of DDT, and you find plenty of evidence to support that viewpoint. That’s why the orientation you adopt is so important: it exerts a powerful influence on your life direction.

These people are often authoritarian and rigid in their views, exerting power over others in an effort to keep others from having power over them. Persecutors may act grandiose and self-righteous to mask their own insecurity.

Persecutors, like Victims, act out of fear. The may seem fearless, but actually Persecutors are almost always former Victims.

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 own feelings.

Persecutors fear loss of control. Rescuers fear loss of purpose. Rescuers need Victims—someone to protect or fix—to bolster their self-esteem.

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.

Whatever I hold in my mind tends to manifest itself in my life. What we believe and assume creates most of our reality and our experience.

The focus in the Creator Orientation is on a Vision or an Outcome. You orient your thoughts and actions toward creating what you most deeply want to see or experience in life.

One of the fundamental differences between the Victim Orientation and this one [Creator] is where you put your focus of attention…For Victims, the focus is always on what they don’t want: the problems that seem constantly to multiply in their lives. They don’t want the person, condition, or circumstance they consider their Persecutor, and they don’t want the fear that leads to fight, flee or freeze reactions, either. Creators, on the other hand, place their focus on what they do want. Doing this, Creators still face and solve problems in the course of creating outcomes they want, but their focus remains fixed on their ultimate vision.

It is the Baby Steps you take, the everyday things you do, that eventually lead to the manifestation of your outcome.

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.

Give yourself the gift of time in coming to answers for your life…It takes time, and a lot of introspection and soul-searching, to get clear about what you really want to manifest in your life.

The way you create any outcome in your life is to hold the vision of your deepest desires. At the same time, though, you must honestly and accurately assess your current situation and how it relates to your greater vision. By doing this, you engage tension between what is and what can be. This tension is the primary creative force behind the manifestation of any outcome. It’s as natural and powerful as the force of gravity.

It’s impossible to invest your soul in a compromise.

Some of the steps you take may end up being detours or out-and-out mistakes. By staying focused on your vision, though, you’ll find even those steps useful in the creating process.

TED—The Empowerment Dynamic—counteracts the poison of DDT, the Dreaded Dram Triangle. TED is the antidote for DDT.

A Creator is vision-focused and passion-motivated. To really live into your Creator self, you are called to do the inner work necessary to find your own sense of purpose—whatever touches your heart and holds meaning for you.

All of life’s experiences are teachers in some sense, challenging us to grow and evolve. Although the Persecutor certainly provokes a reaction, the Challenger elicits a response by encouraging the Creator to acquire new knowledge, skill, or insight. Both roles provoke change, but in different ways.

The Coach is the antidote to the Victim’s Rescuer in the DDT…Mainly, a Coach supports, assists, and facilitates the Creator in manifesting a desired outcome. A Coach holds others to be whole, resourceful, and creative…They help you dig deep inside yourself to gain clarity about what you want to create in your life.

Your life is a kind of laboratory where you’re constantly experimenting with your own higher knowing, always increasing your capacity to design the life you choose. Human beings must create; it’s hardwired. The question is, are you consciously creating or only sleepwalking through your human life?

Living from the Creator Orientation is actually more challenging. In the Victim Orientation, I didn’t have to exercise conscious choice; I just reacted to my circumstances.

Every Victim requires a Persecutor. But the Persecutor isn’t always necessarily a person. The Persecutor could also be a condition or a circumstance. A persecuting condition might be a disease or a heart attack, or an injury. A persecuting circumstance could be a natural disaster, like a hurricane or an earthquake or a house burning down.

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. Have you ever felt or acted this way?

All victims have experienced a loss—a thwarted desire or aspiration—even if they’re not aware of it.

It is the Baby Steps you take, the everyday things you do, that eventually lead to the manifestation of your outcome.