The Empowerment Dynamic. Pt.3

Welcome. Thank you for tuning into the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host, Ralph Owens, along with Terry Baylor. In today's episode, we'll answer questions such as, what does it mean to be a rescuer? Is being a rescuer helping or hurting?

Can a persecutor and a rescuer be the same person? And can a rescuer be something other than a person? Enjoy the show. So so the the final the final piece of this equation, is called the rescuer. So remember, we have a triangle.

At the top, you have the victim. Let's say at the bottom left hand corner, you have the persecutor. And now we're gonna finish it up with the rescuer. And this is what the book says. It says the third role, the one who steps in the dance between the persecutor and the victim is the rescuer.

The dictionary defines the verb rescue this way, To free from confinement, danger, or evil, to save or to deliver. The rescuer may also try to alleviate or lessen the victim's fear or other negative feelings. Here too, a rescuer isn't always a person. Addictions to alcohol or drugs or sexual addiction, work, holism, All the ways we numb out can rescue the victim from feeling his or her feelings. And here's another point that I was gonna make.

It says, you see, instead of helping or supporting the victim, the rescuer just increases the victim's sense of powerless. So powerful. Unwittingly, the rescuer enables the victim to stay small even though this may be the farthest thing from the stated intention. The victim ends up feeling ashamed and guilty for needing to be rescued and becomes dependent on the rescuer for a sense of safety. Is so heavy, man.

That is so heavy because I see that in our society in so many different ways.

I said in scrolling, scrolling. Yes. Scrolling is a rescuer. Twitter is a rescuer. It

is to distract your mind from what's happening. To distract your mind from the persecutor. But that is such a fragile state to be in because you could be manipulated so easily. When you have to have a rescuer, when value that is perceived is only based on what somebody can do for you. Right?

Only if a person can come in and rescue you do you actually show value in them. A person that rescue you is not helping you. They're enabling you to remain a victim. Right? So okay, we want to make them feel like they're victims because we're going to persecute them.

But what happens when the victim is the same one that comes in as the rescuer? Right? To keep you dependent upon them. It's all made to keep you as a victim. It's a very vicious triangle but if you really sit back and be honest with yourself, transparent with yourself, you'll see these roles played out all around you.

And people do it unconsciously and they they've been doing it for their for their entire lives. I mean like what what comes to mind when you hear that Terry?

Yeah, I think the whole rescuer aspect of it. Right? And you know, because quite honestly, I've often tried to help people and move them beyond where they are. And what I had to realize is, you know what, after reading this book, realized, man, I've been a rescuer at times because I'm trying to help you get beyond but I realized I found myself right back at the same place with the individual. Up until reading this book, I didn't really understand that you know what, and we'll get to the more positive aspects of this, right?

Can't wait to get to that section but in it's and of without the person's participation, there's no movement at the end of the day. All I am is a placebo for the moment to help alleviate whatever the tension or the stress that was happening, my encouragement because what I realized is, okay, we're back here at the same conversation again. And that's not to say again, that we don't work through circumstances and issues with persons, I'm not saying that. But at a certain point, I had to realize that what I'm putting in here and there is no visible, there's no, I don't wanna say change but how the person is, how they are taking the information and then trying to reapply it, right? If there's no result or change in their perception and attitude, it's really not about what the outcome's gonna be, but it's what language are you using to describe where you are.

And if that continues to be the same, here's the deal, right? There's always gonna be a Bible reference here on this show. So as a man thinketh, so was he. So if you or we or I, us, whatever pronoun, it's pronouns, right? You wanna use,

if

we're not thinking a certain way or whatever our thinking is, that is what the outcome of our life's gonna be. It's as simple as that. So your language is gonna drive every single aspect of your life. That's just it. Why is that?

Okay, I got another one for you. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth is going to be talking.

That's it.

So what's on the inside of you? Okay, I got one more. I'm not giving you guys the scriptures versus on the actual where they're located but the issues of life come out of what Ralph?

It's gonna

come out your heart. It's gonna come out your heart. So that's why it says guard it. Guard your heart with all diligence. So what that means is be intentional about what you are thinking, what you are reading, who you are engaging with, all of those things play a significant role in this triangle.

Because again, we're all human, don't say, look, I do not want to be pretentious at all and to say that I haven't experienced all three of these roles at some point of my life.

Same thing.

What we're doing is actually being transparent about it and saying that, it is possible to go down the path where you don't see yourself as a victim because you know what, your mind may want or your emotions may wanna take you there but I heard somebody say, I'm gonna turn it over to you Ralph, tell your feelings what to feel, tell your mind what to think and tell your body what to do.

Do you

know how much power there is in that? Let me say that one more time. Tell your feelings what to feel. Tell your mind what to think and tell your body what to do.

That's powerful. Yeah, yeah that's powerful so much in there. I was thinking back to what you're saying about, how you find yourself being a rescuer and so have I. I was reading this in a book today. It says, a man convinced against his will is still of the same opinion still.

Which basically means that if a person doesn't wanna change, no matter how much you wanna tell them, they need to do this and they need to do that. If in their heart they don't wanna change, it doesn't matter what they say, they're not gonna change. You may get them to saying, yes, yes, this is the right thing to do. But that's not the action they're gonna do. A man convinced against his will is still of the same opinion still.

There has to be true change, right? And I think that's where you were kind of going with that too, Terri, is that we've all Being a rescuer to some degree has a lot to do with intent. We may have had the intent

to try

to help somebody.

Oh, it was pure.

Was pure. It's You just wanna help somebody. But by eliminating the pain for them sometimes, all you've done is enable them to continue to be a victim. Right? And, you know, we well, we don't want to see them hurting or we don't want to see them go through this.

So we're going to take the pain away from them. Right? But at the same time, sometimes the rescuer is a person who has created this identity where they have to be saving somebody all the time.

Yep.

Right? And if they don't have that, then they don't have purpose in their life. Right? And God didn't create us to save anybody. Only thing we can do is lead them to Him.

Yes.

Right? It's not in our power to do so. So, that rescuer role, that rescuer mentality, people who identify themselves with that, I have one person that I have in mind right now. And this person just goes around everywhere they go trying to fix everybody's problems. Right?

Can't fix their own, but always trying to fix everybody else's problems. And if you remove their ability to fix everyone else's problems, they start having a meltdown and they don't know how to handle it because they've identified themselves as a rescuer and if you remove their ability to rescue then they feel like they don't have purpose anymore. Any thoughts on that too?

Wow I think that's man I'm chewing on that one. I'm chewing on that one because I think it's a distraction. It's a distraction for them essentially. Essentially they've become their own rescuer in a way. They're playing the rescuer in their life because it's no different than the scrolling, it's no different than the alcohol, it's no different than the addiction.

And so really, they want the gratification of the person or individual or circumstance, whatever saying, thank you, you did this because it gives them a sense of validation and self worth. And I think that is a very interesting place to be because that person's probably a very charismatic person, very easy to talk to, approachable in that kind of situation. That is man, that's very interesting.

Yeah, it's pretty powerful man. It's pretty powerful to think of a person who identifies himself as a rescuer. Cause to your point, and I never thought about it until you just said it Terry, they use that as a distraction not to deal with the issues of their own life.

I'm just taking that from what you said, they're helping everybody else but they have so much stuff going on and man, look, this thing is complicated.

There's levels to this thing. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. We hope that you not only enjoy the content, but gained something to help you on your personal leadership journey. Feel free to reach out to us on x and Instagram under the handles Leadership Sovereignty. Until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.