Breaking Cycles in Our Communities
How narcissism, patriarchy, and lateral harm move through tribal spaces and how we can come back to each other.
In our communities, love is not small. We love fiercely. We protect fiercely. We hold each other up through grief, through struggle, through the kind of loss that most people don’t understand because they haven’t lived it.
But sometimes, that same fierce protection gets twisted. It gets redirected. And instead of protecting our people, we end up protecting harm.
This is about that twist. The ways narcissistic behavior and patriarchy show up in tribal spaces, how men and women both can become part of it, and how the harm doesn’t stop with one person or one generation. It moves through families. It travels through community systems. It gets handed down as “normal” or “tradition,” even when it is anything but.
This is naming patterns because naming is how we break cycles. Many of our men are good men. Many of our women are doing their best. And still, we can’t heal what we refuse to see. I write these things in hopes at least one person sees what I am discussing and decides to make a change for themselves and their family, breaking the cycle for their children, grandchildren, and our future generations.
Before “narcissism” had a name, we knew what harm looked like
A lot of people hear the word narcissist and think it means someone is just selfish or full of themselves. But what I’m talking about is bigger than personality. I’m talking about patterns of harm that show up in relationships, leadership, workplaces, family systems, and through “tradition” and ceremony spaces.
Whether someone meets a diagnosis or not, communities recognize these patterns because we’ve lived around them:
Charm in public, harm in private
Control disguised as leadership
Respect demanded through fear
Accountability treated like “disrespect”
Women expected to shrink
Truth-tellers punished so everyone else stays quiet
When these patterns get protected, they don’t just injure individuals. They shape culture. They shape what we think is normal.
A timeline of disruption: how we got here
When we talk about patriarchy and narcissistic harm in tribal spaces, we have to talk about history. Because a lot of what people call “tradition” today is actually trauma that has had generations to settle in.
Removal and forced disruption
Our communities were moved, confined, reorganized, and controlled. Relational systems were disrupted, not just where we lived, but how we lived. When you take land, you also destabilize roles, clan responsibilities, and balance.
Boarding school era and the training of silence
Boarding schools didn’t just punish language and culture. They trained obedience. They trained fear. They trained people to survive by reading power and staying quiet. Many of our grandparents and parents came home carrying things that were never spoken. Abuse was normalized. Shame was internalized. Control became familiar.
And when control becomes familiar, people start mistaking it for leadership.
Intergenerational trauma and lateral harm
Trauma that can’t go outward often turns inward. When we can’t fight the system, we fight each other. That’s how lateral oppression grows. Not because our people are bad, but because the harm had to land somewhere.
And too often, it lands on women.
Patriarchy in tribal spaces: not “traditional,” but learned
I want to be clear. Patriarchal domination is not Indigenous by nature. Our nations are diverse, but across many tribal lifeways there were responsibilities and roles rooted in relationship, balance, kinship, and accountability, not domination.
Colonization rewarded a certain kind of man, the man who could perform authority in ways the system understood. That system didn’t value humility. It valued control. It didn’t value community care. It valued hierarchy. Over time, some men learned that control gets rewarded, and some communities started treating that control like strength.
That’s where you start seeing:
men protecting men even when harm is obvious
leadership used as a shield from accountability
women blamed for “causing conflict” when they speak truth
girls and young women labeled “disrespectful” for having a voice
community image prioritized over community safety
The culture of men covering for men
There’s a pattern I’ve seen echoed everywhere, and it deserves its own name: men covering for men.
People call it loyalty. People call it brotherhood. People call it “not wanting drama.” But too often, it is simply protection of power without accountability.
You see it in every circle:
the group chat that goes silent when one of their own crosses a line
the friends who “don’t want to get involved” when a woman speaks up
the men who minimize harm because holding another man accountable would require courage
the excuses served up at family gatherings while women and children carry the consequences
Real strength doesn’t need cover stories. Integrity doesn’t require people to look away. If a man has nothing to hide, he doesn’t need a circle trained to protect him from consequences.
And when men cover for men, the message to women and children is loud:
“Your safety matters less than his reputation.”
That is not protection. That is cowardice dressed up as loyalty.
How women get pulled into upholding it
This part is hard, but it’s necessary. Because narcissistic harm doesn’t survive without community participation, and that includes women.
Many women are not upholding harm because they love harm. They are doing it because they believe it keeps them safe.
In rural and tribal communities, everything is connected. Jobs, housing, family ties, belonging. It’s all intertwined. So women learn quickly:
don’t become a target
don’t speak too loudly
don’t challenge the wrong person
keep your head down
protect your family
That can turn into:
repeating a story without verifying it
joining a smear campaign because “everybody knows”
turning on a woman who speaks up because it feels safer to be on the “right side”
policing other women’s behavior so the system stays calm
And then, slowly, compliance becomes the price of belonging.
Why this happens (without blaming women)
There are reasons this takes hold, and naming them helps us change it:
Trauma and abandonment wounds. When men have left, harmed, or been inconsistent, women may overprotect sons out of fear and grief.
Survival parenting. In harsh conditions, mothers and grandmothers may center boys because they fear losing them to systems, violence, addiction, prison, or early death.
Internalized patriarchy. Generations of being taught that male comfort and reputation matter more than women’s safety.
Trauma bonding to power. Learning that safety comes from proximity to male authority, even harmful authority.
Normalization. After seeing harm repeated, people start managing around it instead of confronting it.
Family roles. “Golden boy” dynamics where one son is excused and centered while girls and women carry the responsibility.
This isn’t about shaming women. It’s about telling the truth. Love can get twisted by trauma. Protection can turn into enabling. And enabling doesn’t just hurt “that one woman.” It shapes the whole community.
The patterns to recognize
If we want change, we need language for what we’re seeing. Some common patterns in narcissistic harm look like this:
Triangulation: turning people against each other so the person causing harm stays centered and unchallenged.
Smear campaigns: attacking someone’s character so nobody listens to them.
Projection: placing their own shame, wrongdoing, or insecurity onto someone else and making that person carry it.
Scapegoating: choosing one person to blame so the group doesn’t have to face the real issue.
DARVO: deny, attack, reverse victim and offender so the person harmed looks like the problem.
Entitlement: acting like boundaries and accountability apply to everyone else, not them.
Image protection: prioritizing reputation over safety.
These patterns are important because they are predictable, and when something is predictable, it can be interrupted.
Who else is harmed: children
This is the part that stays with me the most.
Children are not blind. They hear conversations. They feel tension. They watch who gets defended and who gets punished. They learn what “loyalty” looks like, what “strength” looks like, what men can get away with, and what women are expected to tolerate.
And when kids grow up inside that kind of environment, the trauma doesn’t disappear. It gets carried through family lines. That is how lateral oppression moves from generation to generation. Not always through big dramatic events, but through everyday messages:
be quiet
don’t embarrass him
don’t cause conflict
that’s just how men are
a “good woman” keeps the peace
That is how a burden of silence and resentment becomes inheritance.
So how do we heal this?
Healing doesn’t mean pretending harm didn’t happen. Healing means we stop feeding the patterns that keep harm alive.
For men: returning to who you were meant to be
Our men were meant to be protectors without domination. Leaders with humility. Men of responsibility and restraint. Men who honor women, children, elders, and community, not men who demand respect through fear.
Healing for men looks like:
taking accountability without excuses
calling out other men, not covering for them
being present fathers and uncles
respecting women’s boundaries and voices
choosing truth over image
understanding that being corrected is not being attacked
For women: stopping the cycle of policing each other
Healing for women looks like:
refusing to repeat what we don’t know is true
not joining smear campaigns as entertainment or self-protection
checking the instinct to punish a woman for being brave
choosing solidarity over popularity
remembering we can be compassionate and still have boundaries
For all of us: choosing community safety over community image
We have to stop confusing “peace” with silence. Real peace includes safety. Real peace includes accountability. Real peace includes women being able to speak without being destroyed for it.
Closing
I’m writing this because I want more for us. Not just for today, but for the generations coming behind us.
If you see yourself in any part of this, I’m not here to shame you. I’m here to invite honesty. Because the first step of change is seeing it. The next step is choosing differently.
We can protect what we love without enabling what harms us.
We can raise our sons without excusing men.
We can honor our men without sacrificing women.
We can break cycles and come back to who we are.
And to the women and men standing in truth in your own communities, feeling the strain of it and being harmed for trying to make things better, I see you. I pray for you. I want nothing but the best for you and your communities.
Keep going. You’re not alone. ♥️
