Collective "Power"

Hegemonic control & systematic oppression

A different conversation about wellness might begin not with individuals, but with the organizations and systems that shape our lives.

Much of the wellness industry focuses on helping people regulate their nervous systems, improve their mental health, and overcome adversity. These are important conversations. But what if we also looked upstream? What if we examined the environments that create distress in the first place?

What if we started by looking at how organizations treat their members? Many organizations operate from a top-down, hierarchical structure, with leadership at the top and the people who sustain the system at the bottom. While hierarchy itself is not inherently harmful, problems arise when power becomes concentrated, accountability disappears, and control is mistaken for leadership.

How many beloved organizations have leadership that unconsciously or intentionally relies on hegemonic control and systematic oppression under the guise of care, service, or good intentions? How many people become part of systems and structures that support this oppressive lens, defending the organization while shaming, discrediting, or excluding those who expose poor leadership? These questions are uncomfortable because they challenge the narratives organizations tell about themselves.

The sociological concept of hegemony, introduced by Antonio Gramsci, describes how power is maintained not only through authority, but through shaping what people believe is normal, acceptable, and desirable. In many organizations, loyalty becomes more valued than integrity. Silence is mistaken for professionalism. Compliance is rewarded while questioning leadership is framed as negativity, insubordination, or instability. Over time, members begin policing themselves. They learn what can be said, what cannot be said, and which truths are too dangerous to acknowledge openly. The culture itself becomes an instrument of control.

Many people in positions of power thrive on control. Perhaps they began with genuine intentions. Perhaps they wanted to help, create change, or serve a meaningful purpose. Yet structures have a way of shaping those within them. Over time, the system can warp perspectives until control feels like care, compliance feels like harmony, and criticism feels like a threat. What began as leadership can slowly transform into domination while still being justified as protection.

One of the most revealing aspects of oppressive systems is how they respond when someone speaks up. When a person experiences emotional or psychological abuse, the focus often shifts away from the behavior that caused the harm and toward the person's reaction to it.

• If they react emotionally, they are labeled unstable.
• If they remain silent, their experience is dismissed or forgotten.
• If they stand up for themselves, they are framed as the problem, accused of causing drama, being difficult, or revealing some flaw in their character.
• If they move with grace, restraint, and dignity, they may be perceived as weak, passive, or insignificant.

In these environments, there is often no "correct" response because the goal is not resolution. The goal is maintaining power. The abused become responsible for managing everyone else's comfort while the original harm remains unexamined.

Psychologist Jennifer Freyd described a common pattern known as DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. When challenged, individuals or institutions may deny wrongdoing, attack the person raising concerns, and position themselves as the true victim. The result is a profound distortion of reality where accountability is avoided and the person speaking up becomes the target. This is one reason institutionally harmful organizations often appear healthy from the outside. They speak the language of compassion. They promote values of inclusion. They encourage communication. They celebrate wellness. Yet beneath the polished image may exist coercion, emotional manipulation, favoritism, exclusion, gaslighting, or character assassination. The greater the gap between the public image and the lived experience of members, the greater the psychological tension for those within the system.

Perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask is this: What if many of the symptoms or behaviours we are trying to change in individuals are actually reasonable responses to unhealthy systems? What if anxiety, burnout, chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, and nervous system dysregulation are not simply personal failures to cope, but reflections of environments that have normalized control, fear, and disconnection?

A truly holistic approach to wellness cannot focus exclusively on helping people adapt to unhealthy environments. It must also examine the systems that produce suffering and ask whether those systems deserve our loyalty in the first place. Because wellness is not only about what happens within individuals. It is also about the cultures, institutions, and power structures that shape the conditions in which people live, work, belong, and attempt to thrive. And perhaps real change begins when we stop asking people to adjust themselves to unhealthy systems and start asking systems to become worthy of the people who sustain them.