In conversations about trauma, oppression, and healing, we often focus—rightfully—on the harm done to those who are marginalized, silenced, or exploited. But there’s a quieter, more insidious cost embedded within systems like patriarchy, racism, capitalism, and colonialism:

People in positions of power are taught to abandon their own vulnerability in order to maintain control.

In doing so, they lose access to their capacity for empathy, connection, and authentic love.

Last week I wrote about how vulnerability is the key to connection and love. To dominate (non-consensually), one must disconnect. You must silence the part of yourself that would feel what the other is feeling. You must armor your heart, justify your actions, and turn empathy into weakness. And so, systems of power not only dehumanize the oppressed—they emotionally distort the oppressor.

🔒 Why Vulnerability Is a Threat to Power

Vulnerability is about being open to uncertainty, to feeling, to interdependence. But when your position in a system depends on power-over (non-consensual domination over others)—on being the one who has control, wealth, safety, or status—vulnerability becomes dangerous.

To stay on top in systems like:

• Patriarchy, men are taught to suppress emotion, deny fear, hurt, sadness, uncertainty, and dominate others. The harm done by this domination is minimized or justified by the actions or choices of others, (ex. “Did you see what she was wearing?” — consequences, sexual assault) while men are allowed the same behaviors with little or no consequence (ex. to wear little clothing — consequence, none).
  

• Racism, whiteness is centered, and white people are taught to deny or minimize racial harm. Racial harm is justified as deserved because of actions or traits of racial minorities, (ex. They should have obeyed the law — consequences, prison or injury/death administered by police) while whites are allowed the same behaviors with little or no consequence (ex. speeding and petty crimes — consequence, a ticket, probation, slap on the wrist).
  

• Capitalism, productivity and profit matter more than people’s well-being or rest. Compassion or empathy for poor people is discouraged and justified as due to the choices of poor people (ex. drug use — consequence, disqualifies them from most assistance programs, blamed for their life circumstances as a moral failing or money mismanagement), while wealthy people are allowed the same behaviors with little or no consequence (ex. drug use — consequences, none unless caught, often lesser consequences even when caught).
  

To feel deeply would mean confronting the harm these systems create—not just for others, but within oneself. It would mean facing guilt, shame, grief, and responsibility. And those emotions threaten the illusion of superiority and invulnerability.

So people in dominant positions are taught to choose power over connection, denial over truth, and control over compassion.

🧠 The Psychological Cost of Oppression

To hold power over others, you have to:

• Dehumanize the people you’re exploiting
  

• Suppress your instinct to care
  

• Justify your entitlement
  

• Ignore or rationalize suffering
  

• Split off the parts of yourself that feel shame or responsibility
  

This is not just moral injury—it’s emotional fragmentation. You cannot feel someone else’s pain while holding them beneath you. You have to numb something in yourself to maintain that hierarchy.

And numbing doesn’t just stop our pain. It blocks our joy, love, trust, and the ability to truly be known.

❄️ Power Without Vulnerability Is Isolation

When we deny vulnerability, we cut ourselves off from the very things that make us human:

• The ability to be wrong and still worthy
  

• The experience of mutual care
  

• The transformative power of grief and apology
  

• The tenderness of love without control
  

People in dominant roles may appear confident or strong, but beneath that is often fear, shame, and disconnection—a deep isolation from themselves and others.

Systems of domination hurt everyone, though not equally. Even those with systemic power often suffer emotionally—because power without love is cold, brittle, and ultimately unsatisfying.

💥 The Way Out Is Through Vulnerability

Breaking cycles of oppression requires more than policy or protest—it also requires emotional courage. People in dominant roles who want to change and invite real connection into their lives must be willing to:

• Feel their emotional discomfort
  

• Hear truths that challenge their self-image and positions of privilege
  

• Apologize and make amends for harm done, even if they felt entitled to those actions at the time
  

• Let go of the illusion that power means worth. Non-consensual power (power-over) means emotional isolation.
  

• Choose accountability over defensiveness
  

This is vulnerable work—and therefore, it’s loving work.

Because real love—love as bell hooks defines it in her book All About Love: New Visions—is not just affection or kindness. It’s a commitment to nurturing the growth of ourselves and others. And that is impossible without vulnerability.

🌱 Final Word

Systems of oppression are built on the lie that some people must dominate others in order to be safe, valued, or whole. But that lie costs us our ability to feel, to connect, to love.

To unlearn oppression is not just about liberation for the oppressed.

It’s about emotional and spiritual liberation for those in positions of power, too.

Vulnerability is the bridge.

Let’s walk it together.

Thanks for reading. If this resonates with you, share it. To step outside these systems is to invite the healing all of humanity needs.