Hi there Reader,
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So last time we met here, did you notice what happens in your body when you tell the truth, but it threatens your belonging?

Was it anything like what I shared happened in my body in part 1 of this story?
{catch up over there 👉in just 2 mins if you’re fuzzy or missed it completely.}

On that note, this week I‘m processing more about what people (erm… systems?) do when truth suddenly threatens their comfort.

Let me explain.

Toxic systems – like the ones being unveiled en-masse to us across our country and the systems we’ve inherited– train those of us who’ve been enculturated by and benefitted from them to protect what’s comfortable for us rather than what’s true.

Here’s a peek into the toxicity that violently seethes out from beneath the surface of our cultural complex when there’s any level of accountability:
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In this case (actual screenshot above), his “Anonymous” identity was unveiled.

I simply let him know I see him online and might even run into him in-person sometime in my community with my husband – who he’d accused of being a pedophile – in… retaliation? To distract from the child perpetrator outed in the original post?

At first glance, you might chalk it up to either of those.

But this kind of cultural complex is incredibly old. And its mechanisms for maintaining moral control are familiar ghosts haunting the halls of our cultural collective in the same worn-in ways: to maintain a sense of social order and control when those things are threatened – especially by a woman and (how audacious!) a young mother.

THIS kind of socially-enforced punishment is alive, well, and carried by ordinary and otherwise “good” people every day.

And when you’re okay with socially punishing Moms in your community, it rarely stops there. That means you’re capable of doing it to other women, children, older folks, black, brown, yellow folks, indigenous, immigrants, disabled, and Queer.

And that’s not fucking okay with me.

The disturbing details of the “incident about the incident,” I’ll call it, matter far less than naming the systems and dynamics at play that create it. Because the more that those who are impacted by this system of feeling-avoidant antisocial punishment NAME what’s happening rather than taking the blame and shame on as their own and quieting down, the more we can all hold ourselves and one another accountable.

And only then does more possibility open up to dismantle these systems we unknowingly carry as hosts – a pathogen lying latent within us for decades, sometimes generations, until the conditions are right for it to replicate through us once more.

The pathology of social punishment

To trace the lines of this sickness, let’s first understand its anatomy in relation to our bodies.A
nd how the dis-ease of toxic systems attaches itself to the beliefs and complexes of a group and then the bodies of the humans who spread it.
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Following a natural pattern I see in myself, my relationships, and my somatic work with clients, let’s trace how a rupture in relationship creates a nervous system response, a story, an embodied adaptation, and eventually a cultural inheritance that lives on long after the original wounding.

So, if you’re with me, then let’s go under the macroscope.

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Where the wound actually begins

We’ll start right here: where the wound begins.

Where the pathogen enters.

It’s rarely the “group” or the “institution” parts of the "system" we’re always talking about that’re the actual entry point. No, it’s much more personal than that (in this human body).

It happens in the relationship.

And relationships connect us to something bigger than ourselves (via our vagus nerve).

So when a truth threatens belonging, every human relationship has to hold the same questions:

Will we protect (and accept) reality?

Or will we protect cohesion?

Healthy relationships, groups, and systems can tolerate the subtle bind – the tension these questions introduce – without mistaking every discomfort for a pathogen.

Toxic ones cannot.

And so the humans in those relationships, from a moral standpoint (based on Moral Foundations Theory), follow 1 of 2 unconscious impulses in answer to those questions:

They either prioritize a set of binding values or individualizing values.

• Those who prioritize binding values protect their group cohesion and the sanctity of its identity through loyalty and social order, maintaining authority in the name of the whole.
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• While those prioritizing individualizing values focus their protection on caring for the individual through fairness, justice, and the sense of reciprocity that comes with accountability.

Neither is inherently wrong for what they value.

The toxic pathogen enters when either moral value system disconnects from reality, relationship, and accountability; instead choosing comfort maintenance, identity and image management, or group cohesion as the mission.

Because the original post itself wasn’t inciting anyone to panic or demanding any punishment. It was quite simply asking people to pay attention to something happening in their community. My community.

The toxic problem is when accountability shows up, some people’s attention shifts off of the behavior itself to punishing the people naming it.

This is antisocial punishment. And here’s how it looks IRL:

Wherever someone deviates from the status quo by naming an uncomfortable truth, the focus shifts from the behavior to the person naming it.

The possible deviation?

In this real community story, I imagine the person naming the uncomfortable truth could have deviated in multiple potential ways, by being perceived as “too good” or “too altruistic.”

Or, given their perceived position in the group/community (i.e., a young mother who happens to be outspoken, thoughtful, sometimes an activist-in-tone, and partnered with the son of well-known and respected Jewish family).

The motivation to punish?

Those driven by their own envy, spite, subconscious bigotry, or grasping to maintain a sense of order and conformity unconsciously make the messenger the problem. Accountability-seeking their offense.

What hurts my heart and tanks my stomach most is that every time truth gets punished in broad daylight, the infection spreads.

Not because institutions carry it or “systems.”

But because people carry it – person to person, relationship to relationship.

And eventually, generation to generation until silence feels safer than honesty and our belonging becomes more important than accepting our reality.

And, systematically, reality becomes harder to access.

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When the threat enters the body

Truth enters the system.

The mother wrote the community post. She attached the photo of the perpetrators ID (address blacked out, ya know, because we’re still protecting perpetrator “privacy” in 2026). She pressed the publish button.

The post itself wasn’t threatening. It wasn’t a physical threat or even an immediate one.

But it was a cloaked social threat.

And it’s scanned by the nervous system as such:

“This threatens my {community}.”
{INSERT ALSO: safety, values, identity, worldview, belonging}

And alas, the social threat entered through the relationship wound. That’s where all of this begins.
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Nervous systems prioritizing binding values scan more like so:

“This threatens my group’s {purity}.”
{INSERT ALSO: solidarity, sense of order, loyalty, authority}

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And nervous systems prioritizing individualizing values scan more like so:

“This is unfair.”

“Someone’s being harmed.”

“They must be protected.”

“This shouldn't be happening.”

A truth about an experience parents had at Lithia Park creek – the gem of our wee mountain valley town. By the majority of verbal accounts, a divine park not far separate from God themselves. Some have said:

“The heart and soul of Ashland.”

Others compared it to the work of one of the greatest landscape architects of the 19th century (of Manhattan’s Central Park and Montreal’s Mount Royal Park), “a good example of what Frederick Law Olmsted called ‘the genius of place.’”

Even our founding town slogan, “Ashland Grows while Lithia Flows” paints a Victorian-era portrait of the identity of this sublimely connected, intelligently designed and perfectly balanced, safe place. (Maybe not as artistically realistic as the true-to-life Pre-Raphaelite style of the time.)

But when that truth threatens belonging (i.e., basic needs, someone’s identity and belief system, values, or how we relate to the image of the park and community as a whole) our autonomic nervous system simply reacts before we’re even aware of it.

Again, the post itself wasn’t threatening.

This mother simply shared information.

And when information activates fear in your nervous system, you’re flooded with adrenaline, cortisol, and sooo many questions like:

What if this is happening here too? In my neighborhood? My family?

Shit, what if I can’t protect my children?

OMG what if the world really isn’t safe anymore?

That’s when we pay with our nervous system. The virus takes over. It readies to replicate. And our prefrontal cortex’s no longer making any sound judgement calls from here.

We’ve been hijacked.

Physiologically the hijack feels like heart-pounding, gut plummeting, maybe even vigilance comes on board. Your eyes dart around scanning the room in fractions of a second, scanning the situation, reading the people and the moments of our consciousness for something we can grab onto that’s steadier or makes any sense.

In response to the hijack we put our dukes up for the fight, make a quick escape (flight), feel incredibly heavy, paralyzed to respond at all (freeze), or bend over backwards apologizing for what’s not ours and taking it all on (fawn).

From the outside, we’re just left with a deep sense of discomfort. Unease. Something’s not right here… can’t put my finger on it… so, it must be… YOU.

Rather than metabolizing that discomfort, many of us unconsciously redirect it. Blame. Shame. It’s the parents! No, it’s the messenger! It’s anyone naming this problem right here in my favorite city park, my neighborhood, my front yard.

Unfortunately blame and shame are the signposts of dysregulation turned outward. And the pathology here is that you’ll never uncover truth (a.k.a. reality, the facts) where there is blame, shame, and impulsive, aggressive acts – our fight-or-flight-freeze-fawn attempts at regulating this overpowering sense of helplessness we feel.
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How the mind makes the story make sense

Cognitive dissonance.

That’s how your brain retorts to the discord of helplessness. To the overpowering sense that something is off.

When we witness the horrifying reality that our world – and now our local park – is unjust. That innocent, vulnerable children are unsafe here, too. Our belief in a world (and hometown) that is generally fair and stable and where “good things happen to good people” gets shaken.

And instead we’re hearing

“this shouldn’t happen”

on repeat inside our heads.

Your values, whether binding or individualized, are now in conflict with your beliefs. (In this story. In other cases, your behavior can also be at odds with either your moral values or beliefs, creating the same jarring tension.)

Your fundamental survival need for safety is now threatened.

If you’re a binding moral values girly, then the voice of cognitive dissonance in your head sounds something like:

“I want to protect the group.” {sanctity, order, stability}

VS

“I want to know what's true.”

If you’re more of an individualizing moral values homie, then the voice of cognitive dissonance in your head sounds something like:

“The vulnerable deserve protection.”

VS

“The system isn't protecting them.”

VS

“I feel powerless to stop it.”

That’s when a cognitive shortcut, Just-world bias, walks in. And shit gets… well, complicated.

Because we desperately want to believe other people are fair. Our world is an orderly place. It works like this. I know what to expect. “People have what they deserve and deserve what they have.” It’s… safe… here?

So, to cope with the dissonance this threat creates, we start making it make sense.

But that's limited by our moral values and how unconsciously we’re relating to them versus the truth of reality.

Decoupled from our executive functioning, we’re managing the clash from an incredibly impulsive, reptilian brain state that’s trying to survive, stay safe, and belong.

So we either victim-blame or victim-compensate.

One protects the system. The other seeks accountability.

The first is directly and reliably correlated with those who have “ties that bind us” moral values, or the binding values folks we’ve been talking about. And it’s also, shockingly, the most common coping strategy for cognitive dissonance.

The very act of some”body” being violated threatens this group’s values around bodily, sexual, spiritual, bloodline purity. And speaking up about it threatens authority, social order, and the cohesion the group maintains with loyalty to that authority.

So those with values that bind them to the group are statistically more likely to make it make sense by making the victim wrong.

And here’s Just-world bias in action in my town where – in a very hasty “cognitive-tension hack” – responsibility gets reassigned from the perpetrator to the victims:
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So, why does this happen?

Some other quick-hit ways to cope with dissonant tension? Moral reasoning that justifies the victim-blame or shame hack to make it feel more… rational. Even virtuous?!
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Here’s another couple of real-life examples from “the incident about the incident”:
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Because other pathways for coping with cognitive dissonance ask way more of us than the hack of a bias, which allows us to justify, rationalize or, even worse, trivialize-away the tension.

What changing our belief or our behavior ask of us takes slowing down, breathing, connecting to our bodies, actual effort, reasoning, and reflection.

The mind-fuck mentality, or rather pathology, here is that this unquestioned, unconscious bias protects the psychological comfort of one over the discomfort of victims and the truth of reality. And ends up creating more victims as the pathogen replicates.

So now, your nervous system has detected a threat.

Your brain explains it.

But the story doesn’t stop there. Oh, no.

Because what the brain rehearses, the body eventually hosts. Like a virus replicating itself from cell to cell, a belief repeated often enough moves from thought into tissue, posture, reflex, and habit.

Eventually, you no longer just think the story.

You become organized around the story completely.
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​※ Koa

Did you get something out of this email?

A giggle. Some wisdom. Resonance. A witness. The gift of grace in simply acknowledging how absurd it is to be a human right now in a culture that offers LOTS of input but little help? Then, please share with another human who may need this too.

Thank you for reading and sharing,
​Koa

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