🔧 Integration Layer Pending:
This framework will soon include a visual and semantic overlay linking each level of harm to the emotional modes from Framework 1.
Purpose: to show how emotional harm emerges asdefensive distortion
⌗ Comparative Framework Chart
Framework 4 – Emotional Harm & Defense × Core Theories of Trauma, Power & Regulation
Paretas Gradient | Core Question | Typical Behaviours | Dominant Nervous-System State | Psychological Parallels | Sociological / Power Parallels | Neuroscientific Correlates | Key Thinkers / Models |
Belonging / Co-regulation | “How do we stay connected?” | Open dialogue, repair attempts | Ventral vagal safety | Rogers’ unconditional positive regard; Secure attachment (Bowlby) | Mutual‐aid norms; Habermas communicative action | Social-engagement system (ventromedial PFC ↔ vagus) | Rogers • Bowlby • Porges |
Discomfort / Raw Hurt | “I feel pain—am I still safe?” | Withdrawal, mild protest | Sympathetic flicker | James–Lange bodily arousal; Emotion-dysregulation precursor | Symbolic-interaction back-stage distress (Goffman) | Insula & ACC register social pain | James • Lange • Goffman |
Defense Mode (unintentional harm) | “How do I protect myself?” | Denial, projection, shutdown | Sympathetic fight/flight or dorsal freeze | Classic ego defenses (Anna Freud); Dual-Representation PTSD model (Brewin)4 | Face-saving & status-quo preservation | Amygdala-HPA hyper-vigilance; dlPFC over-control | A. Freud • Brewin |
Manipulative Mode | “How do I regain control?” | Gas-lighting, guilt-trips, stone-walling | Mixed: sympathetic threat + strategic cortical planning | Coercive control literature; Narcissistic entitlement | Conflict theory power-over; Stark’s “coercive control” | mPFC theory-of-mind used instrumentally | Evan Stark • Kohut |
Tyrant Mode (intentional abuse) | “How do I dominate?” | Humiliation, fear conditioning | Predatory calm; low empathy | Dark-Triad traits; Authoritarian personality (Adorno) | Structural violence; Total institutions | Blunted amygdala empathy circuits, reward in ventral striatum | Adorno • Paulhus |
Systemic Defense | “Which structures keep us here?” | Burnout culture, institutional gas-lighting | Chronic stress load | Learned helplessness (Seligman) | Patriarchy, racism, neoliberal productivity scripts | Allostatic overload; hippocampal shrinkage | Seligman • Pearlin |
Why the Matches Work
- Defense mechanisms (denial, projection, rationalisation) that Paretas labels “protective” emerged from psychoanalysis as unconscious strategies to reduce anxiety; they map neatly onto her “Defense Mode”.
- Trauma models show that chronic threat locks the amygdala–HPA axis on “high”, while the dlPFC narrates and justifies behaviour—physiology that explains the slide from defence into manipulation when cognition is hijacked for control.
- Foundational emotion theories (James–Lange) plus contemporary regulation research confirm that bodily arousal precedes conscious labelling; missing co-regulation therefore seeds the “raw hurt → defence” transition Paretas describes.
- Sociological “collective/cultural trauma” work demonstrates how entire groups can be stuck in perpetual Defence Mode, reproducing power hierarchies that mirror the personal Manipulation-and-Tyranny end of Paretas’s scale.
- Systems such as capitalism and patriarchy externalise these same dynamics: productivity-as-worth (“your value is your output”) keeps nervous systems in sympathetic overdrive, sustaining chronic manipulation at a societal level.
This space is for the ones who don't gatekeep. Who learn out loud. Who value emotional safety over performance. We’re not here to be perfect— we’re here to grow, together.
The Emotional Gradient Blueprint (TEG-Blue™) © 2025 by Anna Paretas
Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
This is a living document. Please cite responsibly.
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