When Your Wounds Become Weapons Used Against Your Team

How unhealed trauma fuels group collapse, opens the door to infiltration, and ruins your efforts.

Photo by Tom Jur on Unsplash

There’s an interesting phenomenon that happens when it comes to left vs. right in the American political landscape. The left tends to rely a great deal on “trauma,” not as a way to explain behavior, but as a protection from responsibility for it. “Triggers” are anything that causes discomfort, and are everyone else’s responsibility.

Meanwhile, the right tends to ditch anything having to do with trauma; suck it up because no one cares. That’s the past; it doesn’t dictate your future. Get over it. Take all of the feelings and stuff them down deeper because there is work to do.

The uncomfortable truth is this: Neither model is correct, and the truth is somewhat in the middle. The premise we are starting from is this:

Unresolved trauma in individuals, especially leaders, can metastasize into dysfunction, manipulation, and vulnerability to infiltration or collapse.

Now let’s break that down and prove it.

Trauma Psychology 101 for Leaders and Groups

The first thing we’re going to do, as usual, is define our terms. We sometimes tend to mis-define trauma based on what side of the aisle we are coming from. The right typically defines it as one of two things:

1. A Really Bad Thing That You Couldn’t Deal With (in other words, you’re weak)

2. A fake, made-up idea that you’re going to pretend you can’t deal with (in other words, you’re deceptive AND weak)

Since the right’s focus, in some ways, is being able to deal with anything, you can see how this one-dimensional definition can get people into hot water, especially when the concept of ‘mental toughness’ gets written about so often.

[Side note: I’d argue that if your model of mental toughness doesn’t encourage people to really process and heal their wounds, you’re not teaching mental toughness, but emotional numbness.]

On the other hand, the left sometimes tends to define trauma very simply:

1. Anything that has caused you to feel negatively.

This leads to a pretty offense-laden worldview. Everything is a trauma, and everything is a problem that others need to fix, in order for the person to feel good.

Obviously blanket statements aren’t always a good idea; collectively speaking, however, it’s easy to see that each side has its blind spots.

The actual, real definition of trauma isn’t even defined by an event: in other words, it’s not about what happened to you, but by your nervous system’s inability to return to baseline behavior after the event (van der Kolk, 2014).

There are typically three kinds of functional trauma:

1. Acute trauma: A single overwhelming event, like an assault or an accident.

2. Chronic trauma: Repeated exposure to toxic stress or neglect, such as long-term physical or emotional abuse.

3. Complex trauma: A cumulative pattern of interpersonal betrayal or even entrapment with no escape.

Plenty of books have been written about trauma, but the bottom line that you need to understand for the purposes of resistance is this:

Trauma alters your perception of the world, changes your relational patterns, and affects your decision-making process. Without integration (healing), those altered patterns will show up in your leadership, communication, and group behavior, subtly but insistently…and negatively.

Integration, by the way, is the process of consciously acknowledging and emotionally processing traumatic experiences so they no longer unconsciously dictate behavior, relationships, or decision-making. It allows you to respond rather than react, aligning your actions with your values instead of your unresolved wounds, unmet emotional needs, and self-defense models.

Let’s look at how this plays out in practice. You’ll recognize some of these, but others will be new. We’ll also go over how to prevent it, or at least mitigate its effects in your group.

Unhealed trauma changes how our brain perceives threats, as well as how we relate to other people. In collective environments, such as activist groups, workplaces, or even families, it can become a tool of control, even unconsciously (after all, it’s not just an emotional thing, it’s neurological). Instead of being a wound, it becomes a weapon, and can be leveraged in one of two ways:

1. The person with trauma weaponizes their behavior against others as a preventative self-defense mechanism.

2. The person infiltrating the group recognizes a given individual’s trauma, and uses its effects against them to get into the group, disrupt it, or crash it.

First let’s look at how option 1 works. This is when someone engages in behaviors that serve as self-defense mechanisms. To this person, the way to protect themselves is by controlling outcomes and even other people. Look for these behaviors:

• Emotional blackmail portrayed as “accountability”: Instead of collaboration and healthy conflict resolution, this person will leverage their own wounds to demand sympathy, which is expected to result in obedience or acquiescence. In simpler terms, it’s used to silence or shame others under the guise of emotional justice.

• Triangulation: This is when someone avoids direct confrontation, instead going around the horn and playing people against each other. It’s a tactic used in a variety of situations and by a whole lot of different folks. If you’ve ever seen a child in a divorced family playing Mom against Dad, you know what I’m talking about.

• Fawning as control: Often overlooked, fawning appears cooperative: excessive praise, exaggerated loyalty, overcompliance. It’s a trauma-driven survival tactic. In groups, it can be used to gain power by aligning with authority figures and then leveraging that access to shape the power dynamics inside the group.

• Projection of internal wounds: Individuals unconsciously impose their personal fears or past betrayals onto others. A leader with abandonment trauma may accuse dissenters of betrayal. A member with unresolved authoritarian wounds may see any structure as oppression. Someone who has been told they’re worthless may try to force people to accept them.

These patterns, especially when validated or gone along with by the group members, reinforce dysfunction and enable those deploying them to consolidate power without getting called out.

I’ll deviate from the conventional wisdom here and also point out that while you want someone who has done what they say they’ve done, their lived experience doesn’t automatically translate to moral authority. It offers context and perhaps skill in that area, but it doesn’t guarantee that they have clarity, leadership ability, or even emotional maturity.

This means that just because someone has combat experience doesn’t automatically mean they should be the leader of the group, or that just because they have a ham license they should be in charge of all communications.

Another thing I’ll say is that trauma must be processed, and not performed. Wearing your wounds as street cred without first healing them leads to distorted perceptions and destructive influence.

Now let’s look at the second situation, where an infiltrator recognizes a trauma in someone, and leverages it.

Mechanisms of Vulnerability:

• Trauma-driven loyalty to individuals over mission: When allegiance is based on emotional bonds or shared wounding rather than values and strategy, infiltration is easy. Manipulators need only echo those wounds.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Gran Torino, there’s a scene where Clint Eastwood takes his protege to a construction site and introduces him to the boss in the hopes that he’ll give the kid a job. The guy seems leery, but then the kid launches into a practiced mini-monologue about how his car is busted, he has girlfriend problems, etc…and the boss suddenly says the kid can start tomorrow. Why is that? Because the kid echoed pain points that the boss could identify with, making him relatable. The boss saw him as “one of us,” and suddenly felt influenced to allow him into the crew.

• Need for external validation: Individuals with abandonment or worthiness trauma often seek constant affirmation. Infiltrators can exploit this by becoming the source of praise or by mirroring grievance.

This is also, by the way, why so many groups on the right insist on big, public rallies. It goes right back to the need to be seen “doing patriot things.”

• Hyper-reactivity to perceived slights: Trauma survivors often live in a fight/flight state. In this condition, even small disagreements or policy enforcement are seen as attacks—making these members ripe for manipulation or division tactics.

We see this often in more leftist circles, where the threshold for offense is far lower than what the average person might consider offensive.

Infiltration Methodology: Adversaries—whether government assets, corporate saboteurs, or personal opportunists—look for emotional fracture points. They exploit these through feigned intimacy, mirroring ideology, or amplifying victim narratives. The U.S. Army Human Intelligence Collector Operations manual explains that a key HUMINT tactic is to identify emotional vulnerabilities and apply relational pressure to sway opinion or induce defection. “Relational pressure” is just a fancy phrase that means poking a knife into deep emotional needs.

Trauma is the perfect soft point. If I know where you hurt, I know exactly where to apply the pressure, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve never talked about that pain or where it comes from. Behavior and language will give you away. I might not know the exact details, but I’ll know enough about the type of trauma and how it affected you to know how to leverage it.

Group Dynamics Under Strain: Trauma-Driven Collapse Patterns

When a critical mass of unresolved trauma exists in a group, such as if multiple members have unresolved trauma or emotional wounds, dysfunction becomes systemic. It doesn't matter how motivated the group is; if trauma is driving the dynamics, collapse of the group is inevitable.

Observable Symptoms:

• Splintering over perceived moral purity: Small ideological differences become existential threats. The group devolves into purity contests and schisms.

• Obsessive boundary policing: Instead of healthy boundaries, members engage in punitive control behaviors disguised as cultural enforcement.

• Repetition compulsion: As Freud discussed, members reenact traumatic interpersonal scenarios under new banners. For instance, someone betrayed by a parent may consistently perceive leaders as authoritarian threats, regardless of their behavior.

• Dysfunctional loyalty tests: “If you don’t agree with me, you’re the enemy.” Trauma bonds take precedence over logic or mission, driving out nuance and critical discourse and allowing groupthink to show up and run the entire group.

In Practice: A Group Breakdown Example

Let’s say you have a five-man group:

• John is a combat veteran with unresolved grief and survivor’s guilt from the loss of too many friends. He self-medicates with alcohol and has unpredictable mood swings. His intensity commands respect and his combat experience makes him the de facto leader, but his volatility drives tension. To feel safe, he needs to be in control of everything the group does, and he doesn’t do well with pointed questions or accountability.

• Frank experienced significant childhood abuse and finds it impossible to trust others. He views any attempt at leadership as control, sabotaging group cohesion under the guise of “autonomy.” To feel safe, he needs to be in control too.

• Jack was abandoned by his mother and later by his wife. He harbors a secret animosity toward women and masks it with rigid hierarchy advocacy. He lashes out when women contribute ideas, subtly undermining their ability to contribute. To feel safe, he needs to feel like no females in the group will gain any control.

• Damon grew up in a household where love was earned through performance. He is basically a suck-up, aligning with whoever is most dominant in the moment. He becomes a proxy for power games, shifting allegiances based on whoever he believes offers him the most safety. To feel safe, he needs to feel the approval of whoever is in charge.

• Shawn was also severely abused as a child, but he did the mental work necessary to integrate that trauma and become emotionally healthy. He recognizes the places that he is vulnerable, understands how those things can affect how he operates, and is intentional about growing through them. The problem is that he finds himself managing everyone’s emotional storms, serving as a sort of peacekeeper/organizer/mess cleaner-upper. Eventually, he burns out and leaves, taking operational capacity and clarity with him. He already feels safe and confident, his personal value isn’t tied to the group or its mission, and therefore he can recognize a bad situation.

Now imagine that a new person comes into the group. What will they see? How long will they stay? How will their unresolved issues affect the already messy dynamic?

This group will implode. Not because of ideology, competence, or even external pressure, but because trauma, left unspoken and unmanaged, governs every dynamic.

Now add in the tendency to chase member numbers at all costs, and you can see how incredibly wild this can get. It’s no wonder so many groups fail.

So how do we fix it? It’s simple, but not easy. Here’s how you prevent this, and how to vet leadership to keep your group operational.

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