How Group Culture Shapes Power, Voice, and Psychology

When Insight Becomes Control

By: Kristen Tolbert

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

There’s a moment when you realize the group you joined is subtly shaping who you're allowed to be. Not always overtly, but in tone, hierarchy, and unspoken rules. That moment is disorienting—and illuminating.

I’ve been in that moment more than once. Maybe you have too.

And what’s hardest is that it often happens in spaces that speak the language of growth. Psychoanalytic groups. Coaching groups. Leadership circles. Business masterminds. Even corporate teams.

They all use different words. But the underlying dynamic is eerily similar:

Power is centralized. Doubt is weaponized. Autonomy is rebranded as resistance.

What makes it more insidious is that these aren’t obvious cults. They’re often led by people who seem brilliant, well-intentioned, even caring. But somewhere in the structure, something flips. The power to guide becomes the impulse to control.

When Group Culture Becomes a Mirror—and a Cage

This is the pattern:

You express discomfort.

They frame it as “enactment,” projection, or a sign that you're not aware of yourself, or ready for growth.

Your boundary becomes a trigger.

Your difference becomes a disruption.

And suddenly, you're no longer seen as a whole person. You're an object in the system. A case study. A loose thread to be tightened.

You don't reflect in their preferred style, cadence, or hierarchy, so your clarity is repackaged as pathology.

This is especially true in psychoanalytic or therapeutic spaces where interpretation is the currency of power. But it's not limited to those. I've seen it in business groups where glossy platitudes replace honest conversation. In leadership workshops where critical thinking is mistaken for negativity. In startups where disagreement is framed as disloyalty.

Where pressure is reframed as progress. Where discomfort is sold as breakthrough. And where the emotional tone of the group quietly enforces obedience—where you just know that stepping outside the norm will get you exiled.

The group becomes its own enforcer, acting as a proxy for the leader’s fragility—denying reality, protecting the system, and maintaining the illusion of safety through compliance.

The Collapse of Boundaries

Sometimes you enter a group expecting professional learning or support. And somewhere along the line, the contract changes. It becomes enmeshed. Then emotionally fused. Then quietly codependent.

What began as a shared commitment turns into a subtle pressure to conform, caretake, or self-abandon for the sake of group harmony.

The rules shift. The roles blur. Suddenly you're being analyzed instead of heard. Cast into a symbolic role you never agreed to play. Held emotionally responsible for others without your consent.

And when you voice concern? It’s framed as avoidance. Or denial. Or resistance to the work.

This is how smart, high-agency people get stuck in therapy cults, spiritual cults, coaching bubbles, and organizational echo chambers: their resistance is misread as pathology, their clarity mistaken for reactivity.

And it’s not just therapy. It’s anywhere someone in power is allowed to decide what your experience means without your consent.

Interpretation as a Power Move

There’s a difference between being challenged and being managed.

When your story is interpreted instead of listened to—especially without curiosity or permission—you are no longer in relationship. You’re in a performance. You are being narrated by someone who has more power than you, and who has a stake in you playing the role they need you to play.

You might even begin to question your own perception—not because you’re unclear, but because the system requires your compliance in order to function.

Because you know. You see it. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Group Dynamics and Our Unconscious Assignments

Before we ever step into a professional group, coaching circle, or team environment, we’ve already been shaped by another: our families and life experiences. That early blueprint—what we had to do or become in order to feel safe, valued, or loved—often shows up again in group life.

Some of us learned to keep the peace. Some learned to outperform. Others learned to stay small, quiet, beautiful, strong, or agreeable.

These early roles—our childhood ‘assignments’—often become the unspoken contracts we bring into adult dynamics. That’s why groups can feel so loaded. They activate something old.

And it’s also why clarity is essential. Because if we’re not conscious of the roles we’ve played (and still might be playing), we risk recreating the very dynamics we’re trying to grow beyond.

The shift happens when we notice the pattern—and choose differently.

Agency is the moment we recognize the cycle and take care of ourselves inside it. Whether that means staying and renegotiating—or leaving altogether.

We don’t need to demonize the group or victimize ourselves. We just need to stay awake to what’s happening, especially when the emotional tone demands compliance over clarity.

What I Look For (and Help Build)

I invest in systems that honor discernment.
I collaborate with people who value clear boundaries.
I tell the truth, even when it doesn’t protect ego.
I build cultures rooted in mutual respect—not control disguised as care.

Yes, I have unresolved object relations. So do you. So do they. The difference is: I know when I'm being emotionally honest—and when I'm being handled.

Some people will never see the difference.

But anyone with real psychological depth will.

And if you’re reading this and feeling the discomfort: I see you.
You might not be the problem.
You might just be the clearest one in the room.

This is part of a larger conversation we're leading around psychological depth, leadership clarity, and systems that support, not subsume, human agency.

Would you like to go further and unpack how to build group systems and leadership models that don't recreate these dynamics? That’s the work we're doing. And it starts with this: naming what was previously unspoken.