Chefβs kiss with this explanation of the relationship between compliance, hierarchy, connection and attachment from a nervous system perspective (IPNB).
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A news article named Karoline Leavitt, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Megyn Kelly, Tulsi Gabbard, Maria Bartiromo, and Laura Ingraham as "women with the power and platform that few are given, who are using them to perpetuate the pain of other women."
This is a perfect illustration of how domination hierarchies shape nervous systems, identities, and behavior over time.
In rigid hierarchies, safety flows downward from power. Proximity to power becomes a survival resource. When someone has learned, often early and repeatedly, that attachment and safety come from aligning with the dominant figure, their nervous system adapts around that rule: stay close to the powerful, mirror them, protect them, and never threaten their position. That becomes the route to belonging, protection, and status.
So when a man operates as a hyper-dominant figure, he activates old survival adaptations. Some people respond by resisting. Others respond by attaching upward. For the women named here, alignment with him offers visibility, protection, and elevation inside a system that otherwise marginalizes them. Their platforms come from proximity to his dominance, not from challenging it.
From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective, this happens when connection is confused with compliance. When survival has required pleasing, appeasing, or serving powerful caregivers or authority figures, the nervous system can learn that safety equals loyalty, even when that loyalty harms others. Compassion narrows. Threat detection is aimed outward. Other women become expendable.
This is not due to a lack of intelligence. Itβs a predictable result of living inside a stress-saturated hierarchy where regulation comes from status, not from mutuality. They are choosing power over relationship, dominance over care, and alignment over integrity because that is what their survival history and the current political structure reward.
Their behavior perpetuates harm because domination systems need collaborators. They need people who will translate cruelty into legitimacy and contempt into confidence. When women do that work, it feels especially grotesque because they are helping enforce the structures that have historically injured them.
This is a nervous-system-level betrayal of connection in service of hierarchy. And people who still have access to compassion and critical thinking can feel that rupture instantly.
Credit: Trauma Aware America
