By Rev. Dr. Philippe SHOCK Matthews, D.Msc., D.Ph. The Metaphysical Minister of Mental Liberation
The Question Beneath the Question
Why does some of the sharpest pain in Black community life come not from outside forces, but from each other — the gossip, the exclusion, the tearing down of someone else’s success, the “crab in a bucket” dynamic so many of us have witnessed or participated in? This isn’t a flaw in Black character. The question this article asks is: What if the harm we sometimes direct at each other is pain from an entirely different source, redirected because it had nowhere safer to go?
A Trauma-Informed Explanation
What researchers call horizontal violence, or lateral violence, describes harmful behavior — exclusion, harassment, sabotage, shaming — directed sideways at peers within an oppressed group, rather than upward at the systems and structures actually responsible for the oppression. This concept was first named by Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire, who observed that members of oppressed groups can act as “sub-oppressors,” redirecting hostility and frustration toward their own peers rather than toward those holding structural power.
This redirection is not random cruelty. It happens because expressing anger directly at an oppressive system is frequently dangerous, futile, or simply impossible in the moment the pain is felt. The anger has to go somewhere. When it cannot safely go toward its actual source, it often finds the nearest available target — someone who looks like us, who is close enough to reach, and who will not retaliate with the same institutional power the original source held.
The Africana Phenomenological Interpretation
Within the Trinity of Black Trauma, horizontal trauma sits precisely at the intersection point: it is what happens when historical injury (centuries of enforced powerlessness against systemic oppressors) and systemic injury (ongoing structures that continue to make direct confrontation dangerous) produce a psychological injury that gets discharged laterally rather than upward. Psychoanalyst Beverly Stoute’s concept of Black Rage offers an important, more precise framing here: rage in response to racial oppression is not pathology — it is a functional psychic adaptation that can be mobilized either for defense and psychic growth, or, when it has nowhere else to go, redirected in ways that wound the very community it was meant to protect.
Within the Four Frequencies of Humanity model, horizontal trauma often reflects Third Frequency dynamics colliding with unprocessed Second Frequency rage — the domesticated self’s fear of confronting real power, combined with the trauma-organized self’s accumulated fury, finding release in the one direction that feels survivable: sideways, toward someone with less power to retaliate than the actual source of harm. Radical Self Evolution asks something specific and difficult here: to recognize the redirected rage for what it is, honor its legitimate origin, and find ways to redirect it toward its true source — or toward genuine repair — rather than toward each other.
What the Research Shows
Horizontal violence has been documented across a range of oppressed communities as a symptom of colonization, intergenerational trauma, and internalized oppression, with scholars tracing its theoretical roots to Freire’s foundational observation that oppressed people can become “sub-oppressors” acting from feelings of low self-esteem, powerlessness, and fear of direct reprisal (Freire, 1970). Applied specifically to Black experience, Stoute’s psychoanalytic framework of Black Rage describes racial rage as existing in a dynamic equilibrium — a mental construct that can serve psychic growth and resilience when properly metabolized, but that carries real risk of misdirection when the surrounding conditions provide no safe outlet toward its actual source (Stoute, 2021).
A SHOCK Method Application: The Redirection Check
One SHOCK Method tool for interrupting horizontal trauma in the moment is a brief Redirection Check, used when you notice sharp judgment, irritation, or hostility rising toward another Black person:
- Pause the impulse: Before acting on the criticism or hostility, pause and ask: “Where is this feeling actually coming from?”
- Trace the source: Is this person the actual cause of my frustration, or does this situation resemble a different source of pain — a system, an institution, an experience of powerlessness I haven’t yet processed?
- Check the target: Am I about to direct real anger at someone who is, in this moment, a stand-in for something bigger than them?
- Redirect deliberately: What would it look like to name the actual source of this feeling, even just to myself, instead of discharging it here?
This does not mean every conflict between Black people is secretly about racism — sometimes conflict is simply conflict. The practice is in the pause: creating enough space to tell the difference.
Nothing is wrong with Black people…something happened to Black people! IT’S TIME TO BREAK BLACK TRAUMA!
You Do Not Have to Keep Carrying This Alone
Recognizing the pattern is important—but recognition without intervention can leave you repeatedly naming the wound without changing what the wound is doing to your life.
The SHOCK Method is designed to help you identify the trauma patterns influencing your thoughts, emotions, relationships, nervous system, and sense of self. This culturally grounded, trauma-informed approach integrates Africana phenomenology, metaphysical spiritual care, somatic regulation, and practical tools for reclaiming personal agency.
If this article described something you are currently experiencing, your next step may be a private SHOCK Trauma Spiritual Counseling Discovery Call with Rev. Dr. Philippe SHOCK Matthews. During this focused session, we will examine what is happening beneath the visible problem, identify the patterns that may be keeping you stuck, and determine whether SHOCK Method counseling is appropriate for your needs.
Ready for personal support? Book Your SHOCK Method Discovery Call
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Because this article touches Black community, relationship, and collective repair specifically, you may also find real value in a space built for exactly these conversations: Explore BlackLoveGPT
Nothing is wrong with Black people. Something happened to Black people—and what happened can be named, understood, interrupted, and transformed.
References
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Herder and Herder.
Stoute, B. J. (2021). Black rage: The psychic adaptation to the trauma of oppression. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 69(2), 259–290.