Pattern D — Domination
Power-as-Safety → Domination
Regulation organized around power-as-safety, where control replaces connection. When strategic control fails to stabilize conditions, the system crosses a regulatory threshold where power and dominance become the primary source of safety.
Important precision: Pattern D is not a personality label. It describes a regulatory organization that becomes more stable when there is access to power, reinforcement, and lack of consequences.
This model explains how humans arrive at harmful patterns through regulatory logic — not to excuse harm, but to prevent dehumanization while maintaining clarity about impact. Understanding the mechanism does not remove accountability.
The Five Axes Configuration
How regulation organizes across each dimension in Pattern D.
The Regulatory Threshold
The transition from Pattern C to Pattern D crosses a significant threshold. At this threshold:
This is not acute trauma reactivity. It reflects a nervous system adaptation in which power and control become the primary source of safety.
Unless constrained by external accountability and loss of coercive access.
Pattern D Under Limited Awareness
Regulation is now externalized. The system no longer looks inward to regulate. It regulates by controlling others — or by being controlled.
Working With Pattern D
Pattern D rarely moves without external disruption.
Return requires external disruption, loss of power, or intentional repair processes that reintroduce genuine safety. Without such shifts, regulation may remain locked in power-based organization.
Why This Framing Matters
TEG-Blue does not frame Pattern D as evil. It frames it as stabilized survival under prolonged threat combined with lack of awareness.
That framing is what allows accountability without dehumanization. It maintains clarity about harm and impact while preserving the possibility of understanding how the system arrived here — and what would need to change.