The Fractal Architecture of Extraction: How abuse patterns replicate from intimate to civilizational scales

Individual narcissistic abuse and systemic oppression operate through identical extraction mechanisms that replicate fractally across every scale of human organization. From the neurobiological damage inflicted by an abusive partner to the collective trauma of colonization, from the gaslighting of a single victim to the propaganda machinery of states, the same fundamental patterns emerge with mathematical precision. This research reveals seven core mechanisms that function as a universal grammar of domination, creating self-perpetuating cycles of extraction that transcend the artificial boundary between personal and political violence. Abuse is not metaphorical but literal—operating through identical mechanisms whether the perpetrator is a person or a system. The fractal nature of these patterns means that healing, too, must operate across scales. Indigenous healing frameworks have long recognized this, understanding that individual trauma cannot be 

The evidence demonstrates that what we call "narcissistic abuse" at the individual level and "systemic oppression" at the societal level are not merely similar—they are expressions of the same underlying extractive architecture operating at different dimensional scales. Just as a fractal reveals identical patterns whether viewed under a microscope or from orbit, these mechanisms of extraction maintain their essential structure whether deployed by an individual abuser or an entire economic system.

Ten Mechanisms

There are at least nine mechanisms of Extraction and they form an interlocking architecture of extraction that becomes self-perpetuating.

Neurobiological Damage impairs the ability to recognize abuse; 

Burnout Narratives make it your individual fault, and not a systemic problem; 

Relational Labor makes it your work to become resilient to toxicity;

Epistemic Violenceprevents naming the problem; 

Manufactured Precarity forces compliance;

Energy Harvestingdepletes creative capacity;

Identity Fragmentation makes organized resistance difficult;

Dimensional Exile that creates disposable populations; 

Consciousness Colonization makes alternatives unthinkable; and

Temporal Colonization makes alternatives financially unviable. 

Each mechanism reinforces the others, creating what researchers term "the trauma trap"—where the effects of oppression become the very factors that enable its continuation.

The geometric precision of extractive patterns

This understanding demands a fundamental reconceptualization of both healing and resistance. If the patterns are fractal, operating identically across scales, then effective intervention must be similarly multi-dimensional. The research points toward approaches that simultaneously address neurobiological healing, identity reconstruction, epistemic justice, material security, energy reclamation, and consciousness expansion—recognizing that transforming any single scale requires transformation across all scales.

The ultimate insight may be that narcissistic abuse and systemic oppression are not parallel phenomena but identical ones operating at different resolutions. They represent a singular extractive logic that treats conscious beings as resources to be mined rather than sovereign entities deserving of dignity. Recognizing this unified architecture of domination—mapped here through rigorous academic research across multiple disciplines—becomes the first step toward imagining and creating genuinely liberatory alternatives that operate according to fundamentally different geometric principles.

Understanding the Master's House as dimensional collapse - the reduction of multidimensional reality into extractive frameworks - suggests that healing requires dimensional expansion. This means moving beyond individual remedies (necessary but insufficient) to collective healing practices, from reformist tweaks to transformed systems, from managing symptoms to addressing root causes, from isolation to community-based approaches, and from Western frameworks alone to dimensional wisdom.