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Over the past few years, I’ve watched something unsettling happen in our culture—something that looks less like politics and more like the dynamics I see every day in therapy.
People weren’t just voting—they were attaching. They were finding identity, belonging, and safety in a movement that demanded loyalty, even when it contradicted reality.
I didn’t understand it at first. I judged it, resisted it, and felt anger rise in me each time someone defended what seemed indefensible. But once I started looking through a trauma-informed lens, the patterns became heartbreakingly clear.
I’ve judged people who voted for Trump. I felt angry—angry at the harm, the denial, the cruelty that seemed to go unanswered. For a long time, I couldn’t understand how so many people could vote against their own best interests. But the more trauma survivors I’ve sat with, the more I realized that politics isn’t just political.
It’s personal.
It’s psychological.
It’s about belonging, identity, and survival.
When I began looking at the MAGA movement through that same trauma-informed lens, something in me softened. I started to see the same dynamics I see in codependency, high-control relationships, and family systems built on fear. It wasn’t about intelligence or morality. It was about safety.
Many supporters have said they voted for him because he was a businessman or because his outsider status made him seem capable of “fixing” what felt broken. Others were drawn to his defiance—his refusal to back down, his certainty in an uncertain world. The desire wasn’t just to feel powerful but to feel protected.
For some, MAGA even became a surrogate family—somewhere to place fear, shame, grief, and disillusionment. Once I could see it that way, my anger made room for compassion. That doesn’t erase accountability, but it widens the frame enough to hold more truth.
For many people, Trump wasn’t just a politician; he became a savior figure. A 2024 PRRI survey found that nearly seven in ten Christian nationalist Americans believed God ordained his presidency. When a leader is framed as divinely chosen, questioning him doesn’t just feel unsafe—it feels sinful. Doubting him becomes doubting God. For people raised in fear-based religion, that kind of spiritual threat can feel like risking hell itself.
Much of Trump’s rhetoric played on those fears. He warned that only he could protect what mattered most: faith, freedom, children, morality, “the country.” When people are terrified, their survival brain takes over. From a trauma lens, that’s not ignorance, it’s limbic hijacking.
Fear narrows awareness. It blocks curiosity. It makes obedience feel noble. Layer misinformation on top—like the myth that people have abortions at nine months—and you get emotional certainty built on falsehood. It’s not just propaganda; it’s trauma-based persuasion. It hits the nervous system before it touches the mind.
At some point, facts stop functioning as facts. You could point to the sky and say it’s blue, and someone deeply embedded in the movement will tell you it’s fake. Not because they’re unintelligent, but because the system they’re in has redefined reality itself. Psychologists call this epistemic closure: truth becomes whatever the group says it is. In MAGA spaces, Trump became the gatekeeper of that truth. If he said it was fake, it was fake. If he said it was real, it was real.
Once loyalty replaces discernment, facts feel like attacks. Arguing only deepens the trance. You cannot out-logic a survival response. What people need isn’t more data—they need safety. They need room to think again.
Codependency and cult dynamics share the same core wound: abandonment. Both revolve around giving away your power to preserve connection. In childhood, this sounds like, “If I stay quiet, maybe I’ll still be loved.” In adulthood, it becomes, “If I stay loyal, maybe I’ll stay safe.” High-control movements speak directly to that wound. They promise clarity, purpose, belonging: You matter here. You’re one of us.
A 2021 study found that many Trump supporters changed their beliefs to match his, even when his stance contradicted their own. Another study found that his most committed followers scored unusually high in traits like duty, loyalty, and obedience. Researchers like Steven Hassan and Robert Jay Lifton describe this as a “cult of personality”—not because it’s a religion, but because it uses emotional influence, repetition, and fear to override autonomy.
A lot of people are quietly stepping back now. They may not say it publicly—too risky—but they’re beginning to question what once felt unquestionable. They’re afraid of losing relationships, of being shamed, of confronting how much they believed. Leaving any high-control system feels like exile. It’s the same emotional work trauma survivors do when leaving unhealthy relationships.
They don’t need ridicule.
They need empathy.
They need accountability.
They need safety.
Listening without gloating helps.
Affirming their courage helps.
Truth offered gently helps.
Boundaries help.
Leaving an ideology that once felt like home is a grief process.
And I’ll be honest: I still judge the ones who continue to double down no matter what evidence is put in front of them—the ones who dismiss anything they don’t want to believe as deepfakes, AI, fake news, or a conspiracy against their worldview. That level of refusal, that clinging at all costs, still angers me.
I have far more compassion for the people who are at least attempting to think critically, who are wrestling with what they were taught and what they see happening in real time. The ones who are questioning—even quietly—don’t frustrate me. The ones who refuse to question anything do. And I’m allowed to name that, even while holding empathy for how they got there.
For those who feel stuck or scared inside it, the same compassion applies. If the constant outrage, fear, or internal conflict feels exhausting, please know: questioning what you’ve been taught isn’t betrayal. It’s growth. The same parts of the brain that attach to harmful relationships can attach to harmful ideologies. Healing begins when you notice which voices activate fear and which ones regulate you.
Safety does not come from certainty. It comes from connection—to truth, to people, and to yourself.
Real belonging never requires you to abandon your integrity. Healing from codependency or ideological capture is the same work: reclaiming your right to be real.
The question isn’t “Who’s right?” It’s “Who’s free?” And freedom begins when we stop mistaking fear for faith and loyalty for love.
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