Lateral Violence: When Hurt Moves Sideways

Lateral Violence: When Hurt Moves Sideways

When harm isn’t addressed, it doesn’t always disappear. Sometimes it moves sideways.

Gossip. Exclusion. Cliques. Undermining. Public criticism. Withholding information. Sabotaging someone’s credibility. Retaliation. Turning people against one another.

These behaviors can become so familiar in workplaces, organizations, families, and communities that we stop recognizing them as harm.

Sometimes we even call them “just how things are here.”

But normalized does not mean harmless.

Lateral violence describes harm that moves across relationships rather than only through traditional top-down power structures. It can show up between coworkers, peers, family members, community members, and even people who share experiences of marginalization or trauma.

And there is an important history underneath this conversation.

Within Indigenous communities, lateral violence cannot be separated from the impacts of colonization, forced assimilation, historical and intergenerational trauma, disrupted systems of belonging, and generations of imposed power structures.

That context matters.

But understanding where harmful patterns may come from does not mean accepting them as inevitable.

And lateral violence is not exclusive to Indigenous communities. Similar patterns can develop anywhere people experience unresolved trauma, scarcity, competition, inequitable power, chronic stress, or organizational cultures where conflict and harm are allowed to go unnamed.

In this live 90-minute training, we’ll examine what lateral violence actually looks like, why it can become normalized, and what it takes to interrupt it without creating another cycle of blame and harm.

Together, we’ll explore:

• What lateral violence is and what it is not

• How gossip, exclusion, cliques, undermining, retaliation, public correction, and withholding information can function as forms of lateral harm

• How historical, intergenerational, and organizational trauma can influence relational patterns

• Why people who have experienced harm can sometimes reproduce harmful behaviors toward one another

• How power, scarcity, belonging, and psychological safety influence workplace and community dynamics

• Why organizations sometimes normalize harmful behavior instead of addressing it

• The difference between naming harm and shaming the person responsible for it

• What leaders and team members can do when lateral violence becomes part of the culture

• How accountability, boundaries, connection, and repair can begin interrupting the pattern

This conversation is not about labeling communities, workplaces, or people as toxic.

It is about becoming willing to recognize patterns that hurt people, understand the conditions that allow those patterns to continue, and take responsibility for changing them.

Because understanding where harm comes from matters. So does deciding that it does not have to continue through us.

Who Should Attend

This training is appropriate for leaders, supervisors, healthcare professionals, human service providers, educators, victim services professionals, community-based organizations, Tribal programs, HR professionals, and anyone navigating the balance between compassion, expectations, relationships, and accountability.

No previous training is required. Each session in the Triluna Rising Live Learning Series is designed to stand on its own.

Attendance is intentionally limited to 50 participants to create space for meaningful discussion, reflection, questions, and application.