Internalized oppression occurs when people take in the dominant culture’s negative beliefs about their own group and begin to believe them. In this way, shame is shifted downward—carried by those with less social power.

Controlling images help circulate these devaluing messages. Internalized oppression describes how people targeted by those messages may come to judge themselves and members of their own group through them. A person can also recognize, question, and resist these messages, sometimes while still feeling their pull.

Exclusion may begin to feel deserved. A part of one's identity may seem like something to apologize for or overcome. This connects internalized oppression with shame, while locating that shame within a system that assigns unequal worth to groups. Recognizing discrimination and adapting to protect oneself does not necessarily mean believing its message. Understanding the difference takes attention to the person's experience and the conditions they face.

Jean Baker Miller's work on dominance and subordination helped RCT connect personal experience with unequal social power. Maureen Walker builds on that foundation in Race, Self, and Society (1999). She examines how racial hierarchies shape what people believe about themselves, one another, and their possibilities for connection. Her account brings particular attention to the overlapping devaluation of race and gender, including the power to decide whose appearance and ways of being count as acceptable. 

In their conversation Racial Images and Relational Possibilities (2001), Walker explicitly describes internalized oppression as oppressed people coming to believe the false images created about them. She and Miller also explore how dominance shapes privileged people's expectations. These are related effects of an unequal system, with different positions and consequences. Walker's attention to that inequality helps keep internalized oppression grounded in the experience of people whose groups are devalued. 

Miller's *How Change Happens* (2002) develops the connection between Patricia Hill Collins's concept of controlling images and the relational images people carry. Cultural messages help shape what feels possible in everyday relationships. Miller also identifies sources of resistance: people's own experience, the knowledge held within their communities, and relationships that communicate their value. This remains a useful foundation for understanding how an absorbed belief can be questioned and changed. 

Walker brings this understanding directly into clinical practice in “Walking a Piece of the Way,” her chapter in *How Connections Heal* (2004). She examines how internalized oppression and internalized dominance can enter the same therapy relationship, alongside the therapist's professional authority. Her account shows how leaving racial power unnamed can sustain the very disconnections therapy seeks to address. Therapists participate in these cultural patterns and need opportunities to recognize their own part in them.

Judith V. Jordan's Relational-Cultural Therapy, third edition (2024), draws these strands together, connecting internalized oppression with imposed shame and describing the importance of collective belonging and dignity. BCC's definition emphasizes how shame is carried by those with less social power. Working with that shame involves relationships and communities that can receive people's experience, question devaluing beliefs, and address the conditions that keep reinforcing them.

Choose one familiar self-judgment connected to a group you belong to—something manageable enough to consider today. Try putting it into the words, “I learned that people like me are supposed to…” Notice where that lesson came from and whose approval it asks you to seek.

If you choose, explore the message with someone who understands this part of your experience, or turn to writing, art, or community history that offers a fuller account. Notice whether anything shifts when the judgment has a history and someone else's understanding beside it. You can pause without resolving it or forcing yourself to feel proud.