Christelyn Karazin: Communal Narcissism and Black Women

Her community agrees on which man is the right one. Church, college, no record, no other children. It goes badly in ways she had no language for at the time. When it ends, the same people who chose him for her explain that she must have done something wrong. Christelyn Karazin is describing her own twenties, and she says the structure of it is not personal, it is systematic.

Christelyn Karazin is a journalist and author who has written on health, lifestyle and business for national publications, and who co-wrote Swirling, a book about dating and marrying across race from a Black woman's perspective. She founded the site Beyond Black & White and, more recently, a body care line called Watered, built for women of deeper skin tones. The publication of Swirling drew a backlash she describes as a war she has now been fighting for more than a decade, and it is where this conversation starts.

The frame she uses is communal narcissism, a term given to her by a psychologist who studies it: a community that holds certain ideals and enforces them on its members, sustained by denial and by pressure not to say the obvious out loud. In her account of how it operates, the men are prioritized and protected and the women are asked to carry the rest of it, and any woman who names a problem is treated as the problem. She and Lisa work through how closely that maps onto what happens inside a single coercively controlling relationship, where the target eventually accepts the blame for everything because everyone around them has agreed on the story.

Christelyn is specific about the cost. What it does to reporting when a community treats involving law enforcement as a betrayal, and how that leaves people who have been harmed sitting at the same table as the person who harmed them. What being praised only for strength and endurance does to a person's health, and to whether their pain is taken seriously by professionals. How families raise sons and daughters under different rules, which she argues rehearses a girl for a relationship where nothing is ever the other person's fault. And the online economy that has grown up around degrading Black women, and the young men it is aimed at. Lisa asks what people outside the community can usefully do, and Christelyn answers plainly.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What communal narcissism means, and how a group can run the same playbook one partner does
• Why the blame for a failed relationship can land on the woman no matter what happened
• Reproductive coercion: what it is, and how it gets used to control someone
• Why abuse inside a community can go unreported, and what people are told to protect instead
• What a lifetime of being praised only for endurance costs someone physically
• How different rules for sons and daughters rehearse a girl for a controlling relationship
• The online industry built on degrading Black women, and the young men it recruits
• What people outside a community can actually do, starting with listening

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Christelyn's background, and what communal narcissism means
5:00 Prioritizing the men, and the double standard for the women
10:00 The manosphere, and what it tells women they have to be
13:00 The man who looked ideal on paper, and what happened
18:00 When it ends, and why the blame lands on the woman
19:30 Violence, underreporting, and being told to keep it in house
25:00 Leaving, and the cost of choosing differently
31:00 Raising daughters, loving sons, and being groomed early
35:30 The double standard on marrying outside the community
49:00 Submission, "my program," and the trust deficit
54:00 What outsiders can do, and pouring back into yourself

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Beyond Black & White: https://www.beyondblackwhite.com/
🔗 Watered Body Care: https://www.wateredbodycare.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.