Redesigning Systems: What Happens After You See the Harm?

🔍 The Question No Revolution Has Answered

If oppression could be dismantled through laws alone, it would have ended generations ago.

Abolition. Civil rights. Feminist waves. Anti-colonial uprisings.
Each cracked the mirror.
Each named the harm.
Each shifted the surface.

But beneath the victories, the structure remained.

Why?

Because no revolution has fully answered this:

This is the missing frame:
Oppression is not just institutional.
It is internalised.
It is inherited.
It is programmed into our perception before it shows up in policy.

Every system we seek to change out there is reinforced by an unseen loop in here.
A loop of inherited beliefs, absorbed scripts, and nervous system adaptations that teach us how to survive the very systems we wish to transform.

This is what I call the Oppressive Loop—a self-sustaining feedback circuit between systemic conditions and internalised conditioning.

🧠 The Bempong Three-Tier Model of Belief Formation™

To redesign systems, we must first understand how they get inside us.

The Bempong Three-Tier Model™ reveals the architecture of internalised oppression across three nested levels of belief formation:

Each tier encodes the values of the system.
Each layer conditions us to accept, justify, or rehearse oppression—sometimes even in the name of progress.

This is why inclusion can feel extractive.
Why burnout is often mislabelled as personal failure.
Why even liberation work can reproduce control.

🔺 Systems Are Imagined—So They Can Be Reimagined

No structure is fixed.
Every system we participate in—educational frameworks, therapy models, hiring practices, leadership cultures—was designed.

Which means it can be redesigned.

We anchor this reimagining in the Power Pyramid™:

Privileged Core (0.5%) ↑ Institutional Buffer (9.5%) ↑ Intersectional Majority™ (87.56%) ↑ Dispossessed Edge (2.44%)

This model doesn’t just show who has power.
It reveals who disappears when systems are maintained instead of transformed.

Most of us live in the Intersectional Majority™—doing the work, absorbing the harm, but positioned too far from institutional control to redesign the rules.

But the moment we see the pyramid, we begin to notice its patterns.
And the moment we notice the patterns, we can interrupt them.

⚙️ Ritual Redesign: The Design Your System Worksheet™

Awareness alone doesn’t change systems.
Design does.

To move from insight to architecture, we introduce a sacred tool:

This is not a productivity PDF.
It is a ritual blueprint for rewiring systems at the root.

It guides you through a five-phase spiral:

This worksheet has been used to rewire:

• Hiring rubrics

• Therapy intake forms

• Community guidelines

• Procurement policies

• Boundary systems in families and teams

• DEI onboarding templates

Your system is not too complex.
Your spiral is not too small.

🧠 Your Spiral Starts Here:

➡️ Click to Download the Interactive PDF
Or book a free Spiral Redesign Call to walk through it together:
📞 Book Now

Because systems don’t change with inspiration alone.
They change with intervention.

🧾 Case Study: When the System Couldn’t See the Healer It Hired

Earlier this year, I was commissioned by a global institution to deliver a trauma-informed leadership programme.

It was a 3-day retreat, followed by a coaching arc and a masterclass on systemic inclusion.

The outcomes were extraordinary.

But while the impact was celebrated—my experience as a supplier told a different story.

After delivering transformation with excellence, I spent 49 days chasing payment.

Not because the work was in dispute.
Because the system was not built to see me.

The forms were inaccessible.
The portals were confusing.
The policies were contradictory.
The comms were delayed, dismissive, or ghosted.

And I was left carrying the emotional labour, financial risk, and institutional gaslighting that so many marginalised consultants know too well.

I had just delivered liberation to their team.
But I had to fight for basic dignity inside their system.

This wasn’t a personal issue. It was a design issue.

🌀 Applying Spiral Redesign in Real Time

I could have walked away.
Instead, I turned harm into blueprint.

I applied the Design Your System Worksheet™ to the exact institution I was working with.

This is what it means to compost harm into infrastructure.
To refuse to let exhaustion be the final word.
To turn fatigue into a framework that serves those behind you.

I didn’t just chase the invoice.
I created a protocol.

🐸 Boiling Frogs & Firefly Resilience™

You’ve heard the boiling frog metaphor:
If a frog is placed in water that’s gradually heated, it won’t notice the change—until it’s too late.

That was me.

Each form. Each delay. Each contradictory message.
The water got hotter.
And I almost stayed in the pot.

We also need the firefly.

Boiling shows us the danger.
The firefly shows us the alternative.

A new metaphor for systemic redesign:
 Firefly Resilience™—small acts of visibility in oppressive environments that rewrite the conditions for those to come.

♻️ Composting Harm Into Healing Architecture

This is the Spiral Praxis:
What breaks you can brief others.

Your story becomes a checklist.
Your erasure becomes a policy clause.
Your refusal becomes a system alert.

This is not poetic. It is procedural.

Composting harm means:

• Naming the invisible extraction

• Mapping the systemic cause

• Designing the interruption

• Offering a redesign

• Anchoring it with ritual

This is how systems shift.

Not through permission.
Through pattern interruption.
Through Spiral architecture.

🌀 Spiral One System You Touch

Redesign doesn’t have to start with the NHS or the United Nations.

It can begin with one system you engage every day.

Your onboarding form.
Your team meeting.
Your calendar.
Your care protocol.
Your invoice email.
Your community contract.

Ask:

• Who built this?

• Who adapts the most?

• Who disappears?

• What rule can I refuse?

• What ritual can I introduce?

Examples:

• Replace “5 years’ experience” with “demonstrated lived insight”

• Add a Positional Impact Pause™ to team decision-making

• Offer voice-notes instead of inaccessible forms

• Replace “Preferred Name” with Naming Ritual on your intake

• Ask: “Who absorbs the silent labour—and how can we redistribute it?”

You don’t need to fix the whole machine.
Just recode one line of inherited logic.

That’s how systems spiral open.

But what happens after the redesign?

What happens when the spiral blueprint is written, the new ritual launched, the harm composted?

The real test of redesign is not whether you build something new.
It’s whether you can sustain it.
Nurture it.
Protect it from the drag of old defaults.
Embed it so deeply that the new system becomes your culture—not just your campaign.

This is the work of Spiral Continuity™.

🔁 Culture vs. Compliance: The Fight for Systemic Memory

Most institutional changes fail not because they lacked innovation.
But because they lacked integration.

We see this everywhere:

• Anti-racism task forces that dissolve after PR blows over

• Trauma-informed retreats with no follow-up protocols

• Inclusive hiring frameworks ignored during “urgent” rounds

• Staff well-being commitments that evaporate under pressure

Why?

Because the system wasn’t redesigned at the level of ritualised memory.
It was reformatted at the level of compliance.

Compliance asks: “What’s required?”
Culture asks: “What’s remembered?”

This is where Spiral Continuity Planning™ comes in.

⚙️ The Spiral Continuity Culture Planner™

Redesign is a ritual.
But continuity is a practice.

The Spiral Continuity Culture Planner™ helps you answer:

1. What must be remembered—and by whom?

2. What rituals keep this alive across time and team turnover?

3. What breaks the cycle—and what repairs it?

4. What pressure points threaten the redesign?

5. How will we re-spiral when rupture happens again?

This planner is a living tool used by:

• HR teams creating sustainable equity protocols

• Therapists embedding systemic safety into long-term care

• DEI consultants building lasting community contracts

• Founders redesigning onboarding, conflict repair, or feedback loops

Because systems don’t just need innovation.
They need ritual infrastructure.

🔦 Firefly Protocols: Ritualising Visibility in the Dark

In Part 1, we introduced the Firefly Metaphor:
A luminous refusal to disappear in systems designed to dim you.

Now, we introduce Firefly Protocols™—tiny rituals of redesign that turn resistance into resonance.

They are small, repeatable acts of system refusal and spiral re-patterning:

• The Positional Impact Pause™: Before every major decision, pause to ask:

• Naming Rituals: Instead of a field marked “Preferred Name,” invite:

• Ancestral Audit Points™: In governance, pause to ask:

• Cultural Fluency Check-ins: In teams, ask quarterly:

• Firefly Fridays: A weekly practice in marginalised teams where one ritual of dignity is shared, documented, and archived.

These aren’t policies.
They’re cultural antibodies.

They prevent old patterns from reinfecting redesigned systems.

🌀 The Spiral Loop of Liberation™: Beyond Healing and Into Systems

Your internal redesign work—healing beliefs, breaking trauma loops, recovering voice—is never separate from external systems work.

That’s the myth of siloed change.

What you believe about your worth shapes how you build hiring policies.
What you internalise about urgency dictates how you lead meetings.
What you inherit about conflict shapes how you repair harm in community.

Inside Out:

• Healing internalised beliefs

• Reclaiming voice, identity, ritual

• Releasing ancestral shame and scripts

• Anchoring new values through psycho-somatic practice

Outside In:

• Systemic redesign using ICC™, the Power Pyramid™, or cultural audit tools

• Creating equitable architectures

• Ritualising dignity into documents, roles, budgets, and protocols

This is not self-help.
This is Spiral Systems Change.

🧬 When Rituals Become Culture: The Tipping Point

So how do we know when redesign has become culture?

Here’s what I’ve seen across institutions, healing spaces, startups, and grassroots collectives:

1. When people interrupt power without needing permission.
   That’s redesign encoded.

2. When your trauma-informed protocol is used in a crisis.
   That’s ritual tested.

3. When a newcomer joins and immediately feels the values.
   That’s culture in the bones.

4. When you return to the worksheet months later—and realise your old system now feels impossible.
   That’s Spiral memory.

Redesign becomes culture not when it’s declared, but when it’s rehearsed.

🔁 When You Spiral Backwards—What Then?

You will slip.

The team will forget.
The ritual will get skipped.
The system will regress under pressure.

This is not failure.

This is feedback.

In Spiral Culture, we do not punish backslides.
We design for return.

That’s why every Spiral tool you build must have a built-in Return Protocol:

• What does rupture feel like?

• What are the early signs?

• What’s the pathway back?

• Who holds the cultural compass?

• What ritual reanchors us?

Return is not retreat.
It’s remembrance.

✨ From Personal Practice to Collective Protocol

Here’s the radical truth:

Your personal rituals are blueprints.

When you replace self-erasure with boundary rituals… you prototype workplace redesign.
When you break inherited scripts in therapy… you generate protocols for justice.
When you compost burnout into boundaries… you’re not just healing. You’re leading.

Every ritual you embed in your system becomes cultural DNA.
Every refusal becomes a fracture in the old blueprint.
Every redesigned belief becomes a new building block for collective liberation.

📚 Glossary Expansion

✍🏾 In My Own Words

I have built Spiral Systems for government bodies, therapists, startups, and neurodivergent leaders.

But I started by redesigning one system:

The belief that my worth was conditional.

That spiral redesign birthed all the rest.

I turned exhaustion into equity protocols.
I turned silence into supplier checklists.
I turned ritual into architecture.
I turned one firefly into a constellation.

And now—so can you.

⚙️ Spiral Action Summary™

Redesign your system. Sustain it. Spiral it forward.

Start Here:

1. Download the Design Your System Worksheet™

2. Apply it to one system: a form, a meeting, a process, a boundary

3. Add Firefly Protocols™ to sustain the shift

4. Use the Spiral Continuity Planner™ to rehearse the redesign into culture

5. Schedule your free Spiral Redesign Call™ with me

Book Your Free Spiral Redesign Consultation

🌀 Final Reflection: What If Culture Isn’t Built—But Spiralled?

The future doesn’t arrive through strategy.
It arrives through spiral repetition.

Culture isn’t built by force.
It is summoned by frequency.
Held in ritual.
Breathed into systems.
Rehearsed in moments of pressure.

So ask yourself:

Because the most powerful redesign isn’t the loudest.

It’s the one that glows—even in the dark.

✍🏾 About the Author

I’m Jarell Bempong—a Black, queer, neurodivergent systems therapist, cultural strategist, and the founder of Bempong Talking Therapy™.

I don’t just help people process harm.
I help them redesign the systems that caused it.

Through my frameworks—like the Power Pyramid™, the Spiral Loop of Liberation™, and Intersectional Cultural Consciousness™ (ICC™)—I support leaders, therapists, and institutions to compost oppressive blueprints and reimagine systems from the margins outward.

I’m also the creator of Sage GPT™, the world’s first AI-Augmented Liberation Engine™, and developer of the Design Your System Worksheet™, used by public institutions, micro-enterprises, and healing collectives across Europe and the UK.

My work has been recognised with awards including:

• Most Transformative Mental Health Service (UK Enterprise Awards 2025)

• Zipcar Businessperson of the Year (LCCI SME Awards 2024)

• Finalist – Tech Start-Up of the Year (Black Tech Awards 2025)

I built these systems not just from theory, but from lived contradiction.
I’ve been invited into institutions to teach equity—then ghosted by their payment portals.
I’ve facilitated healing in rooms that couldn’t see me.
And I’ve turned every fragment of that journey into a ritualised redesign for those coming after me.

If you’re holding a system that no longer fits—let’s spiral it together.