Bringing Awareness: Coercive Control

 🚫TRIGGER 🚫

Please note the goal of this article is to bring awareness from one survivor to another.

What it is

Coercive control is a pattern of behaviors used to dominate and control someone, often in intimate or close relationships. It’s not just about isolated incidents of abuse but a sustained, ongoing campaign to erode your independence, self-esteem, and sense of safety. Unlike more obvious forms of abuse, coercive control is often subtle and insidious, making it harder to recognize and more damaging over time. 

Key Aspects

Here are some key aspects of coercive control:

Isolation

Coercive control typically begins with the abuser isolating the victim from friends, family, and support networks. This isolation serves to make the victim entirely reliant on their abuser for emotional support and information, which then creates a sense of powerlessness within the victim. Being isolated makes it harder for you to seek help or even recognize that something is wrong. They might claim others are a bad influence, even make claims that they overheard a friend say something bad about you, or use guilt to keep you isolated.

Monitoring and Surveillance 

Abusers often monitor every aspect of the victim's life, including phone calls, texts, emails, and social media. This surveillance invades the victim's privacy, and creates an environment where they feel constantly watched, controlled and helpless.

Threats and Intimidation

Abuser’s use threats, both overt and subtle, to maintain control. These threats may involve physical violence, harm to loved ones, or even threats to take away children or financial support.

Emotional Manipulation 

They use guilt, fear, or intimidation to control your actions. They might threaten to hurt themselves or someone else if you don’t comply with their demands or criticize you in ways that slowly erode your confidence. They also will cut others out if your life or even thiers' if someone does not fit into the game they are playing.

Gaslighting 

The abuser may manipulate situations to make you doubt your own perception of reality. For example, they might deny things they said or did, making you question your memory or sanity. Gas lighting is especially dangerous because usually an abuser will do things (very purposely), that are completely insane so even if you did want to tell someone, explaining it, saying it out loud, makes the victim seem like they are the one losing it. It's important to keep in mind the abuser has likely been setting the stage for their victims "fall" long before anyone would suspect a thing.

Economic Abuse

Coercive control often includes economic abuse, where the victim is financially dependent on the abuser, making it difficult for them to leave the abusive relationship. By limiting or controlling your access to money, they can make you financially dependent on them. This could include restricting your ability to work, controlling how money is spent, or giving you a strict "allowance.” 

Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse is a central component of coercive control. Abusers may engage in name-calling, humiliation, and degradation, eroding the victim's self-worth and self-esteem. Constant criticism, belittling, or demeaning comments are common. This slowly breaks down your self-worth, making you feel powerless or like you can’t do anything right.

Manipulation of Children 

In cases where there are children involved, abusers may use them as tools to control and manipulate the victim. This can involve threatening to harm the children or using visitation rights as leverage. This can also involve manipulating the narrative to have the children choosing the side of the abuser, which makes you further question your reality.

Intermittent Reinforcement 

Similar to the cycle of abuse, coercive controllers often alternate between periods of extreme abuse and moments of apparent kindness and affection. This creates confusion and emotional dependency in the victim. The apparent kindness usually not even being kindness but in abusive situations, it's such a relief to get a "break" from the abuse that over time can seem like that's kindness. 

Normalization 

An abuser may convince the victim that their controlling behavior is out of love or concern. They may make claims to others or their victim, that they are acting out of concern not control because the victim is the one with the problems like mental illness etc., and needs the controller's guidance.

Control of Daily Life 

They may dictate what you wear, eat, who you see, and what you do on a daily basis, stripping away your autonomy little by little. Over time, victims of coercive control may develop a profound fear of the abuser and a sense of learned helplessness, believing they have no way out of the abusive relationship.

The Goal of Coercive Control 

The goal of coercive control is to create a dynamic where you feel dependent on the abuser, and over time, you may start to believe that you need their permission or approval for even small decisions. The person doing it often tries to make you doubt yourself and can even twist situations to make you feel like you're the problem. It’s a way to make you feel dependent on them, slowly eroding your confidence and sense of freedom. It can be hard to recognize because it's often gradual, and the person doing it may claim it's out of "love" or "concern.” 

Coercive control is a severe form of abuse that can have lasting psychological and emotional effects on the victim, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) and a diminished sense of self. The effects can be profound—feeling trapped, anxious, and unsure of who you are anymore. It’s important to know that this type of control is a form of abuse, and no one deserves to be treated this way. Recognizing it is the first step toward breaking free.

 It is essential for mental health professionals to recognize the signs of coercive control and provide support and resources to help victims safely escape from abusive situations and begin the process of healing and recovery. If you or someone you know is in this type of relationship dynamic please reach out to health care professionals or your local police department. Please know there is a better, brighter future.