When a coercive controller feels a loss of control over their victim, escalation of coercive control is almost inevitable. Escalation can mean many things. It might mean that the coercive controller will use physical violence for the first time, or it might mean that they will double down on gaslighting them.
Gaslighting is very destabilizing. It can cause the target of coercive control to doubt their own perceptions and even their entire reality. Victims of gaslighting slowly lose touch with their own identity and the manipulation and deception of gaslighting can literally cause a targeted victim to lose their minds from this incredibly dangerous tactic of coercive control. But regardless of the way the coercive controller escalates, they almost always do. Coercive controllers spend a lot of time and energy gaining dominance over their targeted victim, so when the target of their coercive control starts to wake up to the abuse they are experiencing, and ask the abuser to stop, this is perceived as a threat to the coercive controllers entitlement. Escalating coercive control will often prevent a victim from being able to escape, keeping the coercive controller's abuse of power intact.
At first targeted victims often comply with the coercive controller's demands, in order to "keep the peace." However, human beings are not able to thrive in an environment of coercive control, so eventually most victims try to establish or re-establish boundaries. This will also often lead to escalation. Punishing the target for daring to stand up for their own thoughts, feelings and rights is another way the coercive control can escalate. By the time a targeted victim has discovered they are being abused, and attempted to stand up against it, the coercive controller has already studied their target for what punishment will be most painful, and most likely to re-establish compliance. This means that punishments can feel shocking, sadistic and cruel to victims, further destabilizing them and decreasing their ability to stand up and/or escape.
As this pattern continues with the coercive controller making demands, the target attempting to resist domination, and the coercive control escalating with punishment, gaslighting and/or physical violence, the victim sinks deeper and deeper into the trap I call PsychoSocial Quicksand™. If undetected and unaddressed, eventually the pattern of coercive control can reach stage 8... domestic abuse homicide and/or suicide.
One research study found that 99% of domestic abuse homicides were preceded by coercive control, making it the number one risk factor for intimate partner homicide. Coercive control is evident by stage 3 of the 8 stages of domestic abuse homicide, making domestic violence homicide predictable and preventable. Because researchers have focused primarily on domestic violence, and especially physical violence, research that specifically focuses on coercive control is relatively new, so most of our systems are still using the single incident model to guide policy and practice, rather than risk assessments that identify the pattern of coercive control.
"Drawing on interviews from the Australian Homicide Project with a sample of men
convicted of killing intimate partners, we examine the backgrounds of perpetrators
and the contexts in which the killings occurred and find that fully half report no
physical or sexual assaults against their partners in the year prior to the homicide".
This means that the systems are still focusing on the wrong thing, and this is leading to the predictable and preventable murders of (primarily) women and children, all over the world, every single day!
Even less studied and understood is the link between coercive control and suicide. Dr. Jane Monckton-Smith's research uncovered that the 8 stages also apply to suicide. Coercive control causes trauma with symptoms like anxiety, depression, and hopelessness, often related to PTSD, which is common for coercive control victims. These can all be contributing factor to suicidal ideation.
Sylvia Walby's research in the UK found 1 in 8 female suicides related to domestic violence and abuse. "This equates to 200 women taking their own lives and 10,000 attempting to do so due to domestic abuse every year in the UK. That’s nearly 30 women attempting to complete suicide every single day." And that's just in the UK. How many women worldwide are attempting suicide to escape coercive control?
Losing one's sense of reality and identity, also often caused by coercive control, can increase suicidal ideation. In addition, coercive controllers can become suicidal when they lose what makes them feel powerful. Keeping their coercive control victim entrapped may be what has kept that person feeling stable and powerful, so suicide risk increases for both perpetrators and targeted victims of coercive control when the victim refuses to comply. When perpetrators escalate to domestic violence homicide, they often kill themselves as well.
Most victim/survivors I've spoken with have told me that at one time or another they felt suicide was be preferable to living with coercive control. Many who became advocates tell me they did so to resist their feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and suicidal thinking, as well as to stand up for other victim/survivors who are still trapped in Psycho-Social Quicksand™. Many targeted victims protect themselves from suicide by reminding themselves that their children need them. But this becomes more difficult to do when courts place those children into the unsupervised custody of the coercive controller.... increasing victim's terror and distress. Incredibly common with coercive controllers is the weaponization of friends, family and systems to play the victim and punish their victims by damaging important relationships and convince untrained, and/or well-intentioned, professionals to do the coercive controller's dirty work for them. The use of DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is often used to flip the script, making the victim falsely appear to be the perpetrator and the perpetrator to be the victim.
Suicide may seem like a selfish act.... especially when a mother dies by suicide, leaving children behind. But if you have never experienced the terror, trauma and helplessness of the PsychoSocial Quicksand™ of coercive control, you simply cannot understand what targeted and entrapped victims of this horrible abuse go through. Once your children have been turned into weapons to harm you, and the systems designed to protect you have abandoned you and blamed YOU for the abuse you suffered, emboldening your coercive controller, suicide can feel like your last remaining act of resistance against the torture of coercively controlling abuse.
More research is needed to corroborate links between coercive control and suicide. Because coercive control can be invisible in plain sight, I believe there are many deaths, both homicides and suicides, that are connected to coercive control that have not been identified as such. We need better detection, intervention and prevention and we need #SystemicTransformation to improve our responses to these cases.
If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, help is available in the US from the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline @ 9-8-8. If you are a friend or family member of a coercive control survivor, here is a resource you can use to support them, and a Partnered with a Survivor Podcast to help understand the torture they may be experiencing, from which they could be desperate to escape.
