The second Double of the 5 Doubles & DARVO in the PsychoSocial Quicksand Model™ of Coercive Control is #DoubleBinds. #DoubleBinds are fundamental to the trap of coercive control. It is #DoubleBinds that make escape from #PsychoSocialQuicksand nearly impossible for a targeted victim to accomplish on their own. Coercive controllers, therefore, use #DoubleBinds as one of their primary strategies.
What is a #DoubleBind?
A #DoubleBind is a trap masquerading as a choice. On the surface, it appears as though the person has options, but because all options produce negative outcomes, and because the person is required to "choose", it creates a #DoubleBind. (similar to the concepts in Bounded Choice by Janja Lalich).
Coercive controllers are masters of using #DoubleBinds to entrap victims in PsychoSocial Quicksand™. #DoubleBinds increase the coercive controllers chances to win, and that's what matters to them most, WINNING. In order for the coercive controller to win, their targeted victim must lose and #DoubleBinds make that easy (win/win does not exist in the coercive controller's world).
Unfortunately, our systems are also rife with #DoubleBinds, so coercive controllers don't even need to work that hard to ensnare and entrap innocent people in #PsychoSocialQuicksand.
For example, many systems regularly blame victims when a perpetrator causes harm. Child Protective Services (CPS) is well known for this. CPS has policies that shift the blame from the coercive controller to the victim. Within CPS, the most predominant victim-blaming occurs during the day-to-day implementation of their "failure to protect" policy. (To be fair, in some areas, CPS is shifting away from this destructive model and replacing it with what the Safe & Together Institute recommends... #PivotToThePerpetrator).
Failure to protect means that "Parents or caretakers may be charged with a form of criminal or civil penalty called “failure to protect” when they do not prevent another person from abusing the children in their care." Yes, you read that correctly. Someone can be arrested, charged and convicted of a crime that they did not commit, but which they failed to prevent. Or they can have their children taken from them (the most basic of human rights) for failing to stop a coercive control perpetrator from committing a crime (against them) in front of their children.
This policy was put in place to protect children from abuse, a noble outcome objective. However, the policy is badly flawed, not only because it places the blame for the abuse on the wrong person, but also because it opens the door to continued exploitation by coercive controllers and sets up a domino effect of #DoubleBinds.
This is how it works. A coercive controller escalates to physical violence against their partner or ex-partner. The police are called and, hopefully, not the victim, but the coercive controller, is arrested. CPS, in an effort to protect the children, makes an appointment to speak with the adult victim of the assault, the mother of the children. CPS sees that the children have been negatively impacted by what the father has done. Then, in a bizarre shift of responsibility the CPS worker threatens the mother. CPS demands the mother obtain a protective order to keep the coercive controller away from her and the kids. The mother is told that if she does not file for a protective order, they will take her children away for "failing to protect" them from this obviously abusive and dangerous man.
The mother is now highly conflicted. She knows that the coercive controller will escalate his abuse if she does what CPS has demanded. (I call this #SystemicCoerciveControl, because CPS is using a credible threat to coerce and control). This is the first of many #DoubleBinds the mother will likely now face within the system. She will be continuously damned if she does and damned if she doesn't within an upside-down world of conflicting policies, laws and procedures.
Her initial choice between two bad options will result in a bad outcome either way. What should she do? Should she obtain a protective order, knowing her coercive controller may become angry enough to kill her, or should she risk losing custody of her children to the foster care system? What would you do?
Where are the consequences for the person who committed the crime, the coercive controller? CPS doesn't go after him. They focus on the targeted victim, the innocent party, and the criminal is emboldened. The coercive controller is INCENTIVIZED by the system to commit physical violence against his partner, which results in the perfect punishment, not against him, but against HER, one he doesn't even have to carry out himself. This type intimate partner violence has been named coercive violence by researchers, and it is defined as...
"Coercive violence is a form of intimate partner violence in which the abuser intentionally engages in acts that expose his partner to state surveillance and violence at the behest of institutions or the state, including the child welfare system and the criminal legal system."
Many of the #DoubleBinds created and/or exploited by coercive controllers within systems would be considered coercive violence, including the CPS example above.
Let's look further down the road for this victimized mom to see how the dominos of #DoubleBinds will likely fall.
So, she has to choose between a protective order and her children (#DoubleBind number one). Of course, most mothers would choose the children and risk the coercive controller escalating, even if it meant he might kill her. CPS and the county attorney's office have assured her that any protective order violations will be prosecuted, protecting mother and children from any escalation on the part of the coercive controller, so she "chooses" the protective order.
Unfortunately, the police, county and district attorneys and family court have policies that directly conflict with the concept of "failure to protect".
POLICE: "He violated the protective order? Do you have proof?" ME: "Proof? You mean, do I have proof that he tried to run my car off the road? How would you suggest I obtain said proof?"
Multiple police reports for violations of said protective order result in ZERO consequences for the coercive controller, who continues to harass and stalk the targeted victim. (#DoubleBind number 2). However, the targeted victim is still expected to report all violations and appear in court to testify against the coercive controller who continues to stalk her and whom the police refuse to arrest for violations (#DoubleBind number 3). Meanwhile, the coercive controller is playing the "good dad" in family court, and the judge rules that he has a "right" to unsupervised visitation with the very children CPS claimed he was too dangerous to be around.. and let's not forget, now that the mother has divorced the coercive controller (because society claimed it was easy to do) she won't be there to even attempt to "protect" them (#DoubleBind number 4).
In a cruel twist of #SystemicCoerciveControl, the family court judge admonishes the mother for filing almost 20 protective order violations, and claims she is not credible, because the police didn't arrest him (#DoubleBind number 5).
The final #DoubleBind domino falls when the coercive controller lies in family court and the mother's attorney tells her to stay silent about the abuse or it will be held against her in court. With her truth silenced, and attorney advice preventing her from revealing the #SystemicCoerciveControl she has endured for years, she is horrified when the coercive controller obtains full custody and decision-making for the very children she "failed to protect" from him (#DoubleBind number 6).
These are just a few of the #DoubleBinds I personally faced in the system. One day I will write out the whole story, but suffice it to say, there were many many more.
How are coercive controllers so easily able to manipulate and exploit systems to their advantage using #DoubleBinds?
People and systems are able to justify perpetrating these incredibly harmful #DoubleBinds against targeted victims because of the third Double in the #PsychoSocialQuicksand Model™, #DoubleThink. I will cover #DoubleThink in my next blog post.
Stay tuned...
