While the framework of coercive control that expert Evan Stark researches and covers extensively in his book “Coercive Control – How men entrap women in personal life”, is all about intimate partner violence (IPV), I believe that much of the coercive control framework can be applied in other contexts as well.
Lisa Fontes, author of "Invisible Chains", for instance, has a fabulous article on how coercive control can manifest in the workplace.
What may not apply, although it can, is the dynamic found in intimate partner violence that’s caused by the power dynamic of inequality that underlies intimate partner and gender-based violence. Because the majority of intimate partner violence is perpetrated by males against females, coercive control tactics are helped along by societal biases that place women in a lower status than men. Therefore, men can more easily utilize coercive controlling tactics against a woman, than a woman could use against a man. This doesn’t mean that women never perpetrate coercive control against men, or even that same sex couples cannot be affected by it, it simply means that the vast majority of coercive control in intimate partner violence is a male against female strategy, because it is easier for a male to get away with it.
So, how does this dynamic differ in a professional setting? First of all, the abuse of power afforded a man in his personal relationship against his female partner is absent. (Unless the parties are also in an intimate relationship. Which, I can tell you from personal experience, significantly magnifies the potential for harm, if it applies). There may still be a male/female component to the workplace coercive control, if the party with more power is male. Much of sexual harassment in the workplace, for instance, can keep a female employee entrapped for years by this dynamic.
But what if the parties are not a male supervisor and a female subordinate? Can coercive control still occur under those conditions? I believe it can. Take, for example, a male perpetrator and a male victim… (or two females). While the advantages of the male/female inequalities in our society don’t come into play here, there are still several other factors that can lead to the tactics of coercive control being utilized at work.
The Power of Authority: whenever one person holds authority over another person, like in the case of a supervisor and a subordinate, the opportunity for the successful use of coercive control rises. This doesn’t mean that anytime you have a boss and an employee that this will happen, but it is more likely when there is a power differential. Two studies that support the idea that authority can alter the dynamics of a relationship are the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. In the Milgram study, participants who were told by an authority figure to administer shocks to another human being, demonstrated the tendency to abdicate one’s own moral decision-making in the face of what they consider to be valid authority. The Stanford experiment demonstrated the tendency of human beings to abuse power when placed in a position of authority over another person. This study involved randomly placing college students in the experiment into guards or prisoners. While not every participant in either study abused their power or submitted to authority, many did. The prison study was ended early, because the results were proving to be quite dangerous to some of the participants. So, one factor in whether a person may use coercive control, or end up being a victim of coercive control, has to do with their level of authority in the situation, and/or their ability to avoid the natural human tendencies to submit to authority or to abuse the authority they have been given.
Low or no conscience: persons with personality disorders and or psychopathy have either low or no conscience. This can lead to immoral, illegal and unethical behaviors of all types, not just the use of coercive control. Paul Babiak , author of “Snakes in Suits”, and George Simon, author of “In Sheep’s Clothing” both go into depth about how folks with low or no empathy can wreak havoc in the workplace and elsewhere. And a person doesn’t have to have a personality disorder or psychopathy to be a coercive controller. Just having the single trait of lack of empathy for others (usually combined with some form of justification in their own mind) can enable a person to resort to coercively controlling tactics.
Vulnerability: All humans have vulnerabilities, but some people’s vulnerabilities are more obvious than others. A person with a physical disability, for instance, is at a distinct disadvantage when in the presence of a coercive controller. That’s because coercive controllers seek out vulnerabilities like guided missiles. Exploiting vulnerabilities is one main way in which coercive control can be exercised. A power differential sets up an automatic vulnerability, but there are lots of other vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a person intent on using coercive control to dominate others. This makes people who belong to already marginalized groups more likely to be targeted.
My personal opinion is that whenever you have two things, 1. an imbalance of power AND 2. someone with low/no conscience, the tactics of coercive control are likely to become a factor.
So how do you know if you are being targeted by a coercive controller at work? The short answer is, you may never know for sure. Coercive control can be very subtle, and can go on for a long time, before the targeted person even notices it. (Unfortunately, I have experienced this more than once).
However, there are some things that you can look for and ask yourself in order to better determine the likelihood that you are in an unsafe or even dangerous work environment. (I use the words “unsafe” and “dangerous” rather than “toxic”, because coercive control, in extreme situations, can literally be deadly to the targeted person. A fatal outcome is far less likely in a work situation, than it would be in an intimate partner relationship, but the stress created by coercive control, even at work, can badly damage your health, self-esteem, finances, career, relationships etc. The word “toxic” doesn’t seem to be strong enough in this context).
Below are some of my suggestions for determining the likelihood that you are dealing with coercive control:
Questions to Ask Yourself:
Am I being isolated from support in any way?
Is your communication with others being cut off or monitored? This may be a sign that someone is taking credit for your work, or in some other way manipulating or misrepresenting the “facts” about you.
Have co-workers and/or supervisors started to relate to you differently for no apparent reason? This may indicate that a coercive controller is mis-characterizing you to others behind your back.
Do you arrive in meetings where everyone else seems to know what is happening, but you seem to be lacking information? This is potentially a sign that someone is intentionally keeping you out of the loop in order to make you look bad.
Are my resources being exploited?
Am I getting credit for my own work, or are there times when someone else either takes credit, or it appears that way?
Are my vulnerabilities being used against me?
If you are physically or mentally disabled in some way, are your needs suddenly not being taken into consideration … especially around a particular person?
Have you shared intimate information with someone in confidence, and that information now seems to be known by others you didn’t share it with?
Is information you have shared with a particular person now seemingly being used to discredit you in some way?
Is a particular person directly gaslighting you? (ex. implying, or even directly stating, that your understanding of reality is somehow flawed).
Does it seem like someone is lying? If you find proof of lies, or you just get the sense that someone is lying to, or about, you, there may be coercive control going on. Deception is a big part of coercive control, and people who are dishonest (especially when they show a pattern of dishonesty), are more likely to have reduced empathy and/or conscience. This is not the little white lie that is told to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. I am talking about lies that make your stomach hurt or your chest squeeze when you find out about them.
Has a particular person harmed me, then justified their actions? People who use coercive control are masters at blaming others for their own bad behavior.
Has this person apologized, then continued their bad behavior? This is another sign of emotional abuse that could be connected to coercive control.
Most Importantly – Do I feel like something is really wrong… especially around a particular person? This is the number one sign that you may have been targeted by a coercive controller. Our intuition picks up on lots of details that our conscious mind doesn’t have enough time or energy to process. Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink” goes into this phenomenon in great detail. If you are experiencing any kind of physical symptoms around a particular person, even if that person isn’t using full blown coercive control against you, it is in your best interest to get away from them. And, I don’t mean you get a bad feeling once. I mean that over a period of time, you notice yourself INCREASINGLY feeling worse around somebody. This type of escalation is quite indicative of coercive control.
None of the things above are actual proof that you are being targeted by a coercive controller, but running through these questions in your mind can help you to identify warning signs that it may be happening to you. The subtlety of coercive control makes it hard to identify, but if you listen to your gut, and watch for escalation, over time it will almost assuredly become more obvious. I don’t recommend sticking around long enough for it to become obvious, but sometimes extricating yourself from a situation like this can be very difficult.
While you are figuring out how to handle the situation, I recommend you follow Lisa Fontes suggestions to 1. document everything, 2. save evidence, 3. seek help and 4. consider human resources, so that if/when the time comes, you can best protect yourself.
Do you see any of the above signs happening at work? What examples of workplace coercive control have you experienced?
One of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of coercive control and abuse is whether the actions of the abuser are intentional. Do abusers truly recognize the harm they are inflicting? This question is central to our understanding of abusive dynamics and can shape how we respond to and support survivors.
Exploring the intentions behind coercive control can shed light on the complex nature of these behaviors, helping to demystify the motivations of abusers and the impact of their actions on victims. Let's delve deeper into this critical issue and examine what it means for both survivors and those who seek to support them.
So... do those who engage in coercive control truly understand the impact of their actions? The short answer is that, unless they are completely disconnected from reality, the answer is likely yes.
Are there instances where an abuser doesn’t have full conscious recognition of his/her harmful actions? Yes, but this is not the norm. Here are two of the common myths about abusers that have led society to believe that they may not be perpetrating abuse with intentionality.
Myth 1: Abusers are mentally ill.
For the most part, abusers are not mentally ill. And, for those who are, mental illness is not likely to be what is causing them to be abusive. Lundy Bancroft, author of “why does he do that”, says that it’s the attitudes and beliefs that abusers hold, not the existence of a mental illness, that leads to abusive behaviors. Abusers have approximately the same percentage of mental illness as the rest of the population. So, some abusers are mentally ill. However, mental illness does not cause abusiveness. Unless a person is completely disconnected from reality by their mental illness, any mental illness that an abuser has is in addition to being abusive… not the cause of their abusiveness.
Now, there is a correlation between personality disorders and abusiveness, especially coercive control. This correlation is not accepted by all mental health professionals. However, most mental health professionals have very little training or experience with personality disorders. As I have mentioned in previous posts, people with personality disorders don’t tend to think that there is anything wrong with them, and therefore, do not usually seek out therapy on their own. So therapists don’t tend to treat many of these folks.
Additionally, people with personality disorders are often very good at manipulation and deceit, so if they do end up in therapy, they tend to manipulate the therapist into believing that their abusiveness is connected to anything other than an intentional and forceful strategy to get their own way.
The professionals that do have experience and extensive training in personality disorders, often agree that personality disorders and coercive control tactics tend to have a correlation. That doesn’t mean that everyone with a personality disorder is abusive or that everyone that is abusive has a personality disorder. But, the criteria for diagnosing personality disorders do have a lot of overlap with abusive characteristics.
The other thing that’s important to understand about personality disorders is that they are not really the same as other mental illnesses. Yes, they are listed in the DSM along with mental illnesses, which confuses the issue. But personality disorders are different from mental illnesses in ways that make them unique. George Simon, author of “In Sheep’s Clothing”, calls them “character disorders”, and points to the fact that they exist on the extreme end of the continuum from neurotic to character disordered. Dr. Simon say that most mental illnesses are of a neurotic nature, while personality disorders are on the character disordered side. What is important to understand is that people with these disorders have low or no conscience which makes them dangerous to others in interpersonal relationships. (Most neurotics may have bad habits or characteristics that make them harmful to themselves… they are not usually harmful to other people. While character disordered individuals are harmful mostly to others).
Dr. Sandra L Brown calls relationships with character disordered people “relationships of inevitable harm”. The reason for the harm is that people with personality disorders, (I prefer the term character disorders), lack empathy for others, have traits of impulsiveness and irresponsibility, and feel entitled and often superior, so they end up being willing to use the tactics of coercive control to get their way.
However, just because someone is using coercive control doesn’t necessarily mean that they have narcissistic personality disorder, anti-social personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, or, the particularly nasty disorder of psychopathy. Only a mental health professional can diagnose these, and you aren’t likely to be able to get an abuser to voluntarily submit to any tests.
The abusers who do not have full blown personality disorders may have some of the traits, or they may be operating from societal engrained beliefs about male dominance as a right (patriarchy). Most of these coercive controllers are not mentally ill or character disordered, but have internalized sexism at a deep level that provides them with “justifications” for their abusive actions. They use abuse to “keep their women in line”, and they justify their double standards with patriarchal views of how the world ought to be run. These men think that they are doing what is “right” by following teachings they learned in our patriarchal society. These abusers don’t act abusively in most of their other relationships, usually only in relating to their intimate partners. They may use the tactics of coercive control with their wives and girlfriends, but they usually avoid them with everyone else in their lives (except for their children, who they often feel they have the right to use as weapons to punish their partners or ex partners... misogyny).
People with personality disorders (character disorders) tend to use coercive control tactics as their main way of dealing with others. (Dr. Evan Stark may have disagreed with me on this point. He viewed coercive control as being connected almost exclusively to intimate partner violence. I view coercive control in a broader context. It is certainly present in the majority of intimate partner violence, but I believe it also exists in nearly all social systems where savvy coercive controllers are able to use unfair and deceitful tactics to leverage their power differential in order to get what they want).
Myth #2 that obscures abuser’s intentionality, is the myth that … Abusers were abused as children, or in a prior relationship, and that has made them abusive.
Don’t get me wrong, some abusers were abused as children, and some may have even been abused by a previous partner. But, according to many experts, being abused does not cause a person to become abusive. Abuse is a choice! Even people with personality disorders, who may have damaged systems for empathy within the very structures of their brains, are still choosing to be abusive. It’s not that they don’t KNOW that they are causing harm, it’s that they just DON’T CARE.
The same goes for people abused as children. For the most part, they know that they are causing harm in the relationship. If you really think about it, this myth doesn’t really make sense. A person who was harmed as a child should be LESS likely to be abusive, not MORE, because they know how bad abuse feels. An abuse victim is just as likely to grow up to be overly empathetic as they are to be un-caring and abusive. And the ones that do grow up to be abusive, for the most part, are doing so because they adopted the attitudes and beliefs that justify their abuse and/or coercive control, not because they were abused themselves. They felt powerless as children and made a choice referred to in research as identification with the aggressor, rather than the targeted victim, whom they perceived as less powerful.
The vast majority of abusers are using some sort of justification to continue their intentional abuse. Some have very little empathy and high entitlement, so they justify their actions in this “dog eat dog” world using their feelings and attitudes of superiority and supremacy. Some abusers justify their abuse because they are men and “God” or “The Bible” (spiritual abuse) put them in charge of the family, and therefore they have the “right” to “correct” their wives as they see fit. Abusers in the workplace may use their title as CEO or President to justify demeaning names or unfair policies because they are the ones “in charge” (workplace bullying). Religious or cult leaders may justify their power and authority over others because they actually believe (or pretend to believe) they are “God."
And, then there are abusers who may have only lived inside of abusive systems and families all their lives. They never saw examples of healthy relationships, and they never learned respectful ways to treat people. These abusers may not completely understand that what they are doing is wrong. But that doesn't mean that it's not!
But, if you have told someone repeatedly that they are hurting you, and they don’t stop… then they are acting intentionally. They fit into the majority of abusers who know exactly what they are doing. They are doing it on purpose, and they are selfishly benefitting from hurting you. If they weren’t, they would have already stopped by now.
These and other societal myths cause quite a bit of confusion, but the biggest reason why a victim or target might believe that an abuser doesn’t know that he’s being abusive is this… abusers LIE… and they lie convincingly! To avoid being caught for their intentional use of coercively controlling tactics, in order to get what they want, they must convince their partners that they don’t mean to do it.
Abusers exploit the myths of mental illness and/or prior victimization to convince their targets that they are in some sort of “denial”. The more sophisticated and coercively controlling an abuser is, the more effective this is. The more empathetic, patient and conscientious the victim is, the easier it is for a coercive controller to use these myths to gain the upper hand.
Healthy compassionate human beings give other people the benefit of the doubt, because they don’t like to feel like they are being cruel or critical of others. This plays to the coercive controllers advantage. All a coercive controller needs to do is convince their target that the targeted victim is judging them too harshly, and the target will usually back down, and accept much of the blame themselves.
Don’t fall for this trap. If you believe your partner, ex-partner, or anyone else, who is using coercive control against you may have a mental illness or an abusive childhood that is leading to their poor treatment of you, demand that they get help. If they refuse. They are probably just lying, or, at the very least, they don’t care enough about you to exert the effort needed to keep you safe.
If they do attend counseling, and they get better, (and stay better for a long period of time), great! Maybe they did have something that they just needed help working through. But if they don’t stop abusing you, it wasn’t a mental illness, and it wasn’t a bad childhood. It wasn’t denial… it was denying… it was a LIE!
AND…. even if the experts I have studied, and my own personal experience, proves to be wrong. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if they are abusing or coercively controlling you on purpose or not. What matters is that you deserve to live a life filled with dignity, safety and freedom!
If they are hurting you… they are 100% responsible for your harm, whether they are “intending” to hurt you or not!
If you are in a coercively controlling relationship there is help out there to escape. You can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) for help in creating a safety and/or escape plan.
_________________________________________________________________
UPDATE (March 18, 2023): I have always personally believed that there was a huge overlap between personality disorders and coercive control. However, the domestic violence field has been wary of connecting these dots. They have good reason to do so, and I have spent many hours considering the ramifications of each perspective. Within our current mental health models, if a mental illness is discovered alongside domestic violence the focus often shifts to treatment. But, as I mentioned above, personality disorders are different from other forms of mental illness. They are "pervasive" and "permanent" by definition, and therefore considered to be untreatable.
So, shifting our focus off holding perpetrators accountable and onto treating untreatable coercive controllers would be a waste of precious resources. Unfortunately, the current trend in trauma-informed care is heading in exactly that direction... attempting to treat coercive controllers who may or may not even be treatable... often enabling the escalation of their coercive control in the process.
Currently, we do not know if coercive controllers can be treated effectively or not. Most research indicates low success rates. However, there is no real incentive for coercive controllers to change, because the systems are enabling them to continue their coercive control, even after separation. So, until we transform the systems to incentivize positive change, programs like batterer intervention and intimate partner violence prevention are not likely to produce adequate results. They may reduce physically violent recidivism, but they are not likely to reduce coercive control, and may even increase it.
For this reason, I believe most funding to end domestic violence and coercive control should be focused on prevention and empowering and supporting targeted victims to escape and heal, as well as increasing truly effective means of holding coercive controllers accountable. To really make an impact on reducing coercive control we need systemic transformation that addresses the inequities in the systems that continue to reinforce coercive controller's dangerous and harmful behavior.
FOR A FREE SURVIVOR CONSULTATION
FOR A FREE PROFESSIONAL CONSULTATION
DARVO is a relatively recent term. Jennifer Freyd, a researcher at the University of Oregon, first started using the term in 1997 to describe a pattern of emotional abuse that often presents in relationship involving domestic violence. DARVO is an acronym that stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender, and it is prevalent, not only in intimate partner violence and abuse, but can also be found in institutional violence. Today we will discuss the use of DARVO as it relates to domestic violence and coercive control, and in a future post, I will address how DARVO is often inadvertently implemented in “the system”… re-traumatizing victims.
The most recent study on DARVO that I found, studied the tendency of victims of DARVO to blame themselves, when the tactic was used against them. Apparently, DARVO is quite effective at creating confusion, guilt and shame for the victim. This serves perpetrators well, creating an environment where the people around the parties also tend to blame the victim as well.
So, how does DARVO work? DARVO is a tactical response, used to manipulate the victim out of holding the perpetrator accountable for their negative behavior.
For example, let’s say that you are in an intimate relationship, and you have an agreement about chores and how they will be divided between you. You will be the one responsible for doing the laundry, and your partner will be responsible for the evening cooking.
This arrangement works well for the first few weeks, but, as time goes on, your partner begins to drop the ball on dinner. It starts off slowly, as he brings home take-out one night, instead of making a home cooked meal as you had agreed. This is a minor violation, you think, and probably not worth starting an argument over. Phrases like “don’t sweat the small stuff” reverberate through mind as you contemplate whether or not to mention this minor infraction. You are somewhat bothered by your partner’s lack of consideration for the fact that you had discussed saving money and eating healthier as goals that were important to you, but you decide, for the time being, to hold off on confronting him. You don’t want to seem like a nag, and you can see how you might find yourself needing to make a small adjustment to your laundry duty at some point, and don’t want to feel pressured to do things “perfectly”.
But take-out dinners appear more and more often, and soon, he is forgetting to bring dinner home at all. So you decide to confront him. This is when he uses the tactic of DARVO to avoid accountability. When you remind him of your agreement that he make home-cooked meals each night, he denies having agreed to “any such thing”. You are confused. You remind him of the long conversation you had, where the two of you discussed healthier eating and saving money by eating home every night. He looks at you blankly. You are getting frustrated by his lack of recollection, especially since the discussion had been really important to you.
You try to no avail to get him remember the conversation, but he turns on you. He verbally attacks you. He accuses you of being “crazy” and “inventing conversations” to “make him look bad”. He goes on and on about the fact that he has been “generously” spending his own money to buy you both dinner, and that you are “ungrateful” and “controlling”. Why do you feel the need to “micromanage” him, he demands to know.
What?, you think! Oh no… am I being controlling? I don’t want to be controlling. He DID pay for the food, so I can’t really complain that I am not able to save money, like I had hoped. Am I ungrateful? Your head spins as you try to unravel the cognitive dissonance this conversation is creating!
This is DARVO at its finest! This is emotional abuse, verbal abuse, gaslighting, crazy-making, and psychological abuse, all rolled into one. This is coercive control. DARVO is one of the most commonly used tactics in coercive control, and it can be absolutely disabling, if you don’t recognize it and respond appropriately. And, most people don’t.
The study published in 2017 found that 50% of victims of DARVO felt “angry” during the confrontation, but many didn’t understand why. That is no surprise when you consider why DARVO is being utilized. Victims of DARVO feel like there is something profoundly unfair about what is happening to them, because there IS! The perpetrator of DARVO is intentionally manipulating the facts, in order to avoid accountability for their actions. But… they are doing so in such an underhanded and covert manner, that it’s hard to see what they are doing.
This makes DARVO not only quite effective but also very dangerous for the victim. And, when I say very dangerous, I am not kidding. DARVO can be lethal. Over time, having this tactic used against you can cause you to feel like you are losing your mind. It can cause nervous breakdowns, chronic pain, substance abuse, severe health problems like heart attacks and cancer, even PTSD, CPTSD, suicidal ideation or death.
Over time, both the victim and the perpetrator can end up adapting slowly to this pattern of abuse, making it more and more lethal over time. Both partners can come to believe that it is the victim’s fault that the perpetrator is behaving badly. This makes it harder for the victim to protect themselves and easier for the perpetrator to justify more aggressive retaliation over time.
We have an excellent example of DARVO happening right now in the United States with the impeachment of Donald Trump. President Trump has convinced many people that he is the victim of a “hoax” a “witch hunt” or a “lynching”. Inflammatory words like these evoke strong emotions in people and tend to reduce their ability to focus on the facts of the case. It is pretty amazing what Mr. Trump has been able to get away with utilizing DARVO on the American people.
If you recognize DARVO in your relationship, you need to consider finding a safe way to escape. I don’t recommend trying to leave on your own without advice from domestic violence professionals. The more engrained this pattern is with your abuser, the higher the likelihood that severe physical violence could be the result if you try to leave. Leaving a perpetrator of coercive control is the most dangerous time for a victim, so you don’t want to play that card until you have a plan to keep yourself (and kids if you have them) safe.
Contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline for support @ 1-800-799-7233.
______________________________________________
If you are a survivor who needs coercive control expert witness testimony, coercive control consulting or coercive control assessment for a court case, you can book a FREE CONSULTATION here.
If you are a professional looking for coercive control training or assessment for your team, you can book a FREE CONSULTATION here.
The Maze Coercive Control Wheel (click the link to view un-cropped version of the wheel) was developed by Kathy Jones in order to update the long-standing Power and Control Wheel developed decades ago by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DAIP). By adding coercive control to the existing tactics included in the original tool, we are able to see the extent to which coercive controllers use existing societal, religious and family norms to enforce and maintain control over their victims.
The original Power and Control Wheel was created in Duluth Minnesota in the 80’s. At that time, it was thought that physical and sexual violence were the main forms of abuse that held the entire model together. With the creation of the coercive control model, researchers and domestic violence advocates now understand much more fully how the pattern of coercive control fits into the arena of domestic violence.
Most people understand domestic violence to be the use of physical and sexual force to control their partner in a relationship. But, as laws against physical violence were passed, many men started using other forms of violence as a way of maintaining control over their partners, without the higher risk of being caught. As women became aware that they had some form of recourse in the system, should their partner physically harm them, men we forced to find more subtle means of dominance.
These more subtle forms of violence include emotional abuse, financial abuse, sexual abuse, and psychological abuse. I consider all of these to be forms of violence, because they use force to overcome another’s free will. Legally, however, only physical violence and sexual assault are considered to be “violence”.
This shift from controlling women through physical violence toward using other forms of violence has significantly complicated assisting victims in freeing themselves from this insidious form of oppression.
As the Maze of Coercive Control Wheel points out, there are multiple factors within society that collude with the abuser, against the victim, to keep the pattern of coercive control in place. And, it is these factors that assist men in entrapping women… violating their human rights… and causing untold damage to victim’s lives, and the lives of the people they touch.
As victims of coercive control become aware that they are in a relationship that is harming them, they face significant barriers to escape. The family court system in the United States is significantly biased against women who allege abuse. This means that there is a high risk that a victim of coercive control might lose custody of her children, should she attempt to leave her abuser.
Victims are at the highest risk of fatal violence at the time that they try to escape an abuser. So victims must decide whether that potential risk is worth attempting to escape.
Financial abuse occurs in 99% of relationships with coercive controlling partners. It is one of the most effective ways to trap a woman in the relationship, because, if she can’t support herself and her children, or, if she cannot afford to wage an expensive legal battle against her abuser, she may be too dependent on her abuser financially to leave.
Coercive control is extremely damaging to the victim as well. Victims are often exhausted, injured, confused, terrified, and may even have significant mental, emotional or physical disabilities, caused by the coercive control. All of these things make leaving incredibly complex for the victim.
When a victim finally does find the courage to tell someone what is happening to her, the odds that she will be blamed for her abuser’s actions are high. And these odds go up significantly, if there has not been any physical violence yet. The victim is likely to be told to “forgive and forget” or “give him another chance”. This further confuses her situation and makes obtaining the support she desperately needs to escape, seem impossible.
The Maze of Coercive Control Wheel gives a visual representation of the web of abuse that victims of coercive control are trapped within. It helps to validate victim’s experiences. It can also serve as a way for those wishing to support victims to understand more fully what they have been dealing with, and what support might be most meaningful.
If you wish to learn more about the Maze of Coercive Control, you can visit Kathy Jones web site.
Please feel free to comment below if you find this tool helpful.