NOTE: This blog is written primarily for victimized mothers of coercive control. The statements within are not intended to imply that mothers are never abusive or coercively controlling, or that fathers are never victimized. Some are. However, the majority of coercive control within families is perpetrated by males against adult females and children, so this […]

If you are a protective parent attempting to navigate the family court system in the US (or any other country), you have probably run into the problematic use of the terms Parental Alienation Syndrome, Parental Alienation and Alienation... all of which refer to the same phenomenon. (Read my prior blog on Parental Alienation here, if you are […]

A large majority of targeted victims of coercive control have, or will, develop symptoms of, or full-blown, PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). In my opinion, based on the research I've reviewed and the clients I have worked with, if you are targeted by a coercive controller, unless you are able to effectively escape their PsychoSocial Quicksand™ early […]

As I have discussed before in previous blog posts, DARVO is perhaps the most effective and often used strategy of coercive controllers. And of the possible uses of DARVO, Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) or Parental Alienation (PA) is arguably the most commonly used DARVO strategy of coercive controllers in family court. PAS is a theory […]

So far I have covered the first three of the 5 Doubles in the #PsychoSocialQuicksand Model of #Coercive Control, #DoubleStandards,  #DoubleBinds and #DoubleThink. The fourth Double is #DoubleSpeak. #DoubleSpeak, thank goodness, is easier to grasp than #DoubleThink. I covered #DoubleThink first, because it is the driving force behind #DoubleSpeak. What the coercive controller thinks in their mind becomes apparent in their words and […]

So far I have covered the first four of the #5Doubles in the #PsychoSocialQuicksand Model of #Coercive Control, #DoubleStandards,  #DoubleBinds,  #DoubleThink and #DoubleSpeak. These four doubles, along with DARVO, improve ease of detection of coercive control tactics and strategies as well as help identify coercive controllers. The 5th Double of the PSQM™ is #DoubleVision. Double Vision is a sign that a person […]

So far I have covered the first two of the 5 Doubles in the #PsychoSocialQuicksand Model of #Coercive Control, #DoubleStandards and #DoubleBinds. The third Double is #DoubleThink. #DoubleThink is a bit harder to wrap your head around, probably because it is contradictory and confusing by its very nature. #DoubleThink is a type of conscious self-deception. The term #DoubleThink was coined by George […]

I interrupt our regularly scheduled blog post intended to cover the 5 Doubles & DARVO to make a book recommendation. Although the book Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls was published in 2019, I didn't hear about it until this week on Twitter. And, although it doesn't refer to coercive control or coercively controlling patterns of behavior […]

I am honored to have been interviewed by the fabulous therapist and host of the Indoctrination Podcast, Rachel Bernstein! You can listen in HERE. 

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 […]