I was researching to compose a blog about how coercive control harms children when I came across Dr. Emma Katz' newest Substack article entitled "The Myth That Coercive and Controlling Domestic Abusers Can Be Adequate Parents". So, rather than writing my own blog, which would have derived a huge amount of its research foundation from […]
As mentioned in my previous post, the term coercive control was coined in 1982 by Susan Schecter, and popularized by Evan Stark in his ground-breaking book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, where he recommended it as a new framework, or lens, through which to view domestic abuse. However, research on coercive control began long before Schecter […]
If you don't work in the domestic violence, cult, human trafficking or domestic abuse fields, you may not have even heard of the term coercive control. But even if you have, unless you have taken it upon yourself to get educated on coercive control, you probably don't know what it is or why it matters. (Of course, if you have survived […]
Boundaries are necessary for healthy relationships and mental and physical well-being. But that which makes a healthy relationship thrive can be dangerous or even lethal for the target of coercive control. Boundaries are impossible to set and maintain in relationships with coercive controllers, because they fly in the face of the main goal of coercive control... […]
Coercive control causes trauma, and the degree to which that trauma impacts a target of coercive control is in direct proportion to the degree and duration of the coercive control used to entrap them. I am a lifelong survivor of coercive control. Beginning just before birth, my father forced my mother to abandon her plan to […]
Have you heard the term victim blaming? You probably have, but let's talk about it anyway, because you may not be aware of one of the more subtle versions of victim blaming and the ways that victims can be additionally harmed by this gaslighting method. Victim blaming occurs when a negative, harmful behavior or crime is blamed on […]
DARVO is a popular strategy of coercive controllers and an important aspect of the PsychoSocial Quicksand Model™ of Coercive Control. DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender, and coercive controllers use it to get away with their coercive and controlling behaviors, with the added benefit of focusing all of the blame on their targeted […]
Why do we need to focus on the pattern of coercive control? In short, the murders of seven family members by a Mormon father in Enoch, Utah is a classic example of why we need the context of coercive control to be the focus of domestic violence and abuse prevention efforts. If you haven't read the news […]
UPDATE: NOVEMBER 2, 2023: New research published October 2023 has established a new term for interfering in the relationship between a mother and child. It has been termed Child And Mother Sabotage (CAMS), and pertains to coercive and controlling behaviors by a father against his child and the mother of his child. THIS is the term […]
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. […]