I write a lot about language and terminology for domestic abuse, domestic violence and coercive control. I don't do this because I insist that people use MY language. Loading language is actually a red flag for undue influence and thought reform, other terms related to coercive control, so that is the last thing I would recommend. The recommendations I make for upgrading our terminology stems from my, and other survivors, frustration with misleading terms that have caused us pain. Any term that focuses responsibility for abuse on the target of that abuse, rather than the perpetrator, is harmful to survivors, and therefore, inaccurate.
Here are a few terms that regularly re-traumatize survivors.
For these concepts I prefer the term trauma-coerced attachment. It's not that codependence and trauma-bonding do not occur under some circumstances. (Stockholm syndrome may be the exception. The first woman "diagnosed" with Stockholm syndrome claims it was created to discredit her - a female hostage who had legitimate anger and fear toward the police in charge of protecting her.) The problem with using these terms in connection with domestic abuse, domestic violence and coercive control is that they frame the survivor's response to abuse as the problem or part of the problem, rather than making the abuser 100% responsible.
Trauma-coerced attachment, on the other hand, accurately describes the situation when a target of abuse loses their identity, agency and decision-making ability over time, but does so without making it the target's fault. The attachment that is created in trauma-coerced attachment is a "coerced" attachment. It is a deceptive and manipulated attachment (or bond) that was created purposefully by the perpetrator against the target. Trauma-coerced attachment is like psychological rape and enslavement. It is never the fault of the target!
Codependence, in contrast, is viewed as the target's problem. Therapists, friends and family members regularly expect targets of abuse to "set better boundaries" or "work on their codependency issues". Some clients may actually have boundary or codependency issues. However, it is critical to separate out these issues from abuse. If a person is always acting in codependent ways with everyone in their life, maybe they do need to set better boundaries and be less concerned about what others think of them. However, if they are in a relationship where they are being threatened, isolated, humiliated, retaliated against, punished, deceived and/or controlled by an abusive partner, the likelihood that their actions are caused by a character flaw on their part is extremely low! Even if a target of abuse has some boundary or codependency problems, if they are in an abusive environment, especially a coercively controlling one, their actions to protect themselves ought to be celebrated... not condemned. They can be taught to hold better boundaries once they have reached true safety. Until then, expecting targets to hold boundaries with a coercive controller not only creates a cruel double-bind for them, it could also be quite dangerous!
Victim is another term I have come to avoid. Again, not because it is necessarily inaccurate. People who have been targeted by abusers are victims. They have been victimized. The reason I don't care for the term is that it carries assumptions and provides perpetrators another weapon to use against them. To be survivor-focused, it's important we do everything possible to empower them toward safety, agency and dignity. The word victim does not do that. Much of society hears victim and either, 1. feels sorry for them, 2. blames them for being victimized, or 3. judges them against some ideal version of a "victim" they define in their thinking. All of these responses re-traumatize targets of abuse. They re-create the humiliation, terror, indignity and oppression of coercive control.
The term target, by contrast, points to the predatory nature of coercive control. Anyone can be a target of abuse. As a matter of fact, many targets are chosen specifically because they have super traits, or high levels of empathy, cooperation and conscientiousness. These highly conscientious individuals would be the last people to "play the victim", a common refrain covert abusers use to turn the tables when their target outs them to others.
Terms like high conflict are also problematic. Labeling a divorce case that includes a coercive controller high conflict is like labeling a terrorist attack high conflict. Were the Twin Towers hit because of the victim's "conflict" with the terrorists? Of course not! So, why do we use the mutualizing language of high conflict to describe a target attempting to escape a perpetrator of coercive control? Coercive control is terroristic in nature. If we wouldn't hold a victim of a terrorist attack responsible for the "conflict", we shouldn't hold a target of abuse responsible either. But our family court system frames coercive control cases this way regularly, creating an environment rife with re-traumatization for targets.
So, the language we use is important, not because survivors need to control professional jargon. It is important because the jargon was created within an inaccurate model, that didn't fully understand the malevolent pattern of coercive control. Now that we have the term coercive control to frame the most harmful type of domestic abuse, we can begin to shift our thinking AND our language to better detect and prevent it.
