6 Emotions People Feel When Someone Is Using Coercive Control Against Them
Coercive control manipulates you to believe you are the problem.
Toa Heftiba | Unsplash Coercive control creates invisible chains and a sense of fear that pervades all elements of a survivor’s life. It works to limit their human rights by depriving them of their liberty and reducing their ability to act.
Sociologist Evan Stark likened coercive control to being taken hostage. As he says: “the victim becomes captive in an unreal world created by the abuser, entrapped in a world of confusion, contradiction, and fear.”
It's all well and good reading what coercive control means, but what does it look like when you are living in a relationship with it and have possibly become an unknowing victim?
Six emotions people often feel when someone is using coercive control
1. Misunderstood
When you explain yourself to your other half, you end up feeling you are getting it wrong or are being stupid.
2. Not Good Enough
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No matter how you try to mold yourself into who your partner says they want, the goalposts always seem to get moved.
Domestic abuse isn’t only physical violence towards a person in a relationship, unfortunately, coercive and controlling behavior is often the nasty baseline thrumming in the background of an abusive relationship, as shown by the APA.
3. Bewildered
Things don't add up in your relationship and when you try to figure out what's going on, you struggle to think straight and the confusion shrouds your brain in fog.
Research from the APA helped explain how this type of controlling behavior is designed to make you feel dependent and isolate you from your support circles, in particular, close friends and family, and deprive you of your independence. It even can go as far as regulating your normal behavior, such as when you use your mobile phone and who you are allowed to contact.
4. Lonely
Being unwittingly isolated by your other half can leave you lost and alone, even when that someone is sitting on the sofa watching TV with you.
It won't start as a “you are not allowed to do that” situation, it will start far more under the radar. The odd comment about how they don't particularly like a friend or member of your family. Then it can be scaled up to questioning, "Why are you always talking to that person when you could be spending time with me?" Now, it is hard for you to enjoy your time with a particular friend because your conversations are interrupted for you to, "Come and do something important for me." This can lead to other forms of abuse, as explored by an article in the Journal of Psychology of Violence.
5. Hopeless
You've jumped through all their hoops and met their unreasonable demands and nothing helps or changes how they are behaving towards you. You feel like giving up.
6. Unstable
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If you can see yourself in any, and possibly all the other emotions, and you can throw in a big dose of regularly being gaslighted, you will begin to feel like you are losing your sanity.
Coercive control is a lot more sneaky than a straight-up punch in the face. It never leaves a mark on your skin for someone to notice, it just quietly eats away at you until, before you can see what is happening, you become a shell of the person you once were.
It's almost as if the dimmer your light gets, the more powerful your abuser feels. They chip away at the very core of your being until you believe their manipulation to the point of believing their lies. They lie that you are worthless and should be grateful you have them in your life looking out for you because, without them, you would be nothing.
LouLou Palmer is a professional and personal development coach with over 20 years of experience utilizing science-based therapies, Shamanic techniques, and other modalities. Her work, profiled on BBC Woman's Hour, is based in the UK but available globally.