Coercive Control

If you feel like your relationship or a relationship of a friend or loved one isn’t healthy and there are signs of controlling behaviour that are intimidating, hurtful, scary, or isolating—you’re right to check if it’s coercive control.

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Coercive control is the entrapment of another person by gaining control over their behaviour and choices through force and/or threats of force and manipulation.

Coercive control is a dangerous form of domestic abuse that is used to manipulate, intimidate, and scare another person. It occurs when someone slowly takes over your whole life. It’s not just one fight or one bad moment – it’s when someone uses different types of abuse over time to control almost everything you do. They make rules for you to follow, watch what you do, and punish you if you don’t do what they want. The person controlling you might decide what you can wear, who you can talk to, where you can go, and tries to control how you think. It’s like being in jail, except the bars are invisible and other people can’t see them.

This type of abuse has been criminalised in some Australian states. In Tasmania the Family Violence Act 2004 was amended in 2018 to include coercive control:

1. A person must not pursue a course of conduct that he or she knows, or ought to know, is likely to have the effect of unreasonably controlling or intimidating, or causing mental harm, apprehension or fear in, his or her spouse or partner.

Controlling behaviours have no place in a healthy relationship

It’s important to know there’s no place for coercive control and abusive behaviours (physical or non-physical) in a healthy relationship.

If you notice a pattern of manipulation and abusive behaviours in your relationship, or if, when you do something that you want to do, you have come to expect some form of punishment or payback, you might be experiencing coercive control. If you’re worried or unsure, support is available.

Healthy versus harmful relationships

Understanding Coercive Control

Coercive control is a pattern of abusive behaviours, that can include different types of abuse including emotional and psychological abuse. It can exist on its own without any physical violence, and this can make it harder to identify than some other forms of domestic violence.

It’s important to know the signs of coercive control so that you know when to seek help for yourself or a friend or loved one.

It can be hard to spot signs of coercive control. It often starts small and builds over time, and the abuses can at times be subtle and sneaky or hard to detect.

The person using coercive control can disguise their abusive behaviour or justify and explain it away. They might say something like “you’re imagining it” or “If you were a better housekeeper, Mum, lover, woman (can be anything), I wouldn’t have to do this”, or “I love you and I’m showing you where you go wrong” or “It’s just carer stress”

I wish I’d known it wasn’t my fault and I wish I’d stopped putting the guilts on myself. But it was my generation. It really did hold me back. I thought it was all my fault. But it wasn’t out in the open in those days. We never heard anything about it. It happened behind closed doors.

Judy

Advocate against Elder Abuse

To other people, such as friends or other family members, perpetrators might look like the perfect partner or a wonderful carer. They can be wilfully ignorant when they are genuinely distressed when confronted with how they have hurt you; they never meant to hurt you and they hold themselves blameless because of their innocent mistakes (as they see it). There are often no apologies or corrections and it happens time and time again. They are actually choosing to not face the harmful behaviours; not owning or correcting the behaviours.

How it differs from other forms of abuse

Coercive control is different because:

• The perpetrator presents to others as a loving devoted partner and parent, and the victim is trained to cover for them.
• It may start with small things and build over time.
• It never stops – It’s not just blow-ups here and there, it’s constant
• It’s about owning you. They want to control your entire life, not just win one argument
• There might be little or no hitting, punching, or obvious violence, which makes people think “it’s not that bad” or not believe you
• Each thing alone might seem small (“they just want to know where I am”), but all together it traps you.
• It’s really dangerous – People in these relationships are at high risk of being seriously hurt or killed

Old ideas about abuse focused mostly on hitting and physical violence. Coercive control shows that someone can trap and damage you just as badly without ever leaving a bruise.

What coercive control can do to the victim:

It can mess with your head

• You start doubting yourself constantly – “Am I remembering this right? Am I overreacting? Am I the crazy one?”
• You can’t make simple decisions anymore without second-guessing yourself
• You forget what you used to like or want – your own personality just disappears
• You feel confused all the time because they twist everything around

I never thought of myself as an abused woman. Even through all the things he did. I thought that I was a strong woman in love with a deeply troubled man and I could help him.

Deb H

Advocate for change

You can live in constant fear

• Walking on eggshells every single day, trying not to set them off
• Your stomach drops when you hear their car pull up or their key in the door
• You’re always anxious, waiting for the next blow-up
• You can’t relax even when things seem calm because you know it won’t last

You can feel completely alone

• Cut off from friends and family – either they’ve pushed everyone away or you’ve stopped reaching out because it’s too hard
• You feel like no one would understand or believe you anyway
• The loneliness is crushing because the one person you’re with is the one hurting you

Your self-worth can disappear

• You start believing all the horrible things they say about you
• You feel worthless, stupid, ugly, incompetent
• You think you can’t do anything right
• You believe no one else would ever want you

You can feel trapped

• Like there’s no way out – they control the money, where you go, everything
• Even if you could leave, you don’t know how you’d survive
• You might still love them or remember when things were good
• You’re scared of what they’ll do if you try to leave

My world was shrinking … getting smaller and smaller with fewer and fewer people. I thought “Is this the rest of my life? That’s when I decided to leave.

Anonymous Tasmanian victim survivor

Your health can suffer

• Constant headaches, stomach problems, getting sick all the time
• Can’t sleep or sleeping too much
• No energy for anything
• Stress literally makes you physically ill

You can lose touch with reality

• After so much gaslighting, you genuinely don’t know what’s real anymore
• You might blame yourself for their behaviour
• You make excuses for them to other people
• You minimize how bad it really is, even to yourself

You might not be able to think straight

• Brain fog – hard to concentrate or remember things
• Can’t plan ahead or think about the future
• All your mental energy goes into surviving day-to-day

Shame and embarrassment can take over

• You’re ashamed this is happening to you
• You’re embarrassed that you “let” it get this bad
• You hide it from everyone because you feel stupid
• You think people will judge you for staying

You can become a different person

• The real you gets buried under all their control
• You’re just going through motions, like a shell of who you used to be
• You don’t recognize yourself anymore
• Everything that made you “you” is gone

The really cruel part is that all of this happens slowly, so you don’t realize it’s happening until you’re already deep in it. And because there might not be bruises or broken bones, you might think “it’s not really abuse” or “other people have it worse,” which keeps you stuck even longer.

For me coercion was a deep feeling that this wasn’t right, surely someone who loves you wouldn’t make you feel so crazy, confused and afraid almost too afraid to breathe in case you did or said the wrong thing, every single part of life was carefully popped into his memory bank, even breathing the wrong way down the track, things disclosed, past conversations or actions could be instantly retrieved and used as a weapon against you, further shredding your trust in yourself and your sanity creating this “if I hadn’t acted that way, if I hadn’t said that, if I hadn’t talked to that person, I know better, what is wrong with me – that consequence would not have happened” dynamic, a feeling of deep, deep continued confusion and inability to trust my own judgement in any area, just a deep knowing that if I breathed wrong, I would be in big trouble. It’s often very difficult to give language to – with every single woman I have ever worked with in this space including myself saying ‘oh I don’t really have the words to explain this, it’s really hard to explain, I feel crazy.’

A Tasmanian woman, mother, courageous survivor, and professional working to advocate for and support other women and children. Committed to driving systemic change, empowerment, healing, and education.

What it can do to kids:

• They grow up thinking relationships are supposed to be like this
• They show signs of anxiety, depression, acting out
• They have trouble at school and making friends
• It messes with how they’ll have relationships when they grow up
• Sometimes they try to protect the parent being abused or become little adults too soon

What it does to everyone else:

• Others may not believe you when you try to talk about what is happening because the perpetrator is often charming with other people and attentive to you while with them.
• Your own parents or siblings and friends don’t see you as much as they used to. The perpetrator might control who you see and when you see them.
• Friends and family who see them only occasionally may think them charming or well-meaning, while the subtlety of the abuse escapes most people.
• Others may believe the subtle suggestions of the perpetrator that the victim is depressive, difficult, mentally unstable, or has other issues.
• Family members watch helplessly as someone they love disappears into this relationship. They may notice reduced confidence and think that the victim is withdrawing from their relationships rather than being controlled.

When victims start to tell people, the depth of denial that is experienced is shocking. Victims don’t know what to expect and the denial becomes the norm. I wish I knew about the strength and breadth of denial that I would meet around me. I had no idea. And that nearly destroyed me. Yes. And, you know, each time I had to end an abusive relationship, it’s very taxing. I ended up deciding I would never get into another intimate relationship again when my son was 18 months old. He’s now 38.

Deb H, victim survivor and advocate

Find out more about coercive control at Engender Equality’s. Coercive Control Video Series and Three Minute Thoughtcast Video Series.

The Power and Control Wheel

The Power and Control Wheel is a diagram that shows the different tactics abusers use to control their partners.

All of these tactics work together. A perpetrator of coercive control doesn’t just use one – they use combinations of these to create a web of control. The physical or sexual violence (or the threat of it) is what makes all the other tactics work. Even if they’re not hitting you right now, the fear that they could keeps you trapped.

The wheel shows coercive control isn’t just about anger or losing control – it’s a deliberate pattern of behaviours designed to dominate another person.

Duluth Power and Control Wheel. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wheels/understanding-power-control-wheel/

A Self-assessment Tool

This checklist includes just some of the common ways coercive control might be used in a relationship. It’s impossible to make a complete list. Here are some examples of different types of abuse that may be experienced in a relationship in which one of the partners perpetrates coercive control. You probably won’t experience all of them but if you recognise some of these behaviours, you may be in a controlling or unhealthy relationship.