COERCIVE CONTROL SURVIVAL GUIDE
Recognizing and Surviving Abuse That’s Not Physical
Sandra Smith
I am a survivor of coercive control, and like many, I believed that something like this could never happen to someone like me. I was solid I owned a home, had a good job with savings and spending money, good credit, a support system and lots of h friends and family I thought that I would be the least likely person to succumb to this horror. Then, when I did finally begin to catch on to what was happening to me, I thought I could gain back control of it. Maybe I could manipulate my abuser. Maybe it wasn’t as bad or as intentional as it seemed. He wasn’t always horrible, so maybe the former version of the person I thought I knew would reappear. I’m intelligent and accomplished, so I believed that I could regain the control someone else had taken from me.
Plus, by this point, I was embarrassed. I was ashamed to reveal to my friends and family what had happened to me because I blamed myself entirely. I was not willing to place the blame on the abuser, the con artist, the person who targeted me as a victim, so the problem got much, much worse before it got better. If you or someone you love has experienced this form of abuse, you are not alone. You may feel trapped. Often, your finances are drained, your credit damaged, and in many cases, even your possessions have been siphoned away from you. In most cases, your abuser has been successful in isolating you from people who were once close to you, so you feel awkward turning to anyone for help.
Many people are not even aware that resources exist to help them, that the world is catching onto this vile form of abuse, and some countries are creating legislation that formally recognizes coercive control as a specific crime, as they do in the United Kingdom today.
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I’m writing this right now with a degree of urgency for anyone who may be presently dealing with coercive control to inform you that there is a way out. Things can get better, you can heal, and there are strategies to help you rebuild from the damage caused to you. Please reach out to me or someone else who can help guide you through the process of regaining your life and your sense of self-worth so that you can rebuild your life; you can become more self-aware and feel safe knowing that you are not targeted again. The longer you wait, the longer you stay trapped and paralyzed in fear and disbelief, the longer you will needlessly suffer. Please reach out for help today.
WHAT IS COERCIVE CONTROL?
Coercive control is a strategic form of abuse that occurs in relationships which uses ongoing oppression and terrorism to instill fear. It is designed to make a person become subordinate or dependent in a relationship so that the abuser can gain full control of the person and all that the person has. The abuser will use tactics, such as limiting access to money or monitoring all communication, as a controlling effort. There may or may not be physical violence involved with coercive controlling behavior, but the absence of violence does not make the abuse any less damaging. It deprives a person of the means and access to the support needed for independence, resistance, and escape while regulating their everyday behaviour.
Below are examples of coercive control:
• Isolating you from friends and family often by insulting them or creating conflict that creates a barrier in those relationships
• Depriving you of or dissuading your access to services such as police, counselors, doctors, and support groups
• Depriving you of or regulating your access to basic needs such as food, medical care, clothing, transportation, etc.
• Monitoring you with hidden devices such as cameras, checking your internet usage and social media, checking your phone usage and messages, using spyware and parental control tools on you
• Monitoring your time and activities, spying, verifying, and even falsely accusing you of lying about your time and activities
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• Taking control over your basic living activities such as who you see, what you wear, where you go, and when you can eat and sleep, etc.
• Insulting, berating, humiliating, degrading, or dehumanizing you calling you an idiot, saying you’re an embarrassment, you’re incompetent, or worthless, etc.
• Using intimidation tactics and threats to manipulate and control you
• Controlling your finances by taking over access to your money, credit and debit cards, maxing out your credit cards and then not making payments on those credit cards, encouraging you to make large purchases, persuading and asking for their name to be added to your property, etc. (The goal is to make sure you have little access to money.)
• Obstruction of employment
• Gaslighting lying to you or tricking you to make you question your sense of reality, memories, and sanity
It does not matter if you consider yourself to be a strong or a weak person. Coercive control can range in degrees of severity, and for the scam to be successful, the abuser starts off by winning you over with all of the words and actions you hope to have in a relationship. Their con is usually well established by the time they have targeted you and begun to work their way into your life. The controlling tactics start gradually, and it usually starts with isolation. This isn’t too difficult to achieve in a new relationship because in the beginning everything is exciting, and you want to spend as much time alone with this new person as you can. Slowly, they begin deploying more strategies to gain control over your life. It’s like the experiment with the frog in the slow boiling water it doesn’t notice that the temperature is rising to dangerous, and then deadly, levels because it gets accustomed to the increasing water temperature.
MY STORY
Before this relationship, I was exactly the woman you would expect to never get into a manipulative, controlling relationship. I was working, going on holidays, and living my best life with good friends and a supportive family. I was independent. My life was as close to perfect as it could be, so I asked myself, am I ready to settle down? It made sense. I loved my work and being able to afford holidays and a wonderful home, and I was yearning for a family of my own to share that with.
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I met a man who I thought would make a good partner. At first, he ticked every box, fitting what I was looking for. We both loved cycling and would go together on long rides or walks. I felt safe and happy when we were together. We were going to the movies. We're going to the theater. We're going out to dinner. He was attentive and complimentary. We talked a lot and spoke a lot about our future. I realized that I made a lot of allowances; I forgave things that I didn’t particularly like. I let them go and excused them as minor infractions, but the pattern and frequency grew. It got worse. Eventually, I suspected the behavior was toxic, abusive even, but we were still doing all of these fun and positive things which made it all the more difficult to truly see the red flags for what they were.
The manipulation started slowly. It started with something as small as commenting on a painting hanging on the wall to how I decorated my entire home. He would say “Should that be there?” pointing at the picture. Instead of saying, “Yes, I love the picture. My brother painted it.” I doubted myself and figured he is right. He was questioning things in my life I had full control of and planted seeds of doubt, and I would justify it as a healthy trait. I’d want to compromise to include him in all areas of my home and world, but in reality, I was not compromising. I was being groomed to surrender my power.
After he chipped away at my self-esteem with tiny little things, he moved on to my family and friends. There was a lot of “If your brother loved you, he would…” Then, he would compare himself and his acts of love to my family and friends, framing himself to be better than them for me. In a frighteningly short amount of time, I was isolated from my strongest support systems.
He chipped away and kept searching for that little chink in even the strongest relationships my best friend, my mother, my brother some little thing they could do better, and he’d blow it up and make it a reason to sever ties. All the amazing things that person in my life may have done or still does, he would find a way to belittle that and amplify the negative. After doing that with everyone in my life, he was now the hero and everyone else was the enemy. I didn’t even recognize it as it was happening.
All the while as he was tearing down my support group, he was tearing my selfconfidence, sense of self-worth, and judgment. I was doubting how I could have ever trusted these people. I became further and further isolated from those who cared for me the most. Finally, that critical eye he used with all those around me turned on me. He criticized how I dressed, how I talked, and everything about me as a person.
One glaring example of how he tore down my self-esteem was when the good and bad of our relationship overlapped. We had booked a small cruise, and while on the cruise, we stopped at a destination. We had lunch, explored the shops, and went on a bicycle ride. At one point, we separated. I went left, and he went right. The plan was to meet back in an hour. I went back to the location in an hour, and he wasn’t there. I called his cell phone. Nothing. Even though I have a good sense of direction, I started to doubt myself and cycled around looking for him. I started to worry since
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the time to return to the ship was coming close. When I got back onto the ship, I was a wreck, worried about what might have happened to him. When I got to the cabin, he was there, sitting down playing chess as if nothing was wrong. Then, when I expressed that I was worried about him and was going to report him as missing to the crew, he made it my fault and laughed at me for worrying. That was how all our conflicts went. It was never his problem or our problem. It was only my problem. My mistakes led to conflict there was nothing amiss with anything he did, said, didn’t do, etc.
The stress of that made me feel like escaping, but I didn’t know where to turn. Because I had severed ties with all of my friends and family over him, I didn’t feel I had them to support me. I found myself escaping through work. I didn’t have anyone at the office to talk to about this, but when I got to the office, I could somewhat feel in control of my job and the tasks at hand; I still felt successful there. If anyone asked about the relationship or him, I said with a wide smile, “He loves me, and I love him, and he has asked me to live with him.” I tried to convince myself of that as well.
The lowest point for me was the financial coercion. All of the emotional damage being done to me culminated in financial ruin. He started to really focus on my house deed. He fought to put his name on it as a sort of stepping stone to our relationship. When I would say no, he would accuse me of not loving him and not being committed to our future family. These were accusations that were purposefully said to make me feel cruel and selfish. His manipulation worked. He would even assure me that if we did break up, he would give the house back to me, take his name off the deeds, and I trusted that!
Once I conceded, he was relentless and controlling every step of the way, eagerly asking, “Did you sign the paperwork? Are all the documents complete?” He brought it up nonstop. Once the house officially included his name on the deed, he went from room to room tearing up carpets, rewiring and redecorating rooms, and making the house, as he described it, “Our house.”
The next part of the relationship was a fast spiral out of control. He was soon borrowing my credit card to buy material for the home improvements. From there onwards, the financial control was like an avalanche. He had some of his own money, but it was always my money being used on these projects. In time, credit cards were maxed out, and cash was hemorrhaging with no end in sight.
I was paying bills and settling debts, but I hadn’t realized how bad his spending was and how little of these expenses were my own. He bought a car for me that he needed to drive to collect the items purchased for “our” home. If I asked about any of it, he’d say they were our ex penses. Even when he hit someone’s car, he paid them for the damage, then took them out to dinner and said that it was our expense. But I knew nothing about this incident, the neighbor, or the car he paid to repair. In less than a year, I went from having a solid amount of savings stashed away in my account and no debt to over £140,000 worth of debt.
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In just over a year, I went from being a financially and mentally independent woman on top of the world to timid, self-doubting, and in substantial debt. It took me that long to realize that I was in serious trouble. I had to get out of this toxic relationship and find my old self again, and while I knew this, something compelled me to continue hiding from the problem instead of taking action until one day when I reached rock bottom. The breaking moment was on a Friday night. He demanded that I quit my job, move to another city, and rent out our home. He worded it as if it was for my benefit and our independence. We could do whatever we wanted and go where we wanted, but I needed to leave the one place (my home) that still gave me a sense of my own independence apart from him.
Then, it clicked. This wasn’t about us. This wasn’t about our lives together. This was about money. This was about my home. This was about control and his wanting to dominate me in all areas of my life.
I took a full and honest look at my finances. It was shocking. I was almost eight grand short on one account, and the other one was maxed out. I stopped ignoring the red flags, and my suspicion about who he was as a person grew. So, I went to the police to report him, and even though he was well known to them, I was told no crime had been committed and I could possibly report the theft to another agency who might be able to do something. I was told, what it boils down to is ‘he said
she said'.
When I got home, I was scared. I was angry, but I was mainly scared. I couldn’t change the locks because the house was also in his name. There was no physical abuse, so the law didn’t help at first. However, for my peace of mind and safety, I did everything I could within the law. There was so much fear I had to push through to break free, and it took time. I slept very lightly for the whole separation period, but I was emotionally and financially extricating myself from the relationship.
HOW I BROKE FREE
Many successful, independent women find themselves struggling in controlling relationships. We are manipulated and abused and so often realize, while in the midst of it, we ask, what happened to me? Where did I go and who is this person I’ve become? The red flags are there, but because the danger grows gradually, we don’t recognize that control and stress are killing us. By the time we realize what happened, we have lost so much of our own sense of self. In many ways, I had to press a reset button in my life. I first had to go back to the network I relied on before my relationship alienated me from everyone I trusted and loved. I had to humbly go back to those I pushed away and ask for their help.
One of those friends really pulled me through the worst of it. He simply allowed me space and time to say everything that was building up inside me for that whole relationship. He sat me down, and we had hot chocolate together. He let me
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say everything that I was ashamed to say, and after I got it all out, he said, “I’m here for you. You will get your control back.” Hearing that made me cry, and I often went to him throughout the process, especially when I needed help remembering my worth and my own inner strength.
Within my family, I knew my cousin was waiting for this day. She knew as soon as she met my ex that she didn’t like him. She saw the red flags so much that she stayed somewhere else during a family vacation to Jamaica, and she approached me early on to say her peace but did not revisit it with me. She did not want to hurt my feelings, but she also knew that consistently confronting me might make me pull away even more from her and those who love me. So, she left me alone.
Since I was physically safe, she simply made herself available when I was ready and was not judgmental when I finally came to her. She never said, “I told you so.” She never berated me for how long it took or what I did in the past. I still go to her now and ask for her thoughts on new relationships. I want to see through her eyes.
I went on a journey, rebuilding my old support system one person at a time, and I was fully transparent. With my mother, I had a display cabinet that was in the family for over 50 years. I lost that in the relationship, and I was full of so much shame about letting him take it. So, my mother, who gave that cabinet to me, became such a part of my healing by simply talking to me and saying it was not about the cabinet – she has her daughter back. All the fear and guilt that was building up inside me about the cabinet dissipated with that conversation, and every family member and friend I reconnected with gave me a gift of closure one way or another.
Now, I have expanded my network of friends. I have, in a way, developed an army of support. We laugh, we have fun, and when times are tough, we are there for each other. That is not just in relationships. That is in life, and that includes financial intelligence among friends because our financial habits can slack in all parts of our life. For me, it happened in a romantic relationship, but it can happen with family, friends, work, or anywhere. Support often shows up in the form of helping each other remember that it will pass. Yes, debt is stressful, but with work and a plan, it will pass. My friendships are a safe place for me to be myself, be honest and transparent, and get the feedback I need in the moment without judgment.
Along with rebuilding my support network, I had to break free of my feelings of guilt and shame. I had to stop beating myself up and forgive myself, and I found that forgiving myself included forgiving my ex. It is very difficult to do, so I had to lean on my support network. I did what is called forgiveness letters. I ended up writing three letters getting out all the ‘yuk’ letting it work towards my healing. These letters are just for the person writing them. They never go to whom they are written, and I wrote down everything on my mind. When I was done, I wrote, “I forgive you. I forgive me.” That release can be a source of surprising empowerment.
While I was putting the emotional pieces together, I had to also work on the financial pieces. I found an attorney and pressed charges against my ex. The legal
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ramifications of a controlling relationship are different in different countries and states, but I do now know how important it was to document my experience and find an attorney who I felt understood me, the situation I found myself in and who was prepared to take on the case. It was the first legal person I heard mention the words “abusive, controlling relationship and coercive control.”
I learned to be grateful for seemingly small victories because what I may see as a small victory is in fact a huge feat. For example, I sleep through the night. I do not instantly fear his presence when I am surprised by a knock on the door or hear my phone ringing any longer. People take this for granted, but it is my body saying: I am moving through the trauma of the relationship and healing.
I attended a funeral, and my ex was there. It felt empowering to not be afraid. I was able to say hello and keep my presence strong. I didn’t attach to him in any way, not even with fear or drama. I just let it go.
When I was in the relationship and trying to get out, it felt like my hand was in a lion’s mouth. It was terrifying, but once I was free, I could look back and see that he was no lion. He was a rat. It was simply a moment of my growth, and that helped me distance myself from the fear.
Through all this, the most important thing to remember is being manipulated, being in a coercive relationship, does not mean I am broken, unintelligent, or in any way incapable of making good decisions. We are not raised to know this to identify and to ward off nefarious predators. There is not a class in school to prepare us for this.
I am now aware. I tell anyone I meet now in the same situation: you are getting out of a controlling relationship, and that is courageous. That is strength.
There is a journey of finding ourselves again, and that journey must always start with knowing we had the strength to get out. We are worthy, strong women surviving a painful struggle. We can rebuild ourselves and our self-worth knowing the foundation is our strength and courage to be free.
Now, here I am. I can take my experience and be that support system for other women, especially those who do not have a support system to go back to, possibly from the damage done during the relationship or life circumstances. I am grateful for my journey because although painful, I am stronger from it. My support system is stronger, and those I help give me joy.
KNOW THE SIGNS
Answering yes to any of the following questions may help you recognize signs of coercive control.
• Do you feel like you are being isolated from your friends and family?
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• Does he deprive you of basic everyday needs like food, electricity, transportation, and heating?
• Do you think he is monitoring your physical or online activity or has installed spyware on your phone, laptop, or any other device?
• Does he take control over aspects of your everyday life such as where you can go, who you can see, what to wear, when to be home, and when you can sleep?
• Does he stop you from accessing support services such as specialist support or medical services?
• Is he repeatedly putting you down such as telling you that you’re worthless?
• Does he enforce rules and activities that humiliate, degrade, or dehumanize you?
• Does he force you to take part in criminal activity such as shoplifting?
• Is he in control of the finances and prevents you from working and having your own money?
• Does he threaten to reveal or publish private information about you, like private photos or videos online?
Note: Coercive control knows no boundaries. While more women tend to be victims and men perpetrators, statistically, individuals who present the full spectrum of gender identities, sexual orientations, and types of relationships can take part in this toxic dynamic. I have used a masculine gendered pronoun above merely as an example for sake of simplicity.
THE LEGAL PERSPECTIVE
The UK government’s new coercive or controlling behaviour offence will mean victims who experience the type of behaviour that stops short of serious physical violence, but amounts to extreme psychological and emotional abuse, can bring their perpetrators to justice. The offence will carry a maximum of 5 years of imprisonment, a fine, or both. Essentially, you can press the reset if you leave a coercive, controlling relationship and/or your partner/husband dies, and they were in control of the money. This has been signed into law in the UK since December 2015.
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The law has been ratified in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. A bill is going through the United States (NY State Senate Bill S5306 sponsored by Kevin S. Parker to enact similar laws in America). Australia and France also are considering the adoption of these laws.
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Sandra Smith is a bestselling author and coach with over 20 years’ experience in the public sector empowering clients to have the capability and capacity to effect the changes they want. She is motivated to help them find fulfilment and real change within and beyond their careers.
She is a survivor, having walked away from a coercive controlling relationship. She suffered financial abuse an early sign of a controlling relationship. She has become well-versed in recognising the signs, supporting women, and holding a space for them to talk. She continues to deliver events to raise the profile and encourage others to recognise they can thrive through it all.
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ABOUT SANDRA SMITH
