At a glance
Coercive control is a repeated pattern of behaviour that limits another person’s freedom. It works through small arrangements about where you go, who you see, what you spend and what you are allowed to think, so no single incident looks bad enough. The work starts individually, with somebody outside the relationship, and couples therapy is the wrong room for it.
Clinical insights from 20+ years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 20+ years in practice.
- A week spent managing a mood. When the clients I work with describe an ordinary week, I listen for how much of it went on managing, or containing, somebody else’s mood.
- “Am I overreacting?” My clients almost always open with the question of whether they are overreacting.
- “Not a bad person.” When one of the individuals I work with tells me their partner is not a bad person, I agree with them.
Clinical notes: These observations are anonymous and compounded from session notes since 2004.
What is coercive control?
Coercive control is a course of conduct that narrows what another person is able to do. The word abuse sends people looking for an incident, and often there is none to find.
- A liberty crime. Writing in Violence Against Women, Tolmie, Smith and Wilson describe a repeated pattern that removes a person’s freedom.
- 3 tools. The pattern works through isolation, deprivation and the micro-regulation of daily life.
- With or without violence. It runs alongside physical violence or in place of it.
- No free moments. Abuse used to be treated as a series of assaults with free time between them, and a pattern leaves no such time.
- A smaller life. Your life has got smaller without anybody deciding that it should.
The useful test is whether your world has got smaller since this started. Whether any single thing was bad enough is the wrong test.
What does coercive control look like day to day?
It looks like a list of small rules, each of which sounds like an ordinary disagreement when taken alone.
- Preference enforced as rule. Comments on what you wear, what you eat and who you see are offered as taste and then enforced.
- Shared property. Your phone, your messages and your accounts are treated as belonging to both of you.
- Costly contact. Seeing family or friends becomes difficult, expensive or not worth the argument afterwards.
- Accounting for yourself. You are expected to say where you are, and an unanswered call is met with anger.
- Money out of sight. You earn money you are unable to see, or you spend money you have to justify.
- Humiliation. You are called names, shown up in public and told you are too sensitive to be taken seriously.
- Threats. Your partner threatens to destroy your things, to take the children or to hurt themselves.
Each line is arguable when it stands alone, and arguing about the lines is how years pass. Read more about walking on eggshells with your partner.
Why is coercive control so hard to see from inside?
It arrives in order, and each arrangement is small enough to accept. There is no step at which a reasonable person would obviously have refused.
- One step eases the next. Each arrangement is made easier by the one before it.
- Mixed with warmth. Real affection sits beside the control and is part of what makes the pattern hold.
- The wrong question. You ask whether it is bad enough, and the person you are asking about usually taught you that question.
- Managing reactions. You change a plan, soften a sentence or leave something out because of how your partner might react.
- Memory under attack. Your account of events is corrected until you stop trusting it.
If you have to manage another adult’s reactions to get through an ordinary day, something is wrong, whatever it is called and whatever was intended. Read more about gaslighting in a relationship.
Why is couples therapy the wrong room for coercive control?
Couples therapy asks a frightened person to be honest in a room they will leave with the person who frightens them. This is my position and no research finding. Coercive control needs a different kind of help than couples therapy.
- A new vocabulary. Couples therapy hands the controlling person fluent new language to take home.
- Honesty has a price. What the frightened partner says in the session is answered for afterwards.
- Individual first. The work is individual first, separately, for both people.
- The finding behind the caution. Johnson, Eriksson, Mazerolle and Wortley interviewed men convicted of killing an intimate partner in Australia, and half reported no assault against that partner in the year before.
- What that establishes. It predicts nothing about any one relationship, and it shows that the absence of violence is no evidence of safety.
Couples therapy is the right room for a great many difficulties, including bitter ones. This one comes to individual work first.
How do you start to change coercive control?
You start small, outside the relationship, and you leave confronting your partner off the list. If you are frightened of your partner, that comes before everything else here. You do not have to prove a pattern to anybody before you take it seriously, and you do not have to decide anything on the day you first say it out loud.
- Count for a fortnight. Notice each time you change a plan, soften something or leave it out because of how your partner might react.
- Keep the count private. Do not keep a written record on a device your partner is able to reach.
- Tell one person. Tell one person outside the relationship what your week actually looks like, for a second reading and not for advice.
- Take one thing back. Get back one thing that is yours, a friendship, an account or an afternoon, and choose the one that costs least.
- List what you gave up. Write down what you have given up on in the last 2 years.
- Begin with individual work. Start with one session for yourself, where nobody is listening and nothing has to be settled that day.
Confronting your partner is absent from this list on purpose. In my view it is no first step, and no step to take alone.
These steps fail when every one of them is argued away at home, or when you are too worn down to trust your own count. That is what the session is for.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between coercive control and a controlling personality?
A controlling personality describes a temperament, and coercive control describes what a pattern has done to another person’s freedom. The second is something you check against the last year: fewer contacts, less money of your own, less confidence in your own memory.
Does coercive control happen without any violence?
Yes, and it often does. Isolation, monitoring and financial control do their damage without anybody being hit.
Should I go to couples therapy if I think my partner is controlling?
In my view, no, and never as a first step. Individual work, separately, is the safer order.
Is it coercive control if my partner is loving most of the time?
Yes, because affection does not contradict the pattern. The warmth is part of what makes the control hold.
How do I know if I am the one being controlling?
Ask what has become smaller in your partner’s life since you met: friendships, money, time alone, plans you were not part of. Then ask whether you are able to hear the effect without explaining your reasons.
You may also find these helpful
Sources
- Tolmie, Smith and Wilson, Understanding intimate partner violence: why coercive control requires a social and systemic entrapment framework, Violence Against Women, 2023
- Johnson, Eriksson, Mazerolle and Wortley, Intimate femicide: the role of coercive control, Feminist Criminology, 2019
How this article was written. I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.
