The love that controls you: Understanding coercive control

0:00Most women have been there. Something feels off. You don't feel like yourself. Yet your doctor says everything looks fine. Spoiler, it's your hormones. Midi is a virtual care platform built for women by women and offers specialized hormone care from trained clinicians. Plus, it's covered by most major insurances. Getting started is easy. You can book your first visit with a clinician right away. It's not you. It's your hormones. Visit joinmiddi.com to book your first visit. That's join midi.com. Insurance coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what growth therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay

1:01as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growthherapy.com slash a cast. That's growthherapy.com slash a cast. Grow therapy.com slash a cast. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. If you've been watching the internet this past week, you've probably heard about the Netflix documentary Death of the Pastors wife. It tells the story of Mika Miller, a worship leader in

2:04Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, who's marriage to her pastor allegedly involved over a decade of control, isolation and alleged fear. Her death was ruled a suicide and a federal case involving her husband is pending. I'm not commenting on the legal case on what happened or on anyone's guilt or innocence. What the documentary did is put a clinical concept into the cultural conversation people have heard of but don't fully understand. And that's coercive control. And here's what I want you to hold on to before we go further. Coorsive control rarely starts with physical violence. It starts with love bombing and devotion. The most dangerous relationships often begin with someone who seems almost too attentive, too caring, too certain about you right off the bat. And by the time the devotion becomes suffocation, that exit or what you perceive as the exit of the relationship has been quietly closed.

3:05Today we talk about what coercive control is, the red flags you need to know, what drives someone to do this, and why trauma bonding makes leaving feel impossible. You're also going to learn whether women can be perpetrators, too, and three practical tools at the end of this episode for helping you or someone you love. Hi, I'm Dr. Judy Ho, clinical and forensic neuropsychologist and your host on Savvy Psychologist. This show is all about real psychology that you can actually use, will help you face life's challenges with an evidence-based approach, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment. Today we're talking about coercive control. And this is something that again has been tossed around a bit when you're looking at online articles or maybe if you have a therapist, you may have even had conversations about this. But it's often misunderstood and we're going to break this down right now. Coercive control is not one single act. It's a pattern of behavior that seeks to take away from

4:09the victim's freedom, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. Coercive control gradually strips away people's sense of self and their confidence so that they become increasingly dependent on their abuser for everything. Coercive control can include verbal threats, humiliation, degradation, intimidation, isolation, financial control, monitoring, technology surveillance, and sexual coercion. I've talked about this before. There's a bussel article that I'm going to link in the show notes today if you want to go deeper. And what strikes me every time is how easily each person's behavior can be rationalized away. Coercive controls all about the pattern that accumulates over time and that really shows what's happening in the relationship. The scale is larger than most people realize. Coercive control is more prevalent than physical violence as a standalone form of abuse.

5:11In England and Wales, police recorded coercive control offenses rose from about 18,000 in 2017 to over 45,000 in a year ending in 2024 of March. So clearly this is not a rare or small problem and the mental health consequences are severe. A 2024 systematic review found coercive control is associated with more serious PTSD symptoms, depression, anxiety, substance use, and suicidal ideation, then physical violence alone. Victims of coercive control describe it as being like a living hostage that never ends. That phrase is really important because generally coercive control is about this gradual worsening of the person's behavior. And when it happens over time, it reorganizes a person's entire sense of reality and that's what makes it so psychologically

6:14damaging. Coercive control is often the mechanism through which later physical violence becomes possible. In fact, researchers have described this as the gateway to later physical abuse. So the emotional control comes first, you road the person's capacity to resist or leave and creates the conditions in which physical harm is easier to perpetrate and harder to escape. Again, I'm not making any comments regarding the documentary and whether what was presented in the Netflix documentary is fact, but there was this discussion over and over again, the theme of the documentary seemed to be about coercive control. So there were allegations of monitoring, isolation, financial control, and because Mika's husband is a spiritual leader, there's also this element of a spiritual authority that was potentially allegedly weaponized inside the marriage. And that reflects the

7:16documented pattern that most people who understand coercive control or have experienced it, they would say that that feels similar or familiar to them. And religious settings can create a particular kind of vulnerability because the abuser could claim spiritual authority over the partner. And also the social community and belongingness is all bound up in the relationship. And so leaving means losing not just their partner, but also their entire faith community and their identity. And that can be really hard to do. So here are some of the red flags of coercive control, particularly I want to focus on the early signs that often get missed because they do feel like love. Excessive attention and contact, that sounds great. But we also want to know if it comes with some of these other warning signs. So at first they may show you tons of attention, they may actually

8:16talk about how much they want to be with you, how they already see a huge future with you. But then it gradually starts to also develop into wanting to know where you are all the time. Again, they frame that as it's because they love you so much and they are worried about you. They may express jealousy as devotion or moving the relationship very fast, wanting to be the most important person in your life, particularly very early on, discouraging outside friendships, and maybe talking smack about your friends and saying things that make you feel like you should be doubting your friends and not trusting them. So in some ways these behaviors can feel like just a person who cares about you so intensely. But if they're seen all together and in a persistent pattern, they could become the foundation of control. The later signs of course of control

9:18are more obvious. They're things like constantly monitoring your phone and your whereabouts, checking your emails, looking at your finances and directing your financial spending, and making decisions for you without consulting you. They may start to isolate you from friends and family that you use to have, controlling access to money and how you use it, and even using humiliation, criticism or contempt as a routine part of the relationship. They may start to make you feel responsible for their own emotional state. So when they're not feeling good, they may say this is all because of you and makes you feel bad for when they're not having a good day. They may threaten consequences if you don't comply, maybe using children, pets or shared property as leverage. When coercive control occurs within a community structure where the abuser holds authority, the control is then reinforced by the institution or community

10:18itself because leaving the relationship as I mentioned before means leaving the community, your social network, who you are, all the people you associate with, they could all be gone in one moment if you decide to leave this relationship. And that brings us to the question everyone eventually asks, which is why do people stay in these relationships once they see the red flags? So to answer that, we need to talk about what's actually happening on the inside of these relationships and why it can be so difficult to leave. So coercive controllers are not a uniform type. There really isn't one type of coercive controller. But research has shown that there's usually a cluster of characteristics like high need for control, low tolerance for uncertainty, volatility, manipulativeness, and what researchers call performative vulnerability. So what that means is the abuser presents as needing to be protected while simultaneously being the source of threat.

11:20Many have a history of insecure or disorganized attachment and a profound fear of abandonment that manifests as control. The logic might be that if they control everything about this person's life, then they can't be left or abandoned. Oftentimes, in individuals who exert coercive control will also see elevated narcissism and anti-social personality traits. Some features include entitlement, callousness towards other people's emotions, strategic charm followed by manipulation. These are also strong predictors. And this helps us to just understand why these behaviors might happen and why this pattern exists. It's not to excuse their behavior. In the bussel article, I talked about the charm to control progression. And really, what I'm getting at here is that people who coercive ly control are often very charming at first before they get you very committed to them. And then

12:22once they feel like they've got your attention and your love and care, that's when they start to act in ways that are abusive. So one tip if there's a really fast occurring relationship, things seem like they're going really well, but it's kind of fast. A good tip is just to go a little slower, spend some time observing, take a couple of days off before the next date. And if there aren't any warning signs, really consider them and think about them instead of making excuses for them. What we know is that sometimes the abuser invests in genuine attachment, an emotional attachment, an investment before the controlling behavior begins. And that means by the time the control appears, the victim's capacity to leave has already been compromised because they're dedicated to the abuser. So if you slow down the beginnings of a relationship and really take some time to observe,

13:26it can really help to prevent getting trapped into a coercive control relationship before you realize what's going on. Another concept clinicians talk about is trauma bonding. And this is a very misunderstood phenomenon in intimate partner violence. So when people ask why didn't they just leave, what they're really asking is why someone would stay in something that is clearly hurting them. And the answer is that the relationship itself has been engineered often deliberately to make leaving really challenging and even agonizing emotionally for the person who wants to leave. Abusers create trauma bonds through alternating cycles of cruelty and care. So they may do some very coercively controlling things. And then they'll apologize profusely, say they'll change, shower you with gifts and affection and tell you that that was the last time they're ever going to do anything like this. Sometimes they'll punish you and then they'll give you so much warmth or

14:31they'll instill fear in you but then give you so much reassurance. So this type of intermittent reinforcement pattern is actually the same mechanism that makes gambling addictive. That's the unpredictability of reward versus potential punishment. And that unpredictability of when you might get the next reward actually in relationships produce stronger attachment than consistent positive treatment. A recent study described abusers as deliberately manufacturing emotional entrapment through perhaps sharing their own trauma and telling you that they understand you and alternating their behaviors just as I described. And I will say that sometimes individuals who get themselves caught in such coercive control relationships, they may be reenacting in earlier relationship where perhaps they were mistreated in some way or abandoned or neglected. And so perhaps in the moment

15:31they can't even really trust their own intuition and they're reliant on the abuser, the person who is exerting the coercive control to tell them what's okay and what's not. So I have had patients. Tell me I thought that my radar for what was okay in a relationship and what to accept was kind of off maybe because in the past I didn't really have a good model but then I came to rely on my abusers so much that when they were telling me what they were doing is okay I believe them and I truly did trust them. So this is something that is really challenging to overcome as well. And oftentimes what we see is that chronic coercive control produces symptoms that are similar to what you might see in post-traumatic stress type symptoms or conditions. And as I mentioned if the person has already been through mistreatment themselves or maybe they have insecure attachment to that increases this vulnerability to accept the behaviors of a coercive controller.

16:37And again because it happens gradually it's this idea of the foot in the door phenomenon. So that in psychology means that by doing their controlling behaviors gradually it's not really that you're accepting something so horrific right off the bat. It's that something that you're accepting is only a step worse than what you accepted yesterday or a week ago and before you know it they're doing so much to control your life and you didn't even realize how you got. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like and that's exactly what growth therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works covered by insurance.

17:38Sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments, you just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash a cast. That's growtherapy.com slash a cast. Growtherapy.com slash a cast. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. 75% of women who seek menopause care don't receive it. The lying awake at 3am wondering what's happening to your body ends now. Midi is virtual care built for women in perimenopause and menopause with clinicians who

18:40specialize in women's health. Plus it's covered by most major insurances. Getting started is easy. You can book your first visit with a clinician right away. Midlife needs midi. Visit join midi.com to book your first visit today. That's join m-i-d-i.com. Insurance coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage. So you're not worried about hosting the whole family for the holidays? Why would I be? Way fair had everything I needed to get the house holiday ready. What if Mike brings his cheerful dogs? My tree has tons of five star reviews telling me how sturdy it is. But what if everyone's plus one brings a plus one? We'll see how extendable this extendable table really is. And extra chairs are on the way. Okay. What if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over? Ready to go with extra bedding and towels. From guest-ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust. Way fair delivers. There. I've also gotten the question of whether women can be coercive controllers because I think when we're talking about true crime or media or looking at relationship articles

19:41oftentimes we see that there's a lot of focus on men being coercive controllers. But coercive control can be perpetrated by women. It's just at lower rates in some studies. And I think what differs most is severity and consequences. So female victims tend to face disproportionately higher risk of physical violence, homicide and economic entrapment. As I mentioned women can and do perpetuate coercive control and men and same-sex partners can be victims. Men who experience they will face some additional barriers like social stigma being additionally disbelieved, having inadequate resources and a cultural script that doesn't tend to accommodate male victimization as easily. So these barriers are real and naming them is part of what makes it possible for more people to get help. And that brings us to three practical tools if you feel like you have been in a coercively controlling relationship or you know somebody and care about somebody who might be.

20:48The first tool is for someone who suspects that they're in a coercively controlling relationship. So I want to be really clear please reach out to a professional who can help you if you think that this might be happening. And also if the relationship is turning abusive we're going to be talking about some really good resources for you to reach out to. There are resources who can help people who are considering getting out of a damaging or abusive relationship. But the first tool is to really know the signs. And we've been talking about it all through this episode. And the most important thing is to recognize the signs of coercive control because a lot of it is designed to be somewhat invisible. And as I mentioned the gradual nature is part of that mechanism and as they isolate you from your support network. Your support network doesn't even know what's actually happening in your relationship. So here are some questions to sit with. Does your partner monitor your whereabouts, phone or finances excessively. Do you feel like you always need to ask permission for ordinary

21:52activities? Are you isolated from people who used to be in your life? Do you feel like you're walking on eggshells around their moods? And do you feel responsible for how they feel? Have you been told that you're crazy or imagining things when you try to raise concerns about their conduct or the relationship in general? Has your sense of who you are changed significantly since this relationship began? If you're nodding as several of these then that's worth thinking about. One of the most reliable clinical indicators of coercive control is what happens to a person's sense of self over the course of the relationship. Cours of control gradually strips away a person's sense of self and confidence. So if you find yourself wondering who you were before this relationship, what you used to like, think, want, believe, and you feel like you're out of touch with that, then really think about whether or not this information also lines up with some of these other red flags we've been talking about. Also, if people who knew you well before have expressed concern

22:55or told you that they feel like they can't reach you anymore, then again, think about whether or not your partner might be isolating you too much from other important people in your life. The second tool is an really important clinical question that I get and my colleagues often get as well. And the idea is sometimes people will come and they'll say, I might be in a relationship with somebody who is coercively controlling me. It might not be so bad. Could I maybe negotiate or reset with them? And the honest answer is you can, but it's rarely successful and usually that won't happen without significant professional support. And here's the reason for that. Cours of control is not generally a communication problem. It's not generally a misunderstanding that can be resolved through better conversation or more patience. It's a pattern of behavior that serves an important function for the abuser oftentimes that's something related to control and power. And changing

24:00that requires the abuser to fundamentally reorganize their own relationship to fear, attachment, and power. Again, that's possible, but it really requires strong motivation at a professional who works specifically with this type of relationship. So if it does happen, it's going to be with professional help and it's going to be because the person exerting coercive control really wants to change. Again, if you are in a coercively controlling relationship, safety first, if there's a physical danger getting safe is the priority. If that's not happening and you think that there could be a space to negotiate, then it's really important that you contact a professional. But couple therapy is not usually the first intervention for coercive control because it can be weaponized by the controller and put the victim at greater risk by providing a new platform for manipulation. Individual therapy for each person in relationship is usually the appropriate

25:02starting point. And if the controlling partner is resistant to accountability, minimizes the behavior or blames you, then that tells you something important about the possibility for change. The third tool for today is how to help a loved one. If you suspect someone you love is in a coercively controlling relationship, the single most important thing you can do is stay connected to them. Remember, part of how coercive control works is through isolation. The abuser's goal is to remove every external source of support and perspective outside of the relationship. So your continued presence in that person's life, even if it's at reduced contact and even when they pull away, is itself a form of protection. Here's what not to do. Don't issue ultimatums to your friend or loved one. Don't express anger at your friend or loved one for staying and don't tell them directly what to do. People in coercively controlling relationships have had their autonomy systematically stripped away. So telling them what to do, even with the best intentions,

26:06mirrors the dynamic they're already in. What they need is relationship in which they experience themselves as having a choice. So here's what to do. Express concern without judgment. Just state your observations rather than characterizing what they mean. So for example, I've noticed you've seen more withdrawn lately and I miss you rather than your partner is controlling you. Ask questions at open space rather than demand answers like how are you doing in the relationship? Like really, make sure they know you're there that you're not going anywhere and you will not judge them for whatever they decide. Research consistently shows that victims are most likely to seek help and eventually leave when they have at least one stable non-judgmental external relationship to reach toward. So that can be you. The National Domestic Violence Hotline, the hotline.org, is available 24 hours a day at 1-800-799-7233. They help both victims and people who are concerned

27:07about someone they love. And 988, which is the crisis and suicide hotline, is always there to for more support. If someone came to mind while you were listening, send them this episode. And if there's a topic you'd like me to cover, reach out to our team as psychologist at quick and dirtytips.com. That's a wrap on today's savvy psychologist. Coorsive control can be really challenging to disentangle because it often arrives wearing the face of love. So knowing what it looks like both in its early and later form in yourself and the people you love is one of the most important things that you can do to educate yourself. Not because you'll always catch it every time, but because you're more likely to catch it at all, and that can change everything. Remember, insight without action is just interesting, so take one thing from today and do something with it. Savvy psychologist is a quick and dirty tips podcast. Thanks to the QT team, Mcmillan team. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find the show on YouTube and

28:08follow us on socials. I'll meet you back here next episode. Before I let you go, a quick but important note. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It's not a substitute for working with a licensed mental health professional and nothing here constitutes clinical advice or establishes a therapeutic relationship. If you're struggling, please reach out to someone who can truly support you. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse for coercive control, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24 hours a day at thehotline.org or call 1-800-799-7233. And again, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is also available by caller text 24 hours a day. Hey all, Kelly Clarkson here with Wayfair. You know my favorite compliment during the holidays?

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