Coercive Control: Sneaky, Subtle & Sadistic Patterns of Domination

[Music] Very serious stuff today. Many times we only think, or the police only think, or a country only thinks, or laws only maintain that domestic violence has to do with physical harm. But much more pervasive than physical harm is the topic I'm bringing to you today, which is the whole understanding of coercive control. The sneaky, subtle, sadistic patterns of domination that happen in an emotionally abusive relationship. You need to know these things. You need to recognize them. You need to call them when you see them, and you need to know when to move away from them. So today, you're gonna have a full understanding of what coercive control looks like, sounds like, it feels like, and you will know whether or not that's what's happening in your relationship. Stay tuned.

Welcome to Save Your Sanity, help for handling those difficult, toxic, and often disturbing people in your life. I'm Dr. Roberta Schaer, the relationship help doctor, and I'm here for you. You'll get the insight, skills, strategies, and support to stop tolerating verbal and emotional abuse, whether it's happening now, or it happened to you in the past, maybe by a parent, partner, ex, relative, or even a co-worker. Time to take life back, to recover, and to rediscover you, your values, dreams, desires, and realize them in healthy ways, in healthy relationships. I'm so glad you're here.

Have you heard of this concept of coercive control? Many people haven't, and of course, you're not going to hear about it unless you are looking for understanding of what's actually going on in your relationship. It might have gone on in a relationship that you were raised in. Maybe a parent was the one who perpetrated coercive control over you. Of course, most teenagers think that that's the case, no matter what. But I mean the real deal, the real coercive control. And I want to really bring some insights into that for you, because I've called this episode, "Coercive Control: Sneaky, Subtle, and Sadistic Patterns of Domination." And I did it for a purpose, because the word sadistic is important. In the Oxford dictionary, sadistic is defined as deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on another person. So a hijacker, one of those relentlessly difficult toxic people that I talk about so much, is a person who derives pleasure from inflicting pain and suffering and humiliation on others. And I would add another thing to the pain and suffering and humiliation, I would add the joy that they find in intimidation. And again, I looked in the Oxford dictionary to find out exactly what intimidation means, and it means frightened, especially in order to make a person do what one wants. Now, doesn't that just sound like a hijacker? They want to intimidate you. They want to humiliate you. They enjoy the fact that you are suffering. And I know that some hijackers say that they don't enjoy it, but if they didn't enjoy it, they would stop doing it. And you know from my last episode on whether or not hijackers are doing what they do on purpose, that it is not the case that they cannot control this urge. After all, go and listen to that episode. But they don't do it everywhere, do they? They don't do it with every person. So therefore, they do have control. They do make decisions. They do decide when to be their nasty selves and when to be their charming, manipulative selves. And so that's important to know.

So coercive control, this is a term that was coined by a man called Evan Stark, and he wrote a book about it. And I got really interested in a paper that he wrote. And for those of you who like to look things up, it's called "Representing Battered Women: Coercive Control and the Defense of Liberty." And so I started going down that path to see what he meant about entrapment and how it would help me help you understand what's going on. So he defines coercive control this way: "An ongoing pattern of domination by which male, and it is gendered, by which male abusive partners primarily interweave repeated physical and sexual violence with intimidation, sexual degradation, isolation, and control." I'm going to read that again, because that's a lot. It is defined as "an ongoing pattern of domination by which male abusive partners primarily interweave repeated physical and sexual violence with intimidation, sexual degradation, isolation, and control." The primary outcome, he says, of coercive control is a condition of entrapment that can be hostage-like in the harms it afflicts on dignity, liberty, autonomy, and personhood, as well as to the physical and psychological integrity." Wow. Does that feel familiar to you? That something is happening to you that really gets in the way of you feeling like your dignity is a priority, your liberty is a priority, or autonomy is a priority, and who you are? You know, I see so many times that any relationship in order to be healthy has to have three hallmarks. There has to be equality, reciprocity, and mutuality. Now, you're sure not going to find those things in a relationship with a hijacker. I'm sure you're clear about that after listening to a bunch of episodes. And if you're new to Save Your Sanity podcast, I am so glad you found me and this podcast, and I invite you to go back and listen to the many, many, many episodes in this series.

So yes, it's true, women also assault their partners. But coercive control, in Evan Stark's mind and in his construction of the idea, he says it's gendered because it's used to secure male privilege and its regime of domination, subordination. It's constructed around the enforcement of gender stereotypes. So that really has a lot to say about many things that happen when we see men and control of things, and they are doing these things that we talk about, that they are deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering, humiliation, intimidation, anything to coerce you, anything to have control over you. Now, you know, many times there's physical violence in relationships, and we're very, very aware of that. But sometimes people don't recognize the physical violence as the tip of the iceberg for what's been going on for a long time, that may or may not have been reported, and may or may not have been the build-up to this amazing physical assault. And you know, there was a report done in 2006 in Britain, and they looked at 500 women who had been assaulted in various forms and involved in extreme violence. And the statistics were that 70% had been choked or strangled at least once, 60% had been beaten in their sleep, 24% had been cut or stabbed at least once, and almost 60% had been forced to have sex against their will. 26.5% had been beaten unconscious, and 10% had been tied up. And as a result of the assaults, 38% of the women reported suffering permanent damage. Now, you don't want to be in these statistics. Yes, sure, you could say that's 2006. I would say it's more frequent today, and that is a problem because the vast majority of assaults used coercive control, and that was over time. That was something that happened over and over and over. And so it was marked by the frequency and duration of it, not by the severity of it. And it was reported in 2008 by a study that men using coercive control assaulted women six times more often on average than men who used physical violence alone. So this is incredible stuff. And it is this intimidation that's used to keep abuse secret. And the idea is to instill at home, you know, in the privacy of home, to instill fear and dependence and compliance and loyalty, and oh yes, over and over and over, to instill shame. And when that's all happening, a person, a woman, because remember, we're talking about coercive control as being something that men do, because it is in Stark's definition, something that men do, although women are capable of it, it undermines the will to resist. After a while, the person, the woman, is so diminished, so demeaned, so devalued, that eventually she just gives up and she loses her will to resist. And then you just become a doormat. You know, first of all, you've bent yourself into a pretzel, but then when you really give up, you just become a doormat. And I have worked with women who have gotten to that place in their lives, and they've had sort of a one last thing, and they came and they asked me, "What can I do? Is there anything I can do? Am I wrong?" By this time, they were believing it was their fault because they'd been told so often it was their fault. And I was so glad that they reached out. And you can also reach out at any time. Just go to be a client dot com and have your initial consultation. Be a client dot com.

So this coercive control thing is just huge. It's about intimidation, and it's about the fact that this abuse goes on and on and on. Hijackers are repeat offenders. Any day at any time, when they're not getting what they want, or when they want to demand what they want, they use coercive control. And so they are repeat offenders. And sometimes just the intimidation enough wears you down so badly that you have become a hostage to the situation. And it's such an insidious thing that over and over and over, it's subtle, and it's scary, and it's intimate, and it's intimidating. And that is really, really difficult. And then sometimes you're afraid to do anything because you're afraid of the effects on the children. And that's a topic for another day. I'm going to talk about lots of these individual pieces of this in depth in upcoming episodes, but this is the big one that I wanted to do to really bring the idea of coercive control to you. And you know, I've done a lot of work with passive-aggressive ideas, definitions, examples. I wrote a book about it called "Stop That Crazy-Making: How to Quit Playing the Passive-Aggressive Game." And passive-aggressive threats, such as emotional withdrawal or disappearing without notice or the silent treatment, that's the kind of thing that hijackers do, and that's another form of coercive control. I will just disappear. I will not talk to you. I will ignore your existence until you come begging for me. Horrible, horrible things. And you know what they do? You know, they do things that are almost unspeakable. They'll leave anonymous threats on answering machines or on your phone, or I guess answering machine sounds a little old these days, but they will, they will leave voicemail for you that is threatening. Or they will get into your electronic communication. They will change your passwords on your phone. They will surveil your phone. They will want to keep control and look at your browser history. They will want to steal your money. They will make it impossible for you to make phone calls. They'll ruin your phone and throw it away and then say you don't need it. And cut you off from other people. And then of course, they'll do the gaslighting thing. And you know, there's a whole episode on that on sneaky gaslighting, and where they try to define your reality for you. While, but they try to tell you what you think and what you feel and what you need and what you want, and what you should think, feel, need, and want. And they gaslight you. They make it sound like there's something wrong with you if that's not what you want, because they know you better than you know yourself. And so you should understand that they are able to define your reality for you. And that's what we call gaslighting. Another thing they like to do is they tell lies about you in public, don't they? They hope to insult you or embarrass you and get away with it in public.

Coercive control, and you know, the subtle things, the sneaky things that are in the title here, it's partner surveillance. And I don't mean just cameras. I mean, it's all kinds of little things. Like they, in the beginning, they text you, "Oh, how are you doing? What are you doing?" And it seems so endearing and sweet and lovely. But that's the beginning of this sort of partner surveillance. "What are you doing? Where are you? How long will you be? What are you going to do on the way home? Why didn't you get home when you said you would be? You're five minutes late." That kind of thing. Then they time people. I mean, I have heard stories where partners of coercive controlling men, there are times when they're in the bathroom, they're timed on their shopping trips. Yes, of course, their phones are looked at, their browser history is looked at, as I said. They check to see if you belong to any groups on Facebook. They make fake accounts and they lurk in there to see what you say about them, or they get their friends or relatives to do that and then report back to them. Those searched through your stuff. They'll go through your wallet. They'll try to get your bank records. And then of course, they will do the things. They will have cameras, and they will have surveillance, and they will have GPS devices. And it's just an amazing array of tactics.

One of the big things that they are happy to share is they want to degrade you. They want to appear morally superior to you, and they want to deny you any self-respect. Does that ring a bell for you? Do you feel like your partner wants to take away your self-respect? And they do that by having no respect for you, and then telling you that no one else respects you, and that there's nothing about you that is worthy of respect. So these insults used in coercive control, they target areas from maybe where a woman gets some self-esteem from looking after the children, or doing a good job at work, or taking care of the home. And they'll just do anything. You know, they'll tell you you're not a good friend. They'll tell you that you're not a good wife, that you're not a good partner, that you're not a good daughter-in-law, that you're not a good daughter. They will do anything to demean you. They absolutely will. And they want to isolate you. And why do they want to isolate you? Well, they don't want you disclosing anything that's going on in the relationship, number one. So if you don't have anyone to talk to, then that reduces the likelihood of you being able to say what's going on. And you know, of course, they are working in triangulation and smear campaigns to get with your friends and family and tell your friends and family that there's something terribly wrong with you, and that they are looking after it because they know you have a problem and they shouldn't worry about that, but you'll be happy. They will be happy to keep them up-to-date on the problems. So they isolate their partners to prevent this disclosure. And then they want you to become dependent on them. So isolation helps with that. I had one client who, you know, fell madly in love, and the whole fairy tale, which goes with falling in love with a hijacker, often. And then the fairy tale included moving to another country. Then she was kept in a place, and all of a sudden, they couldn't afford the second car, so she didn't have a car. She wasn't familiar with the language. I mean, all of the things that you could imagine. He absolutely isolated her. And so he then could have exclusive possession of her and monopolize her and keep her from getting any help. Now, of course, because I'm telling you this story, he didn't win, because she was able to get to a telephone, and she was able to get online, and she found me, and we talked. And in that country, we talked when she was in a telephone booth. And so it's just true that these things happen.

So one thing that an abuser wants to do is to isolate a partner from her support system. And so they will even go to the lengths of abusing or assaulting or threatening family members, or they'll tell them that they're not allowed to visit, they're not allowed to come round, they'll refuse to go and visit family members, and they'll make their victims, their prey, as I prefer to call them. And they'll make them choose between them and other people. Or they'll show up unexpectedly at your place of work just to check in and see if you really are where you say you are and doing what you do, and to see if there are any buddies lurking around you that they can accuse you of being involved with. So all of these things, you know, are part of this coercive control. They want to deprive you and exploit you and regulate you. All of these things that I said, I'm going to talk about in individual episodes over the next while, but they want to have this fostering of dependence on them. So they deprive you of the resources you need to make good decisions for yourself or to live independently. And they will take away the financial resources and they will make you entirely dependent on them financially. Now, that's really a difficult situation, and that happens far too often. They'll micromanage you. They will say that you could, you could make meals quicker, you could make beds more efficiently, you could get home from work faster, you could pare down the grocery bill. All of these things, constant criticism, constant, constant, constant criticism. So power and control, power and control. And that sets the stage for violence and injury. Hopefully, it won't get there, but so often it does. And the kind of pushing and shoving and things holding and things that go on often go unreported. And I highly recommend that you don't let them go unreported, because every time you call the police and they show up, yeah, I know you run the risk. I know that it's going through your mind if you've ever done it that if there's no bruises to report, sometimes nothing happens. But the report is there, and it's important for that. And you know, hijackers like to take you down a peg. They like to rob you of your dignity. And that's what coercive control is. You can't ever be right. Your clothes are not right. Your weight is not right. Your hair is not right. You don't take care of yourself. You're too high. I mean, [expletive] I mean, you can't be right. So this invisible intimidation just goes on and on and on.

So it begins by being able to name it. And that's what I wanted to give you today. Know what coercive control is. Now, on my live stream every Monday night at 6 p.m. Pacific time, in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to do an entire hour on this where you can ask your questions and get in the chat. And so go over to youtube.com/for relationship help, H-E-L-P, youtube.com/for relationship help. That's my channel. Subscribe over there now and hit the little bell by the subscribe, then you'll be reminded about Monday evenings. And if you can't be there, you'll be reminded when the replay goes up. So very important. Because when abuse isn't reported, or unfortunately, in some situations of law enforcement, it's just seen as the course of conduct, then we have to do some real work. And I want to help you understand that it's critical to recognize that all of these tactics that I'm talking about, they come into a pattern of domination that is an offense. Maybe each little act does not seem like an offense, but the pattern is an offense. And in the United Kingdom, five countries, I think, have put it into law that coercive control is something that is punishable and it is something recognized by the courts. We really want that to be happening in the United States and in Canada and every country of the world. You know, I'm a Canadian that I have dual citizenship. I live in San Diego, California. And I know that we're fighting for that here. We've had a little setback with the current administration because we had made some real gains under the last administration. We had it on the books that abuse included emotional, financial, every kind of abuse, not just physical abuse. Current administration, quite sneakily, went back in last April of 2019 and just changed the language back to there must be assault, a crime of violence, and a crime of means there has to be bodily harm. But we will keep working on this. And if you live in a community, you might want to go to in the community in which you live, because of course, you live in a community, go and find out, you know, what do the police have to say about this? Attend some meetings, find out if you can what's going on about coercive control, because you can educate yourself and maybe you can educate the law enforcement about this if they're not very aware of it. I know I have had clients who live in remote communities, and they call the police when they're being threatened or choked or whatever, and the police come, and the police kind of laugh it off, and it's not taken seriously. And I'm sorry about that. I'm so sorry about that. But we have to keep working.

So one of the things that you can do for yourself is to understand what coercive control is, how sneaky, how it's subtle, how it's sadistic, how it's sustained over time. And come to understand that that has, if that has happened to you, you may have started believing you're the problem, because heaven knows you've been accused by a hijacker that everything is your fault, even the weather and the IRS are your fault. So it may be an awakening. Maybe listening to this will awaken you to those sneaky, subtle, sadistic patterns, and you will be able to start to make a list of them in your head. And this is what's happening, and this is what's happening, and documented, and get with the program more so that you can define it and you can get help for it. I'm always here to help you. As I said, if you're new to working with me, you can go to be a client dot com. But there's so much for you. There are my two podcasts, this one, Save Your Sanity, and the other one is called Transforming Relationships with Emotional Savvy. And you can find them wherever you like to get your podcasts. And by all means, come to my website, transforming relationship dot com. All my blogs are there. Sign up for the newsletter. Stay in touch. You'll find me on Facebook. Go to my page, facebook.com/relationship help dr. Jump in. There are pages for my podcasts on Facebook. There's one for Save Your Sanity. There's one for Transforming Relationships with Emotional Savvy. We can stay in touch. I also have a membership site. If you want to get completely off social media and be part of the forums, just go to transforming relationship dot com and click on circles. I'm doing everything I can to help you. I really want you to have the information. I want you to have resources. I want you to understand. I want you to educate yourself on it is not your fault. A hijacker is doing this to you. They are perpetrators and predators, and they are seeking coercive control. So I hope this has been enlightening for you. I hope that it has caused you to think about a few things, sad things, I know, but really understand. And I look forward to talking more about each one of these things so that you can learn more in depth about it, understand, have examples. But I wanted you to have this overview of coercive control today, and that way you will be awake and aware to what's going on, and you will be alert when it happens, because you will begin to spot it. And that's so important. If you're brand new to my work, go and get my free ebook, "How to Spot a Hijacker," at hijackals dot com. Hijackals dot com. I look forward to talking to you soon and talking with you on the Monday evening livestream. So go to my channel, youtube.com/for relationship help, and I will find you hopefully in the chat on a Monday night at 6 p.m. Pacific sometime soon. In the meantime, take very good care of yourself. I'm so glad you spent this time with me today. I hope you heard something that touched your heart and empowered you to move forward. You can have the life and relationships that you most want, and that begins with you, within you, today. I'm always here for you. Life can get better, and you heard that from me, the relationship help doctor. I'm Roberta Schaer, and I work with clients throughout the world through video conferencing. We can talk. So learn more at for relationship help dot com, F-O-R relationship H-E-L-P dot com, or visit me on YouTube at for relationship health. Join me for next week's show.

[Music]