How Coercive Controllers Make You Believe You are Worthless
The hard to understand early stages of domestic abuse
I’ve read every book I can find about coercive control. As I have navigated my own recovery from being imprisoned with a controller for more than two decades, finding my own story within pages written by others has been validating and reassuring.
Turns out I’m not crazy after all.
For all those years I thought I was the only one living in a prison masquerading as a relationship, trapped behind invisible bars. Dreaming of escape yet believing it impossible.
I now know that I was wrong.
Tragically there are mini prisons everywhere that are disguised as homes. In those prisons are jailors and prisoners being actors in their own façade, appearing to the outside world as normal couples and families.
But the thing I notice over and over, as I read books and articles about this insidious form of domestic abuse, is that they seem to miss the same thing.
They do a wonderful job of explaining the stages of the slowly escalating control that is carried out with the ultimate goal of forcing the victim to accept a life of oppression and subjugation. These books have in-depth explanations of the isolation tactics that…
