Breaking the Chains: Understanding Coercive Control
There are wounds that leave bruises, and wounds that leave none and sometimes the ones you can’t see are the ones that steal the most from you.
Coercive control is one of the most insidious forms of abuse because it works quietly, gradually, and often invisibly. It doesn’t begin with threats. It begins with closeness. It begins with charm. It begins with someone who seems to care so intensely that you mistake their interest for safety.
And slowly, you find yourself becoming smaller.
At first, you can’t name it. You just feel different. More anxious. Less certain. You start monitoring your words, your tone, your movements. You brace for reactions without knowing why. You apologise more. You doubt yourself more. And somewhere deep inside, something begins to whisper: This doesn’t feel right.
This article is for that part of you, the part still trying to understand what happened, or what is happening now, and whether what you are experiencing “counts” as abuse.
It does. And you are not imagining it.
What Coercive Control Really Is
Coercive control is a pattern of behaviours designed to dominate another person’s life—emotionally, psychologically, financially, socially, and sometimes physically. It often develops slowly, so slowly that survivors feel ashamed they didn’t see it sooner.
But you couldn’t have.
You were conditioned not to see it.
Coercive control doesn’t usually start with cruelty. It starts with intensity that feels like love, attention that feels flattering, and protectiveness that feels comforting. Over time, those same behaviours harden into control, criticism, surveillance, fear, and dependence.
If emotional abuse leaves you doubting your worth, coercive control leaves you doubting your very self.
If this resonates, you may also find comfort in reading Recognising Emotional Abuse: Signs and Impact and The Psychology Behind Gaslighting.
How Coercive Control Takes Hold
Coercive control almost never arrives as a single moment of harm. It settles in slowly, like fog, soft at first, almost invisible until one day you realise you can no longer see clearly. It’s not one event but an accumulation, a gradual tightening of the world around you.
Isolation: When Your World Quietly Shrinks
It often begins with subtle comments—nothing dramatic, nothing you can point to as “proof.” Maybe they raise an eyebrow when you mention a friend. Maybe they sigh after a family visit. Maybe they become strangely cool when you come home from seeing someone who cares about you.
You find yourself adjusting, just slightly, to avoid the tension. You stay home a little more. You share a little less. You decline invitations that used to feel nourishing.
Over time, you don’t even wait for their reaction—you anticipate it. You pre-emptively shrink your world because it feels easier than the fallout.
What the abuser removes isn’t just people. It’s the mirrors, those relationships that reflect your truth back to you. Without those mirrors, your reality becomes easier to distort.
Micromanagement & Surveillance, Everyday Life Becomes an Explanation
At some point, you notice you’re accounting for things you never used to think twice about:
Who you spoke to.
Why you were five minutes late.
What you wore and why you wore it.
How much you spent and why that amount was “necessary.”
At first, their questions sound like concern. They “just want to understand.” They “just want to make sure everything’s okay.” But slowly, subtly, the tone shifts. The questions become expectations. The expectations become rules. The rules become consequences.
You begin to move through your day with an internal auditor, always checking, justifying, and rehearsing.
Not because you did anything wrong, but because their scrutiny has become the air you breathe.
Emotional Manipulation & Gaslighting, Your Mind Becomes the Battleground
Gaslighting is the thread that binds coercive control together. It doesn’t begin with outrageous lies. It starts with tiny rewrites of reality:
“That’s not what I said.”
“You’re remembering it wrong.”
“You always make a big deal out of nothing.”
“You’re too sensitive.”
Over time, your certainty erodes. Things you once knew in your bones now feel blurry. You start apologising for reactions that were perfectly human. You begin to believe that if you could just communicate better, stay calmer, choose the right moment, they would understand.
Gaslighting teaches you that conflict is your fault. That their cruelty is your misunderstanding. That your intuition, your deepest internal compass, is unreliable.
And once you stop trusting yourself, you start leaning on them to interpret your own experience.
For a deeper exploration of this dynamic, you may want to read: How to Recover from Gaslighting in a Toxic Relationship.
Financial and Practical Control, Your Autonomy Quietly Disappears
Money becomes a point of tension, subtle at first, then sharper. Your spending is questioned. Your work hours are criticised.
Your financial independence becomes something they chip away at, one “suggestion” or “concern” at a time.
You may begin hiding small purchases or asking permission for things you never used to consider “big asks.”
Work becomes a source of conflict rather than stability.
Daily decisions, where to go, what to buy, how to spend your time, become permissions rather than choices.
Financial control traps people not just logistically, but emotionally.
Shame grows.
Isolation deepens.
Leaving becomes complicated in ways outsiders rarely see.
Intermittent Kindness, The Hook That Keeps You From Leaving
And then, just when you’re overwhelmed or beginning to question what’s happening, they soften.
They’re gentle again. Affectionate and attentive. They say the things you’ve been longing to hear. You glimpse the person you fell in love with, and for a moment, everything feels possible again.
Maybe things really can go back to how they were.
Maybe they were just stressed.
Maybe you did overreact.
This is not accidental. This is the cycle.
Intermittent kindness is what makes coercive control so hard to leave. Your nervous system bonds to the relief, not the harm. You cling to the moments of gentleness because they’re the only oxygen in the room.
If you’re caught in this push-pull dynamic, please know: you are not weak. You are trauma-bonded—a powerful psychological response that happens in cycles of harm and intermittent affection.
To understand this more deeply, you might find clarity in: Understanding Trauma Bonding: Why You Miss Someone Who Hurt You.
Healing begins in safe company. Support before and after leaving can change everything.
What Coercive Control Does to Your Mind and Body
Coercive control doesn’t just alter how you think about yourself. It alters how you feel inside your own skin. It’s not “just psychological”—it is deeply physiological. Your nervous system becomes shaped by the constant unpredictability, the monitoring, the emotional whiplash.
For many survivors, the first signs something is wrong aren’t thoughts, but sensations.
You may notice yourself becoming more alert than you used to be, listening for the tone of their footsteps, the sound of a message notification, the subtle shift in their breathing that tells you their mood has changed. Your body learns to scan for danger before your mind has even caught up.
Decision-making becomes harder. Not because you’re indecisive, but because every choice has carried consequences for so long that your system now expects punishment. Even small things—what to cook, who to text, whether to leave the house—can feel loaded.
And then there is the exhaustion that doesn’t go away with sleep. The sense of bracing, even in stillness. The moments of emotional numbness where your body simply shuts down, not out of weakness, but out of protection.
Some survivors describe it as feeling like their mind and body are no longer on the same team.
And when they finally leave, many say the silence feels louder than the chaos they escaped.
This is your nervous system trying to recalibrate after living in survival mode. If you recognise this reaction, you may find comfort in Why Healthy Love Feels Uncomfortable After Abuse, which explains why safety can initially feel foreign, even unsettling.
Your body remembers what your mind worked so hard to rationalise.
Recovery begins with learning to listen to those signals again, slowly, gently and without shame.
Why It’s Hard to Recognise and Leave
One of the cruellest misunderstandings about coercive control is the belief that survivors “should just leave”. If only it were that simple.
Coercive control doesn’t begin with violence or threats. It begins with connection, with hope, with someone who once made you feel special. And by the time the controlling behaviours emerge, your world has already begun to shift in barely noticeable degrees.
It becomes difficult to name what’s happening because it happens slowly. The escalation is so gradual that your threshold for what feels acceptable moves without you realising. What might have shocked you in the beginning becomes, over time, “just how things are.”
This is part of what makes coercive control so dangerous: it dismantles the very capacities you need in order to leave.
Your confidence erodes. Your support network shrinks. Your financial independence weakens. Your sense of reality is repeatedly rewritten.
And still, you may stay, not because you’re blind to the harm, but because you fear what leaving might trigger. Because you’re unsure you can manage on your own. Because you’re trauma-bonded to the intermittent moments of kindness. Because you still love them. Because you are hoping, against hope, that the person you first met will return.
These are not weaknesses. They are the symptoms of trauma, of conditioning, of survival.
If you need a deeper, more nuanced explanation, Why Do They Stay? The Complex Reality of Leaving Abuse offers a compassionate look at why leaving is anything but straightforward.
Recognising coercive control is not an act of self-blame; it is an act of reclaiming your clarity. Leaving is not a single decision; it is a process.
And none of it is your fault.
Legal Protection Against Coercive Control
The legal landscape is evolving to recognise this devastating form of abuse. In Australia, different states have taken various approaches:
In NSW, coercive control was criminalised from July 2024, carrying penalties of up to 7 years imprisonment. Queensland followed in March 2024 with even stronger penalties of up to 14 years imprisonment. Victoria addresses these behaviours under existing family violence laws, while South Australia is progressing draft legislation. Western Australia has announced a phased approach, and Tasmania, ACT, and NT cover aspects of coercive control under family violence legislation.
These legal developments represent growing recognition of the serious harm caused by psychological abuse and control.
NSW: Criminalised July 2024, penalties up to 7 years
Queensland: Criminalised March 2024, penalties up to 14 years
Victoria: Covered under family violence laws
SA: Draft legislation in progress
WA, TAS, ACT, NT: Various stages of coverage
Reclaiming Yourself: First Steps Out of the Fog
Healing from coercive control is not just the moment you leave. It’s the quiet, steady work of coming back to yourself, the parts that were silenced, softened, or punished into hiding. It’s the slow reawakening of your inner voice, the one that learned to whisper because speaking too loudly wasn’t safe.
Seeing What Happened
For many survivors, the first act of freedom isn’t physical, it’s psychological. It’s the moment something inside you says, “This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t love.”
Naming the abuse is powerful. It cracks open the fog, even if only slightly at first. That clarity becomes the first loosened link in a very long chain.
Finding Safe People to Hold the Truth With You
Because your reality was repeatedly distorted, sharing it with someone safe can feel both terrifying and relieving. You don’t need many people. You just need one person who won’t minimise, excuse, or question your experience.
Sometimes this is a trusted friend. Often, it’s a professional who understands coercive control and trauma, someone who can help you rebuild the internal compass that was slowly dismantled over time.
Relearning Your Edges, One Boundary at a Time
When you’ve lived through coercive control, boundaries often carry old fear. You may have learned that saying “no” brings consequences, that having needs makes you difficult, or that your comfort doesn’t matter.
Reclaiming your boundaries is not about being rigid; it’s about remembering where you end and someone else begins.
It’s a brave, gradual return to your own dignity.
If you feel unsure how to start, Setting Healthy Boundaries from Relationships Australia may offer gentle guidance.
Planning for Safety if You’re Leaving
Leaving is not an impulsive act; it is a strategy, a process, a careful negotiation with fear. For many, it is the most dangerous time. That’s why a safety plan matters, not because you’re dramatic, but because you’re realistic.
A safety plan honours your instincts. It protects the part of you that knows the truth, even when it still feels risky to say out loud.
You Deserve a Life That Doesn’t Hurt
Coercive control flourishes in silence, in confusion, in the places where you’re made to doubt your worth.
Your healing will be built on the opposite: clarity, compassion, connection—both with others and with yourself.
You are not imagining it.
You are not overreacting.
You are not difficult, dramatic, or “too sensitive.”
You are a human being who adapted to survive something profoundly unsafe.
And you do not have to walk out of this alone.
If you need support, whether to understand what’s happening, rebuild your sense of self, or take your next steps, I’m here.
📧 kat@safespacecounsellingservices.com.au
📞 0452 285 526
FAQs:
-
Coercive control is not one behaviour; it’s a pattern that slowly reshapes your world. It’s the combination of emotional manipulation, isolation, financial restrictions, surveillance, and subtle punishments that make you feel smaller, quieter, and less free over time.
It rarely looks dramatic from the outside, but its impact is profound: it limits your autonomy and erodes your sense of self. -
Often, it’s a feeling before it’s a realisation. You may notice that you’re pulling away from people you love, second-guessing your decisions, monitoring your own behaviour to “keep the peace,” or feeling anxious about ordinary things like spending money or expressing an opinion.
You might find yourself apologising constantly, doubting your memory, or feeling guilty for having boundaries.
If your world feels smaller and your voice feels quieter, something important is happening. -
In Australia, coercive control is increasingly acknowledged as a serious form of domestic violence. Some states, like NSW and Queensland, have now criminalised it, while others address it under broader family violence laws.
Legal protections do vary by state, but the growing recognition reflects what survivors have always known: psychological abuse can be just as dangerous as physical violence.
If you’re unsure how the law applies to your situation, a DV service or legal professional can guide you safely. -
You don’t have to name it perfectly before you reach out. If something feels wrong, that’s enough.
Start by speaking to someone who won’t minimise your experience, a counsellor, a DV service, or a trusted friend. Services like 1800RESPECT can help you explore what’s happening and create a safety plan at your pace. -
Yes, but the most powerful support is a gentle, consistent presence.
Survivors often feel ashamed, confused, or afraid of being judged. Pressuring them to “wake up” or “just leave” can push them further into isolation.
Instead: listen, believe them, check in regularly, and remind them that nothing about this is their fault. When they’re ready, you can help them connect with professional support.
Where to Find Help:
1800RESPECT - National sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service
Lifeline: 131114 - Crisis support and suicide prevention
DVConnect: 1800 811 811 - 24/7 crisis response to domestic violence
Supporting Someone Under Coercive Control
If you suspect someone you know is experiencing coercive control, your response matters deeply. Listen without judgment and believe their experiences, even when they seem confusing or inconsistent. Offer practical support without pressure or ultimatums. Stay connected even when they seem to pull away, as isolation strengthens the abuser's control. Help them access professional resources when they're ready to take that step.
Your consistent, patient support creates a lifeline to freedom.
Learn more about supporting loved ones
