Coercive Control
Summary - Not all manipulators display every behaviour in the red flag warning list, or will meet the criteria 100%. Also, they won’t display the behaviour all the time, which leads to confusion before the education system presents the warning signs. Study gaslighting. They will not want to be exposed so compensating behaviour will be introduced to cover up manipulative actions and statements.
(If it’s an emergency, go to the Domestic Abuse (subtle) page, and scroll to the numbers.)
FOS - Complaints That Involve Economic And Domestic Abuse
Psychology Today - The Risk Factors for Continuing the Cycle of Abuse
Before you read, have a little insight, it may help centre matters: Masked Emotional Instability
GEE - 8 types of people who never deserve a second chance, according to psychology
VeryWellMind - Why Do People Blame the Victim?
VeryWellMind - What to Do If You or a Loved One Lack Empathy
Choosing Therapy - Narcissistic Injury: Definition, Signs, & Examples
PsychCentral - Spotting and Dealing with a Smear Campaign by a Narcissist
GEE - 8 types of people who never deserve a second chance, according to psychology
Marriage - How to Make a Narcissist Fear You: 15 Proven Strategies
Choosing Therapy - 10 Signs of a Female Psychopath (and men but are different)
Barton Family Lawyers - Your Legal Guide to Divorcing a Narcissist – Narcissistic Abuse Explained
Coercive control comes from a deep insecurity, not confidence or purpose; controlling to stay in a position with a public image is extremely damaging and they may spent more time covering it up than get help.
BFL - Your Legal Guide to Divorcing a Narcissist – Narcissistic Abuse Explained
CH - Flying Monkeys. Unravelling the Origins of a Term in the Context of Domestic Abuse
The Role of Flying Monkeys in Domestic Abuse
Flying monkeys in the context of domestic abuse play various roles, all of which serve to reinforce the abuser’s control and manipulation:
Spread Disinformation: They may spread lies and rumours about the victim, often echoing the narcissist’s narrative to discredit and isolate the victim further.
Harassment and Intimidation: Flying monkeys can also engage in direct harassment, sending messages or making calls on behalf of the abuser, serving to intimidate and control the victim.
Spying and Reporting Back: In some cases, they act as the eyes and ears of the abuser, reporting back on the victim’s activities and state of mind.
Enabling Denial: Their actions can provide the abuser with plausible deniability, as the abuser can claim they are not directly responsible for the actions of others.
Guardian - JK Rowling tells of fear former husband would burn Harry Potter manuscript
The same abuse can happen to women and men, with the same list and same approach; women may be more covert, men more overt, but not always. The more manipulative, the more hidden the action will be, and the more blameshifting will be present.
Controlling to ‘go along with the facade, fantasy or trauma bond’.
What is narcissistic injury?
What is a trauma bond?
True or False: Cohesive control is fuelled by insecurity, not a confident personality foundation.
Choosing Therapy - What Is a Narcissistic Family Structure? 10 Signs & How to Deal
TNC - Narcissistic Families – Hidden In Plain Sight
“Image is everything, no boundaries, control issues, secret keeping, hide fraud and abuse.”
Choosing Therapy - 10 Signs of a Female Psychopath (and men but are different)
True or False: Emotional abuse can be linked to the sponge theory, what is absorbed in childhood may project in adulthood.
True or False: Conditioning can appear as close at first rather than unhealthy without boundaries. A role must be performed ‘this is not you, come back to the fold’.
True or False: Enmeshmant families are created around an undiagnosed personality disorder, creating a culture without triggers and fixed roles.
True or False: The most controlling person can hide behind everyone else and use others so their hands are not dirty.
True or False: Fear of exposure requires some form of hidden control that creates paranoia, not a full awareness of the actions.
Ayo & Iken – 20 Ways to Spot the Psychopath in Your Life
Ignoring the signs and parenting that nothing is happening can cause serious mental stress on the balanced person's mental health. What is unhealthy for is unhealthy for two. A trauma bond will most likely be happening to the victim trying to maintain a healthy life away from the facade.
These actions are mostly done behind closed doors; the public may struggle to see the signs without someone speaking up. Others will be used to cover up actions and statements if fear of exposure is noted. Most people will be playing catch up to a Machiavellian type. (Heritable traits that some identify with)
Key - Looking for blaming shifting before something happens or no empathy after something has happened. Fear of exposure will have a no-hands-dirty approach.
Controlling a person’s home life and controlling their finances when someone is unwell isn’t always straightforward. Pay attention to the temperament of the controller, who may appear to have paranoia for no reason, or no reason seen in public.
Linked to hidden insecurity, childhood experiences and enmeshed cultures. People who like to control others feel less in control. People may enable their insecurity without releasing it, which can turn toxic if the core issues are reviewed.
Quotes - Manipulating you into doubting your perceptions, memory, or sanity (gaslighting), e.g. ‘It didn’t happen’, ‘You misunderstood’, It was a joke’.
Psychological and emotional abuse can be difficult to describe or identify. It’s when a perpetrator uses words and non-physical actions to manipulate, hurt, scare or upset you. Some examples of emotional and verbal abuse are:
Mocking you, calling you hurtful names or using derogatory words about you.
Telling you that they’re sorry, that it isn’t abuse.
Sulking or refusing to talk or be kind until you do something they want.
Making you doubt your own sanity. This is known as gaslighting. A perpetrator may gaslight you into thinking that you are remembering things wrong or that you are misinterpreting things, later making you believe their version of events is true. This behaviour is often used to manipulate.
“That’s not what you said,”
“You made me do it”
Actions - Ignoring you or giving you the silent treatment as a means of punishment.
Husbands and wives living a double life, one for home, one for work, people visit the home less due to the hidden agenda to have a facade.
Gaslighting and blameshifting can be linked to preventing narcissistic injury from developing, stressing emotional triggers.
Over time, emotional abuse is projected in different ways with different triggers without any reason or justification.
Undiagnosed personality disorders are created in childhood. Transferred unprocessed trauma from parental emotional abuse, jealousy, envy, and fear of abandonment can be the driving force without guidance and stability from outside influence to gain balance. Chips, pokes, subtle name calling, controlling finances, fraud, emotional abuse, gaslighting, strange justifications to gain a controlling position in a network of people, pathological lying, blaming their victims for how they feel. Zero empathy or accountability: ‘This is my life’ even at the expense of others.
The development of Machiavellianism and control issues should be researched in depth and seen as a long play. Constant tactics are used so everything fits the narrative.
Genetics and family culture influences can mean the traits are the justified cyclical view ‘everyone is the same, I’m just better at using people’. Many may pride themselves on playing games with everyone, looking for weaknesses to convince.
‘What’s wrong with what works for me’.
The agenda is to hide all practices; the game must continue. Like many undiagnosed personality disorders, the feedback loop convinces the person of their own justifications so nothing changes, and in many cases, the manipulative view from childhood is still very present in older adults. Assuming ‘this is the way of the world if I want something’ means one toolbox, one set of survival tools.
If someone has an undiagnosed personality disorder from birth or genetics or an affected upbringing, they will need to help. The unfortunate reality is that they may refuse to process accountability, so they cannot see they are the problem. “Fear of exposure will cause a reaction to sign off, and for the person, it is will to deny their behaviour.
A red flag can be the person is always talking about everyone else when they are not present in the room. Blameshifting all accountability - blames the victim, label friends or relatives with a biased view, creates drama when expectations are not meet. Relationships have a purpose; people always appear to be less, not as capable all the long making no effort to bond and change… nothing is wrong.
Continuous sarcasm - Red flag
Histrionic (needing attention) vs extraversion (outgoing)
True or False: Truth, triggers and actions, pay attention to the deflection and blameshift. There are more deceptive actions hiding to cause fear of exposure. A lack of accountability is at play at the expense and use of others. Transaction with control issues needing to suppress any means necessary. An action to something, not a reaction to nothing. Hurt deceptive people hurt others in a very particular way... it's all been documented in the pattern of deceptive behaviour hiding in the mind and facade.
References -
PsychCentral - Recognizing the Signs of Coercive Control
BBC - Coercive control: Male victims say they aren't believed
Healthline - How to Recognize Coercive Control
Respect - Understanding Coercive Control
WA - I’m not sure if my relationship is healthy
CPD - What is Coercive Control?
IBB Law - Coercive and Controlling Behaviour
RV - What is coercive control?
Lynne Namka - Emotional Manipulation and Coercive Control
Psychology Today - 4 Common Patterns of Coercive Control in Relationships
Mayoclinic - Borderline personality disorder
Psychology Today - Borderline Personality Disorder and Projected Abandonment
Hare Psychopathy Checklist (Original) (PCL-22)
Screening Tests for Psychopathy
The discussion may require further education to document: (More a social or home, plagues the schoolyard and may stick in adult life, bad role-modelling, conditioning of how undeveloped minds think of ways to control others.)
Direct and Indirect forms of abuse, how to spot the history when matters change tactics to smear and deflect onto others, or a professional victim card appears.
Test Question - Smear, what is it and why does it happen in childhood, families, schools, places of work, going undetected? What is its design, and why is it a secondary sign of something more harmful?
It is important to realise when playing catch up to matters of concern that smear is secondary, not primary (an extension of gaslighting). Smear can occur as a tool used after the direct damage/gaslighting/various forms of emotional or physical abuse have been employed over time with mixed aggression, so the questionable behaviour continues undetected without training or education to spot the signs.
Smear - Using in-direct methods linked to control issues to extend guilt or shame onto someone with emotional abuse/pressure can be an indicator of deceptive high-functioning behaviour appearing in the secondary evidence in the abuse timeline.
True or False: The full definition is a narcissistic smear. The internal mechanism operates externally, showing a lack of empathy for others, an internally damaged feedback loop, control issues, avoiding processing and accountability, blameshifting to damage truth and facts to continue with a mask/stimulation and gaslight through others when the target/victim chose not to accept a personality disorder (unusually undiagnosed) or continue deception or self-deception.
A hurt person hurts other people to avoid a lie/action, or behaviour. Guilt and shame are put on to others as the child's mind inside the adult cannot process reality with balance or the perception of others. The carefully crafted false self-construct inside a facade built over time from childhood experiences of abuse or no accountability or both.
Fantasy, triggers and abuse behind closed doors, sometimes in public. High functioning is harder to spot.
The giveaway is simple: Using others while those ‘others’ are unable to go beyond face value, impressional or harmful as well. Exposure on numerous accounts while the ‘others’ extend and become an abusers while the core negative disruptor tries to stay clean.
Further secondary evidence linking to the coverup of primary evidence… a reaction to ‘fear of exposure’, reacting to something, not reacting to ‘nothing’.
More than one narcissistic person will expose themselves, and more than one unbiased personality disorder will expose themselves. Not every adult has an adult mind due to childhood development. A Professional victim can be present as a tool… the child is still present. They will harm their own children’s growth, and so the cycle continues.
Test question response - If marked wrong even after presenting key markers, review the Smear or Flying Monkeys web pages, then seek advice locally or call 101 or 999 or 911 (US). The confusion a person might be experiencing has a design to do just that, confuse…so the victim cannot see who is causing harm over time. The outcome is harming a person’s mental health over time.
Gaslighting has a design and has an agenda to go undetected (linked to an abusive person’s masked/damaged ‘for the narrative perception), a stimulating game to one person with mixed aggressive behaviour… very harmful to another if not safeguarded.
The unfortunate experience is linked to an undiagnosed disorder is trying to influence others at any cost with detachment and control issues (assuming they own someone else’s perception, their parent did it to them, for example, learned). Remove Truth Bias (many grow up assuming with a positive comparison).
They will go on to harm networks, another giveaway that something is unstable/damaging/without processing of the self or accountability enabled… a masked internal thinking system/equation will go on to abuse for control indirectly to equally harmful as direct abuse. In many ways, it is the extension that is learned, used and once felt so projection on to others is a way of making others feel the same hurt; what inspires can be all the lies right behind the eyes. An abuser can claim the things they do are what the victim is doing to them. A lack of imagination and what is in thought is what is used, a key giveaway to a lack of emotional intelligence and future development.
True of False: To maintain control of a lie/action or a facade, the disruptor assumes what they do is acceptable in their eyes as their eye learned what they use from a bad role model.
