The ABCs of Narcissism 4: the C’s Part 2
Coercive Control
Hello! There’s so much to learn about narcissism that, for the moment you finally work out you’ve been a target, victimised and gaslit all this time, I’ve put together a quick reference glossary over a series of articles under each letter of the alphabet to help you understand and begin recovery.
Please note this is a glossary of terms with the briefest of explanations as a very rudimentary introduction to aspects of narcissism for victims who may be trying to understand how they may have been gaslit. They are general and include all possibilities. Their purpose is not to diagnose or label abusers but to help you recognise and give you the current shorthand for destructive patterns, manipulative behaviour and negative personality traits so that you can discuss and put your particular encounter with narcissism down to experience and move on better educated.
C is also for:
Coercive Control
Thank the heavens above this was finally recognised as a crime in the UK in 2015 and in several other countries. Hopefully, it will follow soon in the US, where it is still not outlawed unless a ‘crime’ is committed.
Coercive Control is a campaign orchestrated by a narcissist (narc for short in current fora) to gain complete control over their victim, also known as their ‘supply’ or ‘target’. It is an insidious type of domestic violence and terrorism that can be ever so subtle that the victim does not realise for years that their freedoms and individuality have been eroded. The conditioning, reprogramming, brainwashing or grooming of the target is such that, as the demands and behaviour of their controller become gradually normalised, they can find it difficult to notice, pinpoint, question or describe what has happened to them until they have escaped the influence of their abuser and it is a thing of the safely distant past if they can find the right kind of help and ongoing support.
They have for so long had to justify themselves and every thought or action to the narc, and the behaviour of the narc to others, that being miserable is just a fact of life, that’s how it is, anything else, any aspirations for something better has been re-presented to them by the narc as a product of their ‘crazy’ imagination, delusions of grandeur, lack of schooling or intelligence, or a supportive friend’s lies.
According to Evan Stark , Ph.D, MSW Professor, Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration as, 60-80% of victims of domestic abuse have experienced Coercive Control. It can happen to anyone and is not restricted to, but tends to happen mainly to women because of gender privilege.
The Coercive Control campaign will involve many or all of the techniques described in this series of articles but here are the main ones:
Isolating the victim.
It is essential for the campaign to work that the victim is vulnerable to persuasion. Like a hypnotist selecting likely candidates, part of the romantic strategy will be an appeal to your empathy as a test. A sob story or crazy ex will usually suffice to hook the rescuer in you.
Once they’ve bought into the narrative the narc will gradually seek to take away all support from their target using tactics such as discrediting family members and friends, lying to them about you, convincing you that they hate you, moving you far away and insisting all social media is shared and contact monitored or cut off completely.
“It’s you and me babe, against the world!” is a dangerous refrain and learning about how Sonny Bono controlled Cher from the age of 16, the lyrics of I Got You Babe, make interesting reading.
During a 1999 interview with journalist Benjamin Svetkey, Cher said “I couldn’t stand on my own two feet and talk back to him. That was my problem. I could just never ever talk back to him, and so I never got any of my needs met that weren’t what he felt they should be.”
“After I had Chaz, I started to grow up and he wouldn’t allow it, and I was starting to really… He was starting to kill my spirit… he just didn’t count on how tough I could be, because I never argued with him one time. I don’t think we had more than three arguments in eleven years.”
It has been suggested that controlling relationships enter crisis points when the supply is pregnant because the narc fears the involvement of health professionals may unearth his reign of terror.
Restricting their victim’s freedom both physically and/or to make decisions for themselves.
Narcs may restrict you from leaving the home for work, school or to visit friends and family or even from using public transport. When you do leave the house they may stalk you, keep calling you or demand that you check in with them regularly and give them your devices and passwords when you return.
A narc may use a very narrow interpretation of any religious doctrine to reinforce their viewpoint and control to the extent that even a modest query as to the authenticity of what is said is met with cries of blasphemy or the threat of being shunned. The acceptance of the tribe is one of the humans most basic needs and they will play upon it, while they’re not too tied up isolating you from it.
My ex used to call and ask to speak to whoever I was visiting to make sure I wasn’t lying, the implication and brainwashing being that it was me who was in the wrong and untrustworthy and putting him out unfairly with my outing. It was easier and less embarrassing in the end to just stay in.
Fake News.
In the words of Doctor Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister: “A lie often repeated becomes the truth.” Inventing a reality to suit the narc and then bolstering it by discrediting any story that conflicts with the narc’s narrative is a powerful brainwashing tool that works at any level. A narc can even gaslight an entire nation in plain sight. This is a technique used by dictators throughout the ages exemplified by Stalin’s technique of ‘disinformation’, whereby he controlled the sprawling Russian population and kept his enemies at bay. This often gives the impression of greater power, ability and resources than the narc could possibly command and soothes the serious insecurities that cause him to need to exert this ridiculous and pernicious level of control.
Monitoring your every move.
It is crucial to their campaign’s success that they make you believe that they are everywhere, omnipresent, all-seeing and all-hearing until you are convinced that there is no point defying their rules or demands because they will miraculously know or inevitably find out quickly enough to punish you roundly. It is so wearing to have to ‘walk on eggshells’ or run through every movement you’re about to make in your head to check it’s ‘correct’ before you do it that before long you are just too tired to question it and it becomes easier to just comply which later turns into what seems to be the good and natural order of things.
My ex tracked my phone and boasted proudly of it to family members. Others have had cameras wired throughout their home, recording them or speaking to them even in the bathroom for the added zing of humiliation to the despicable erosion of the last of our boundaries.
Gaslighting.
The abuser will always seek to convince their supply that the abuser knows best. In order to achieve this most effectively, they must destabilize their supply in order to make them question their sanity if they don’t agree with the narc’s views, beliefs, knowledge and ideas wholeheartedly, or if something ‘feels off’ to the victim about a course of action proposed. Unable or unwilling to argue the logic, fairness or legality of their standpoint, they have to lie, manipulate or distract to get their way and will stop at nothing to do so. As they have no empathy for their victims, there is no emotional price too high for you or your loved ones to pay for the privilege of proving you are wrong.
Discussions, where the logic and fairness of a narc’s actions are questioned, will result in circular arguments, tangents and distractions about, for example the victim’s ability or qualification to form an opinion or idea and it will go on for hours, entire nights if need be until the victim is too tired to keep on or learns to not bother as they have children to see to and this exhaustive process gets them nowhere, it’s just easier to get on with all those jobs you gradually find yourself sacrificing your entire life to do to keep your controller happy… the slippery slope.
If ever I tried to get a straight answer or a reasonable financial plan sorted, my ex would start picking holes in my grammar. It would get me so paranoid about opening my mouth that the amount of pain it took to make be brave enough to speak was so enormous that when he then started to ridicule my words, I’d burst into tears which, was then taken as proof of his diagnosis of me as being unstable, mad and hence untrustworthy, unbelievable and usually a ‘bad mother’.
Threatening the victim with losing their children.
As everyone around you seems to come to understand that you're crazy, or he’s convinced you they hate you/distrust your abilities to parent… etc there is always the threat that your children will be taken away if you leave. As the victim has seen the damage being done to their children on a daily basis just by them being present during their parent’s abuse if nothing else, the thought that the narc may get complete control of them, cut off all contact with you as they grow up, turn them against you, or in your absence turn up the level abuse inflicted upon them, is the one of the most terrifying of all control strategies and the one most likely to keep the victim exactly where the narc wants them.
I always thought that it was better for me to stay at the centre of things. That way I could see and hear what he was doing and protect loved ones the best way possible. Being inside his circle I had some ability to influence or distract him, warn loved ones he was on the warpath or cover-up, for example, normal kids’ behaviour that would incur torrents of wrath in our house. Even just hanging their coat on the bannister instead of in the cupboard, would mean their toys getting trashed.
Manipulating the children.
Children are often weaponised, used against, or to torture a parent by being made to witness the narc demeaning their victim, calling them names or criticising their parenting abilities among other things they may, in reality, do perfectly well and above and beyond the call of duty.
This conditions the children to distrust the victimised parent and teaches them how to abuse them when the narc is not present to continue the control, the convincer strategy that you really are what they say you are and keeps the target feeling powerless and monitored at all times. The children concerned are also starved of the support and examples they really need to grow into loving, independent adults and the victimisation and damage can continue for generations.
Threatening children, family members and pets.
The narc knows your ‘weakness’ is your selfless love for your family and they exploit ‘vulnerabilities’ that healthy normal people would laud and applaud, love and appreciate you for. They are no better than ruthless kidnappers in this respect, forcing you to comply with their demands for fear of severe consequences, forcing in many cases their victim to hand over or give them complete control of everything you earn or own in order to keep the peace and your loved ones safe.
Having convinced you of your general powerlessness and uselessness, they may threaten to take the children away by other means such as calling social services to say you’re neglecting or abusing your children.
Every night, just before he went to sleep, I got to hear about how we were about to lose the house and would have to take the kids out of school and cancel their university plans if I didn’t work out how to get, earn or borrow more money to keep the kids safe and with an educational exit plan. I didn’t sleep for years worrying and working all night on various jobs and schemes. It kept me too busy and exhausted to analyse where all the money was really going and find out about his secret life.
Many women have stayed in controlling relationships because of threats to kidnap children or hurt pets. I always thought I could minimise the harm to my children by staying there to defend and comfort them. While I regret the harm they suffered, I believed at the time that there was no way I could have prevented the court system from granting him access to do potentially worse and carry out his various threats to punish me for leaving. I had to wait till they were grown up enough to leave for that hard-earned university education, stay away and see him for what he is, most of, if not some of the time, charmers working the way they do. In my time, the laws around Coercive Control didn’t exist but if they had I may have done things very differently. I would urge anyone who relates to any of these points to seek counselling services and the assistance of local Aid Centres and charities and the police, if only for a chat. They are trained nowadays to look for signs of domestic abuse and advise.
Name-calling.
The narc will never miss an opportunity to reframe any activity you do or action you take to suit their current narrative and/or for purposes of destabilizing you, leaving you too dazed and confused apologising to work out what just happened and fight back. It reinforces the belief they want you to have that you’re not good enough at anything to survive outside their control.
If you look too happy or confident, it can only be allowed if they have decided to let you feel that because it suits them at that moment, usually to get you to something for them or as a prelude to a big “see? I told you so,” fall.
If feelings of support, strength and confidence building comfort appear to come from a source outside their control it will and must be destroyed, discredited and its influence killed off.
Name-calling and constant criticism are designed to keep the victim on the back foot, defending themselves. This is never a position of strength. The abuser gets to call all the shots, pull all the punches and direct the conversation and activities at all times, keeping the victim busy justifying themselves till they can’t trust themselves to think straight, never mind understand what’s really going on.
Melissa Hamilton, PhD, a criminologist and expert in domestic abuse says of frequent put downs, “They’re designed to make you feel unimportant and deficient.”
Above all, you must, for the narcissist’s campaign to work, learn to distrust your own judgment and accept theirs as gospel.
When, at the end of our relationship my ex got me jailed for the night, long story lol, I was finally grateful first for a break from him and finally a breakthrough in my thinking. I had to realise that for someone like me to end up there, something was very, very wrong with my life. Listening to the other detainees I was just grateful that I was able to see clearly now who was pulling my strings. I had no intention of returning to a family dynamic that had flung me this far off my true path and potential.
Controlling finances.
This is the surest way to keep you captive, in fear and at their mercy is to take away all access and control of money or any resources that could secure your escape or even let you build confidence enough to start questioning their authority.
You will find that access to bank accounts are mysteriously unavailable online for various reasons you can never get to the bottom of through various means of distraction and ‘buying time’ like signing in the wrong place, insisting on posting the forms for you etc. It took me two years of fighting with the bank to get access to my own accounts and see the truth in black and white of where all my efforts to please him and keep the children safe had landed me, deep in debt while he holidayed and entertained women all over.
To avoid you questioning how they are managing the family finances or where they may have hidden their wealth and assets you don’t know about, they will turn the spotlight on you by placing you on a strict budget that barely covers basic needs, such as food or clothes so that you ‘fail’ to manage and always fail forward, creating and proving the myth of your ‘untrustworthiness’ every day till you and everyone else believes it.
Putting you on a strict budget is also very useful for monitoring exactly how you spend your budget as part of the monitoring and checking for the potential of outside interference. This is also why they may stop you from getting a credit card as it may provide a means of escape.
Using outmoded gender roles to trap targets.
Controlling men have been known to make use of stereotypical male and female roles in order to coerce their targets into unpaid tasks as carers and ‘bearers’ and home-makers, responsible for all domestic ‘duties’ even to the point of slavery.
Not only does this keep you too busy and tired to seek work or activities outside the home, as it is unpaid it also adds to their control of your purse strings. There is nothing wrong with dividing domestic chores as long as both partners behave as such, each having an equal say in how domestic activities are divided maintaining the potential to find fulfilment in those activities or at least not have the activities impinge on a reasonable level of personal freedom to pursue fulfilment in activities of their own choice outside the home.
Your body is no longer your own.
Sadly the proliferation of apps and devices designed to improve our lives have become in many cases the tools for our entrapment and monitoring.
Just like setting financial budgets, controlling partners have been known to monitor their supply’s diet, calorie intake, exercise regime, sleep patterns and even the frequency of their visits to, and time spent in the bathroom.
They may also control and oversee visits to healthcare professionals and decide whether or not you are allowed to follow their advice or prescription. Some have even gone as far as convincing their victims to lie to get medication that aids the narc’s campaign, keeping their victim doped, over/underweight, or for the personal use of the narc.
My ex always had to make a show of proving how much he ‘loved’ me by being present at all consultations and therapy, to make sure I “got it right”. If he had any inkling that someone may be supportive of me in a way that threatened the setup at home, I would have to cancel the next meeting.
Using Jealousy to ‘guilt’ you.
The easiest way to keep control of a loving and vulnerable partner is to guilt them into not causing hurt or inconvenience to the narc. Frequently complaining about the amount of time you spend with your friends or family either on or offline, conditions the target that their partner is just the ‘jealous type’ as if that is a valid reason that everyone should accept for their manipulating behaviour. Eventually, the victim accepts that is just not worth the trouble to dare incite the green-eyed monster, life is easier if they just cut off all contact with the outside world, what with all these domestic chores they’ve got going on endlessly…
Affection and sexual demands.
Once a supply has been secured by their various charms, the narc will often take them on an emotional rollercoaster, dazzling them with romance during the honeymoon period, discussed later in ‘Crumbs’ and ‘Love Bombing’, only to then withdraw all affection as a punishment for not complying with the setup and as a start to the conditioning process of stimulus and reward for the ‘correct’ behaviour. There is a more subtle form of this in dating called ‘negging’ where the narc will appraise the value of his prey quickly with a back-handed compliment and see how they react, how eager they are to please.
The victim will always seek to secure the beautiful feelings of appreciation and adoration they had at the beginning of the relationship, like the first hit of crack cocaine, or a win at the bookies, they’re hooked pretty quickly to the rush especially if they have not felt the euphoria it can create in the past. Some women escape one narcissistic predator after another only to fall prey to this trap over and over again.
Control can also be exerted in the demonstration of physical affection such as the number of times you have sex each week, the activities to be performed or endured and whether or not any kind of protection or birth control is used.
I recently had to sack an employee who was having an affair and made her send him videos of a sexual nature to ‘cheer’ the sad bloke up, to then threaten to disseminate if she did not comply with his demands.
“The victims may come to an ‘understanding’ that if they do not comply with their perpetrators’ demands or desires,” Hamilton says, “then they may face significant consequences.”
Cher also admits in her interview that he had another woman living with them while he was still married to Cher: “We were fine with that. We had a strange relationship. I don’t expect anybody to understand it, because it was our relationship and it worked for us.” If this unreasonable demand and normalised abuse really worked for them, why did they split up?
If you recognise these traits in your relationships with your partner, family members or work colleagues, please understand that a narcissist will not change or seek therapy. Non-engagement is always the best strategy if you can manage it. Leave or find support to safely manage your exit if you can.
You and your loved ones do not deserve to waste another moment in their corrosive company.
Coming soon — The ABCs of Narcissism 5: the C’s Part 3
Cognitive Dissonance and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD)
To start our series The ABCs of Narcissism 1: the A’s
Click here:
References and further reading:
Start Here, and Out of the Fog, by Dana Morningstar.
Coercive Control, by Evan Stark
Invisible Chains, by Lisa Aronson Fontes
The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist, by Debbie Mirza
How to Kill a Narcissist, by JH Simon
Boundaries after a Pathological Relationship, by Adelyn Birch