Coercive Control

There are so many ways that narcissists use coercive control to manipulate others. Below are some of the ways that control can be exploited.

Because of the certainty that a narcissist will carry out their threats, narcissists know that if they can get any leverage and if the threats work, it creates a way to exploit the person, gradually escalating more and more to create impossible situations unless stopped.

Coercive control can take many forms. These just scratch the surface, as far too often they are compounded, and made to seem insignificant or invisible to the outside world, whie to the person victimised, their whole identity is disrupted as they lose sight of who they are.

• Imagine a person you’re dating has a naked picture of you, and threatens you with consequences if you don’t comply. You know they will not hesitate to honour that promiseto circulate the images, publicly shaming you while knowing that once out there, the images cannot ever be hidden again. What do you do?
  Do you say no, and risk consequences, or is it better to tow the line, and hope it stops?

• Imagine being in a relationship and confessing a weakness or some information that you daren’t risk ‘going public’. Once revealed, in a brief moment of weakness, it can be used against you. You’re asked to tolerate a small amount of abuse, or risk it being revealed. Perhaps even do something that seems wrong that they ask, without realising you’re actually being used as a pawn in a different game they are playing. Once innocently draw into being a perpetrator in a different game, you’re even more committed to not challenging them. What do you do?
  Do you say no and risk your livelihood, naked pictures, or other leverage being put onto the line, or is it better to tow the line, and hope it stops, with no further consequences

• Imagine being told to make a choice between your parents and your children, knowing that you would lose contact with the children unless you excommunicated your parents? What would you do?

• Imagine being you’ll be accused of child abuse if you don’t give up the children in your care? You know you’d never lay a finger on them, but you also know that they are so impressionable that they would repeat what thye are asked to, and once the accusation is out there, the public would never see you as innocent ever again? Would you give in, or risk being labelled with one of the worst labels imaginable?

• Imagine getting into a relationship, where the other person seems to reflect eveything that’s important to you. They appear self-reliant, capable, and enthusiastic. In a flourishof excitement, you propose. Trapped in a promise to marry someone you soon realise was no the person you thought they were, you feel obligated to continue, being told about all the people coming to the wedding from miles away that would be let down, who have spent thousands on air tickets to be there. You’re trapped to go ahead or be seen as the bad one, jilting them at the alter. So you go ahead, hoping it will work out, only to them be trapped with the arrival of a child, making escape appear impossible, and being forced to endure consequences including losing your child, if you dare challenge their decisions. Do you escape or do you stick in there, enduring ever increasing levels of abuse, in order to protect your children?

• Imagine being in court, fighting for contact with your children, only to have your ex-wife openly lying, blocking all contact, and convincing the children you don’t want contact, causing you to revisit the courts until you’re in such chronic debt that you can’t afford to go back to court any more and you lose your children? 1 million children in the UK alone do not see one of their parents through deliberate parental alienation. Fighting against a convincing narcissist can cost you far more than giving in to them. Do you fight or give in?

• Imagine being in a relationship and confessing a weakness or some information that you daren’t risk ‘going public’. Once revealed, in a brief moment of weakness, it can be used against you. You’re asked to tolerate a small amount of abuse, or risk it being revealed. Perhaps even do something that seems wrong that they ask, without realising you’re actually being used as a pawn in a different game they are playing. Once innocently draw into being a perpetrator in a different game, you’re even more committed to not challenging them. What do you do?
  Do you say no and risk your livelihood, naked pictures, or other leverage being put onto the line, or is it better to tow the line, and hope it stops, with no further consequences

• Imagine someone at work. They seem popular and well respected always associated with success, and seemingly getting great results from their team. Then imagine that the reality is that they threaten those they manage with not only being dismissed, losing any pay, bonuses, and even their livelihood, as well as not getting employment anywhere else in the places with whom they have strong contacts. Suddenly the probability of not getting employment creates fear that leads to a toxic work environment, forced to work ludicrous hours, with increasingly impossible targets, under constant threat of not being able to make ends meet, and support their families. 

• Imagine someone with the ability to do so saying they will take it out on the children, on your siblings on or other close family members if you don’t cooperate with their demands, and also being told that it will be your fault if they are forced to take that route. If they get away with doing that to others, is it your fault for letting it happen, or should you simply accept the abuse to yourself, to avoid it happening to others?

• Imagine being held to ransom with poverty, with your partner spending the money into the household quicker than it it is being replenished, refusing to work, and meaning you are the only way to avoid financially going under? Do you keep working more and more with more jobs and more hours, or do you all sink together?

The common thread is the certainly thay the narcissist will carry out the threat, even if it means self-annihilation. Like an atom bomb destroying everything of meaning, the narcissist has no hesitation to carry out threats.

It may begin as a subtle request, such as not going out on a planned evening, leading to you not going out, in order not to have them worry about you, or even as a more uncomfortable one, such as suggesting that a friend of your makes them feel uneasy or made a pass at them or perhaps making up that they overheard them insulting you, leading to you distancing yourself from them.

Then it progressing into choices, as you become more and more invested, such as to disconnect you from your friends network, by making it really unconfortable for everyone to have contact, or instigating an argument with them.

Then it may progress to a choice between children or family, or between friends, or freedoms. It may be through financial control, with no visibility or access to bank accounts.

Gradually, self-belief becomes eroded, until the guilt and shame, turn into self-delusion, where it is mentally safer to ignore the facts, in preference to accepting them. Living in denial then becomes a way of life, as you gradually fall deeper into a well spun web from which there is no easy escape.

With fear for the children, of poverty, or threats of violence constantly playing on your mind, separated from all friends and external influences to advise you that your situation is not right, you bury yourself deeper and deeper into the depths of denial, believing the abuse experienced is commonplace and to be expected, even deserved, yet at the same time wishing that one day the abuse would stop, and not seeing any way that it could be without the atom bomb level threat being triggered.