Coercive control: How to recognise the signs and rebuild your life after abuse
It rarely starts with threats or violence. Coercive control can begin with seemingly caring behaviour before escalating into isolation, monitoring and manipulation that gradually erode your confidence and independence. Trauma specialist psychotherapist Tina Chummun explains how to recognise the warning signs, understand why leaving doesn't always end the fear and begin rebuilding your sense of self.
Alison Graves
What coercive control actually is
According to trauma specialist psychotherapist Tina Chummun, coercive control is domestic abuse, but it’s the part you can’t see.
“When we picture abuse, we tend to picture bruises from physical abuse, yet coercive control is often entirely non-physical, a sustained pattern of behaviour designed to strip away a person’s freedom, autonomy and their sense of self.”
The term was coined by sociologist Evan Stark, who understood it not as a series of isolated incidents but as a “liberty crime”, where it’s a slow, systematic entrapment. In England and Wales, it has been a criminal offence since 2015, precisely because it was finally recognised that you can imprison someone without ever raising a hand.
“The essence of it is power and control. Through isolation, intimidation, monitoring, criticism and manipulation, the abuser gradually shrinks the other person’s inner and external world until they’re living inside a set of rules that only the abuser can see, and that constantly changes. It’s this invisibility that makes it so insidious, often the victim themselves doesn’t have a name for what’s happening. They simply know they feel anxious, overwhelmed, confused, disorientated., diminished and permanently on edge.”
The signs of coercive control to look for
It’s a pattern rather than an event, so coercive control is best recognised by how you feel and its accumulation, says Tina, who has worked extensively with survivors of domestic violence, sexual abuse and PTSD.
Walking on eggshells. This is the hallmark where living in a state of constant hypervigilance, monitoring another person’s moods, pre-empting their anger, endlessly adjusting your own behaviour to keep the peace. Imagine a deer in the wild, permanently alert to a predator; now imagine the predator lives in your home. That’s the nervous system reality of coercive control ignited and switched on 24/7.
Isolation. Being gradually cut off from friends, family and support, often under the guise of love or concern, until the abuser becomes your only frame of reference.
Monitoring and invasion of privacy. Checking your phone, tracking your movements, needing to know where you are and who you’re with. Control dressed up as love and care, which it is not and a violation of one’s boundaries.
Gaslighting. Having your reality persistently rewritten until you no longer trust your own memory or judgement and start to wonder if you’re the problem.
Financial control. Restricting access to money, scrutinising spending, creating dependency that makes leaving feel impossible.
Micro-regulation of everyday life. Rules about what you wear, eat, how you clean, who you see, the slow erosion of the hundreds of small freedoms that make up a self.
Why leaving doesn’t always mean you’re free
This is the part that’s least understood, says Tina, and she adds that ‘leaving is not the same as being free’ and that survivors are often blindsided by the fact that the fear doesn’t end when the relationship does.
‘There’s a neurobiological reason for this. Living under coercive control keeps the body locked in survival mode, flooded with the stress hormone cortisol, the threat detection system running constantly. That doesn’t switch off the moment you leave. The nervous system has learned that the world is dangerous, and it keeps firing the alarm even when in safety.
‘Survivors often experience hypervigilance, anxiety, flashbacks, difficulty trusting their own decisions, and a jarring sense of “why do I still feel afraid?” long after they’re physically out. Understanding this is itself part of the healing and it means you’re not going backwards or failing to “get over it”; your body is simply still catching up with your safety.’
The stages of recovery after coercive control
Reclaiming your reality – after months or years of gaslighting, rebuilding trust in your own perceptions and naming what happened as abuse. Recognition is where healing begins.
Regulating the nervous system – learning to bring the body back down out of survival mode with grounding tools: slow paced breathing, the 5-4-3-2-1 senses exercise, gentle movement. Body tapping exercises. This teaches a body that has forgotten safety how to feel it again.
Rebuilding the self – coercive control systematically dismantles identity, so recovery is about rediscovering who you are outside of someone else’s rules, your preferences, your voice, your boundaries, your worth.
The three As of recovery
Tina has a quickfire way for survivors to untangle recovery…
Awareness (gently recognising the patterns and their impact without shame)
Acceptance (meeting yourself with compassion rather than self-blame, understanding your responses as survival, not weakness)
Authentic communication (relearning how to voice your needs and hold boundaries, something coercive control forcibly takes away).
