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Coercive Control: Breaking Free From Psychological Abuse (by Lauren Kozlowski)
Lauren Kozlowski describes what coercive control is and what to look out for when
experiencing it.
19/09/2024
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
In her book Coercive Control: Breaking Free From Psychological Abuse, Lauren Kozlowski writes:
“For a long time, the term ‘coercive control’ wasn’t really a ‘thing’. It existed, but it wasn’t used to accurately describe the kind of abuse that effects millions of us every day. It sums up the acts and patterns of vile threats, crippling humiliation, and frightening intimidation so many of us endure daily from our partner. Coercive control sees the victim systematically punished, with fear being the reins that control their actions. The abuser in this type of relationship seeks to harm, chastise, and frigthen their victim into submission, enabling them to have complete control over their subdued partner.”
Coercive control can also stem from other people in our lives, including family members and strangers alike. In my life, I have experienced extreme coercive control by a stalker who has harassed me for half a decade—efforts he has intensified a hundredfold in recent weeks.
I have repeatedly told him to leave my life, but he has responded by using coercive measures to remain in it. For example, he reported me to the Austrian police in an attempt to silence me, ensuring he could stay in my life and continue his abuse.
If you’re familiar with coercive control, you know how uncomfortable it feels when someone uses it against you. It’s often done in a way that prevents the victim from easily escaping the situation. While many people may experience coercive control from family members, it can feel even more terrifying when it comes from a stranger—especially a stalker who has threatened to rape and kill you.
Lauren Kozlowski states:
“The abuser in this type of relationship seeks to harm, chastise, and frighten their victim into submission, enabling them to have complete control over their subdued partner.”
Because coercive control is so widespread, I’m certain that if you’re a woman, you’ve likely experienced it at some point. But what does coercive control look like?
Kozlowski explains it as follows:
“This controlling behavior ensures the victim is dependent on their abuser. It happens when the abuser isolates their victim from support, exploits them, strips them of their independence, and regulates their day-to-day behavior. This was my life for many years: I was deprived of the comfort of family and friends, my money was taken from me, my movements were tracked and monitored, and I became a ghost of the person I once was before the abuse. I lived in a constant state of fear and gut-churning anxiety, worried about the next wave of abuse I would have to endure.
Coercive control is a set of invisible chains that tethers the victim to their abuser. It works by limiting their human rights, stripping them of their liberty, and reducing their ability to take action.”
I signed up for Instagram in the past, but my account was soon flagged as fake, and I couldn’t retrieve it. The same happened on Facebook, and more recently, when I signed up for LinkedIn. I hadn’t done anything dangerous or appeared as a fake person, but my account was still flagged as fake.
At first, I thought this was another person’s doing, but this person told me it was the sociopathic stalker—who is extremely jealous of my life, success, and relationships—who had tried to forbid me from having any relationship with anyone except him. If I initiated contact with someone in the past, he would always intimidate and coerce me into stopping. His actions are extreme, using hysteria, paranoia, and severe emotional blackmail, as well as actions such as blocking me from being able to use my own social media accounts, to keep me isolated.
It took only a day after I set up my LinkedIn account for him to get me blocked. By hacking into LinkedIn and getting LinkedIn to block my account, he ensured I couldn’t connect with others online. LinkedIn then asked me to verify my identity with my ID, but the option was blocked on my phone (by the hacker who hacked into it so my ID would not be recognized). After an hour of trying to identify myself with my passport, I had to give up.
In the past, this stalker has spied on people in my life and commented on them. He called my younger sister a narcissist and a whore, shamed and harassed my children, and tried to forbid me from sending messages to my ex-husband. When I attempted to contact anyone, he would tell me how dangerous they were and forbid me from emailing them, or hack into my accounts and make sure I couldn’t access them.
Besides hacking into my social media and email accounts, a hacker has also accessed my job search account, social security accounts, energy provider account, and others. I found myself unemployed during the COVID pandemic when companies reduced hours and stopped hiring new employees. When someone hacks your job search account and alters your personal information, you may be blocked from receiving unemployment benefits for six weeks. I have repeatedly discovered him trying to sabotage my career, finances, and relationships, aiming to cut me off from my income, my children, and other important aspects of my life.
The boundary violations are clear: He invades my privacy, enmeshes with me, triangulates, and behaves as if he were me. He has also often “acted” as though he were my ex-husband or ex-boyfriend, claiming to have a relationship with me just like they did. This was his reasoning to absolve himself from his own responsibility of having to respect my boundaries and leave me alone.
Every choice I made in my life, he would try to coerce me into letting him make instead. When I refused, because I found his behavior insane, he would punish me.
This is what Lauren Kozlowski has found out about coercive control (her book was published in 2020):
“Cases of coercive control have doubled in the last year (and that’s just the ones reported to the police—I imagine the true figure is much, much higher than a quick Google search would reveal).”
I believe this is true. One reason cases of coercive control are underreported is that police often deny victims the right to file a report. This happened to me a few years ago when I tried to report my ex-husband’s coercive control with the help of a social worker, but the police refused to make the report.
According to Kozlowski, coercive control is not always easy to detect in the beginning:
“Coercive control creeps up on you slowly. You don’t enter a relationship and immediately see your spouse restrict your freedom or get enraged when you visit family. It rarely happens so boldly. More often, coercive control seeps into the relationship bit by bit until you find yourself in the depths of the abuse, wading through it daily, unable to find a way out. Before the abuse takes full force, there are usually red flags.”
In my experience, this is partly true, though it depends on the person. I’ve encountered men who controlled me coercively in more obvious ways, while others did so in more subtle ways. Once you’ve experienced coercive control over a prolonged period, you usually become familiar with the signs and can identify the red flags when others try to control you.
Kozlowski describes her first experience with coercive control when her ex began speaking less to her, giving only one-word answers after she returned home later than planned from visiting her mother. She explains:
“The red flags warning you of a dangerously controlling, abusive partner are generally very similar in each case.”
In her words, these include:
- Isolation from your support system
- Monitoring your activity
- Denying your freedom
- Gaslighting
- Putting you down and calling you names
- Preventing or limiting access to money
I have experienced all of these methods from a single person. The punishment, revenge, death threats, and other methods used to intimidate me have made it impossible to live a normal life.
When I was blocked from LinkedIn, the stalker ensured I couldn’t connect with others. His intention was to coerce me into spending time only with him. His going to the police was an attempt to prevent me from reporting him for stalking by silencing me first so he could continue to invade my life.
This is a complete stranger—I do not know this person—but he has forced himself into my life and relationships in a way that is not only uncomfortable but disgusting.
As I’ve mentioned before, he has tried to coerce me into telling him I find him attractive, even though I find him extremely ugly. For years, he has insisted, sometimes daily, that my perception of his appearance is wrong and that I need to change my opinion to match what he wants me to think of him.
A person with high self-esteem would simply walk away and find someone else when rejected, but this individual, despite humiliating and degrading me in the most disgusting and inhumane ways, refuses to leave me alone.
His entire life revolves around spying on me, fabricating things about me, and projecting false, revolting ideas onto me. He imagines I am a severely co-dependent woman, eager to please others and incapable of living an independent life without him—the “all-knowing, most intelligent” man. Despite my efforts to forbid him from being in my life, he has ensured that he can stay in it and continue controlling every part of it, including controlling my opinion and thoughts about him.
In Lauren Kozlowski’s words, “the abuser must always be right, and they will make sure they force their victim to acknowledge this as fact.”
Have you ever been controlled coercively?