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Coercive Control: When an Abuser Tries to Prevent You from Leaving
Lauren Kozlowski describes what coercive control is and what to look out for when
experiencing it in her book about coercive control.
06/01/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
In her book Coercive Control: Breaking Free From Psychological Abuse, Lauren Kozlowski explains how coercive control effects millions of us daily. The most commonly known form of coercive control usually stems from a 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.
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?
Usually, an abuser who uses coercive control intends to isolate their victim from others, cutting them off from support and help. I have experienced this form of control multiple times, stemming from various people, and I am familiar with the patterns associated with it. Most commonly, coercive control is difficult to stop, not only because it is often not taken seriously, but also because it can be so covert that addressing it becomes challenging.
Coercive control may also go hand in hand with financial abuse, both of which can lead to a victim being unable to leave an abusive partner.
In my case, one of the abusers I’ve encountered tried to isolate me from others by hacking into my accounts and locking them. 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 harmful or appeared to be a fake person, yet my account was still flagged as fake.
I have two stalkers who frequently hack into my accounts.
One of them often lowers my YouTube numbers, deletes photos from my blog, alters blog content, and even changes videos I create. This individual is extremely jealous of my life, success, and relationships. He has tried to forbid me from having any relationships with anyone except him. In the past, whenever I initiated contact with someone, he would intimidate and coerce me into stopping.
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.
One time, he hacked into my social security account, and I was unable to get my iron supplement prescriptions because the system showed I had no health insurance when I arrived at the doctor’s office. It took over a month to resolve this issue.
Recently, my phone number stopped working unexpectedly, and I have been unable to resolve the issue.
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.
Lauren Kozlowski has found that cases of coercive control have doubled in 2019 (her book was published in 2020).
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 at first. It often starts gradually, and by the time it becomes too obvious to ignore, it is often already too late to leave the relationship—for example, when you are pregnant and dependent on your abuser.
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.
According to Healthline, there are 12 major signs of coercive control:
1. Isolating you from your support system
2. Monitoring your activity throughout the day
3. Denying you freedom and autonomy
4. Gaslighting
5. Name-calling and putting you down
6. Limiting your access to money
7. Reinforcing traditional gender roles
8. Turning your kids against you
9. Controlling aspects of your health and body
10. Making jealous accusations
11. Regulating your sexual relationship
12. Threatening your children or pets
An abuser may use only a few of these methods, but he may also use all of them. In my case, various men have repeatedly used most of these, or all. 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. Another person reported me to the police so he could silence me and stop me from reporting him to the police for stalking.
This particular stalker 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.
Some men imagine because I am a woman, I need to be severely co-dependent, eager to please men (simply because of my gender, regardless of my individual personality) and that I am incapable of living an independent life without a man. Despite my efforts to block these men from staying in my life, they ensure that they can stay in it and continue controlling every part of it, including controlling my opinions and thoughts about them and trying to dictate what I am allowed to write on my blog.
If you have experienced coercive control or know someone who has, I recommend reading Lauren Kozlowski’s book. It offers valuable advice and helps you recognize the patterns.
Have you ever been controlled coercively?