What Is Coercive Control? Understanding the Pattern Behind the Harm
One of the most common things I hear in the counselling room is people describing a relationship that is clearly causing them harm, but struggling to find words for what is actually happening. They have not been hit. There has not been a single dramatic incident they can point to. What they describe instead is a gradual wearing down: feeling less confident than they used to, less free, less sure of their own judgement. They often wonder if they are imagining it, or whether they are simply too sensitive, or whether perhaps they are the problem.
Coercive control is the term that describes what many of these people have been living with. If any of that sounds familiar, this blog is for you.
What Coercive Control Actually Means
The term was introduced by sociologist Evan Stark, who described coercive control not as a crime of violence but as what he called a liberty crime. It is not about one bad argument or a single frightening incident. It is an ongoing pattern of behaviour designed to dominate, restrict and gradually erode another person's freedom and sense of self.
In England and Wales, coercive and controlling behaviour has been a criminal offence since the Serious Crime Act 2015. The law looks for a repeated pattern of behaviour in an intimate or family relationship that causes serious effect: ongoing fear, distress or restriction of day-to-day life. What that legal recognition makes clear is that physical violence does not need to be present for the harm to be real, significant or criminal.
This matters, because so many of the people I work with have minimised what they have been living through precisely because nothing had been thrown, nothing physical had happened. They do not always use the word abuse. They say things like, "I just feel so worn down," or "I don't know why I can't seem to make any decisions anymore," or "I'm just constantly on edge and I don't really know why."
Why It Is So Difficult to See
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