What is coercive control? How does it happen? Why do we stay? Where does it come from and how do we break free?
Low self-esteem, or lack of self-love does not cause coercive control. After all, if we didn’t love ourselves, or have esteem for our lives, would it all hurt so sickeningly much?
Coercive control is defined as being forced to do something we don’t want to do. As being harmed by someone against our will. Does anyone willingly stand in harm’s way…?
The coercion comes about by definition when someone controls and harms us or forces something upon us when they: make jokes that are insulting, make direct criticism and insults, call us names; by physical harm or endangerment; in financial deprivation or control including creating debt we’re held responsible for.
Coercive Control By Another Name
This is also known as narcissistic abuse. It’s also known as toxic behavior, or dysfunctional behavior. Bottom line…? It’s fraud. The person carrying out the coercion is the doer. – The wrongdoer.
Yet, we so often blame ourselves. And, so do they. They get us to do all kinds of things, put up with so much nastiness, disrespect, lies, affairs, withholding sex or affection, or attention, mounting bills, disappearing funds, and they disappear. Even where they are and what they’re doing becomes a painful aspect of torture in coercive control.
Guided recovery sessions. Everything you’re feeling is normal.
And we stay. Maybe for a long time. And as we’re still there, naturally we do what normal humans do, we first look for the answer to why it’s happening within ourselves. We take responsibility for their behavior; we look to ourselves as the reason they do things that makes us feel bad or harm us.
Normal is Normal
At first, this makes some sense, early on with someone we feel we love and are in a relationship with, naturally, we do what humans do.
We adjust, compromise, try, fix, seek help to fix it, say no, say yes, apologize, try harder, cook better, do more, and want to have long talks with them about it all… And none of this works.
It’s normal to feel down and defeated when we’re controlled coercively, that’s one piece that makes coercive control work.
That’s when we start looking for different solutions; more answers as to why. This is often when we come across more wrong answers or solutions that fix nothing and don’t answer our question: Why is this happening?
In fact, these traditional answers cause more pain. These wrong answers as to the whythis happens are reflected in the concept of us being codependent, the idea of our low self-esteem, in the notion of having no boundaries, and on and on in a litany of nonsense ending with: because we don’t love ourselves other’s treat us badly. Nonsense.
We do love ourselves. Always. If you didn’t love yourself what they do wouldn’t hurt so badly.
I’m not sure how any of these blame-the-person-being-harmed-for-the-rotten-persons-behavior concepts ever made any sense, but they’re largely adopted as the way to look at situations where someone is stuck in coercive control or deceptive fraud.
Is it not possible that we’re influenced and yield to them simply because of what they are? If our hand is in the water, does our hand not get wet?
A human hand or a doggy paw for that matter, when dipped in water gets wet. Is this the case because there’s something wrong with us – or our hand – or the dog? Or is it because water is wet?
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
“He tried to convince me he had sex with Dawn because of losing the dog.” ~ Shannon O. Five women’s stories from the promises to hell to escape and healing.
The thrill of engagement; the excitement of meeting Mr. Right, The One, the one like no other is the sociopath effect. There are specific feelings and thoughts that well up. These demonstrate we’ve fallen into the trap of a disingenuous user; in the time of the experience, we call it amazing love.
There are people of inherent coercive control. It’s a quality they possess simply as who and what they are. You could say they’re people of inherent evil. – Just in the same way we’re inherently good and that’s just who and what we are.
How many of us had the opportunity to be cruel to them, or take something back for them but couldn’t do it? – Yah. Because we’re inherently good. It’s who we are.
These spontaneous and overwhelming feelings represent the common marker that we’ve met a person who’s interested in us for their own dark-minded entertainment or their personal gain.
Meeting a Person of Inherent Coercive Control Feels Like This
We feel we’ve met the most amazing person on the planet
We can’t believe it…we can’t believe we found this person
They’re like no one we’ve ever met before to an exceptional degree
We’re surprised they like us, though we don’t say it out loud and this thought surprises us
It’s hard to believe that they’re still single or that someone let them go
We really want this relationship to a point of feeling anxious about it
Some notice fears that the relationship won’t come to be
We do things we’d never otherwise do within hours or days of meeting them such as change our plans, alter our schedule, and make exceptions for them
Coercive Control is Elicited as a Natural Response to Persons of Inherent Coercive Control
We fall into a particular and unusual emotional state; an instantaneous unconscious transformation that is the stuff of coercive control. You could say, being hooked is a state of involuntary coerced agreement. Towards them and things related to them, we become a bouncing ball of, yes!
And they, the hunter in pursuit who’s just bagged us? They are thrilled. Ecstatic. We see it in smiles, a buoyant attitude, wanting to be with us, messaging, and texting lots… It’s their pride in ensnaring someone new which they see as an accomplishment.
We naturally mistake for mutual and genuine excitement that we met. In truth, it’s the thrill of engagement and just the beginning of a long hard Tilt-O-Whirl of crazy.
Coercive Control is Not Because of Us: It’s Really Them
Please embrace how good you are. Know that you do love yourself or you wouldn’t be on this page. Understand that codependency as an explanation for why we were deceived and used is a behemoth of outdated thinking… and results in feeling more beat up.
And further, codependency is a misconception applied to women. How many men are told they’re codependent and this is what caused a sociopath to hijack their life?
We Get Down and Low: Low Self Esteem Doesn’t Make it Happen
Low self-esteem can be an effect of time spent under #coercivecontrol. This is not a character flaw, it isn’t permanent. It’s normal to feel down and defeated when we’re controlled coercively, that’s one piece that makes coercive control work.
But low self-esteem or lack of self-love does not cause coercive control. After all, if we didn’t love ourselves, or have esteem for our lives, would it all hurt so sickeningly much?
We can sidestep and escape coercive control by understanding what it truly is, why it happens, and who’s doing it. Combine that with embracing your own life in all your goodness.
And please, never stop seeking evolution in your answers and explanations for life’s phenomena. Remember, they used to think the earth was flat.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
Breaking up with evil is an odyssey through hell on steroids. It seems that no one understands what we’re going through. How do we cope and recover when we feel so alone?
So, you got to the day when you knew you had to break away, and you did it! Congratulations!You’re amazing, courageous, incredible and gorgeous inside and out. But then: the aftermath… When the real hell breaks loose. Everyone of us finds this shocking since we’d been living in hell for a while by the time we ended this “relationship”.
…A relationship is hardly what we ought to call it at this point, and for good reason, which we’ll get to a little later. Let’s reserve that peek into the heart of the deep-darkside of this mess.
As for now, in the aftermath, when the “break up” has happened, after we’ve gotten either them or ourselves out of a shared home, we’re struggling. Confused, grasping, frozen, and so, so scared. This is the emotional landscape pathological predators and users inspire without their trying – it just is the way it is. Who can we turn to?
We Know Somethings Wrong: We Don’t Know What
Let’s start at the beginning of the whole schemer. We, each, naturally, entered into what we thought was a relationship with a kindred spirit. These hijackings are most often described as a dream-come-true kind of soul-mate match.
And to the next person that tells you this malarkey: That you had to know they and the amazingness of them was fishy because, if it seems too good to be true, it isn’t…You tell them from me: There are very, very good things that are very true.
Don’t let anyone tell you the reason this happened is because you missed something, or have a broken picker, or don’t have boundaries. It isn’t. This happens because evil people exist.
It happens like this: An ordinary day, our usual routine – or maybe we’re out somewhere we usually don’t go. We meet someone, like them, believe them, trust them. This is all normal and our right as humans on planet earth.
And with this person, we had a certainty that we’d met a person of amazing character and quality. As it turns out, we didn’t and they aren’t: and they know it. And further they know that we don’t know that they’re a lying, deceiving snake, and that’s just how they want it for as long as possible so they can use us and take things from us. That makes them rotten and wrong: not us.
The trauma and post trauma of being scammed by a pathological user that we loved and trusted our life with is singular.
Naturally, as we became a couple – still not realizing the pull of their influence of natural dark and hellish coercion – we stick with them and stay in what we think is a side-by-side love-match. We look forward to our bright future together. Yet unbeknownst to us, rather than side-by-side, we’re not on the same page…Not in the same book. Heck, not in the same time warp or galaxy.
It’s fairly early on that we feel weird. There are inconsistencies, odd things that happen, that they say… And we rationalize. Or ask and are rebuffed or worse. Or don’t ask at all. Because of what we are as normal humans – mixed with, colliding with what they are as sociopathic entities: we stay, we continue to rationalize or set questions aside. This is the normal way of things when someone is ensorcelled under coercive control by a sociopathic “person”.
This kind of entrapment can happen to anyone at any time in life. There are even those of us who have a sociopath parent, sibling, or child. For some of us, we met this evil as teenagers. We might have spent our teenage years to now, living in a slow simmering turmoil and chaos until landing here; arriving puzzled, in pain, and oh, so, so sad and exhausted.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
This pile of steaming confusion is something we can barely breathe inside of, or comprehend as our minds and bodies and stomachs churn every minute. Our friends…?
They didn’t understand when we were in it, and now, now that we’re making an exit, and mining discoveries that burn our eyeballs and bring up breakfast, they will understand far less.
It feels like we’re at the onset of a walk through the fire, a ride through a tsunami on a piece of cardboard.
Though We Can Barley Stand, We Need to Talk
We want, need and deserve answers that are real. Our chance at full recovery is within knowing the truth. A truth beyond the standard explanations.
As we go through the mind-bending maze of breaking up with evil, we need to talk and tell and retell…. because: we’re trying to figure out why this happened, what happened and how someone could do this to someone they professed to love. We’re mid-traumatic-event with more life-shaking discoveries ahead.
Real Answers: Real Recovery
Post Traumatic Stress is Real
We’re in post-trauma because the time spent as “a couple” when that other person is an antisocial psychopath is a traumatic event, yet not a typical traumatic event. Rather than a short-lived one-time event it’s sustained trauma and is in our daily life.
By typical traumatic event, I mean a natural disaster, a car accident, or physical attack by a stranger, or in war. The events which people often don’t want to talk about, can’t talk about and might be told by some not to talk about… yet these events are accepted. No one questions someone about the validity of having their house robbed, but sustain a life-jacking…? Somehow it’s supposed that we’re to blame.
Post Trauma is Where Healing Starts
The trauma and post-trauma of being scammed by a pathological user that we loved and trusted our life with are singular. This is someone we loved, yet now we’re absorbing: that they didn’t love us after all.
The discovery that they lied is traumatic. We do want and need to tell our story because we’re looking for answers at every retelling. We’re stunned and unwinding the maze to see more of what happened… we need to. We talk about it a lot. We need to.
This is No Ordinary Break Up: It’s a Life-Saving Escape
As we’re in real trauma, and post-trauma, trying to make sense of what happened, we go over and over and over it. It’s the only thing on our minds. After about three weeks, people tell us to move on, thinking we’re in a normal break-up.
Not only does this not help, but it also isn’t possible: not until we do get the answers to what happened and how. We want, need, and deserve answers that are real. Our chance at full recovery is within knowing the truth. A truth beyond the standard explanations.
Defend and Explain Ourselves to No One
The inevitable and unavoidable post trauma has set up camp in our lives. The good news is: this is not the new us. How we’re feeling is normal; normal and not permanent.
Our impatient friends might tell us we’re obsessed. We might have taken on the idea that we’re obsessed, or that we’re ruminating or fixated. Anyone who suggests that is wrong. They don’t understand what breaking up with evil is.
We need to replay what happened until we find the answers. It’s the natural healing process the body is searching for answers our friends don’t have, and neither do we, yet. Believing we’re ruminating or obsessing blinds the truth. – Our body s doing what it does to find answers. Plug in new information and answers will seem to fall from the sky…
So, keep looking, turn it over and over. Please keep asking questions and looking for answers that slow and then stop the merry-go-round in our heads. Add the real information and truth about this phenomenon, realign the view of ourselves with compassion and facts about what normal is and we’re on the way.
It’s Too Unbelievable and Just too Much
Not only do people around us not understand our agitation, the way our hand tremors as we try to take another sip of tea and tell more, well… it frightens them. It’s all too much for them from the outside looking in at us breaking up with evil.
We can see that they can’t believe that we could’ve believed this person. They don’t understand that it’s normal to believe people. It’s not at all in their awareness that evil people exist even if they didn’t like the person we just broke up with.
We try to explain. What comes back eventually or immediately from others is most commonly along the lines of, You gotta admit, you made a bad choice. The response of friends and family blasts us with another shock, another punch in the gut.
We explain again, It wasn’t like that, it’s just not a regular break-up… this is more than that! We see a silent sideways glance and a look between or between our friends or our coworkers or our parents for the 500th time. Another punch in the gut and still, we want to explain, again…
They Can’t Take It
What if we’re on the threshold of a new discovery? As if we’re a part of the team that discovered the earth was round rather than flat?
Try to stop explaining it to others. No matter how profound and accurate about these beasts what you discover is, it’s exhausting. Keep in mind that no matter what, there’s no need to explain ourselves to anyone. There’s no call ever to defend yourself to those who don’t understand.
And sad to say but our explaining can take us to more loss, rather than support. After landing on more explanations for the behavior and more discoveries about what they’ve done we want to tell our friends. Instead, we look up and see that after about three months of this that our friends, even the best of our besties, have vacated the premises.
And – truth be told, nothing, none of those partial answers or standard explanations has stopped the room from spinning or eased the pain. We notice one of these sad days, that our pants are sliding down, and we weigh about 20-pounds less than we used to.
Post-Trauma Sits Down With Us and Stays Awake All Night With Us
In post-trauma, part of us is floating somewhere off to the right side of our head, another part of us is heavy in our gut, another part is aware of movements all around us… like thinking he’s about to show up around the corner.
It could be, that we barely notice the exodus of our friends, or weep when we notice, but really, we’re too busy trying to figure out what happened and why we’re in a ball on the floor, and can’t seem to even do the laundry.
We’re Hit Hard in Every Realm
We suffer emotional confusion, anxiety, fear… And possibly face real physical danger. We’re hit hard financially, and all but collapsed under the two-ton truck sucker-punch to the heart, body, mind, and soul. No one can begin to understand what this was or why we stayed unless they’ve been in it too. – And even then, real understanding is eluisve.
It seems the inevitable and unavoidable post-trauma has set up camp in our lives and is here to stay. The good news is: this is not the new us. How we’re feeling is normal; normal and not permanent: if we take in the information and new perspectives that answer every question, and can resolve every loss.
Most of us shiver in vacillating doubt of everything we think and feel. Most of all, we’re wondering if maybe we’re wrong and maybe after all they are the amazing people we first thought they were and that all this is in our head. Or, worse yet thoughts that we’re the problem, that we’re the evil.
The Room Stops Spinning When We Understand
Who feels like they’re going mad? Did every hand in the dark, reading this in bed go up? This is exactly how you would feel right now.
We’re solely occupied with replaying the scenes and conversations with them. Rewinds and reviews of even those moments we thought of as “fun” cycle on repeat… Because we must know what that confusion, the head-spinning upheavals, and the gut-punch actually meant.
One thing we know for sure: no one understands as we do battle in breaking up with evil. We didn’t and don’t understand… that’s why we got online… that’s what led us here, to this page. Finally, we’ve found a place where understanding this is the pathway to restoring your life. All those questions, all those replays hold the answer when we find the keys to unlock them.
We’re doing something big here, we’re effecting paradigm shifts that will redirect the trajectory of our own lives, and of all humanity.
These vivid and haunting images and revamps with new endings of a happier ending (if only we’d done something differently), is an effort by the body to find answers. Please know, this is normal, and this will continue until we get real answers.
Talking about it, and seeking reasons that make sense is a necessary piece to unwinding the madness. Each of us is spinning, retching, crying, confused, panicked, maybe scared out of our minds. Frantically, we’re wondering if we are losing it and if all this isn’t our fault.
All of this is normal under the circumstances. How many of you are doubting your selves? – That’s normal too. Please don’t acquiesce in shame under the popular opinion that we allowed this. Please, don’t stop until you get answers that make real sense, and honor you.
There Are Answers: The Most Healing Answers of All
The thing is, if we keep looking at it purely from our emotional pain, we might not see the answers. We’ll want something to crack the mystery of the crazy… new information that plugs into our replay to reveal the pure and simple truth of what happened and why.
There’s more to this than gaslighting. Hoovering happens, or doesn’t happen for a very specific reason. Deflection, projection, and the silent treatment are not random nor what they seem. Every piece of this has two combined paradoxical and very simple explanations; a hideous one, and a gorgeous one. Those are the only two sides to the breakup.
The fact is, getting to this new point of knowing the answers and certainty of them and the why is full healing, but it’s a long walk from here to there. We need someone to talk to. There are answers. Real answers that leave us whole again, all of them, right here.
Discovery and Awakening
We’re each on a mission, together; and together, we’re not alone, and we do understand.
For most of us, breaking up with evil is a solo journey. The impending isolation and alone-ness are colossal on one hand, yet we’re among hundreds-of-thousands who’ve gone through this, and are part of a mass awakening: an awakening to the brutal depths of the sinister-side of humanity; we’re advancing all together, and alone as we evolve as humans.
Together, yet as individuals. Interconnected and interdependent and each on our own. There’s a collective transformation of consciousness underway, and we’re leading as the advance guard, as pioneers. So, no, everyone won’t understand, but we must; we must have answers.
Together We Understand, Heal, and Make Change
In breaking up with evil, others from the outside looking in, might think we’re only breaking up with some really bad guy or really awful woman… and have lost our minds, or should have known better… Think again world, because that’s no kind of answer; that’s founded in grave misunderstanding and missed opportunity.
What if we’re on the threshold of a new discovery? As if a part of the team that discovered the earth was round rather than flat? What if we’re part of a human revolution to avert the world from crumbling under self-absorbed destruction, and toward a unified realization that we’re of infinite value; that we each create our lives, and can make love-not-war, peace and joy, and happiness for all a reality?
We’re doing something big here. By finding the real answers behind these sickening traumas, we’re effecting paradigm shifts that will redirect the trajectory of our own lives, and of all humanity. – As I see it, we’re each a part of a much larger situation. We’re each of us who’ve been through this on a mission together, and together, we’re not alone.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
