Getting Free from Coercive Control in Changing Times

I sat down to write about what it’s like getting free from coercive control, and I realized something exciting: I don’t know! Obviously I know about my own experience and I’ve learned a lot about others’ experiences too, but the reason I don’t know what it’s like now is because the context and culture is already much different than it was ten years ago and even further back when I started my own journey as a teen. We have collective knowledge and resources that weren’t even hinted at in public discourse 25 years ago. Some people were doing really important work that’s become the knowledge and resources we have today, but everyday people weren’t having conversations about it.

Furthermore, things are changing even more rapidly now. I’m astonished at how quickly the awareness that “big changes are happening and nobody is coming to save us, it’s up to us, let’s change the world together” is spreading. Just a few months ago it felt like I’d be screaming into the void if I said that out loud. Now it’s all over my social media feeds and my daily conversations.

How will this season of change affect our experiences of getting free from coercive control?

So yeah, I absolutely do know what it’s like to get free from coercive control as an individual with limited support. But I was initially focused on getting free from what happened in my family and how that shaped me, and didn’t realize that I was also swimming upstream against a cultural coercive control current. If I was embarking on this journey today, it would be so much easier to hear the messages we all need to hear: You’re not alone. There’s nothing wrong with you. You didn’t deserve that, you deserve much better. They made it seem like your fault, but actually they did that on purpose. Here are the tactics they use, so you can recognize them when you encounter them again. Here’s how you can get to know your nervous system, here’s how you can get some support.

And if it’s so much easier to hear those messages and connect with the knowledge, resources, and people we need to get free, the whole experience would be so much different from my journey so far. That’s such an amazing thing! I’m grateful for the support I’ve received and the connections I’ve made along the way; I wouldn’t be here without them. And I’m thrilled to realize that it’s not necessarily going to be quite that hard for the folks who are doing this work now.

I do know that getting free from coercive control involves connection, co-regulation, being witnessed and validated as your authentic self, learning about what happened to you, support for processing your emotions and integrating your experiences on a somatic level, practicing new skills for healthy relationships, and learning how to support others who are on this journey as well. These are all things that I do as a coach and CCT practitioner, and I’ll continue to write more about them. The thing that’s different that I can’t account for yet is how our changing cultural context affects our experiences. My hope is that people who have access to more support, education, and resources in this realm will have an easier time of it, and that the sense that others are on the same journey will have both an inspirational and alchemical effect.

If you’re getting free from coercive control so that you can make the life, relationships, community, and contributions you really want to make, I hope you’ll consider working or collaborating with me. Let’s find out together how this journey goes in a changing culture!